The Devils Punchbowl

The first picture shows the face of a dog that looks as though it was hit by a truck and dragged a hundred yards over broken glass. Yet despite its horrific wounds, the animal is somehow standing under its own power, and staring into the camera with its one remaining eye. Wincing with revulsion, I slide the photo to the bottom of the group and find myself looking at a blond girl—not a woman, but a girl —carrying a tray filled with mugs of beer. It takes a moment to register that the girl, who’s no older than fifteen, wears no top. A vacant smile animates her lips, but her eyes are eerily blank, the look of a psych patient on Thorazine.

When I slide this photo aside, my breath catches in my throat. What might be the same girl (I can’t be sure) lies on a wooden floor while a much older man has intercourse with her. The most disturbing thing about this photo is that it was shot from behind and between a group of men watching the act. They’re only visible from knee to shoulder—three wear slacks and polo shirts, while a fourth wears a business suit—but all have beer mugs in their hands.

“Did you take these pictures?” I ask, unable to hide my disgust.

“No—

Damn!

” Tim jerks the hand holding the cigarette lighter, and the guttering light goes out. “You seen enough?”

“Too much. Who took these?”

“A guy I know. Let’s leave it at that for now.”

“Does he know you have them?”

“No. And he’d be in serious shit if anybody knew he’d taken them.”

I lay the pictures beside Tim’s leg, then close my eyes and rub my temples to try to stop an incipient headache. “Who’s the girl?”

“Don’t know. I really don'’t. They bring in different ones.”

“She didn't look more than fifteen.”

“If that.”

“Those pictures were taken around here?”

“At a hunting camp a few miles away. They run people to the dogfights on their VIP boat. Change the venues each time.”

Now that the lighter is out, my night vision is returning. Tim’s haggard face is wan in the moonlight. I expel a rush of air. “God, I wish I hadn'’t seen those.”

He doesn’'t respond.

“And the dog?”

“The loser of a fight. Just before his owner killed him.”

“Christ. Is that the worst of it?”

Tim sighs like a man stripped of precious illusions. “Depends on your sensibilities, I guess.”

“And you’re saying this is being—what, promoted?— by the Magnolia Queen?”

Tim nods but does not speak.

“Why?”

“To pull the whales down south.”

“Whales?”

“High rollers. Big-money players. Arab playboys, Asian trust-fund babies. Drug lords, pro athletes, rappers. It’s a circus, man. And what brings ’em from the farthest away is the dogfighting. Blood sport.” Tim shakes his head. “It’s enough to make you puke.”

“Is it working? To pull them in?”

“Yeah, it’s working. And not just spectators. It’s the competition. Bring your killer dog and fight against the best. We had a jet fly in from Macao last week. A Chinese billionaire’s son brought his own dog in to fight. A Bully Kutta. Ever hear of those? Bastard weighed more than I do. The dog, I mean.”

I try to imagine a dog that outweighs Tim Jessup. “Through the Natchez airport?”

“Hell, no. There’s other strips around here that can take a private jet.”

“Not many.”

“The point is, this is a major operation. They’d kill me without a second’s hesitation for talking to you. I’d be dog bait, and that’s a truly terrible way to die.”

Something in Tim’s voice when he says “dog bait” touches a nerve in me. It’s fear, I realize. He’s watching me closely, trying to read my reaction.

“Why do I feel like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop?”

Jessup hesitates like a diver just before the plunge. Then he clucks his tongue and says, “They’re ripping off the city, Penn.”

This sudden shift in focus disorients me. I settle back against the bricks and watch the wings of an angel twenty yards away. The dew has started to settle; the air around me seems a fine spray that requires wearying effort to pull into my lungs—maybe thick enough for a stone angel to take flight. The low, churning rumble of a push boat on the river far below tells me that sound travels farther than I thought tonight, so I lower my voice when I ask, “

Who’'s ripping off the city?”

Tim hugs himself, rocking slowly back and forth. “The people I work for. Golden Parachute Gaming, or whatever you want to call them.”

“The parent company of the Magnolia Queen is ripping off the city? How could they do that?”

“By shorting you on the taxes, dude. How else?”

Jessup is referring to the portion of gross receipts that the casino boat pays the city for its concession. “That'’s impossible.”

“Oh, right. What was I thinking? I just came out here for old times’ sake.”

“Tim, how could they short us on taxes without the state gaming commission finding out about it?”

“That'’s two separate questions. One, how could they underpay their taxes? Two, does the gaming commission know about it?”

His cold dissection of what would be a nightmare scenario for me and for the town is getting on my nerves. “Do you know the answers?”

“Question one is easy. Computers. Teenagers have hacked into freaking NORAD, man. Do you really think the network of a casino company can’t be manipulated? Especially by the people who own the network?”

“And question two?”

“That’'s tougher. The gaming commission is a law unto itself, and I don'’t know enough about how it operates to know what’s possible. There are three men on it. How many would have to be bent to provide cover for the operation? I don'’t know.”

I'm still shaking my head. “The auditing system we use was evolved over decades in Las Vegas. No one can beat it.”

Jessup chuckles with raw cynicism. “They say you can’t beat a lie detector, either. Tell you what,” he says gamely, and in his eyes I see the energy of a man who only comes into his own during the middle of the night. “Let’s assume for a second that the gaming commission is clean and go back to question one. There’s no way to distort the take from discrete parts of the casino operation, because everything’s so tightly regulated, like you said. The company’s own security system makes it impossible. Every square inch of the boat is videotaped around the clock with PTZ cameras and wired for sound. The cameras are robotically controlled—from Vegas, not Natchez. A buddy let me into the security center one night, and I saw Pete Elliot fingering his brother’s wife in the corner of the restaurant.”

“I don'’t need to know that crap.”

“I'm just saying—”

“I get it. What’s your point?”

“The only way for the company to rip off the city is to understate the gross. You guys see a big enough number, you figure your cut and don'’t look any deeper. Right?”

“To an extent. The gaming commission looks deeper, though. How much money are we talking about?”

Jessup flicks his lighter and examines his burned thumb, then squints at the flame as though pondering an advanced calculus problem. “Not that much, in terms of the monthly gross of a casino boat. But that’s like saying a thousand years isn’t much time in geological terms. We’re talking serious bread for an ordinary human being.”

“Wait a minute,” I say. “There’s a flaw in your premise. A fatal flaw.”

“What?”

“There’s no upside for the casino company. However much they rip us off by, their gain is minuscule compared with the risk. They’re practically minting money down there. Why risk killing the golden goose to steal a couple of extra million a year? Or even a month?”