Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

Walt chuckles as though with embarrassment. “I’'ve got a bad ticker, hon. Can’t take that stuff.”

Nancy looks almost frantic. “Well, there’s other things I can do. I mean, you got me out here and all. And I got to make a living, you know?”

“Oh, I know that, sweetheart. Don’t you worry ’bout that.” He digs out his roll and peels off five $100 bills. Nancy almost licks her lips at the sight of them, but she waits until he passes them to her. “Does that cover your time?”

The glow in her eyes tells him she hasn’'t seen that kind of money in a long time, if ever. “What about my tip?”

Walt hesitates, then winks like a man who knows he’s being taken advantage of and peels off another hundred, which he folds into the damp little palm.

“How long you gonna be in town, J.B.?” Nancy asks, obviously thinking about her future prospects. “I can put on the dog all you want, darling.”

“I'’ll be around all week. Got a piece of some Wilcox wells down here. You’ll see me around the boats. If I'm with somebody else, you just give me the high sign, and I'’ll come get you if I can. If not, I'’ll catch you the next night. Okay?”

She nods soberly. “I got you.”

Walt smiles with genuine gratitude. “Can you get home all right?”

“Yeah, my car’s in the lot here.”

“Where?”

“Other side.”

Walt gets up and cranks the Roadtrek, then follows Nancy’s pointing finger to the other side of the vast lot, where he stops beside her wreck of a car.

“It’s a junker,” she admits, “but it runs good. My ex is a mechanic.”

Walt feels like giving her the rest of the roll, but that would be pushing it.

Nancy raises her slim frame from the seat, leans down, and kisses him on the top of the head, then walks to the door in the side of the Roadtrek. As he looks back to watch her go, she pauses and lifts her tight skirt over her hips. A thin band of black elastic encircles her surprisingly feminine hips, and the thong disappears between the firm cheeks of her rump. She bends and touches her toes without effort, then stands and turns to face him, drawing the thong away from her pubis. The hair there is trimmed flat, a dark shadow over taut skin and protuberant lips. This time something stirs in him, something beyond thought or reason, the old Adam in him coming back to life.

“Do you miss it, J.B.?” she asks softly. “Don’t you just want to put your finger in it sometimes?”

Walt tries to laugh this off, but something sticks in his throat.

“Everybody wants to,” she says. “You don'’t never get too old for that.”

Walt looks into her eyes, then back at the triangular shadow.

“I'’ll be around,” she says, letting the thong pop back into place. “You let me know.”

She pulls down the clingy skirt, opens the door, and steps out of the van.

Walt drives away without looking back. Her groping touch had repelled him, but that last, unexpected display, her frank lack of embarrassment, arced across the space between them and struck something vital. It’s enough to make him want to stop the van and pour another drink. A girl he wouldn'’t have looked at twice ten years ago has pierced his armor with a simple tease. The confidence he felt on the boat has been shaken. As he climbs the long road that leads up the bluff, he wonders,

Am I getting too old for this game?

CHAPTER

27

After two nights without sleep, seven hours’ rest is not enough, but ten minutes in a steaming shower at least make me feel human again. Caitlin woke me from a dead sleep at 3:45 a.m. and led me to her bathroom. Now, as I'm toweling off, she comes in and sets a cup of coffee beside the lavatory. I wrap the towel around my waist, and she perches on the edge of the commode. She’s still wearing the clothes she had on at the police station.

“Have you slept?” I ask her, taking a hand towel off the rack to dry my hair.

“I’'ve been reading about dogfighting.”

“And?”

“My mind is blown. I'm serious. This is a worldwide sport—if you can call it that—and it goes back centuries. It’s been outlawed almost everywhere except Japan, but it’s still thriving all over the world. Did you even Google this?”

“I haven'’t had time.”

Caitlin shakes her head as though I'm hopeless. “I pictured, you know, a mob of hicks with twenty-dollar bills in their hands gathered around a couple of bulldogs. But this is a big-money business. There’s a whole American subculture out there. Two subcultures really: the old-timer rednecks—who specialize in breeding ‘game’ dogs and pass down all the knowledge about fighting bloodlines

from the 1800s; then there’s the urban culture—the street fighters, they call them. Hip-hop generation and all that. It’s a macho thing. They fight their dogs in open streets, basements, fenced yards. But as different as the two subcultures are, they have a lot in common. They’re highly organized, they train the dogs the same way, and they expose their kids to it very young to desensitize them…It’s

sick.

”

“‘Game dogs,’ you said. Is that what they call fighting dogs?”

“No, no. ‘Gameness’ is a quality that a dog has or doesn’'t have. If a dog is ‘game,’ that means he’s willing to fight to the point of death, no matter how badly injured he is. Truly game dogs will keep fighting with two broken forelegs.”

“Jesus.”

Caitlin stands, outrage animating her. “Apparently pit bull terriers are among the most loyal dogs in the world, and it’s that loyalty that these assholes twist to create animals that will sacrifice their lives to please their masters. You should see some pictures. When they'’re not fighting, these dogs live on heavy three-foot chains or on the breeding stand. That'’s it. And they don'’t live long. You know what happens to dogs that aren'’t considered game?”

“I can guess.”

She nods. “They kill them. Kill them or use them for practice. ‘Practice’ means letting other dogs tear them to pieces, to give them a taste for blood. If it’s the first option, they shoot them, hang them, bash in their skulls with bats, electrocute them, run them over with trucks. Sometimes they just let them starve.”

“It’s hard to grasp,” I say, knowing this is hardly adequate. “I need my clothes.”

“They’re in the dryer. I'’ll get them. Though I kind of like seeing you this way. It’s been a while.”

This is what you get with a journalist like Caitlin. She can talk about horrific details in the same sentence with her desire for food or sex. I guess it’s like doctors talking about suppurating infections while they eat. After a while, they just don'’t think about it.

“Yes, it has,” I agree.

She looks at me for a few moments more, then leaves the bathroom.

The hook has been set. She will not let go of this story until she finds everything there is to know. This probably puts her in more

danger than she was in before, but at least now she knows what she’s dealing with, and I will be close enough to protect her.

After I dress, we take my backpack and slip out a side window, then through a neighbor’s yard to a street two blocks away. There a female reporter named Kara picks us up in her Volkswagen. She drives us to her apartment on Orleans Street, tells Caitlin to be careful, and disappears. Then Caitlin takes the wheel and follows the directions I’'ve given her.

Our destination is a hundred acres of gated land called Hedges Plantation. Just off Highway 61 South, it’s owned by Drew Elliott, my father’s first junior partner, and a friend of mine since grade school. Dad is supposed to have got the key so that he can let us onto the property at 4:30 a.m. Danny McDavitt and Kelly are flying in from Baton Rouge, and McDavitt can probably set the chopper down there without anyone being the wiser. Though Hedges is surrounded by the newest residential developments on the south side of town, it’s mostly wooded, and protected from casual observation on every side. Drew originally planned to build a home here, but now I hear he plans to build a high-end subdivision. Modern medicine in a nutshell. There are a couple of aluminum buildings on the property, and it’s one of these that I’'ve chosen for our rendezvous.

“Is that the one?” Caitlin asks, pointing to a narrow gravel road just past the entrance to an antebellum home on the right.

“No, the next one.”

“I see it. Okay.” She slows the car, and the wheels crunch on gravel. “The thing about dogfighting,” she says—it’s standard procedure for Caitlin to return without warning to a previous discussion—“is that when the police do bust fights, which is rarely, they always turn up evidence of other crimes. Drugs, weapons, prostitution. The gambling goes without saying.”

“Kill your lights.”

“What?”

“There’s enough moonlight to get us down this road.”

She switches off the lights but keeps talking. “I don'’t mean random stuff either. The same criminals who run drugs and guns and girls love fighting dogs. It’s like the ultimate expression of the male lust for power and violence.”

“Your Radcliffe education is showing.”

“Well, it’s true.”

“I know. That'’s why I called Kelly.”

She gives me a tight smile. “Yeah, I get it now.”

As we roll up to a metal gate, a tall, white-haired man steps from behind some cedar trees to our right. My father. Caitlin smiles and starts to roll down her window, but Dad pulls open the gate and motions for us to drive quickly through. After we do, he locks the gate behind us and comes to the passenger door of the Volkswagen. I get out and squeeze into the back, leaving the front seat for him.

“Well, Kate,” he says, his eyes glinting as he looks at Caitlin. “It’s sure been dull without you around.”

“No more boredom,” she says with a smile. “I guarantee that, at the very least. Have you heard from Peggy and Annie?”

Dad shakes his head. “We’re talking as little as possible. And only on the satellite phone.”

“I have it with me,” I say. “We can get an update after this meeting.”

“Good. I have a surprise for you, Son.”

“What’s that?”

“Walt’s here.”

“Garrity?”

“Right.”

“What do you mean ‘here?’ In Natchez? Or

here

here?”

“He’s in the shed now, talking to Kelly.”

For the first time, I feel a rush of real optimism.

“The sly son of a bitch just appeared in my house,” Dad says. “Almost gave me a coronary. I have James Ervin watching me, and he had no idea Walt was even there.”

James Ervin is a black cop my dad used to treat. “That'’s not encouraging.”

“Walt’s pretty slick,” Dad says.

“Who’s Walt Garrity?” Caitlin asks.

“A Texas Ranger,” Dad explains. “Met him in Korea, when we were still boys. He’s semiretired, but I guess once you learn to sneak past Indians and Mexicans, retired city cops aren'’t much of a challenge. This will be the only night we see him. He wants to work totally apart from everyone else.”

As well as I got to know Walt in Houston, there are many things

I don'’t know about him. For example, I know that my father saved Walt’s life during the Korean War, and that Walt later returned the favor, but I don'’t know the circumstances of either episode. Both men belong to a generation that doesn’'t talk about certain things without a compelling reason.

“I'm sure Walt knows best,” I say. “We’ll talk about your security later.”