The Price of Blood (21 page)

“Holy shit,” said Fatty in feigned shock. “This is like payday in basic training. PFC Naslund reports for pay.”

“How long you known me, Fatty?”

“Since kindergarten.”

“You ever know me to throw you a curve on anything?”

“Where’d the gold come from, Phil?” Fatty fingered an ingot, caressing the Chinese ideograms embossed on its surface.

“From a gray area.”

Fatty sat down at the table and carefully prodded the barrel of the .45 with his index finger so the muzzle pointed toward the waterfall upstream. “A gray area like New Orleans?”

“What gives you that idea?”

Fatty pointed at Broker’s chest. “The T-shirt. And certain inquiries from a big property management firm down there. I faxed them Mike’s loan history this week.”

“You hear about the guy who killed Mike’s dog?”

Fatty nodded. “All over town.”

“He works for the guy who owns the property outfit in New Orleans.”

Fatty stared at the gold with a pained smile. “Ah, look, Phil—”

“Don’t worry. It’s going to wind up perfectly legal.”

“But it isn’t right now, is it?”

“Remember how you always ask me about what I do? This fantasy of yours, about being involved in an undercover operation?”

“Yeeaah…”

“Well, this is going to be the biggest thing I ever tried.”

“But is it legal? You know. Gavels. Juries. Cell doors clanging shut.”

“Fatty, this is evidence,” said Broker seriously.

“Then why is it sitting on a picnic table in Magney State Park instead of on the attorney general’s desk?”

“I’m in the preliminary stage of an investigation.”

“Yeaah?”

“In the meantime, I’d like you to secure these items in a safe place and tell absolutely no one.”

“That’s all?”

“No. Chain up the developer you sicced on my dad. One way or another this gold is going to settle that note.”

“You know, Phil, there’s enough weight here to take care of the loan. Maybe throw in a new Lexus,” estimated Fatty. “Hmmm, and it looks real old. If it’s rare it could be worth even more…” He reached out and petted a bar like it was a cat.

Broker said, “Forget the inquiry from New Orleans. It never happened.”

“Is it legal?” he asked again.

Broker leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “Fatty, it’s exciting. Haven’t you ever wanted to do something…exciting?”

“Jesus, Phil.” Fatty swallowed and looked around the deserted camping area again. “How exciting?” he whispered.

“It’s
Communist
gold,” whispered Broker.

Fatty Naslund straightened up and said, “Well, in that case, fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.”

B
ROKER LEFT NINA WITH JEFFORDS AT THE POLICE station, then made a quick stop at Mike and Irene’s to pick up his truck. Now he whipped the Jeep down gravel back roads, through thick forest. J.T. sat in the passenger seat. “Now I’m going to mess this guy up—” said Broker.

“Like the old days,” yawned J.T.

“But not too much.”

“You know me, pard, the model of restraint,” said J.T. He took out a pair of soft leather gloves and slapped them on his thigh.

The old days
.

They had been old-fashioned cops together. Dirty Harry dinosaurs. Back when Broker thought he could make a difference.

He and J.T. worked triage on the streets. They’d developed an eye for who could be saved and who belonged in the toilet. They had agreed on a personal approach. They put the word out that people were accountable to them personally. They told the punks, “If you don’t have a father one will be assigned to you. You can have him or me.”

They were consequences. They were rough. They played Catcher in the Shit. Some of those kids were now in the service or in college.

Elected officials, human services, neighborhood organizations, and the press had a different description of what they did. They said it verged on police brutality. Broker decided he wanted off the streets. He didn’t want to wind up shooting some fifteen-year-old kid. He had moved toward the margins and then the shadows, into undercover work.

Bevode Fret wasn’t no kid. He was a cold-blooded, dog-killing swamp animal.

J.T. pulled his gloves tight and glanced at Broker. “Don’t know I like you looking so happy.”

“Man should be happy when he’s killing snakes,” said Broker.

“You know, Phil, for years brother cops been coming to me for reassurance you ain’t a psycho. Say I’m not a liar.”

“Dead cool,” said Broker, thinking ahead.
I’ve been waiting for something like this my whole life
.

B
EVODE FRET WAS LET OUT OF A POLICE CAR AT the town limits of Devil’s Rock on a dirt road that ended on a deserted cobble beach. Broker waited on the shore. He kept the motor running in his Jeep.

Bevode held up his handcuffed hands to Lyle Torgeson, who sat behind the wheel of the police car. Lyle, his eyes unavailable behind sunglasses, tossed a key to Broker. Then he dropped a manila envelope out the car window and drove away.

“Pick it up,” said Broker, nodding to the envelope.

Bevode smiled. “You and Cyrus have a good time down home? Get all reacquainted…” He stooped and picked up the envelope that contained the personal possessions he had been carrying in his pockets. When he regained his full stature he stared at Broker. He was an inch taller, maybe five, six years; younger. Probably in better shape.

He opened the envelope, reached in and retrieved a pocket comb. Taking a stance with his hips spread and shoulders hunched like a teenager preening in front of a mirror, he ran the comb through his thick blond hair two handed.

He was handsome and he was vain and he was totally self-assured. He was fearless. He couldn’t be scared. He could be destroyed or he could be greatly inconvenienced.

A gull flew over and its shadow touched both of them. Bevode smiled.

Bevode put the comb away. In a smooth deceptively fast motion, Broker’s right hand came from under his sports coat, brought the big Colt out, and, without pausing, with a twist of his trunk and shoulders, brought the heavy automatic sideways through the air and cracked Bevode across the mouth with the barrel.

Bevode groaned and staggered to his knees. Blood drops dotted the clean round cobbles. His cuffed hands went to his swelling mouth. Broker saw with satisfaction that one of Fret’s front teeth came loose in a gout of red. Bevode tendered it in his slippery fingers and stared at it in disbelieving fury.

“That’s for Nina,” said Broker. “And to slow you up. I’ll bet even an autographed invitation from Mr. Cyrus won’t get you back on the street till you get that smile fixed.” Broker grinned. “Now get in the car.”

He shoved the staggered man into the passenger seat and strapped the seat belt over his arms. Then he drove up the access road, across Highway 61, and followed the gravel road into the woods.

Bevode’s muddy eyes were steamy with pain, but also concentration, as they left the gravel and shot down a bumpy logging trail, and the trees grew thicker and the shadows cut off the light. From the corner of his eyes Broker watched Bevode try to keep himself oriented, looking for the sun, but soon the trees and foliage and close green shadows closed off the sky. They came out on a gravel road again and pulled through a gated entrance to an overgrown parking area.

Broker stopped the truck, got out and pulled an old gate across the access. Then he drove into a camping area.

There was a solitary picnic table, a fire ring, a pipe with a faucet, a trash barrel where a convention of flies were feeding, and a sturdy Minnesota Department of National Resources park toilet.

“Get out,” said Broker, unclipping the seat belt.

Bevode warily got out and looked around. His eyes were feral, calculating. Unflinching.

And Broker, who wanted to stay reasonably in control about this, found that he couldn’t. In a surge he rushed Bevode and knocked him back against the toilet door. “So you’re going to save Lola from Cyrus, huh?”

An expression of incredulous enlightenment flickered on Bevode’s torn features. “Oh
no
,” he groaned. “The bitch tried to get to you, too.”

Broker stayed his punch in midair and squinted at Bevode, who grinned horribly with his gap-toothed smile and his puffy lips. “That yoga-shit really builds up the old pudenda, don’t it. Lola can fire a harpoon out of that jelly roll.” He shook his head with great sincerity and laughed bitterly. “Knew I shouldn’t’ve left Cyrus alone with her.”

His candor was thoroughly believable and he was still utterly unafraid. “Aw, man,” he said. “Lemme guess.”

“Shut up.” Broker pushed him against the toilet door again.

Bevode chuckled, slobbering blood. He raised his cuffed hands to his neck, to the faded hickey, and then pointed at Broker’s neck, at the tell-tale blood bruise coiled under his left ear. “Looks like we been bit by the same snake, bro. That lady is relentless.” Despite the damage to his face, Bevode Fret winked.

Broker stepped back and grimaced.

“Hey, I can dig it,” said Bevode fraternally. “I started out the same way. Just tryin’ to help.” He shook his head. “Get wise, you sorry Yankee piece of shit.”

Bevode had opened his bloody palms in a reassuring gesture and took a half step toward Broker. “I mean,” he said, “she wants it all for herself, you dig? She gets everybody fighting each other. She’s down there right now telling Cyrus that I’m ready to back-stab him, don’t you get it?”

Bevode took another half step encouraged by the frown on Broker’s face. “Hey, don’t feel bad,” he sympathized. “You ain’t the first guy she took in. Hell, look what she did to ole Cyrus. Sold him a load of bullshit about where she came from…and he’d’ve fathered her mulatto child for an heir to the LaPorte fortune if I hadn’t sniffed out the nigger in
that
woodpile.”

Bevode made his move. His cuffed hands flashed instinctively for Broker’s injured thumb, his weak spot. Broker anticipated it and made a fist around the painful digit. Bevode’s powerful hands, still slick from his bleeding mouth, slipped off Broker’s knuckles and Broker happily kicked him in the balls and sent him back against the toilet.

Bevode came off the door in a crouch, not even breathing hard, still game to try again. A deep, gleeful voice boomed behind him, resonating against the plastic door: “
Fee fie fo fum. I smell the blood of a white motherfucker
!”

“Huh?” ejected Bevode, his jaw going slack.

The black arm that shot out from the ajar door looked like a railroad tie cooked in creosote and the hand at the end of it pawed around until it seized Bevode by his still-in-place ducktail hairdo.

“What the…” Bevode was yanked off his feet with the aid of Broker’s foot, placed strategically to trip him. J. T. Merryweather emerged from the toilet. Working effortlessly in tandem, they jackhammered Bevode to his knees.

“Broker, my man,” exclaimed J.T., “there’s no toilet paper in this outhouse.” Then he turned his coal-hard eyes to Bevode who was immobilized, stretched out between J.T’s hand in his hair yanking his head back and Broker’s heel in the small of his back. Bevode was wide-eyed, but not with actual fear. More puzzled and indignant, like a man who had just discovered a garter belt in his underwear drawer.

“What’s that you got in your hand, J.T.?” asked Broker.

“Why,” J.T. peered into Bevode’s wide eyes, “it’s Louisiana baby-soft Charmins. I’ll bet I can just wipe my ass with this baby soft face and then…”

Together they sang happily, spontaneously, “Toss it down the hole with the rest of the shit.”

“G
UYS,” IMPLORED BEVODE IN A STRANGLED VOICE.

“You hurt Nina, so I hurt you,” said Broker. “But you suckered me down to New Orleans, while some of the boys went after Nina—”

J.T. glowered. “And for that we’re going to take your southern manhood. Grab your balls for the last time, Fauvus…‘cause tomorrow you gonna be a bitch and I wouldn’t be surprised somebody makes an anonymous call down to New Orleans and tells the whole fuckin’ police department how we put your sorry ass down.”

Bevode roared to life and twisted and thrashed like a large carnivore caught in a net and that’s why Broker needed J.T. here because he’d never be able to put him down alone and what he had in mind was something that even Lyle Torgeson in Devil’s Rock wouldn’t countenance. For this, Broker needed a partner.

The plastic shed rocked as they battled him through the doorway. J.T. dragged, one hand in Bevode’s hair and the other on the chain between the cuffs. Broker pushed. The main threat came from Bevode’s powerfully kicking feet. Broker managed to get his arms over the tops of both of Bevode’s knees and, with his knees up under his armpits, they forced him through the door.

Inside, the light was filtered through green and white corrugated plastic. Flies buzzed in a heady, early summer soup of disinfectant and several cubic yards of human feces and urine that percolated up through the stout brown plastic commode bolted to the cement foundation. Broker thanked the DNR for building strong biffies.

They got him to the commode and J.T., groaning with the effort, pulled Bevode’s hands down in front of him with one hand and slammed his face on the toilet seat with the other. With the muscles of his arms stacked in ripped cuts, he manhandled Bevode’s cuffed hands through the opening and put a knee to his back. Momentarily free, Broker knelt and smiled into Bevode’s biblically outraged eyes.

“First the handcuff keys.” He dropped the key a few inches past Bevode’s nose and crossed eyes, through the hole into the foulness below.

“Aw jeez,” lamented Bevode, gritting his teeth.

Broker dug items from the manila envelope and dropped them one by one. “Wallet. Rental car keys. Travelers checks.” Gingerly he held up the leather folder that held Bevode’s police identification. “One New Orleans police ID and badge, used.”

Then they both surged down on him as he put up a mighty struggle to fight away from the oval maw of the toilet. “Gimme some air,” gasped Bevode. “I can’t breathe.”

“What’s your deal with Lola?” Broker yelled.

Bevode panted, pinned to the toilet. “No deal. Aw, man, she played prick tease with me to pick my brain like she did you. She don’t fuck nobody no more,” he gasped.

Broker seized Bevode’s long wild hair in his right fist and yanked his head back. “Now listen up. You go back to New Orleans and tell your boss I ain’t playing games from now on.”

Bevode rolled his eyes at the plastic toilet seat and groaned. “Oh, man, wait a minute here. Just slow down.”

It really bothered Broker that Bevode was probably more worried about his suit than his life. “Who else is in this? In Vietnam?” he yelled.

Bevode grinned weakly, surging away from the latrine opening. “Just us, don’t cha see. Thing like this, gotta keep it tight. It’s a foreign place. Bunch of Godless atheists. Just the salvage crew, general’s picked men.”

“And you expect me to lead you to it,” said Broker flatly.

Bevode smiled painfully. “General decided that there’s no way that cu…,” he caught himself, eyed the slime waiting below, and his smile stretched a bloody inch, “Miss Nina Pryce could track down that old jailbird herself. He’s bettin’ on you.”

Broker eased up on his hold. J.T.’s corded arms relaxed. Bevode took a breath and some hope. “Be reasonable, man; Nina’s a crazy lady. She don’t get it. Tuna and her dad were in it
together
. Think about it. The general stuck up for them and it ruined his career. Hell, if the army wasn’t in such a bummer about Vietnam, even
they
would’ve figured that out.” Bevode took another breath, his voice getting stronger. “They used you, man. Pryce’s kid and Tuna are
still
using you.”

Broker balked for a second.
LaPorte, Tuna, and Pryce. Inseparable buddies for years
. Could have been all three of them. He shook his head. What he got for believing in heroes.

J.T. eyed him for a cue. “What?”

Broker peered at Bevode. “Who are the other guys following Nina?”

Bevode ignored the question and smiled. “Look here. Only one way it can end. We got the fuckin’ boat. And we got the gear to get it off the bottom. We’ve bribed the shit out of the whole government. Hell, we can work it out.”

Broker decided to keep it simple and said, “You shouldn’t have killed Mike’s dog.” He nodded to J.T. They both surged down on the Cajun.

“Oh oh. This about the fucking
dog
?” Bevode gasped, eyes wide, amazed.

They each grabbed a leg and levered him into the toilet. “He won’t fit through,” growled J.T. With one hand he reached down and tore at the seat. On the third try it came screeching loose from under Bevode. Then J.T. smashed at the plastic sides of the commode, cracking the plastic, kicking at the springy shards that twanged around Bevode’s twitching head.

They jammed one of Bevode’s shoulders and his head through the widened hole and his voice continued to bellow, but muffled. J.T. took the yoke of the toilet seat in both hands and began to pound on Bevode’s back with the flat. Between blows, Broker stomped.

“Two hundred pounds of crap,”
whack
, “won’t fit through a ten-pound hole,”
whack
. J.T. kept swinging, glistened with sweat. But then the other shoulder did go through and Bevode screamed like a cat nailed to a stump and his hips balanced on the edge of the cracked stool and his feet wildly churned in midair.

“Bevode,” yelled Broker, “rhymes with commode.”

As Bevode’s pant legs and shoes disappeared, Broker and J.T. leaped toward the door in a fit of hysterical laughter and got tangled together trying to fit through, now fighting each other to escape the mighty splash.

Still laughing, they made it outside and slammed the door shut and planted themselves side by side, backs up against it in an effort to suppress the subterranean thrashing howl emanating up from the ground.

“Like a goddamn monster movie,” gasped J.T.

“Like
The Creature from the Black Lagoon
,” giggled Broker.

They both went to the faucet and scrubbed off furiously. Broker returned to the lavatory and snapped a Yale lock on the door.

As they walked to the Jeep, J.T. mused, “Somebody should call one of those bleeding heart liberal anchor-
persons
on TV and report a case of po-leece brutality.”

“Should call Paul Wellstone,” Broker agreed.

A few minutes later Broker pulled the Jeep to the side of the access road leading into the remote campground. They opened the gate and after Broker drove through, they wrestled the gate shut. Broker turned to J.T. and shook his hand.

“You really going to do it? All the way to Vietnam?” asked J.T.

“I’m going to do it.”

“You gonna have backup?”

“I’m working on it,” said Broker.