The Price of Blood (16 page)

L
APORTE WORE SNOWY TOPSIDERS, A TAN SHORT-SLEEVED shirt, and casual pleated trousers. His bare, corded arms had shriveled but not weakened, and his neck compressed toward his shoulders, which added to the sidling insect gait. His eyes were pale blue, pitted and shiny as two musket balls, but seemed darker because of the pressure ridge of his brow. Salt-and-pepper short-cropped hair capped his bony head and the hand he extended was hard as tanned hide.

LaPorte pointed to the bandaged thumb. Broker did not respond. LaPorte’s smile effortlessly glossed over twenty years. “Appreciate you taking the time to come.”

He motioned for Broker to resume his seat, mounted the steps and sat, elevated behind his wide desk. The platform bothered Broker. It was a conceit that the LaPorte of twenty years ago would have had contempt for. He flipped open a manila folder and shot his lead eyes at Broker. “You were a lieutenant during that shitstorm back in seventy-five.” LaPorte let the folder fall shut. “Still a lieutenant, I see. Does policework agree with you, Phil?”

It was the first time that LaPorte had ever called him by his given name. Even prepared to discover that this man had arranged to leave him to die in Hue City, the small gesture affected Broker. He graced LaPorte with the most exhausted of cynical smiles.

“So,” said LaPorte, “you’re still mixed up with the Pryce family.”

“And now I’m mixed up with you.”

“You’ll recall, when we were at Benning for that witch hunt, I cautioned you to walk away. But you had to go over and help Marian move off the base.”

“Marian died and Nina doesn’t need any extra hassle. She has enough hassle inside her own head.”

“I hear you.” LaPorte squinted philosophically.

Broker withdrew the folded map from his inside jacket pocket and tossed it on LaPorte’s desk, knocking over a collection of terra cotta figurines. LaPorte pursed his lips and set the bundle aside.

“There’s your maps and sonar pictures. And I’ll let your friend Bevode go…” Broker pronounced Fret’s name Bee-voo-dee.

LaPorte corrected, with a dry smile, “Bevode. Rhymes with commode.”

“Whatever. I want your word that he leaves Nina Pryce alone.”

LaPorte grinned, revealing a half-inch of root on his molars. “My word.”

“I was thinking more along the lines that if you break it you and me will have a personal problem.”

LaPorte responded with a pompous tic, shooting the nonexistent cuffs on his thick wrists. “I can understand how you’d be upset. This came on sort of sudden.”

Broker rose slowly from his chair, letting his coat fall open to reveal the holster and his voice growled, intimate with menace. “Don’t think so. It’s been coming on for twenty years. And if you and I don’t reach an agreement, financial and otherwise, in the next few minutes I’m going to flat kick the slats out of your whole corncrib. I already stove in that pussy you sent up north.”

LaPorte shrugged his shoulders. “Bevode tends to be…overzealous.”

“He’s a punk. He had a fucking hickey on his neck.” Broker made a face and resumed his seat.

LaPorte leaned back and massaged a liver spot on his hand. “Would it surprise you to know that Bevode Fret was once a very dedicated cop, lavishly commended, and known throughout the parish as a man who couldn’t be bought?”

“Point being?”

LaPorte shrugged. The lead eyes probed. “Perhaps the work got to him. Does the work ever get to you?”

“You mean protecting the rich rats from the poor rats?”

“I mean too many rats in the cage. A man can start looking for options.”

Broker exhaled and inspected his hands. “Yeah, right. Crime’s supposed to be deviant behavior. Now there’s nothing to deviate from. Folks are choosing up sides. Some kind of cultural street challenge that’s going on.”

LaPorte smiled faintly. “Down here the rabble associate that dilemma with skin pigmentation.”

Broker flicked ashes into his turned-up Levi’s cuff. “It’s the climate. Encourages one-crop agriculture and simple-mindedness.”

LaPorte laughed and opened a drawer and stood up. He came around the desk and handed an ashtray to Broker. “Mind the ashes, Phil; that rug cost more than you earned last year.”

Broker took the ashtray and slowly rolled the ash into it. LaPorte leaned back on the desk and smiled. “Now, if we can get past the macho tantrums, I have a proposition for you.”

“Just like that,” said Broker. “After all this time. And your goon kicks down my door…”

LaPorte clasped his hands behind his back and walked to the window that overlooked the wedding party. He squinted down at the lawn then turned and picked up a pair of binoculars from a shelf on the wall. He bent, focused the glasses, then shook his head. He came back to his desk and pressed a button. He grinned at Broker and chuckled. “The minimum wage. They just can’t get it right.”

The elderly black man who had brought Broker his drink crab-walked into the room. LaPorte spoke with elaborate politeness.

“Hiram, get on Artis down there to tell the guests not to put the knives, forks, and spoons into the trash containers. Keep it separate. And the glasses.”

“Okay, Mr. Cyrus,” the servant replied and shuffled off.

LaPorte sighed. “I’ve been telling that man for ten years to drop the ‘Mister.’ Old habits.”

“You were saying?” said Broker.

A puff of wind stirred the long curtains and LaPorte said, “Maybe we’ll get an afternoon breeze. Let’s go out on the balcony.”

They sat in wrought-iron chairs as a tremble of impending rain ruffled the cascading impatiens. Beyond the hedges, the wedding party buzzed in pre-event conversation.

LaPorte looked up and found the sun in a hazy hole in the clouds. He stared directly at it unblinking and stated, “The fact is, I’m in a ticklish spot.”

Broker hawked, leaned forward, and spit over the balcony. “You don’t strike me as the ticklish kind. You’re more the agony of psoriasis.”

LaPorte cleared his throat. “Who else knows about the map?”

Broker answered offhand. “I called Mel Fisher for an opinion—”

“That’s not funny,” said LaPorte. “The Hue gold is a remote legend. I’d like to keep it that way. When the war ended the Communists didn’t register a complaint that it had been stolen. Which is part of the mystery. It crops up from time to time as a low-key buzz in the international treasure hunting community. But, with Clinton getting ready to normalize relations with Vietnam, and with Nina Pryce waving around the Freedom of Information Act, I suspect interest will start picking up.”

“So?”

“So answer the question.”

“Nina Pryce. Me.”

“Let’s cut the bullshit. It’s Jimmy Tuna I care about. If you can’t see that, we’re both wasting our time.”

“Okay,” said Broker. “He disappeared without a trace from Milan.”

“Did you talk to the prison doctor?” asked LaPorte. Broker shook his head. “I did,” said LaPorte. “Tuna has weeks left. Maybe days. He always was a hard luck guy…” LaPorte’s eyes cruised the far wall where he kept his war mementos. “He married this foxy German girl in sixty-six. She gets over here, gets her citizenship, buys everything in sight, and then sends Tuna this tape of her screwing a guy as a Dear John.” LaPorte shook his head. “He played it over and over. Her screaming with bed-springs in the background.” LaPorte lapsed into a guttural German accent: “‘Fok me, hunny,’ Christmas Eve, 1970. Rainy night in the team house on the Laotian border.” He sighed and shook his head. “Went off the deep end. Tried to rob a bank…prison all these years. Now cancer.”

“Maybe robbing banks was habit forming,” said Broker. The words hung in the heavy air with his cigarette smoke.

LaPorte leaned back in his chair, squinted into the sun, and shook his head. “It was the fucking war. We all went wrong.” He turned to Broker. “Bound to happen when you lose human scale.” He laughed cynically and slid in and out of past and present tense: “We let them bring in the gadgets. You know, like, they used to pollinate the jungle with these dealy bobs—body heat sniffers. So a monkey comes along and trips one. And it’s B-52 time and it starts raining dead monkeys. Not to mention blowing a lot of fine hardwoods to bits…”

His leaden eyes drooped, too heavy for his face and his voice lowered, speaking to himself. “The hill tribesmen told me that the tigers were growing up without learning how to hunt. They just fed on all the dead monkey meat laying around. So they grow up and don’t know how to teach
their
young to hunt…”

Cyrus LaPorte caught himself and laughed. “Do you know that they give recruits these stress cards now in Marine boot camp? If they’re feeling
abused
they hold them up to the drill instructor. God in heaven; the new gadgeted-up American tiger that never learned how to hunt.”

LaPorte became aware that Broker was staring at him and asked softly, “Does it really matter what happened that night?”

“It matters to Nina Pryce.”

LaPorte grimaced and exhaled slowly. “Phil, she really doesn’t want to know.”

“Try me.”

“Okay.” LaPorte brought his palms down on the wire arms of the chair as if to rise. But it was meant as an emphatic gesture. “I’ll fucking tell you then. Our former worthy foes are less worthy since they opened the door to the west. I’m doing some business over there, building a hotel in Hoi An; great site, virtually untouched. Which means I’ve had to spread the dash around. Take a few ranking party members out to dinner. Some long cruises on my boat.

“So I asked one of these gentlemen to do a little digging for me and it turns out we didn’t know half of what was going on that night.”

“Like what?”

LaPorte pointed his finger. “Who was the key to pulling former assets out of the central provinces?”

“Trin.”

“Correct. And what was Trin’s first rule?”

“Trust no one.” Broker felt his shoulders curl forward, body-armoring against the tug of LaPorte’s will.

“And who did Trin trust?”

“Pryce.”

“Now, back to my Commie bureaucrat, who was panting like a bitch in heat for the new Land Rover I was going to buy him. He checked around. Didn’t take much. A number of people made their reputations capturing Trin. According to this guy, Trin was grabbed in a secure house in Hue because the North Vietnamese were tipped by an American…”

LaPorte paused. “This alleged American arranged a clandestine meet, through a double agent. On the coast. To give up Trin. And hear this. My informant said it was written right in the report: The American was described as having a gold cigarette case.”

“What did this guy get in return for handing over Trin?” asked Broker.

LaPorte smiled thinly. “Bastard wouldn’t tell me. That’d probably cost another Land Rover.”

“Hearsay,” said Broker.

“My ass. It was planned in depth. First position Trin as the bait. Then send you in as the decoy. And I tried to defend that sonofabitch…” His eyes scanned the rustling foliage and he said softly, “For which I paid a very steep price.” LaPorte stood up abruptly and seized the railing until his knuckles turned white. “Give me a cigarette, please,” he asked softly.

There was a time when Broker could not imagine Cyrus LaPorte losing control. He shrugged and held out his pack. LaPorte took one and a light from Broker’s lighter.

LaPorte inhaled, blew a stream of smoke and immediately rested two fingers on his left wrist to test his pulse. Broker remembered what his dad had said and he wondered if LaPorte, who was in his early sixties, had glimpsed death creeping the iron lilacs, staking out squatter’s rights on his estate. LaPorte tossed the smoke away and made a face. “I haven’t had one of those in eight years.” He spun on Broker. “So you can see why I’m not crazy about Nina Pryce nosing around in my affairs.”

“What do you care. You’ve found your helicopter.”

“Goddammit, man, we’ve gridded the bottom and sonar mapped the whole area. We’ve been all over that wreck and we’ve got bones and coral-wrapped hand grenades, but we’ve only brought up
seven
bars of gold,” said LaPorte. “It’s not there.”

“And you think Tuna knows where it is?”

With a glare like point-blank muskets, LaPorte fumed, “Of course I do. Don’t fuck around. So do you!”

T
HE WOMAN WALKED OUT FROM BENEATH THE BALCONY, staying to the dappled shadows along the right side of the pool deck. Divots of sunlight peeked through the hedge and caught in her dark hair and flowed in snake-skin patterns on her olive arms and legs. She wore a high-necked T-shirt and light shorts like a coat of black cotton paint and she carried a faded blue rubber mat under her arm. She used absolutely every muscle in her body in the simple act of walking.

Broker’s eyes stayed fixed on the woman as she knelt and smoothed out her mat.

“I don’t know about Minnesota, but down here it’s not considered polite to stare at a man’s wife,” said LaPorte.

“Very attractive,” said Broker.

“Really? All you can see is her back.”

“And young.”

LaPorte snorted. “No, Lola’s merely well preserved.”

Impolitely, Broker continued to stare at Lola LaPorte as she swung her body through a continuous series of postures. Her limbs swung light as balsa, but they were anchored in the tension of driven pilings.

Yoga. Irene Broker studied it to file down the teeth of aging. But Mom did it on rocks.

LaPorte leaned over the balcony and called out, irritably, “Lola, cut that shit out and come over here.”

Lightly she unwound from a pose and stood, staring up at them. Her large eyes, wide cheeks, full lips, and perfect shoulder-length hair communicated a certain taboo physical range: rich guy’s wife. As cool in the tropical heat as a pristine winter shadow Lola LaPorte walked halfway to the balcony and put her hands on her hips. “What?” she said, annoyed, not turning her face up.

LaPorte rose and leaned over the balcony. “Mr. Phillip Broker is up here, he’s the detective from Minnesota we discussed last night. I get the impression he’s embarking on a new career as a blackmailer.”

“Is he here to study or to practice?” said Lola in a bored voice. Broker appreciated that the LaPortes, in conversation, volleyed a siege energy of contempt.

LaPorte made a face and lowered his voice. “You married, Broker?”

“Divorced.”

“Kids?”

Broker shook his head.

“I wanted kids,” said LaPorte in a sour tone. Then he called to his wife. “I was thinking of inviting Mr. Broker to supper.”

“Sorry, I have plans,” said Broker who didn’t want to seem too eager to curry LaPorte’s favor.

“So does Cyrus,” said Lola sweetly. She waved her wrist idly in parting and returned to her exercise.

LaPorte grimaced and then inclined his palm back toward his office and they went inside and sat in the chairs in front of the desk. This time their eyes were on the same level. “Let’s get down to it, Phil. I’ll tell you what I want. You tell me what you want.”

Broker waited, expressionless.

“I need Nina Pryce contained,” said LaPorte. “Bought off, diverted, made happy, whatever it takes. Things are too delicate right now to have a loose cannon on deck. Second, I have to locate Tuna.” He held up his hand. “Let me enlarge a bit: I’ve had Tuna watched for years. Every approach I’ve made to him he turned down. When Nina started visiting him I had
her
watched. So, after she went to see you last January, I’ve had you checked out in detail.

“Bevode can do more than drag his knuckles. He ran a credit profile on you. We know you’ve been trying to arrange large loans through your employees’ credit union. We’ve been in contact with Neil Naslund, the banker in Devil’s Rock. We know about your problem.” LaPorte steepled his fingers. “If we can find a way to cooperate, I can make that problem go away.”

Broker’s turn. He ad-libbed easily.

“The map I gave you is a Xerox. The original shows a grid coordinate circled in grease pencil that pinpoints a location well within the coastal waters of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. And I have the original chopper graphic. And a transcript of an FBI inquiry into a ruckus in the Milan Pen visitor’s room between you and Tuna in 1980.”

LaPorte stroked his chin ruefully. “Now there’s a hitch that Robert Louis Stevenson didn’t have to deal with. Xerox machines.”

Broker paused to let it sink in. “I left them in a sealed envelope in my lawyer’s files in St. Paul. And I wrote a speculative letter that mentions your name frequently. If anything unusual happens to me or Nina Pryce the envelope gets delivered to the United States Attorney. Another copy goes to the Vietnamese Embassy.”

LaPorte glanced at his watch, then smiled. “Maybe you and Bevode Fret are more kin than you think. Have you put a figure on it?”

“First let’s get Nina off the table.”

LaPorte leaned forward. “Is she really…unbalanced?”

“She’s just extreme.”

“Okay, okay…What do you think would solve her problem?”

Broker smiled. “To see you hang for killing her father.”

LaPorte chuckled. “Does she have a fallback position?”

“I could suggest one,” said Broker.

LaPorte opened his hands in an entreating gesture. Broker continued. “You pay for a year of discreet counseling. I mean serious stuff, a psychiatrist. Then you make a good-faith effort to help her get reinstated in the army.”

LaPorte sputtered and smiled at the same time, instantly grasping the symmetry in the solution. “Getting back in would make her well, huh?”

“Just my opinion.”

LaPorte shook his head. “God. I’d lose my pension. The good old boys in the army think she’s a libber fanatic bitch. She was all over the TV.”

“You could do it,” Broker said mildly.

“Jesus Christ, I don’t know. Maybe with the Bush crowd but these Arkansas hippies—”

“Easier with the hippies. You could do it,” repeated Broker. “For Ray.”

“Fuck Ray Pryce, the horse he rode in on, and the colonel who sent him.” LaPorte thumped his chest. “I signed for that fucking helicopter
he
lost. They made me
pay
for it. You know how much a Chinook costs. I was pay-deducted through Ford and Carter and finally Reagan got me off the hook and got me my money back.”

Broker found the outburst curious. In the public library he’d read that the LaPorte family was worth $70 million. His eyes strayed to the tall portrait of the pirate on the wall. “You’re not in this strictly for the money, are you?” he asked.

“We’re not talking about money. Money just sits in a bank and accrues. This is…treasure. I’m sixty-one years old. This is probably the last exciting thing I’ll do in my life.” LaPorte shook his head impatiently. “The Pryce kid? Will she shut up?”

“Can you grease the skids to get her back in?”

“That would take an absurd, and not entirely legal, contribution to a presidential campaign.” He grimaced. “It might be done.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. Now for Jimmy Tuna—”

LaPorte raised a hand. His eyes glowed faintly and Broker had conflicting impressions. Sensuality. And molten lead being poured.

“Are you sure you want to mix in our dirty business, Phil?”

Broker looked directly into LaPorte’s metallic eyes. “The Hue gold is…morally ambiguous.”

“The Eagle Scout I knew twenty years ago wouldn’t have said that.”

“People change.”

Something merry danced in LaPorte’s eyes and Broker thought it might be the old male slow dance; LaPorte wanted him to admit he was rolling over and baring his throat to the stronger alpha wolf. “Please continue, Phil,” said LaPorte.

“I don’t want Tuna hurt.”

“The man is dying,” LaPorte said impatiently. “Do you know where he is?”

“Not yet.”

The heat left LaPorte’s eyes and they froze with a subtle click of calculation above his smile. Broker had ceased to be important.

And Broker’s own false smile masked the ice pick that suddenly pinned his heart. He’d made a fatal mistake. A number of them. LaPorte had probably shut his eyes and drawn a circle on that map. The treasure map had no leverage power because it was a phony. Easy bait for an eager Nina. And he knew Fret wasn’t alone. His whole act was designed to siphon Broker off to New Orleans.
And if I could figure out that the trail to Tuna led through his banking records, so could Cyrus LaPorte
. They were still following her. And if they grabbed her coming out of the bank in Ann Arbor…

“How much?” said LaPorte with a convincing pained expression. Broker was treading water. LaPorte was comfortably standing on the bottom.

“Five hundred thousand. For Nina, for my silence, and for Tuna. Half now. Half when it’s done. And do it some way it can’t be traced.”

“I’m willing to pick up the note on your dad’s white elephant and hold it. If everything works out, you’ll get another hundred thousand.”

“That’s a hundred and fifty thousand shy of the figure I had in mind.”

“Let’s think about it.” LaPorte stood up briskly and pressed the button on his desk. “When are you leaving New Orleans?” he asked.

“Ten tomorrow morning.”

“Where are you staying?”

“The Doniat. On Chartiers.”

“I’ll pick you up at eight and drive you to the airport. We’ll see where we’re at then.” They shook hands.

The old black guy in the shiny trousers appeared at the door and LaPorte said cordially, “Hiram, show Mr. Broker out. I’m leaving through the garage. I’d drop you but I’m going in the other direction. Hiram can call you a cab, but you should really take the streetcar.” LaPorte smiled and walked energetically down the hall and through a doorway.

“I need to use a phone,” Broker immediately said to Hiram.

“Uh-huh, but you wait a second.” Hiram cocked his ear out the open balcony doors. Seconds slid by like abacus beads on a wire of sweat. Broker heard the faint squeal of tires on hot cement down near the pool apron.

“Okay. Now you use that phone right there,” said Hiram, pointing to the raised desk. Then he turned and shuffled into the hall.

Broker stabbed in Nina’s number. On the third ring a rough male voice answered, “Hello,” and Broker hammered the desk with his fist. Then the voice said, “I say, Merry. What do you say?”

Broker shook his head, blinked and then almost shouted, “Weather.”

“Hi there,” said Nina in a bright voice.

“Who—”

She cut him off. “I told you we shouldn’t split up. The only guy who was good at that was Robert E. Lee.”

“Nina?”

“Relax. I’m playing Scrabble with Sgt. Danny Larkins of the Michigan Highway Patrol. We took a grad course together, remember.”

In the background the deep voice said, “Sociology of deviance. It was
boring
.”

Nina continued. “For an outrageous amount of cash Danny has taken two personal leave days to squire me around and tuck me on an airplane. And he’s got this great big gun.”

“She’s just dying to touch it,” yodeled Danny Larkins. They both laughed.

Broker, glad that someone was having fun, sagged on LaPorte’s desk. “I screwed up.”

“That’s okay. I didn’t. How’s it going?”

“You’re it. They got me down here on a draw play. The map’s all bullshit. Watch yourself.” He wondered if the call could be monitored. “Especially tomorrow.”

“About what I figured. No sweat. We’re having a poker party tonight. Six cops. I’m buying the beer.”

“Strip poker. And all of us are these
huge
motherfuckers,” crowed Larkins.

“I gotta go, I’m using LaPorte’s phone,” said Broker.

“I’m covered. You take care,” said Nina. Broker thought he heard her blow a kiss into the receiver. He hung up, dismounted the dais, and started for the door. Hiram appeared in front of him.

“You ain’t leaving yet,” said the old man.

Broker glowered down at Hiram’s mostly bald beige skull. “Say again?”

Hiram shook his head. “Out there on the balcony. Go ahead. Somebody you gotta talk to.”

“Who? Why?”

Hiram’s voice was eloquent with the absurdity of watching white people. “Cause they in over they head just like you.”

Lola LaPorte smoothed her hands through her hair as she walked along the pool deck toward the balcony. When she was within easy speaking range, she looked up. Through a haze of anger and humiliation Broker saw that her features keyed to the way she moved, hard and soft, a mobile pentagram of squares and triangles seamlessly turning inside of circles. He thought that her wide, somber eyes might be light brown.

“He’s gone,” she called up to him. Nice voice when her husband wasn’t around. Full range, like the rest of her. Mature and disciplined. “When policemen visit my husband it usually concerns money. What exactly is Cyrus paying you to do, Mr. Broker?”

With a tight smile Broker grabbed at the only straw in sight. “Get some counseling for a girl named Nina Pryce and let Bevode Fret out of jail in Minnesota.”

She put her hands on her hips in a self-consciously mocking feminine pose and pitched her voice to match. “Nina Pryce is hardly a
girl
and I myself, given the opportunity to keep Bevode Fret in a jailhouse, would never consent to letting him go; a sentiment shared, I assure you, by half the sensible people of New Orleans. But then, half the sensible people in New Orleans would be a distinct minority.”

“What can I say—”

“Are you corrupt, Mr. Broker?”

“Only in Louisiana, so far.”

Broker tried to make out her expression, but she stood in a subtle riot of shadow cast by the hedges and he couldn’t tell.

“Relax, we’re alone for a while. I’ll be right up,” she said.