The Devils Punchbowl

“Now, now, I hear that baby cryin’,” sings a chiding voice. “He just a bawlin’, and you lyin’ in bed like Miss Astor.”

Daisy is close to eighty now, but she still gets around like a woman of sixty-five, despite her arthritis. Her flower-print dress crinkles as she sits on the bed and gives the baby a bottle to suck. Tim junior’s eyes go wide and blue as urgency changes into bliss, and he grips the bottle with one strong hand. Daisy tries to take the other in hers, but the child will not be led.

“I used to look at you like that,” Daisy says wistfully.

“I know,” Julia whispers. “I wish I was back there again.”

Daisy shakes her head, her eyes on the baby. “Everybody wish that sometime. But there ain’t no going back.”

Julia closes her eyes. The smell of her own breath sickens her. She ran out of the house without even a toothbrush.

“You hungry yet?” Daisy asks.

“No.”

“You gotta eat sometime. Can’t take care of no baby without getting something down yourself.”

There’s a sound of horsehair rope being stretched, and Julia knows that’s Daisy turning her head. She looks up into the yellowed eyes and says, “Thanks for letting me stay here. I didn't have anywhere else to go.”

Daisy smiles. “Well, I think you gon’ be here a while yet.”

Julia goes still. “Why is that?”

“Well, there was something in the newspaper this morning. I hate to say nothing about it, but I guess there’s no point hiding it.”

“What was it? Something about Tim?”

Daisy’s crinkled lips curl around her dentures like dark papier-mâché. Julia’s glad Daisy put her teeth in. Last night, the old woman looked one step away from the grave. “I can’t read too good no more,” she says, “but it didn't sound good.”

“Where is it?” Julia asks, sitting up in alarm. “What did they say?”

“On the kitchen table.”

Julia bounds out of bed and runs for the kitchen.

CHAPTER

18

The guard at the gatehouse of Jonathan Sands’s home stands gaping at the two bound men in the backseat of my Saab.

“I said I want to see Mr. Sands.”

“Does he know you’re coming?”

“No. I have a trespassing problem I’d like to discuss with him.”

“Just a minute.” The guard vanishes into his hut. Like the men in the backseat, he is American, not Irish, but the brief look he gave my passengers told them all they need to know about the trouble coming their way.

“Are you armed?” the guard asks, reappearing at my window.

I point down at my waistband, where the butts of three handguns jut from my waistband.

“You need to leave those with me.”

“I go in like this, or I drive away now.”

The guard vanishes again. I check my watch. The first balloons should be taking off any minute. Judging from the treetops, the wind looks to be gusting seven to ten miles per hour, which is enough to stop many pilots from launching. During the drive over from Washington Street, I received a text from Paul Labry, informing me that the balloons would be taking off from a vacant lot just off Highway 61 South. The destination of this morning’s “race” is predetermined, but the launch point varies according to the direction of the

wind, with various pilots making complex calculations and jockeying for takeoff positions in spaces just big enough to accommodate a launch without hitting power lines or other lethal obstacles. I texted Paul that a family emergency would prevent me making the launch in time and that he should fly in my place. Labry has already sent four anxious text messages in reply, asking what the problem is. I’'ve responded by begging him to trust me and to try to keep Hans Necker from getting too upset.

I'm receiving yet another message from Labry when a black Jeep thunders up behind my Saab and skids to a stop. In my side mirror, I see Seamus Quinn jump out and march toward my car. The Irishman must have driven all the way over from the

Magnolia Queen.

I roll down my window, allowing an endless stream of curses into the car.

“What the fuck do you want, just?” he growls. Quinn is a darkly handsome man with bad teeth and eyes that glint like polished metal.

“I want to talk to your boss. It won'’t take long.”

Quinn plants both hands on the side of my car and glares into the backseat. “You fuckers banjaxed it, did you?”

In my rearview mirror the two bruisers hunch in the backseat like toddlers dreading a spanking. Quinn stares in amazement as I take two Glocks from my waistband and hand them to him butt-first. “I'm already late for something, and if I don'’t show, people are going to come looking.”

The glinting eyes narrow, but Quinn finally waves me forward with a guarded smile. “I'’ll follow you in, your lordship.”

As he walks away, the gate rattles open on its electric chain, and I drive through under the watchful eye of a video camera mounted on a pole to my right. Is Sands watching from his bedroom? I wonder as my car tops a low rise, and I see the casino manager’s house for the first time. In a city famed for Greek Revival, Spanish, and Italianate mansions dating to before the Civil War, Sands has chosen the closest thing to a Miami drug lord’s palace as his residence. The linked boxes of white stucco may overlook the river, but they look like alien spacecraft that landed in the antebellum South by mistake, crushing an acre of pink azaleas when they set down.

“Why does Sands live here?” I ask the guys in the backseat.

“Why not?” one says sullenly.

“There’s concrete and steel under that stucco,” says the other. “He won'’t sleep in a house that won'’t stop a bullet. I think it’s an Irish thing.”

“Must be.”

“You are

sooo

fucked,” the second guy says for the tenth time. “I can’t believe you’re driving into this place. If I had the keys, I’d be halfway to Mexico by now.”

“I'm not the one who banjaxed it” is my reply. “Whatever that means.”

Sands’s driveway is a long ellipse, and the river shows to great advantage, for the bluff is lower here than in town and steps down gently to the water. As I brake to a stop behind an Aston Martin Vanquish—an automobile beyond the reach of any honest casino manager—it occurs to me that the best way to go after these guys might be to put the IRS on their tails.

Quinn skids to a stop behind me, jumps out, and opens my door. “Here we are, guv’nor,” he says, his voice dripping mockery. “Let’s go see the man.”

“If you’re waitin’ on me, you’re walkin’ backwards.”

Quinn’s eyes become slits. “Eh?”

“Never mind.”

The Irishman opens the back door and motions for his two thugs to get out. After some effort one of the guys manages to work his way out of the small backseat with his bound hands. Quinn regards him silently for about ten seconds. Then he takes something out of his pocket and fits it over his right hand. I catch the gleam of brass just as Quinn swings, a powerful uppercut delivered with such speed that it would have taken a stop-action camera to capture it. The snap of bone shatters whatever illusions of security I might have had.