The Devils Punchbowl

“You like fight?” Ming asks, standing on tiptoe to speak in Walt’s ear above the howling crowd.

“Not much.” Walt realizes that he’s hardly paid attention to the dogs since they first exploded out of their corners like projectiles shot from a gun. “This is bush league,” he says, truthfully.

“Bush?” Ming asks, clearly confused.

“Amateur hour. Low-rent. I can’t believe they sent us to this dump.”

Ming’s remarkable eyes narrow in concern. “You no like?”

“No. These dogs are mismatched. The brindle outweighs the black by two and a half pounds.”

“You want go closer? I take you front row.”

“I'm fine right here, hon.” It strikes Walt that Ming may not be as disgusted by the scene as he is. “Do you like the fight?”

The young woman shrugs, then whispers, “No like people.”

Her warm breath in the shell of his ear starts his heart pounding.

“They no like me either,” she adds. “To hell with them, yes?”

Walt chuckles at her frankness. “More than likely, is my guess. You want to leave?”

Ming shrugs, then smiles and runs her finger along his forearm. “Whatever you want, Zhaybee.”

Walt considers the matter. He knows he’s not thinking as clearly as he should. He ought to have been working the crowd for clues to Caitlin Masters’s whereabouts, but he’s just stood beside Ming, like the lazy old fart he’s pretending to be. It’s not the dogfight that’s

messing him up. It’s the girl. But it’s not like it matters tonight. In his gut he knows he will find no clues here.

Sands is testing me,

he thinks.

He has to be. This is how they screen prospective spectators. A thrown-together dogfight like this wouldn'’t attract the kinds of gamblers Jessup had told Penn about. Not even the ones who wanted to go slumming.

No rap star, NFL player, Arab prince, or Chinese billionaire was going to spend five minutes with this pathetic collection of pasty-faced, Skoal-dipping rednecks. They’re still talking about the “kickass” hog vs. dog exhibition that preceded the pit fight.

Who’s watching me?

Walt wonders. Someone in this room was studying him right now, evaluating every reaction. One of the men on the far side of the crowd probably. But the spy could be Ming herself. Sands or Quinn might be planning to question her later and draw out every detail of how he’d behaved during the fight. He’d have to make sure that nothing she said would arouse suspicion.

“You want me call driver?” Ming asks.

Walt stands on tiptoe, pretending to base his decision on what’s happening in the pit. Genghis, the brindle, still has a lock on the foreleg of the black, and Mike has lost a lot of blood. The floor of the pit is viscous with it. Mike’s handler looks worried, and Walt senses that Genghis is about to try for his throat.

“I guess,” Walt says in a bored voice. “Hell, I’d rather be back on the

Queen

than in this dump.”

Ming takes his callused hand in her soft fingers and looks up at him with liquid eyes. “Or in hotel room, maybe?”

Walt swallows hard, trying to conceal how desperately he wants to be alone with her. Ming removes a cell phone from her tiny handbag, presses a key, and puts a finger into her opposite ear. Their driver had told them he couldn'’t wait outside, since a random bust was always possible. If that happened, they were to run into the nearby woods and wait until the police left, then call him on Ming’s cell phone. Because they'’re far out in the woods, Walt figures the limo is at least twenty minutes away.

Ming stands on tiptoe again, and he leans down. “Driver come back fifteen minutes,” she says. “Okay, Zhaybee?”

“That’ll do. This fight will be over by then, anyway. The black’s about had it.”

Ming peeks between some people in front of her. “Yes.”

Now all Walt has to do is pretend to be excited about cruelty and slaughter for fifteen minutes.

The black’s handler is shouting at Genghis to break off the fight. The other handler looks angry about this, but the fight’s being conducted under “Cajun Rules,” a code that strictly governs all aspects of a fight from the washing, weighing, and handling of the dogs to what constitutes a turn and a scratch—even the duties of the referee and timekeeper. Any dog handler with experience ought to know that Cajun Rules allow the handlers to yell at both dogs.

To Walt’s surprise, a sharp cry from Mike’s handler finally distracts Genghis, and Mike tears himself free, twisting away in a move that warrants a cessation of the fight. As Mike limps back to his corner on three legs, the referee calls a turn, signaling that the black has tried to break off the battle. Mike’s handler straddles his gasping dog, rubbing him vigorously after only a cursory check of the injured leg, which is almost surely broken.

“Get ready, Mike!” he yells, tossing a bloody towel aside. “You ain’t out of it yet. You got your second wind now. Get ready to scratch, boy!”

To scratch, Mike will have to limp across a line in the dirt four feet in front of him—within two seconds of the referee’s signal—then voluntarily engage Genghis, whose handler is struggling to hold him in his corner. Walt tries to imagine a boxing trainer encouraging a human fighter to continue with a broken, mangled shoulder. They don'’t even do that in UFC fighting.

“Let go!” shouts the referee, and the timekeeper begins counting. Before the second syllable dies in his throat, Mike limps out of his handler’s grasp and hobbles across the scratch line. Half the crowd whoops with approval. Across the pit, Genghis strains in his handler’s arms, almost mad to finish the battle. Mike hesitates at the center of the pit, then tucks his tail between his legs and starts to turn away.

“Goddamn it, don'’t you turn!” screams his handler. “Hit him! Hit! Hit!”

Mike looks back across the pit, then lowers his square head, charges across the bloody dirt and lunges at Genghis, seizing the brindle’s nose in his jaws. When Genghis’s handler releases him, Mike

tries to roll him over, but the broken leg prevents his getting enough leverage to do it. As the churning dogs wheel to one side, Genghis rips his nose free and darts out of Mike’s reach, then hurls himself bodily into the smaller dog, knocking him onto his back. Genghis leaps for Mike’s exposed throat, but Mike twists his trunk at the last instant, and the massive jaws bite deep into his chest instead. The crowd roars and stomps the floor in approval.

Genghis thrashes his head from side to side, grinding his jaws, widening the wound. A rush of blood soaks Mike’s ribs, glistening on the black coat, and for a moment both dogs stop moving. Genghis seems content to rest in this dominant position, his jaws locked in Mike’s chest, his tail held high. Mike gazes back at his handler with cloudy eyes, like a boy who has disappointed his father.