The Price of Blood (11 page)

T
HE ANGRY SCREAM WAS NINA. THE GRUNT OF PAIN belonged to someone else. Dammit! Broker shot upright on the bed and grabbed for the Colt.
Must have fallen asleep and
…

Broker grimaced as he rolled off the bed, at half-speed, because of the thumb, and charged the doorway to the living room. Bodies crashed against furniture, the screen door buckled.

Three figures thrashed on the back porch, breaking his terra cotta pots. A shotgun was somewhere in the middle. In the porch light, a patch of Nina’s ribcage showed where her T-shirt was ripped. This tall dude with long, blond hair askew was trying to bear-hug her. Burly Lyle Torgeson’s light blue uniform was in there too, trying to lever between them.

The intruder was making the fatal mistake that Earl had made, trying to contain a hysterical woman. Nina darted inside his long reach and butt-stroked viciously with the shotgun stock.

“She’s with me,” Broker yelled, gingerly looking for a way into the tussle.

“Then tell her to stop hitting
me
,” yelled Lyle.

Broker found an opening and clubbed the blond dude in the head with the pistol butt. He slung his good arm around Nina’s waist and lifted her free, grunting with the effort because she was compact as a puma and hissing and spitting and she still had a hold on the shotgun.

Lyle had his service pistol out now and jammed the muzzle two inches into the blond guy’s cheek. “Don’t. Fucking. Move.”

“Hey, man, mind the threads, I ain’t resisting,” said the guy in a ropey drawl. An echo of Earl lay thick on the chilly predawn and Broker, breathing hard, hurting, shaking, became incensed. He hadn’t been in two tussles in two days in a row since he’d been a rookie working patrol.

Urgent footfalls sounded in the brush on the path from the lake. Broker snatched the shotgun from Nina, stuck the Colt in his waistband, and swung the shotgun toward the sound. “It’s Mark Halme, from Grand Marais,” shouted Lyle. Broker lowered the long gun. “We got this under control,” said Lyle to the swift-moving shadow. “Keep an eye on the road.” The other cop jogged back on toward the road.

Broker saw the map, mashed flat by a dirty shoeprint, on the redwood planks among the dry potting soil, dead roots, and broken crockery. He snatched it up and set it aside. Then he turned to this new redneck.

Lyle had him face down and was trying to cuff him, but the guy was making it hard so Broker stepped in and gave him a kick. He quieted and Lyle, who had holstered his piece, grabbed a handful of the guy’s hair and slammed his head down onto the redwood.

“I got no problem cuffing you unconscious,” said Lyle.

“Awright, man, cut the shit, I’m lettin’ you do this, you understand,” said the guy. A streak of blood on his chin made an oily slick in the yard light. Lyle snapped the shackle.

“Okay, you have the right—”

“Wallet,” said the guy.

“Shut your hole,” said Lyle.

“Badge in my wallet,” said the guy.

Broker glanced over at Nina who sat in a crouch, sweating and gasping for breath, eyes bright. “The green Saturn?”

“Now you believe me? He was on the plane. His name is Fret.” She nodded.

“He left the Saturn up on the road,” said Lyle. He had the wallet out and squinted at it in the yard light. He handed it to Broker. The blond guy rolled over and came to a sitting position, his back against a bench. He was wearing a charcoal jacket, matching trousers, a black stretchy muscle shirt, and soft, worn black crosstrainers.

The laminated picture ID matched the guy, a pretty boy, cruel face ruined by a bottom-heavy long jaw. Carefully combed blond hair. A silver badge was pinned next to the ID. Det. Sgt. Bevode M. Fret, Orleans Parish, New Orleans Police Department.

“He’s no cop. He works for Cyrus LaPorte,” said Nina.

“Shut up,” said Broker. He turned to Fret. “What’re you doing breaking into my house?”

“Recovering stolen property,” said Fret confidently.

Broker motioned to Lyle who told Fret to stay put. Then they walked down the steps into the backyard. Lyle said, “Had the car on my sheet, Tom said to keep an eye out, watched him pull out from the motel parking lot at 3
A.M.
We had Mark already up here, backed off the road, so I radioed him to look sharp. Asshole there pulled over about a hundred yards from your turnoff. Came in through the woods…”

Broker’s skin prickled suddenly, his eyes swung from side to side, reaching out into the dark. Then he whistled. The high-pitched whistle echoed through the silent pines. Then he called, “Tank.”

Lyle bit his lip and shook his head. “Lured him up onto the road. We found a canine handler’s whistle up there. He hit your dog with a Tazer.” Lyle paused and toed the dirt. “Then musta snapped his neck.”

“Shit.”

“He’s tricky, we lost him in the trees. Mark swung down to the shore in case he was coming up from the beach. Then I saw him creeping toward your place. He went in and I came running and he comes flying out the screen door with the banshee. She a new love interest?”

“That would be too simple.” Broker shivered, bare-chested in jeans and tennis shoes.

“This some kind of snaky UC shit that followed you up from the Cities?”

Broker shook his head. “This is personal. Can you take him down and put him on ice, no rights, no phone call, nothing. I’ll get dressed and meet you at the station. We’ll have a talk with him.”

“Okay, but I’ll have to wake up Tom. This guy’s really a cop. He’s in our jurisdiction without bonafides.”

“This has nothing to do with police work.”

“I gotta take the stuff he was bringing out of your house.”

Broker nodded. “Just keep it quiet.”

“Gotcha.” Lyle went back up the steps. “On your feet,” he ordered.

“How ’bout you take off the cuffs, huh?” said Fret. “Seeing’s I’m a brother officer—”

“You ain’t shit,” said Lyle. “I saw on
Sixty Minutes
last week about the NOPD. Feds busted twenty of you guys and the crime rate in New Orleans went down eighteen percent.”

“Listen, dickhead, I realize you got it rough up here in the woods going round scooping bear shit off the roads—”

“Move,” said Lyle Torgeson. With a menacing glance, Broker warned Nina to stay clear as he handed the map over to Lyle. Coated with goosebumps, he walked Lyle and his prisoner up the drive to Lyle’s cruiser. Mark Halme shined his flashlight and led Broker into the thick brush on the shoulder of the highway. They stopped and Broker knelt and put his hand on the still warm mound of dark fur.

Halme shined his light on the silver whistle and the electric stun gun that lay next to the dog’s body. He speculated, “That guy had a lot of balls letting
that
dog in close enough to zap him with the Tazer.”

“Real good or real desperate,” said Broker.

“I already took some pictures. I’ll be at the cabin the rest of the night in case there’s more of them,” said Halme. He gingerly folded the Tazer and the whistle in plastic evidence bags and backed away, giving Broker some room.

Broker jerked nervously. Mosquitoes starting to flock. He fished a crumpled pack of cigarettes and matches from his pocket, lit up, and blew smoke at the insects. It was quiet now except for the waves breaking on the shore. Hyper alert, he could hear his sweat dry, feel the salt crack on his skin.

He took his vows seriously. He’d upheld the ones he’d sworn to the U.S. Constitution and to the people of Minnesota. His failed marriage he still wore like crippling chains.

The Cyrus LaPorte he had known wouldn’t use the likes of Bevode Fret. For the first time he formed the thought that maybe it was LaPorte who had not minded his vows. But it was wrapped in hot angry instinct.

For the dog alone I’ll hurt you bad, General
.

Back off. Think. Cool gears of reason shifted through the wrath. Sorting it. Delaying it. He lifted the huge shepherd in his arms and plodded back to the cabin. Nina confronted him, shaking in her torn shirt. There were purple claw marks down her shoulder and on both arms. She had trouble breathing.

“Now you believe me,” she insisted and her voice rasped, barely under control. Then she saw the dead animal. “Aw, God.”

Broker nodded and laid Tank down. Then he noticed the blood oozing from her bruised throat in the porch light. The dark shape of Fret’s thumb prints. “Your neck?”

“Bastard tried to choke me.”

“I’ll take you to the hospital—”

“I don’t need a fucking hospital. I need some fucking
help
.”

Broker patiently hoarded his anger, pushing it into his heart like icy bullets into a spring-loaded magazine. “Get cleaned up, make some coffee. There’s a cop named Mark Halme staying close. I’ll be back after I talk to this Fret.”

“He won’t tell you anything.”

Broker squinted in the harsh light at the damage on her throat.
Sonofabitch, she’d been fighting for her life
.

“He’ll tell me a lot,” he said slowly. “But I’ll tell him more and then he’ll tell LaPorte…”

Nina shook her head in a quandary of pain and anger. Broker clamped a hand on her shivering shoulder. “You’re not alone anymore, okay?”

She set her lips to keep them from quivering. “We’re going to take LaPorte down,” she said.

Broker narrowed his eyes. “We’ll see. I’m on my way to lay the opening move on Fret.”

Nina collapsed into his arms in a tremendous release of anxiety and laughed. Quickly she sobered. “Where do you keep a pick and shovel?” she asked, squaring her shoulders. “You can’t dig with that hand and your dad can’t and I sure as hell won’t let Irene do it.”

Broker knelt and patted the stiffening fur. “Wait for Mike. He’ll want to pick the spot.”

T
HE NORTH SHORE DAWN ROLLED THE FOG IN OFF the big water and glossed the black granite boulders with glacier sweat and it was the first day of June. Broker stood on the waterfront across from the police station and sipped coffee and waited for Tom Jeffords. Lyle was inside the cop shop running Fret on the computer.

Jeffords showed up in sweats, running shoes, and a light windbreaker. Unshaven, he nodded as he eased from his Chevy pickup. He reached out his hand for Broker’s coffee cup and took a sip. “Lyle says we got big city bullshit before breakfast?”

“Fucker killed Mike’s dog.”

“Lyle told me. Why, Phil?”

“Remember that kid who stayed with Kim and I? Nina Pryce.”

“Sure. Your army brat surrogate kid sister, the celebrity.”

“She grew up,” Broker said laconically. “This guy says he’s a cop followed her up here from New Orleans. Played real rough with her.”

“Lyle’s got him for burglarizing your house and assault. The dog will be impossible to prove. He could claim self-defense. You want to press the breaking and entering?”

“Not yet. Want to talk to him first.”

“This headed in the direction of me doing you a favor?”

“I’d appreciate it.”

Jeffords turned Broker’s injured hand in his fingers, winced and said mildly, “You started smoking again.”

They went into the station and Lyle handed them a sheet of fax paper. “He’s dirty. Administrative leave from NOPD, implicated in narcotics and two homicides. Case dropped. Circumstantial. No witnesses. Sound familiar?” Lyle handed over a plastic card. “He also had this in his wallet. Registered PI with New Orleans.”

“Big deal,” said Jeffords, “you can send away to a magazine and get one of those.”

Lyle held up the map. “All this trouble over a piece of paper.”

Jeffords unrolled the map. “Hmmm. This is the coast of…Vietnam.” He took out a sheet of paper that had been rolled inside the map. The murky graphic could have been a close-up of a rock formation in a lunar crater. “What’s this?”

Broker had avoided taking a good look at the contents of Nina’s briefcase up until now. He shrugged, but he felt his stomach tighten and the part of his mind that was an intricate museum of facts drew a connection to a picture he’d seen in a
National Geographic
article.
Sidescan sonar
. A shape emerged in the wavy gray lines. The unmistakable rotor masts of a Chinook cargo helicopter. Not on the moon, on the ocean bottom. He looked at Tom and shrugged. “I don’t know. Yet.” Then he said, “Is there a Xerox in town big enough to copy the map and this thing, good copy?”

“Maybe at the hospital,” said Jeffords.

“Could Lyle run copies on the QT while we talk to this guy?”

“I can do that,” said Lyle. “One other thing. I had Gloria at the motel pull his phone bill. He made two calls to New Orleans and received one back. All the same number. Listed to a Cyrus LaPorte.”

Broker instinctively disliked former New Orleans detective sergeant Bevode Fret. Not just because he wore a men’s cologne that had little girls in its ads. Or because he oozed casual superhero violence out of a Nietzschean comic book. When Broker walked into the detention room where they were holding Fret, the southern cop nodded and smiled at him in sinister welcome.

Like he was proud of the brawny backwoods mojo that enabled him to lure a big dangerous animal into killing range. Like he was in control.

The Louisianan sat at a small table under bright electric lights. His lanky frame was relaxed on a folding chair as, tentatively, he sipped from a Styrofoam cup of coffee. He had a bandage on his big jaw and a puffy bruise down his left cheek. He had meticulously combed his duck-butt hair. The charcoal gray, athletic-cut tropical suit he wore must have cost eight hundred bucks. With a twinge of disgust, Broker noticed the prominent day-old suck mark on his neck under his left ear.
Vain Elvis boy has a hickey
.

“You gonna charge me?” he asked as Broker and Jeffords entered the interrogation room.

“How’s B&E and felony assault sound?” said Jeffords.

“Where’s the felony? She had the shotgun, bro, not me. I ain’t carrying. Got no permit up here.”

Broker did not mention the marks on Nina’s throat or the dog. That would be a personal discussion he’d have later. He said, “You came through my door at four
A.M.
You didn’t knock.”

“Door was open.”

“Door was locked,” said Broker.

Fret shrugged. “Opened for me. I just walked in. Was going to collect some things that didn’t belong to her and quietly be on my way. She jumped me.”

Jeffords folded his arms and leaned against the wall. Broker sat down in the other chair, facing Fret.

Fret grinned. “Give me my rights and my phone call. I ain’t saying do-do.”

Broker and Jeffords stared at him. His muddy hazel eyes did not waver. His grin broadened. “Didn’t think so. This ain’t the kind of situation we want getting more complicated than it already is for you guys or my client.”

“Tom, could Sergeant Fret and I could talk privately?” asked Broker.

“Sure, just keep the door open.”

Fret grinned again, showing alligator rows of teeth. “You the local badass? Going to trip me down some stairs?”

“Talk,” repeated Broker. Jeffords nodded and left them alone. “I’m a cop,” said Broker.

“Yeah, so I gathered when I saw the army bust into your house in Stillwater. Checked you out…” A little honey humor ran with the mud in Fret’s eyes and he let Broker fill in the blanks. Fret knew he had history with LaPorte and Nina and they were talking between the lines. “You’re the kind of cop who don’t wear a uniform. So if you’re a cop why you been driving that cunt around?”

“Her name’s Nina Pryce,” said Broker.

“Yeah, the nasty little cunt who wormed her way into my client’s social circle and then robbed some items.”

“What’re you getting at?” asked Broker.

“She took some stuff. I take it back. Everything’s copacetic. Oh yeah,” Fret loosened his features and like some lightbulb coming on in the dungeon of his mind, he recollected, “my client has a soft spot for the…girl. That’s why he didn’t charge her down home. Yet.”

“We checked your phone calls. You work for Cyrus LaPorte.”

“
General
Cyrus LaPorte.”

“And he has a soft spot for Miss Pryce?”

Fret smiled and shifted into a lazy intimate tone of voice, a personal touch that southerners seemed to own as a birthright and that Broker resented because it was absent in himself. “It’s like this,” said Fret reasonably. “Mr. LaPorte and the girl’s daddy were in the army together. Some fuckin’ thing way back. She blames General LaPorte for her daddy’s shortcomings, you could say. She’s messed up her life behind this shit and the general don’t necessarily want to lean on her. He’d be willing to let it go if he gets his stuff back and some kind of understanding she leaves him alone.” Fret knit his thick blond eyebrows in a convincing display of concern.

“What’s the big deal about this map?” asked Broker.

“Not real sure on that, bro,” said Fret, smiling broadly and winking. “Not my area of expertise. Something to do with illegal oil drilling General LaPorte detected over in Asia. General LaPorte has these do-good projects, sorta like Jimmy Carter, you understand. Some deal with the Vietnamese government. If it gets in the wrong hands, it could create a problem. But it ain’t the paper. It’s her intent. General LaPorte is a prominent member of the community. Don’t need extra hassle from a nutcase.”

“So you’re up here on a goodwill mission?”

“Yeah,” said Fret. “Just my nature, I guess.” He paused and massaged his hands together and a lazy, bullying contempt surfaced in his swampy eyes. “You could say all my life big dogs been lickin’ my hand.”

The ugly challenge hung like smoke between them. The barest of smiles drew down Broker’s lips. This new ogre was intentionally goading him.

Fret, enjoying himself, asked, “You her boyfriend, huh?”

“Friend of the family,” Broker said.

“Oh yeah?” said Fret. They were playing a game. Broker didn’t mind games.

“Yeah,” said Broker. “She’s been…upset. Since her mother died. She doesn’t need any more crap in her life.”

Fret became absorbed in dusting at a dirt smudge on his trousers with his big hands. And Broker chastised himself for being so cavalier about security last night. Fret had contempt for them, and he was vain.
Mind the threads
. He had worn a suit. He didn’t expect to get dirty. He had
planned
to get caught.
I’m letting you do this, you understand
. Just a sadistic sonofabitch who couldn’t resist killing something. Casually, Fret looked up. “She don’t count, bro. Turns out now it’s
you
the general wants to talk to.”

Broker stood up. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Do that,” said Fret. As Broker left the room he sang out, “Hey, sun’s coming up. Can a guy get some breakfast?”

Jeffords pushed off the wall when Broker came into the hall. “How long can you hold him?” Broker asked.

“Thirty-six-hour rule,” said Jeffords. “Which doesn’t include weekends. So it’s Saturday. So I can run him up to county and lock him up and the clock will start as of midnight on Sunday. We don’t have to charge him till noon on Tuesday. That give you enough time?”

“That’ll do just fine.”

“What are we doing here?” said Jeffords.

Broker nodded at the door. They took their coffee to the waterfront. Sunlight steamed the dew on the boulders.

“I was eavesdropping in the hall,” said Jeffords. “So, is she really a nutcase?”

“I suppose she is, the way Joan of Arc was a nutcase.”

“What? She hears voices?”

“She has a fixed idea that drives her life. Maybe Fret has a point. LaPorte was her dad’s commanding officer in the army. He pressed charges against her dad for stealing. She’s really twisted about it. Maybe it’s time she faced up to the truth.” Broker spoke easily, playing into the scenario that Fret had sketched. Dissembling, something he’d watched Trin do effortlessly to Americans in Vietnam, that he had perfected when he first started working undercover with J.T. Merryweather:
Let ’em see the black man and they can’t see the person. Gives me extra room to maneuver on their ass
. Stillwater prison was full of people who suspected everybody in the state, except Phil Broker, of turning them. They saw a limited, dangerous blue-collar mensch who worked with his hands when they looked at Broker, and he flowed naturally into their expectations. Talking to Fret he did it innately. Now he was doing it with a friend.

Tom exhaled. “So now what?”

“I’ll have a heart to heart with her and then I’ll talk to this LaPorte. Arrange to get him his stuff back. If he’ll drop charges on her, then we let the redneck go. A trade.”

“Tuesday noon. And I keep the Tazer.”

“Let Fret know I’m trying to work something out. Then let him use the phone.”

“What about Mike’s dog?”

“That’ll be between him and me when he gets out. You all right with that?”

“You want to get your butt sued, fine. Just don’t get my butt sued,” said Tom Jeffords.

Walking heavily, Broker was on his way to find his folks and tell them about Tank when he spotted Fatty Naslund wheel his tomato-red, perfectly restored ’55 Thunderbird up to the bank. Broker stepped off the street into a space between two stores until the banker was out of his car and inside. He didn’t want to see Fatty now. He’d see him later.

Because Broker had decided he was going to New Orleans to see a man whom he had idolized in his youth. To see for himself if that man was who Nina Pryce said he was.