The Devils Punchbowl

The crowd parts as though for a prophet, and Walt leads his hooker across the casino floor like a king escorting a royal consort. He hasn’'t felt this good about a job in a long time. He’d never gamble with his own money, but he does believe in luck. Any man who’s been in combat has seen luck in all its infinite variations, and Walt has been putting his life on the line for fifty years since he got back from Korea. He’s the last of the Rangers from his old company still doing law enforcement work, and while he knows that judgment and experience have helped get him this far, without luck he would have died long ago. Driving out from the ranch, he’d wondered if he might be pushing a little too hard this time, tempting the lady to turn against him. But tonight he feels the fullness of his abilities in all their old potency. He’s got his mojo working, as an old Houston cop used to tell him.

“I'm waiting for you,” he says softly, thinking of the man who threatened Tom Cage’s granddaughter. “Come on and take a nibble, sonny. I'’ll set the hook so hard it’ll break your goddamn jaw.”

In the parking lot on the bluff, Walt tips the driver of the shuttle bus, then steps off and joins Nancy on the pavement of the parking lot.

“Where’s your car?” the hooker asks, looking up the line of modest cars in the lot. “I'’ll bet you drive a big old Cadillac or something, don'’t you? Old school, right?”

“Hell no,” says Walt, pointing to the big Roadtrek van. “That'’s me right there.”

The girl’s mouth falls open. “Where? That?”

“That'’s me.” Walt clicks open the locks from his key ring. “Wait till you see her.”

The girl looks wary, but she follows him into the van, which is finished as finely as a boat cabin. “Ain’t no regular RV, is it?” she marvels, turning in the small space. “You got a stove and a microwave and a flat panel and a refrigerator and a—”

“Shower,” he finishes.

“Man! What did this thing set you back?”

“’Bout a hundred,” Walt says.

Nancy shakes her head and eyes the sofa in back doubtfully. “You’re not sleeping in this thing, are you? I mean, you got a hotel room, right?”

“Sure. I'm at the Eola.”

She smiles and nods knowingly. “Well, hell. Let’s get this thing going and get up there. We’ll open up the minibar and have us a party, Daddy.”

Walt opens a cabinet over the sink and pours himself a shot of Maker’s Mark. Then he sits at the table in back and drinks it, feeling the burn in his gullet.

Nancy looks puzzled. “You got any rum, by any chance?”

“Rum is for pirates and high school girls. You’re out of high school, aren'’t you?”

She giggles. “Maybe I am and maybe I ain’t. Do you want me to be?”

“What I want is for you to pour yourself a little whiskey and sit here by me.”

Nancy pours a glass of whiskey and sets it on the table, then sits beside Walt and nuzzles her face into his neck. For an instant he feels a shiver of desire, but then her hand creeps across his thigh and down between his legs, rubbing insistently.

“Don’t you want to get on over to that hotel?” she coos. “We wanna be where we can spread out. Don’t we?”

Walt doesn’'t want to take the girl back to the hotel. He wants to go back to his room alone and call Carmelita. He can’t do that, of course, not without breaking cover. He never had any intention of screwing Nancy. He figured he’d get her to do a little striptease, overtip her, then pretend to pass out and hope she didn't try to rob him. If she did, he’d “wake up” and ease her out gently. But now that they'’re alone, he knows he doesn’'t have the stomach for even that. Seeing those little tits drop out of that dress wouldn'’t do anything but make him think about the kids she has waiting at home, and the idea of her working with mechanical urgency to make him climax nauseates him.

What he really feels like doing is talking to her. Asking the same stupid question he asked the whores back in Korea—“How did you wind up doing this?”—which was all the more pointless back then because almost no one could answer even the simplest queries in English. Only in Japan had he received a real answer, on his extended R&R, and that had almost changed the course of his life.

“Don’t you want it, Daddy?” Nancy murmurs, rubbing clumsily at his trousers. “Huh?”

He drinks off her shot, then says, “Listen, Nancy,” and gently moves her hand out of his crotch. “You brought me some good luck in there, and I sure appreciate it. But I think I'm gonna call it a night.”

The girl’s face falls. “What’s the matter, J.B.? You don'’t like me?”

“Oh, I like you. A lot. But I'm gettin’ on up there in age, in case you haven'’t noticed.”

Nancy gives him a conspiratorial laugh.

“Hell, I got kids older than you. I like having a girl on my arm, putting on the dog a little. But the truth is, honey, old J.B. can’t really get it up no more.”

Her brow furrows as though she’s trying to understand an algebra problem. “What about Viagra?”

Walt chuckles as though with embarrassment. “I’'ve got a bad ticker, hon. Can’t take that stuff.”

Nancy looks almost frantic. “Well, there’s other things I can do. I mean, you got me out here and all. And I got to make a living, you know?”

“Oh, I know that, sweetheart. Don’t you worry ’bout that.” He digs out his roll and peels off five $100 bills. Nancy almost licks her lips at the sight of them, but she waits until he passes them to her. “Does that cover your time?”

The glow in her eyes tells him she hasn’'t seen that kind of money in a long time, if ever. “What about my tip?”

Walt hesitates, then winks like a man who knows he’s being taken advantage of and peels off another hundred, which he folds into the damp little palm.

“How long you gonna be in town, J.B.?” Nancy asks, obviously thinking about her future prospects. “I can put on the dog all you want, darling.”

“I'’ll be around all week. Got a piece of some Wilcox wells down here. You’ll see me around the boats. If I'm with somebody else, you just give me the high sign, and I'’ll come get you if I can. If not, I'’ll catch you the next night. Okay?”

She nods soberly. “I got you.”

Walt smiles with genuine gratitude. “Can you get home all right?”

“Yeah, my car’s in the lot here.”

“Where?”

“Other side.”

Walt gets up and cranks the Roadtrek, then follows Nancy’s pointing finger to the other side of the vast lot, where he stops beside her wreck of a car.

“It’s a junker,” she admits, “but it runs good. My ex is a mechanic.”

Walt feels like giving her the rest of the roll, but that would be pushing it.

Nancy raises her slim frame from the seat, leans down, and kisses him on the top of the head, then walks to the door in the side of the Roadtrek. As he looks back to watch her go, she pauses and lifts her tight skirt over her hips. A thin band of black elastic encircles her surprisingly feminine hips, and the thong disappears between the firm cheeks of her rump. She bends and touches her toes without effort, then stands and turns to face him, drawing the thong away from her pubis. The hair there is trimmed flat, a dark shadow over taut skin and protuberant lips. This time something stirs in him, something beyond thought or reason, the old Adam in him coming back to life.