The Devil’s Punchbowl. Greg Iles

her phone and reads the letters again, being careful to hide it from the hidden camera above.

      Thiefwww kllmmommy. Sqrttoo.

      The message came from a number she doesn’t recognize, not even the area code, but this is the strongest proof that Tim sent it. He’s told her that one of his security tactics is to use the phones of strangers when their attention is elsewhere. He’s even stolen cell phones for this purpose. But this message has taken her to the edge of panic. Kllmmommy? Sqrttoo? It almost sounds like an order to kill Julia and the baby.

       ‘No,’ she whispers, as the possibility that this message might have been meant for someone else sinks into her bones. ‘Not possible. He loves that baby. He loves Julia.’

      Linda hears footsteps enter the restroom. She grabs the handle and flushes for cover, and cold spray hits her face.

       ‘Linda?’ asks a worried voice. ‘It’s Ashley. Are you okay? Janice said you really look like shit.’

       ‘I’m okay, Ash. Stomach flu, I think. I’ll be right out.’

       ‘Yuck. I’ll tell Janice.’

       ‘Thanks.’

      Linda frantically plays back the sequence of events that brought her here. Four hours ago, Tim walked past the door of The Devil’s Punchbowl whistling ‘Walking on the Moon,’ by the Police. The song was a coded signal, arranged last night after Tim met with Penn Cage. If Tim had whistled ‘Every Breath You Take,’ it would have meant, ‘Get out now. Don’t wait for anything.’ ‘Walking on the Moon’ meant Linda should work until the end of her shift, then throw her cell phone in the river, get into her car, and drive three hours to New Orleans, to her aunt’s house. Tim would call her in transit using a pay-as-you-go cell phone he’d bought at Wal-Mart, and she would answer with the same type of phone. Hers was in her car now, under the front seat.

      ‘Walking on the Moon’ was supposed to signal that everything was going according to plan, but the moment Linda recognized the tune, her insides had started to roil with apprehension. She’d forced herself to keep doing her job, even though she had to remain on the boat an hour after Tim’s shift ended. She’d almost snapped at midnight and simply run down the exit ramp as he left the boat, but that would have busted them for sure.

      ‘I shouldn’t even be here,’ she says almost silently, ever conscious of the hidden microphones. The Devil’s Punchbowl usually closes at 11:00 p.m., but Sands has ordered all the food service to run on extended hours during the Balloon Festival.

       The door bangs open again, and Ashley calls, ‘Darnell just came by and asked why you weren’t on duty. She’s on the warpath. You’d better get back out there if you can walk.’

       Sue Darnell was the personnel manager, a cast-iron bitch from Dallas. ‘Almost done. I’m just fixing my face.’

       ‘Down there? I’m looking at your heels, girl.’

       ‘I’m coming, Ash! I got vomit on my blouse.’

       ‘It’s your funeral, honey.’

      Don’t even think that, Linda says silently. With a handful of tissue she wipes clammy sweat from her face and forehead, then gets to her feet and checks her uniform for any signs of vomit. She was lucky.

      The ladies’ room opens into Slot Group Seven, a jangling circus of noise filled with smoke and drunk gamblers. The extraction fans don’t work for shit up here. Linda smooths her skirt against her thighs and tries to walk with something like grace as she moves through the suckers and back toward the Punchbowl.

      She’s thirty feet away when she realizes something is wrong. Ashley and Janice are standing by the cash registers, talking to each other without any regard for three patrons waiting to be seated. Ashley’s mouth forms a perfect O, then Janice nods and begins chattering. When Ashley catches sight of Linda, she motions her over with a quick wave.

      ‘What is it?’ Linda asks, fighting the urge to bolt for the main-deck gangplank.

      ‘Janice just got a text from her ex-husband. He’s up at Bowie’s. He said some guy fell off the bluff up by Silver Street. He was goofing on the other side of the fence or something, and he fell. He’s dead. Some people are saying he jumped.’

      Linda blinks, trying to absorb this, but a low ringing has begun in her ears.

      ‘Drunk, probably,’ Janice says. ‘Jimmy’s drunk, anyway. You couldn’t get me on the other side of that fence even if I was toasted. There’s only about a foot of concrete, and then nothing.’

       ‘A whole lot of nothing,’ Ashley agrees. ‘I wonder who it was.’

       ‘A tourist, I bet,’ says Janice. ‘Somebody here for the race. Wait.’ Janice takes a cell phone from her pocket and checks a message. ‘Now Jimmy says somebody threw the guy off the bluff. Jesus.’

       Linda is looking at Janice, but what she sees is Tim flying through the air, head over heels, spinning through the dark—

       ‘Linda?’ says Ashley, her voice tinged with real concern. ‘Are you going to puke again?’

      Janice grabs the trash can from behind the register, but Linda ignores it and walks back toward the ladies’ room. The girls say something behind her, but she doesn’t catch the meaning. She passes the door of the restroom and walks to the thick glass door that leads to the observation deck. The October wind hits her face-on, and she’s glad for the chill. Looking upriver, she sees the lights of the houses on Clifton Avenue, then Weymouth Hall. Somewhere up there, Tim is supposed to be meeting Penn Cage tonight. She doesn’t let her mind go any further than that. Tim is there, she says silently. Right now, he’s handing over whatever he got tonight. With this article of faith set in her heart, she slips her personal cell phone from her pocket and flicks it through the rail, toward the river three decks below. She doesn’t hear the splash, but she sees a spurt of silver rise in the moonlight as the phone goes under. She knows her body was between her hand and the surveillance camera when she threw the phone, because she’s rehearsed this move a dozen times in her mind, just as Tim instructed.

       ‘Keep moving,’ she mouths to herself, walking to the companion-way used by the service staff to get to the main deck. ‘Don’t stop long enough to let fear paralyze you.’

      She’s quoting Tim now, like a heroine echoing her mentor in her mind. She slips through the gift shop, then past the foot of the escalators. This is the hardest part of her journey. Every atom of instinct is screaming for her to march down the big aisle between the slots, through the main entrance, and right across the broad exit ramp–but she can’t.

      She doesn’t have her car keys.

      For one wild moment she considers leaving anyway, breaking into a sprint and racing out to freedom. But if she did that, she’d be cutting herself off from Tim. The TracFone from Wal-Mart is under her car seat, and that’s her only sure link to him now. To reach it, she has to have her keys.

      Why didn’t you tell me to keep my ignition key in my pocket? she asks Tim silently. Why didn’t I think of it? For the first time a blade of raw terror slices through her, cold and true. If Tim didn’t think of this contingency, what else did he forget?

      Linda grits her teeth and forces herself to breeze past the center aisle without looking at the exit. Point of no return, she thinks, spying the service door that leads belowdecks to the restricted area of the boat. Operations, Security, the physical plant of the barge.

      She has to show her badge to the security officer at the top of the stairs. He gives it a bored look, then lets her walk down the steps. She can feel his eyes on her backside as she reaches the lower