The Devil’s Punchbowl

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‘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.

15 (#ulink_75c17b17-2e74-57c9-a8cd-8907de026bd0)

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.’