The Devils Punchbowl

There?s only silence at first. Then Kelly?s voice comes into the receiver as though it?s being transmitted from a distant spacecraft. ?What?s happening, man? Somebody threatened Annie??

?Jesus, Kelly, it?s great to hear your voice. We?re in trouble here. They threatened Annie, my parents, my sister, everybody. They already killed a friend of mine tonight. A guy I went to school with.?

?Slow down. Are you safe where you are??

?Yeah, but I don'?t have much time. Are you still in Afghanistan??

?Yeah. The mountains. Look, talk to me. Who?s your problem??

?The main guy is Irish. He runs one of the casinos here. He pretends to be English, but that?s just a front. He goes by the name of Jonathan Sands. I have no idea who he really is. Paramilitary type, but hiding it in a suit.?

?I don'?t like the sound of that,? Kelly says reflectively. ?Ex-IRA, maybe??

?He definitely knows how to handle weapons.?

?What the hell have you got into??

?I'm not sure. But I didn't take it seriously enough at first, and a friend died because of it. According to him, I can?t use conventional law enforcement. Sands has got a lot of people on his payroll.?

There?s a long silence. Then Kelly says, ?It could take forty-eight hours.?

?What could??

?Me getting there. The company will get Annie and your mother sorted out, but it could take me two days to get back to the States.?

?Dan?are you sure??

?Hey, it?s only money.?

?You know I'?ll??

?Shut the fuck up, okay? Before you embarrass both of us. And try to keep breathing for the next forty-eight hours.?

?I'?ll do my best. Look, you can?t call me, okay??

?Understood. The Blackhawk team is going to bring you a secure telephone. A satellite phone. You?ll have to decide when it?s safe to use it. Update the company when you can. Just keep using

Spartacus

as your code. They?re also going to bring a gear bag. That'?s for me. I'?ll have them stash it somewhere in town, and you can pick it up if you?re not being tailed.?

?Okay. Daniel??

?Hold up. If you get in a really tight spot after the team leaves and before I get there, there?s couple of guys in your area I trust. They?re from Athens Point, down the river.?

?Who are they??

?One?s a young guy, ex-marine. Carl Sims. Met him at the range there. He?s a black guy, a sniper. I don'?t care what you?re mixed up in, use my name, you can trust him.?

?Okay. Who else??

?There?s a guy used to fly for the sheriff down there at Athens Point. Ex?air force. Name?s McDavitt. He?s the real deal. If you need to get somewhere fast, or get away fast, he?s your man.?

A jolt of synchronicity makes my scalp tingle. ?I met McDavitt

today.

No shit. Some corporate big shot hired him to fly us around the city.?

Kelly laughs softly. ?You see? Things don'?t look as bad as you thought. Now, you get back to Annie. We?ll take care of things on our end. See you in a couple of days. I'm out.?

I wait until I hear the click, then slowly hang up.

The circuitous trek back to my house doesn?'t seem to take nearly as long this time; I feel Daniel Kelly sitting on my shoulder like one of Odin?s crows. The watcher on the corner is still in place, but I move across Washington as though cloaked in darkness. Just as I slip through the hedges into my backyard, I see a man walking across the parking lot of the bank behind my house. I silently double my pace, drop into the moat beside the basement window, and slide into the relative safety of my home.

My father is standing watch at the top of the stairs. He looks old in the shaft of light falling from my bedroom door, like a monk meditating over a gun he found by chance.

?Don?t shoot,? I hiss from the bottom of the staircase.

?Son of a bitch,? Dad whispers with relief. ?I was about a minute from calling 911.?

?I'm feeling a little better now,? I say loudly, hurrying up the stairs.

?I think that was worse than Korea,? Dad whispers, standing slowly and rubbing his lower back. ?Except for the frostbite. I took two nitro pills while you were gone. Let?s get to that damned computer so we can talk.?

He follows me into my bathroom, and I bend quickly over Annie?s MacBook.

Kelly called me himself from Afghanistan. I had to wait a half hour, but it was worth it. Blackhawk dispatched a team as soon as I told them we were in danger. They?ll probably come in an armored SUV. I imagine they?ve already left Houston. They?ll be here in less than seven hours.

Dad nods thankfully, then pecks out two words:

And Kelly?

Kelly?s coming himself. 48 hours minimum before he gets here though.

Good. So. What do we do now?

Wait for the cavalry. We should probably stop using the computer. There are lasers that can read keystrokes by the vibrations of window glass. This is sci-fi stuff we?re up against.

As Dad shakes his head slowly, I type:

We?d better stay upstairs. We can pull shifts. One of us by Annie?s bedroom door while the other catches a catnap in my bed.

You think I can sleep a wink after what you told me tonight? Drag a couch out here and we?ll play cards until dawn.

Cards? You don'?t play cards!

A smile that?s almost a grimace makes my father?s eyes squint.

Haven?t since Korea. Bores the hell out of me.

But tonight?

The enemy?s out there. Tonight we play cards.

CHAPTER

15

Linda doesn?'t know whether she?s paralyzed by fear or whether she?s entered a place beyond fear. Her mind has given way to grief or shock, or some mixture of both. They have taken her deep within the bowels of the barge that supports the faux riverboat above her head, to the long hold with black foam on its walls, like the foam in a recording studio. It?s dim, but it doesn?'t stink of mildew as some areas of the lower deck do. This hold smells like a new car. It?s here that Sands brings Linda and his other mistresses when he wants sex during business hours. A sofa bed in the corner faces two large LCD screens that display an ever-changing feed from the security cameras upstairs. On those screens Sands can monitor all areas of the casino, even during sex. This room has other uses too. Here they bring the troublemakers and scam artists who aren'?t lucky enough to be handed over to the police. For these occasions, a single chair stands in the center of the hold, and beside it a shiny cart like a printer trolley. But the square device on the cart is not a printer. It?s smaller, with thin wires coming off it, like the EKG machine at a doctor?s office. It?s that machine that makes the staff refer to this hold as the real ?Devil?s Punchbowl.?

As Quinn leads her by her elbow to the chair, Sands following behind?she can feel his presence?Linda sees something against the far wall of the room. It?s a person, a small man with dark skin and