The Devil’s Punchbowl. Greg Iles

of action by the time I get there. Julia could come apart in less time than that, and a wrong move on her part could be fatal. But my options are almost nonexistent. All the resources I would normally use in this kind of situation have been placed out of bounds by Tim’s warnings. Last night I wasn’t sure his caution was warranted, but after seeing the condition of his body and the state of his house, I have no intention of risking the lives of his wife and son on assumptions.

      I’ve called on other, private resources in extraordinary situations, but none are ready to hand tonight. The man I trust most to help me in a crisis is in Afghanistan, working for a security contractor based in Houston. His company may have some operators Stateside who could help protect Julia, but none would be any closer than Houston–seven hours away by car.

      Most people who felt they couldn’t trust local law enforcement would probably call the FBI, but that option presents problems for me. Seven years ago I forced the resignation of the Bureau’s director, when I proved that he’d been involved in the cover-up of a civil rights murder in Natchez in 1968. That won me few admirers in the Bureau (open ones, anyway) and made me a liability to the field agents I’d befriended during my successful career as an assistant district attorney in Houston.

      ‘Damn it!’ I shout, pounding the wheel in frustration. ‘What the fuck is going on?’

      It’s like screaming inside a bell jar, but at least my outburst gives vent to the rage and frustration that have been building since I saw Tim’s body. Closing my right hand into a fist, I pound the passenger seat until my wrist aches. When the national park at Melrose Plantation flashes by, I realize I’m driving eighty–forty miles an hour over the speed limit.

      Settle down, I tell myself, remembering my father, who becomes calmer the more dire the medical emergency. When everything is at risk, good judgment, not haste, makes the difference between life and death. Panic is the enemy….

      My decision to run every stop sign on Washington Street is perfectly rational. They are four-way stops, and unless someone else is doing the same thing I am at exactly the same place and time, I have enough visual clearance to safely jump the intersections.

      I park on the street, exit my car, and move toward the house in continuous motion, my mind in flux. Taking the porch steps at a near run, I notice that the cast-iron lamp hanging above me is out. Mom must have inadvertently switched it off. That isn’t like her, but I don’t have time to worry about personal inconsistencies tonight. I’m slipping my key into the lock when a man’s voice speaks from the shadows to my right.

      ‘That’ll do, Mr Cage. Stand easy where you are. No need to disturb the women.’

      I fight the urge to whirl toward the sound. I’ve tried too many cases where people were shot because they saw the face of someone who didn’t want to be remembered. Yet from the voice alone, I’m almost certain that the man in the shadows is Seamus Quinn, the security chief on the Magnolia Queen. I’ve never heard an Irish accent like Quinn’s outside the movies, and even then only in Irish-made films.

      ‘What do you want me to do?’ I ask.

      ‘I want you to listen. It’s all right to turn. I want you to see.’

      By now my eyes have adapted to the darkness, so when I turn, I see enough to register how wrong I was: The face staring at me out of the shadows belongs not to Seamus Quinn, but to his boss, Jonathan Sands.

      Wait, I think, the voice is all wrong. Gone is the refined English accent of the Magnolia Queen’s general manager, replaced by a coarse, working-class Irish accent identical to that possessed by Quinn. Then it hits me: I’m looking at Sands, but it was Quinn who spoke. The Irishman must be standing behind his boss, down in the flower bed. I glance past Sands, but all I register is something low and pale in the blackness behind him, like a crouching animal.

      Sands moves his hand slightly, which pulls my eyes back to him, and then I see his gun, a small but efficient-looking automatic held at waist level.

      ‘Easy now, darlin’,’ he says. ‘I only brought this wee pipe so I don’t have to lay hands on you.’

      With a start I realize it was Sands who spoke the first time. He’s simply speaking with Seamus Quinn’s voice rather than the cultured English accent he doles out for public consumption. I only know about British accents because my sister, Jenny, lives in England. She went to Britain as a visiting professor of literature at Trinity College, dated a Dubliner for several years, then married an Englishman and settled in Bath. For this reason, what would sound like a British accent to most other Southerners sounds like Belfast to me, and it tells me I know a lot less about Jonathan Sands than I thought I did. Tonight he sounds like a cross between Bono and the lead singer of the Pogues.

      ‘You’re not English,’ I murmur, trying to get my mind around it. ‘You’re Irish.’

      ‘As Paddy’s goat, Your Honor,’ he says, chuckling softly. ‘But let’s keep that between us, eh?’

      While Sands’s eyes flicker with private mirth, the evil that Tim hinted at fills my soul like a squid’s ink. I know without doubt that everything my dead friend suspected must be true.

      ‘What do you want?’

      ‘Your undivided attention. Do I have that, Mr Cage?’

      ‘Obviously.’

      ‘Before we talk, I’ll ask you to hand over that weapon you’ve got in your pocket. Two fingers only.’

      Sands materialized so suddenly on my porch that I actually forgot I was carrying a gun. But his ability to spot my concealed pistol in the dark tells me that trying to use it against him would be the last thing I’d do on earth. As directed, I carefully draw the Smith & Wesson and pass it to him, butt first.

      With the sure movements of a man accustomed to handling firearms, he slips the gun into his waistband at the small of his back, then gives me a courteous nod. ‘Fair play to you, Mr Mayor. I’m going to pay you the compliment of speaking frankly, because this town is full of cute hoors, but you’re not one of them. A friend of yours died tonight, and died hard. He died because he stepped over the line into other men’s business. Timmy Jessup thought he was the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike. When the flood rose and rolled over him, he sucked in his breath and kept his finger where it was. Pity, really, because he was all alone. Everyone else in this culchie town is swimming in the flood–sunbathing beside it, windsurfing on it. Because it’s a flood of money, Mr Mayor, not water. And if you try to put your finger in the hole Jessup left…Well. What matters now is that he’s dead, and nothing can bring him back.’

      As the initial shock of being surprised on my own doorstep begins to fade, my outrage boils over. ‘You sorry son of a bitch. Are you telling me you killed—’

      Sands silences me with an upraised hand. ‘Quiet now, mate. You’re in more danger than you know.’

       12

      My mouth has gone dry. It’s not the screamers who scare me; it’s the men who don’t let emotion get in the way of what they want. They’re the ones who’ll kill without hesitation. ‘I’m listening.’

      ‘Grand. Because this is all the talking I’m going to do. After this, I act, immediately and irrevocably. Understood?’

      I nod.

      Sands puts his hands behind his back and looks down like an officer contemplating a job in progress. A born soldier was my immediate impression of the man when I met him, for his bearing seems altogether military, though somewhat more fluid than that of the regular officers I’ve known. Sands has little skin fat; his face looks like a skull overlaid with the optimum amount of muscle, and little else. He’s losing his hair in front, but his baldness gives no impression of weakness; rather, the heavy brow and blue-gray machine gunner’s eyes give one the