The Devil's Punchbowl

CHAPTER 67

Caitlin is sitting at a small, round table in the Natchez Coffee Bar, a long, narrow space downtown, not far from the club where Jiao Po takes her PiYo class. Jiao sits across the table, not an arm’s length away, her eyes deep and remote. People have often told Caitlin that her skin resembles porcelain, but Jiao’s skin is perfect, without blemish. She radiates a self-possession that Caitlin finds intimidating, and her light eyes seem startlingly alive in the Chinese face. The coffee bar is almost empty, but when Caitlin asked to sit with Jiao, the woman did not object. Only when Caitlin identified herself did Jiao’s eyes rise to take her in.

“Is anyone watching you?” Caitlin asks. “Any of Sands’s men, I mean?”

Kelly has already assured Caitlin that Jiao isn’t being tailed, but Caitlin wants to make sure.

“What do you want?” Jiao asks, regarding her coolly. “A human interest story for your newspaper?”

“No. I want to show you something. A photograph.”

Jiao rises from the table.

“You stayed in New Orleans too long,” Caitlin says quickly. “I know you must suspect about the women.”

The girl slows almost imperceptibly.

“I know you went to Cambridge, Ms. Po. I know you don’t miss much. But sometimes we blind ourselves intentionally to things we don’t want to see.”

Jiao stops and looks back, her body utterly motionless. “What does this photograph show?”

Caitlin shakes her head. “You have to see it. Either you have something to fear or you don’t. I’m not here to hurt you. Only people you trust can do that.”

Jiao steps back to the table with regal poise and gives Caitlin an impatient look. “Well?”

“Will you sit down?”

Jiao sighs lightly, then takes her seat again. “Show me.”

Caitlin takes a five-by-seven manila envelope from her bag and removes the bathroom-mirror photograph of Sands screwing Linda Church. With an eerie sense of detachment, she slides the photo across the table, just as Penn told her he did with Shad Johnson.

Jiao doesn’t flinch or even blink. After a few seconds, Caitlin can’t tell if the woman’s breathing.

“Is this the only one?” Jiao asks at last.

“No.”

“Show me.”

Caitlin removes five more photographs, each showing Sands having sex with a different woman, every one an employee on the Magnolia Queen. Jiao must have seen many of these women over the past few weeks. The final photo shows only a male organ entering a woman’s anus, but Caitlin is sure that Jiao knows whose penis she’s looking at. Her doll-like lips purse for a few seconds, then without lifting her eyes from the top image, she says, “Do you have money?”

“Do you need money?” Caitlin asks, confused. Perhaps Jiao has been cut off by her uncle and fears she can’t survive without Sands’s support.

A fleeting smile crosses Jiao’s face, and the aquamarine eyes rise to Caitlin’s. “No, I mean, were you raised with money?”

“Yes.”

“My father made little, but my uncle saw that we never went without. Father wouldn’t touch that money for himself, but we children got the necessities. After he died, I lacked for nothing. But I found that whether women have money or not, we look for men who are strong enough to be providers. Strong enough to protect us, yes? But with that strength comes things we do not want so much. A wandering eye, aggressiveness, even cruelty. Yet the men who would always be faithful, the ones who worship us, we ignore or kick away. Do you find this to be true?”

“I’ve made mistakes like that. But some men are both strong and kind.”

Jiao’s eyes move over Caitlin’s face. “I think my father was like your lover. He was a professor. He taught law in Communist China. What could be more absurd? When I was young, I thought he was a fool. After he died, I attended school in England, as you said. But during breaks I went to Macao, to live under my uncle’s protection. He didn’t want me there, but I insisted. I was seduced by his power, his money, the unimaginable wealth. And I fell in love with Jonathan Sands. He seemed a glamorous figure to me, an Irishman who could carve out a place for himself among my uncle’s henchmen. He was white, yet my uncle respected him. And of course, my mother was a Scot.”

The coffee bar’s single waitress walks toward them. Caitlin lays the manila envelope over the explicit photos as the woman passes and goes to the restroom. “You must have been very young when you fell for Sands.”

Jiao shrugs. “Older than my mother when she married. But, yes, I was young. Too young to see what I was to him. A way to rise in the hierarchy, to reach the inner circle. He was playing a role from the beginning, I think.”

Caitlin is impressed by the girl’s sangfroid, but it makes her doubt the soundness of her plan. Without an angry Jiao, nothing of value will be accomplished here.

“I’m curious about something. Did they let you see the violent part of what they did?”

Jiao takes a quick breath, then expels it. “They tried to insulate me from that, my uncle especially. But everyone has a primal fascination with violence. At that point in my life I was curious. But my curiosity was quickly satisfied. Death holds no mystery for me. I think women are interested in life, men in death. What do you think?”

Jiao’s genuine interest in her opinions takes Caitlin off guard. This meeting reminds her of conversations during college. “I think there’s some truth in that.”

Jiao toys with what’s left of the muffin on her plate. “At first I thought violent sport was something that came along with male strength. They admired in others what they aspired to in themselves.”

She slides the envelope off the picture and stares clinically at her lover fucking another woman. “I saw much dogfighting in Macao. My uncle lives for it. He and his friends. Breeding the dogs, training them-most of all fighting them. But what I learned watching those men was this: They prized the dogs that would fight to the death, beyond all hope of survival. The ones too weak to do that, they killed. In the end, though, all the dogs died.” Jiao looks earnestly into Caitlin’s eyes. “They prized some dogs, you see, but they loved none of them.”

This insight silences Caitlin for a while. “Is Sands like that?”

Jiao ignores the question, her gaze still on the photograph. “They see us the same way,” she whispers.

“How do you mean?”

The girl’s eyes rise to Caitlin’s. “You’re a beautiful woman, Ms. Masters. Don’t protest, please, you know you are. It’s a fact, like strength or height. All your life you’ve benefited from this attribute, as I have.”

Caitlin can feel herself blushing. “Yes. I have.”

“Men prize beautiful women, they pursue us with all their power, shower us with wealth. They settle for those of medium attractiveness, and the ugly ones they treat as slaves.”

Caitlin isn’t sure what to say. “That might be a little extreme.”

“Do you think so? I do not.”

“Well-”

Jiao silences her with an upraised finger. “We all lose our beauty one day, Ms. Masters. All of us. Never forget that.”

“That day is a long way off for you.”

Jiao smiles. “In the eyes of the man I thought I wanted, it has already come and gone. I sensed it long ago. I’ve tried to deny it. I have been a fool.”

Caitlin says nothing.

“What do you want me to do?”