Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

Sands looks bigger than he did walking the casino floor. He has an imposing density that Walt has seen in natural fighters, and he has a fighter’s eyes as well, always probing for vulnerability. Yet when he rises from his desk, the watchfulness recedes, and he offers his hand with a smile. Walt takes it, gauging the power in it. It’s the hand of a laborer or an infantry soldier.

“Hello, Mr. Gilchrist,” Sands says in a cultured English accent. “It’s good to have a real gambler aboard.”

“Aw, you must see my type all the time.”

“You’d be surprised. The average player on a Mississippi boat loses about fifty dollars. Our average is higher, because we have a higher percentage of table games, and we draw the affluent clientele that does exist. But still. It’s good to have a real player aboard.”

“Winning, losing, hell, it’s all the same after a while. It’s the risk

that keeps you going. Just like the oil business. I hate a duster, but, goddamn, it just makes it all the sweeter when you hit that pay sand on the next one. You know?”

“A man after my own heart,” Sands says. “A man who can live out Kipling’s famous advice about victory and defeat—to treat those two impostors as the same.”

Walt laughs. “You Brits sure have a way with words. I'’ll bet the ladies just fall over and beg for it when they hear that accent, don'’t they?”

Sands smiles and takes his seat. “What business are you in?”

“Oil.”

“Not too much of it left around here, is there?”

“More than you’d think. And with the price through the roof, the numbers on old wells look a lot better than they used to. Course, you’re right. In the fifties and sixties, they found some fifty-million-barrel fields over here. Most of them are still producing. But I'm rambling. Times have changed, that’s for sure.”

“You mentioned a group event in the future.”

“Right. But it’s not your standard-type junket.”

Sands smiles expansively. “I always have time for a man with an interesting proposition.”

“I'm the same way myself. You never know what’ll come your way if you keep your ears open.”

“What sort of event do you have in mind?”

Walt hesitates as he once did when asking a pharmacist for a condom, but inside he’s feeling a too-long-absent thrill. He loves nothing more than facing his mark and winging it, which is what he’s always done best. If you look a criminal in the eye and come right at him—tempt him toward a crime as though it’s your idea—he frequently forgets to doubt you. Of course that can get into entrapment issues, these days. But in the heyday of the Rangers, there’d been a lot of latitude when it came to that kind of thing, and not much concern about procedure. Case notes tended to be spare, running a line or two every couple of days. “Drove from Austin to Dallas. Located suspect in barn. Killed him at dawn. Returned to Austin” was one Walt remembered fondly. Times have changed of course, but this meeting has some of the flavor of the old days.

“Mr. Sands,” he says, “when you get to my age, like me and my

friends, there’s not much you haven'’t seen. It tends to take a lot to get the old ticker racing.”

A sympathetic smile from Sands. “All pleasures grow stale, don'’t they?”

“Indeed. But in about a month, I'm bringing over a bunch of boys for a visit. We’'ve been looking for a place to blow off some steam without the wives, and we got to talking about Natchez. We used to come over here for a golf tournament they had every year, the local oilmen. Man, after that thing was over, we’d go back to the hotel, and they’d have the girls waiting. There were lines out the doors of some rooms, and local guys charging admission just to watch.”

“That'’s the kind of action you’re looking for?”

“Some of that would be appreciated. With enough to go around, of course.”

“Oh, that’s never a problem here.”

“Not just girls, though. I'm talking about the gambling too.”

“Well, you'’ve seen the boat.”

“And a fine one she is too, as far as she goes.”

Sands cocks one eyebrow. “Meaning?”

“Legal gambling’s all right, in its place. But it’s kind of…restrictive, if you get my meaning. It’s like sex in a medical clinic with all the lights on. Takes the zing out of it. Half the fun’s the sneaking around, the mystery of it. That'’s what gets the blood pumping—the forbidden. You with me?”

“Oh, yes.”

“When I was a boy, before I went into the army, I used to work in a gambling joint down in Galveston. Illegal, of course, like all the best places. Man, there was

nothing

they didn't have. I'm talking sport, now. Bare-knuckles boxing, strictly for interested parties. Cockfighting. Shooting contests.

That'’s

the kind of action I'm talking about.”

Sands mulls this over, watching Walt with unblinking eyes. “I see. You ever put money on dogs?”

“Dog racing?”

“Dog

fighting,”

says Sands, his eyes as insinuating as those of a pimp offering a young boy to a tourist.

“Oh, I get you. Twenty, twenty-five years ago we had a good bit of that in my neck of the woods, but the governor got a bug up his ass and the state troopers started cracking down. The Rangers too.

I saw old Red fight in Taos. She was bred out of Arkansas Blackie. Hell of a leg dog. Went for the foreleg every time, but she could really break ’em down. A real champion. That was years ago, though. I’'ve heard they do a lot of hogs-and-dogs-type stuff out at the hunting camps, and I’'ve seen a little of that. But straight fighting? Pit fighting? Not in a while.”

“Well, we have a variety of activities available to players accustomed to more intense games. I'’ll give it a think and see what I come up with. As for ladies, do you have any preference?”

“I gotta tell you, I like those oriental girls. You seem to have a surplus too.”

Sands’s eyes flicker with light.

“When I first got to town, I was thinking about a colored girl, but these young ladies you got remind me of some I spent time with in Korea.”

“Recently?”

“Hell, no. I'm talking 1952–53.”

For the first time, Sands looks truly interested. “You fought there?”

“All along that godforsaken thirty-eighth parallel, with those hookers’ granddaddies launching human-wave attacks every night. Only one out of two of those bastards even had a rifle in his hands when they started, but soon as one man would fall, the unarmed fella would pick up his gun and keep a’comin’.”

“A very effective tactic,” Sands says, “if you can find personnel fanatical enough to carry it out.”

Walt laughs. “That'’s your basic Chink soldier right there. Fanatical. I'’ll bet you couldn'’t find a hundred Americans on the East Coast who would do that.”

“Quite right. If one American dies in Iraq, it’s national news.”

“You look like a man who’s spent some time in uniform.”

Sands shrugs. “When I was young and stupid, I confess. But the real fighting isn’t always done in uniform.”

“I imagine you’re right, there. Anyway, it goes without saying that anybody who can help us out with extracurricular activities would be handsomely compensated.”

Sands dismisses this with a flick of his hand. “I have no worries on that score, Mr. Gilchrist.”

“J.B., please.”

“You know, of course, that the type of action we’re discussing is illegal, both in Mississippi and Louisiana.”

“Ain’t just about everything worth doing illegal? That'’s the way this country works. Pure hypocrisy, from Plymouth Rock on down.”

Sands sniffs and leans forward, subtly signaling that the meeting is over. “Which hotel are you staying at?”

“The Eola.”

“If you’ll call ahead on your next trip, we’ll comp you a suite at our hotel.”

“I appreciate it, but I’'ve got a soft spot for those grand old dames. The downtowns may be dying, but the great hotels soldier on, in the good towns anyway. Course, I don'’t mind putting the boys up in your hotel. We’ll make that part of the deal if it makes things easier.”

“It does simplify issues like transport.”

“It’s a deal, then.”

Walt gets up, not wanting to press, but Sands comes around his desk and says, “Are you interested in any special action during this visit? A test-drive, say?”

“A girl, you mean? Or the blood sport?”

“You seem quite able to manage the ladies on your own. I was thinking of sport.”

“Well, I wouldn'’t be against it. I got three, four more days here. I was planning on getting to know one of those little China girls better. But I'm open to anything. You get something good going, I'm in.”

Sands shakes Walt’s hand and leads him to the door with a smile. “I'm sure we can accommodate you.”

Walt has shaken a lot of hands in his life, and he knows the feel of great strength under restraint. The manager of the

Magnolia Queen

could tear a deck of cards in half.

CHAPTER

43

Kelly and Major McDavitt flew Annie and my mother back from Houston this afternoon, arriving at my house just after seven. My mother insisted on cooking for us. We tried to make Kelly eat, but he privately told me that he wanted to go down to the

Magnolia Queen

and make sure that Sands appeared to be keeping his part of the deal. “I like to know where my enemies are” was how he put it. Kelly expressed visible relief when Dad informed him that Sands’s guard dog had tested negative for rabies, and laughed that he might have to celebrate.

Living in the Texas safe house for a few days had been surprisingly comfortable, my mother claimed. The simple fact of separation had proved to be the ordeal. Though Mom sensed that the crisis that had necessitated their fleeing was not fully resolved, we assured Annie that the bad guys were all taken care of. When she asked why James Ervin and his brother were standing guard on the front porch and in the backyard, I told her that we just needed to play it safe for a couple of days.

“In case the bad guys’ friends are mad, right?” she said.

“Sort of,” I admitted.

My parents left a half hour ago, with James Ervin driving. His brother Elvin stayed behind to await Kelly’s return. Annie took a quick bath, then climbed into bed and called for me to tuck her in.

It’s obvious that being home has given her a great sense of relief, no matter how hard she pretends that living on the run was no big deal.

“The second house was scarier,” she says, looking up at me from the covers as I sit on the edge of the bed.

“Why?”

“The first one was a condo, really. Like a vacation. But then Mr. Kelly called, and Mr. Jim said we had to move. The place he took us to then wasn'’t near as nice. I think it belonged to a lady he knew. The house was okay, but I could tell that Mr. Jim and his friends were worried. At the first house I never saw their guns, but at the second one, they had them out all the time.”

“I'm sorry you had to go through that, baby. But it’s over now.”