The Devil’s Punchbowl. Greg Iles

he says with a grin. ‘At first I thought you’d chickened out. I mean, shit.’

      As he shakes my hand, I marvel that at forty-five Jessup still sounds like a strung-out hippie. ‘You’re the one who’s late, aren’t you?’

      He nods more times than necessary, a man who’ll do anything to keep from being still. How does this guy deal blackjack all night?

      ‘I couldn’t rush off the boat,’ he explains. ‘I think they’re watching me. I mean, they’re always watching us. Everybody. But I think maybe they suspect something.’

      I want to ask whom he’s talking about, but I assume he’ll get to that. ‘I didn’t see your car. Where’d you come from?’

      A cagey smile splits the weathered face. ‘I got ways, man. You got to be careful dealing with this class of people. Predators, I kid you not. They sense a threat, they react—bam!’ Tim claps his hands together. ‘Pure instinct. Like sharks in the water.’ He glances back toward town. ‘In fact, we ought to get behind some cover now.’ He gestures toward the three-foot-high masonry walls that enclose a nearby family plot. ‘Just like high school, man. Remember smoking grass behind these walls? Sitting down so the cops couldn’t see the glow of the roach?’

      I never got high with Tim during high school, but I see no reason to break whatever flow keeps him calm and talking. The sooner he tells me what he came to say, the sooner I can get out of here.

      He vaults the wall with surprising agility, and I step over it after him, recalling with a chill the one memory of this place that I associate with Tim. Late one Halloween night a half dozen boys tossed our banana bikes over the wall and rode wildly through the narrow lanes, laughing hysterically until a pack of wild dogs chased us up into the oak trees near the third gate. Does Tim remember that?

      With a last anxious look up Cemetery Road, he sits on the damp ground and leans against the mossy bricks in a corner where two walls meet. I sit against the adjacent wall, facing him at a right angle, my running shoes almost touching his weathered Sperrys. Only now do I realize that he must have changed clothes after work. The dealer’s uniform he usually wears on duty has been replaced by black jeans and a gray T-shirt.

      ‘Couldn’t come out here dressed for work,’ he says, as though reading my mind. What he actually read, I realize, was my appraising glance. Clearly, all the drugs he’s ingested over the years haven’t yet ruined what always was a sharp mind.

      I decide to dispense with small talk. ‘You said some pretty scary things on the phone. Scary enough to bring me out here at this hour.’

      He nods, digging in his pocket for something that turns out to be a bent cigarette. ‘Can’t risk lighting it,’ he says, putting it between his lips, ‘but it’s good to know I got it for the ride home.’ He grins once more before putting on a serious face. ‘So, what had you heard before I called?’

      I don’t want to repeat anything Tim hasn’t already heard or seen himself. ‘Vague rumors. Celebrities flying in to gamble, in and out fast. Pro athletes, rappers, like that. People who wouldn’t normally come here.’

      ‘You hear about the dogfighting?’

      My hope that the rumors are false is sinking fast. ‘I’ve heard there’s some of that going on. But it was hard to credit. I mean, I can see some rednecks down in the bottoms doing it, or out in the parishes across the river, but not high rollers and celebrities.’

      Tim sucks in his bottom lip. ‘What else?’

      This time I don’t answer. I’ve heard other rumors–that prostitution and hard drugs are flourishing around the gambling trade, for example–but these plagues have been with us always. ‘Look, I don’t want to speculate about things I don’t know to be true.’

      ‘You sound like a fucking politician, man.’

      I suppose that’s what I’ve become, but I feel more like an attorney sifting the truth from an unreliable client’s story. ‘Why don’t you just tell me what you know? Then I’ll tell you how that fits with what I’ve heard.’

      Looking more anxious by the second, Jessup gives in to his nicotine urge at last. He produces a Bic lighter, which he flicks into flame and touches to the end of the cigarette, drawing air through the paper tube like someone sucking on a three-foot bong. He holds in the smoke for an alarming amount of time, then speaks as he exhales. ‘You hear I got a kid now? A son.’

      ‘Yeah, I saw him with Julia at the Piggly Wiggly a couple of weeks ago. He’s a great-looking boy.’

      Tim’s smile lights up his face. ‘Just like his mom, man. She’s still a beauty, isn’t she?’

      ‘She is,’ I concur, speaking the truth. ‘So…what are we doing here, Timmy?’

      He still doesn’t reply. He takes another long drag, cupping the cigarette like a joint. As I watch him, I realize that his hands are shaking, and not from the cold. His whole body has begun to shiver, and for the first time I worry that he’s started using again.

      ‘Tim?’

      ‘It’s not what you think, bro. I’ve just been carrying this stuff around in my head for a while, and sometimes I get the shakes.’

      He’s crying, I realize with amazement. He’s wiping tears from his eyes. I squeeze his knee to comfort him.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers. ‘We’re a long way from Mill Pond Road, aren’t we?’

      Mill Pond Road is the street I grew up on. ‘We sure are. Are you okay?’

      He stubs out his cigarette on a gravestone and leans forward, his eyes burning with passion I thought long gone from him. ‘If I tell you more, there’s no going back. You understand? I tell you what I know, you won’t be able to sleep. I know you. You’ll be like a pit bull yourself. You won’t let it go.’

      ‘Isn’t that why you asked me here?’

      Jessup shrugs, his head and hands jittery again. ‘I’m just telling you, Penn. You want to walk away, do it now. Climb over that wall and slide back down to your car. That’s what a smart man would do.’

      I settle against the cold bricks and consider what I’ve heard. This is one of the ways fate comes for you. It can swoop darkly from a cloudless sky like my wife’s cancer; or it can lie waiting in your path, obvious to any eyes willing to see it. But sometimes it’s simply a fork in the road, and rare is the day that a friend stands beside it, offering you the safer path. It’s the oldest human choice: comfortable ignorance or knowledge bought with pain? I can almost hear Tim at his blackjack table on the Magnolia Queen: ‘Hit or stay, sir?’ If only I had a real choice. But because I helped bring the Queen to Natchez, I don’t.

      ‘Let’s hear it, Timmy. I don’t have all night.’

      Jessup closes his eyes and crosses himself. ‘Praise God,’ he breathes. ‘I don’t know what I would have done if you’d walked away. I’m way out on a limb here, man. And I’m totally alone.’

      I give him a forced smile. ‘Let’s hope my added weight doesn’t break it off.’

      He takes a long look at me, then shifts his weight to raise one hip and slides something from his back pocket. It looks like a couple of playing cards. He holds them out, palm down, the cards mostly concealed beneath his fingers.

      ‘Pick a card?’ I ask.

      ‘They’re not cards. They’re pictures. They’re kind of blurry. Shot with a cell phone.’

      With a sigh of resignation I reach out and take them from his hand. I’ve viewed thousands of crime-scene photos in microscopic detail, so I don’t expect to be shocked by whatever Tim Jessup has brought in his back pocket. But when he flicks his lighter into flame and holds it over the first photo, a wasplike buzzing begins in my head, and my stomach does a slow roll.