The Price of Blood (22 page)

B
ROKER SAT AT THE TABLE IN HIS CABIN AND waited for Ed Ryan to call. He lit a cigarette and made a face. He’d lit the filter end. In a foul mood, he hurled the cigarette across the room.

“What
is
wrong with you?” said Nina, who sat opposite him counting money. She had withdrawn ten thousand dollars from her savings in Ann Arbor. Now she was dividing crisp hundred-dollar bills into two piles. Two rubbery white security belts curled at her elbow. Their flimsy elastic straps reminded Broker of female undergarments.

“Nothing,” said Broker. He got up, manhandling his chair out of the way. The clatter echoed in the silence.

A lot was wrong. He was beginning to feel like a kid from a small town who’d gone off to see the world and had been turned around by some big leaguers
.

Bevode’s warning still echoed in his ears.
They’re still using you
.

There was one person who definitely hadn’t used him that night, unless he’d masterminded the gold robbery from his cell in a Communist jail
.

Broker walked to the table and snatched at the phone.

“I thought we were waiting for Ryan to call,” said Nina.

“I’m calling Trin.” Broker dug in his wallet for the card with the Vietnam number.

“Isn’t that jumping the gun?” said Nina.

Broker took a deep breath to clear away twenty years of cobwebs and punched up an international patch and hit the number. Satellites played tag during an eerie silence. Then, after five rings, a sleepy Vietnamese voice answered.

“English?” asked Broker.

“Okay. Huong Giang Hotel on Le Loi Street.”

“I’m trying to locate Nguyen Van Trin. I was given this number,” said Broker.

“Sure, Trin,” said the voice. “He work this desk sometime.”

“I have to talk to him.”

Pause. “It’s four in the morning here.”

Broker had totally overlooked the time zones. “It’s urgent.”

“I’ll have to wake people up,” said the clerk. He took Broker’s phone number and asked what message he should give to Trin.

“Tell him I’m with Ray Pryce’s daughter and I want my cigarette lighter back.” Broker repeated the message slowly so the clerk could write it down. Broker hung up the phone.

“Feel better now?” said Nina with a lilt of sarcasm. She stuffed the thick wads of hundreds in the security belts.

Broker looked over his shoulder. He had recurring visions of Bevode Fret howling and bounding through the tamarack like a Sasquatch tarred and feathered in turds and clammy wads of toilet paper.

“Trin’s a long shot,” said Nina.

“We need someone we can trust over there. An expediter, to finesse the Vietnamese authorities.”

“Finesse? You haven’t seen this guy in twenty years.”

Broker shook his head. “Trin used to be a real sharp individual.”

“Used to be won’t do it,” said Nina in a slightly testy voice. “I’m starting to think we should keep it American right down the line.”

“The new world order don’t cut shit in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, goddammit. They belong to a small exclusive modern club, people who have won real wars. The Gulf doesn’t count.”

“There’s the U.S. Liaison Office in Hanoi,” she insisted.

“We were both in the army, remember. We both got the royal shaft.” He glared across the table. “What did you talk about with your army buddies while I was in New Orleans?”

Nina recrossed her arms. “I was curious to see if anybody I knew was in or had been in Hanoi on the MIA mission.”

“Well?”

She shook her head.

“Good,” said Broker.

“Why good,” she snapped.

“Because the minute we tell anybody else what we’re doing the whole thing blows up in our faces. They don’t call it ‘gold rush’ for nothing.”

“I presume we’re going to let someone in on it who has some authority, to—you know—
arrest them
,” said Nina. Anger turned her freckles slightly purple.

“Look,” fumed Broker. “What I do isn’t a science. It’s not enough to know the peasant wants to steal the goat. You have to
catch him
stealing the goddamn goat. We have to catch them digging it up and loading it. In the act.”

“Right,” she shot back. “If Tuna turns up. If the gold’s where he says it is. If LaPorte goes for it after you robbed his house. If Trin’s reliable. If we can get the Vietnamese to cooperate…if, if.”

Broker ground his teeth and rubbed his eyes. He was exhausted. His whole body ached from the tussle with Bevode. They were both beat. Getting snarly.

Striving for control, he said, “I’m thinking, we get there and check out Trin. We locate the stuff.
Then
you approach the MIA mission. I tip LaPorte. The MIA people bring in the Vietnamese and hopefully they don’t screw up dropping the net—”

“I don’t like it,” said Nina.

“What don’t you like?”

“Relying so much on Trin.”

“I know how to do this,” he asserted.

“I’m not so sure.”

“Are you on the rag or something?”

“Hey. Fuck you.” She balled her fists.

Edgy, he shot back a flash of street. “You fuck me your heart’ll give out.”

Nina glowered and stamped from the room, slammed the screen door, and stalked off the porch. Outside, she paced back and forth, arms locked across her chest, trampling pine needles. Broker smoothed his fingers through his new short hair. The pressure was definitely starting to get to them.

Then the phone rang. Broker snatched it up. A calm voice on the other side of the planet announced in impeccable English, “I need some flints for the Zippo. They’re hard to get over here.”

The screen door slammed and Nina stood at his side. “Ryan?”

Broker shook his head and turned to the receiver and wondered aloud, “Trin?”

“It’s me.”

“I’m coming over there,” said Broker.

“I know.”

“What do you mean, you know?”

“It’s all arranged. Jimmy bought you and Nina Pryce a tour. I’m a tour guide. I have hotels reserved in Hanoi and Hue. We’ll take the train from Hanoi. I just need a time and a flight number.”

“Where’s Jimmy, Trin?”

“Don’t you know? He’s in jail. In America.” Trin’s voice sounded confused. The long-distance connection had a delay and a background rush like the inside of an artificial lung. Hard to talk.

“I’ll be in touch as soon as I have a flight,” said Broker. There was an awkward silence. “Long time, Trin,” he said.

“Yes,” said Trin. “Long time.”

He hung up the phone, crossed his arms heavily on the table and lowered his head. What did he expect. Trin had been an intelligence operative. He’d never discuss business on the phone.

He looked at Nina and said in an amazed voice, “He’s
expecting
us.”

“Oh boy,” she breathed.

Now they paced. They re-aired all their speculations and anxieties. They finished a pot of coffee and made another one. They watched the sun sink lower in the sky. They stared at the phone.

Finally it rang. Broker picked it up and Ed Ryan said, “I don’t know why I do this shit for you.”

“A
NN MARIE SPORTA ATTENDED THE UNIVERSITY of Wisconsin at Madison between 1988 and 1993,” said Ryan. “Which is interesting, because her mother was collecting food stamps in Chicago and Ann Marie wasn’t on a scholarship. We checked. Her grades weren’t that good…”

And Broker thought: Jimmy Tuna,
sponsor
, champion of gimpy Viet Cong and underachieving college students.

Ryan paused for tantalizing seconds. “Her father, Anthony Sporta out of Skokie, was a guest of the government at Marion at the time, for transporting a stolen car across state lines.” Ryan paused again. “So you probably want to know why your guy in Milan was his daughter’s benefactor…”

“Ryan?”

“Aw. Take a guess.”

Broker batted at the air, too tired for jokes. But he had pulled Ryan out of bed at four
A.M.

“Give up?” taunted Ryan. “Okay. Tony Sporta’s father married James Tarantuna’s aunt. They’re
fucking cousins
. And I just happen to know where Tony Sporta is because I thought you might ask.”

“Ryan, I love you,” shouted Broker. He flipped Nina a bandaged thumbs up.

With mock sobriety, Ryan stated, “We here at ATF have been through diversity, team, and sensitivity training. Doesn’t mean you can get near my asshole.”

“Where?”

“You ever hear of Loki, Wisconsin?”

“Spell it.”

“Lima Oscar kilo India. Sounds Indian…” Ryan speculated.

Ryan was Boston. Southie. Irish. Broker shook his head. Not Indian. Norski. In the stories Irene told him as a little boy, Loki ran with Thor and Odin. “Where is it?” he asked.

“Polk County. Near Amery. There’s nothing there—literally—except a cheese factory. And a lot of cows standing around.”

“Shit, that’s right across the river from the Twin Cities. What’s Sporta doing in Loki fucking Wisconsin?”

“Runs the cheese factory. According to the bureau, there’s certain Italian gentlemen in Chicago who own the Red, White, and Green pizza franchise. It does a good cash business and that’s always a great way to launder money. They make lotsa pizza. So they need cheese in bulk. So they bought this factory. I have no idea why they put Tony in there. By the way, you never told me what you’re doing.”

“Thanks, buddy.” Broker slammed down the phone and jumped up from the chair. He pawed at the air. “Wisconsin road map!” Nina dashed out to look in the glove compartment of the Jeep. Broker rifled his kitchen drawers and shelves. Outside, Nina held her hands, palms up.

“Forget it, we’ll grab one on the road,” he yelled. They went sparky as frayed live wires. The cabin snapped with brown energy as they grabbed up their meager, unpacked travel bags. He had to call Larson and check on flights. The visas. Christ, their passports were with the visa applications. Later.

They had money stuffed in the security belts. Credit cards for backup.

Weapons…

He pulled the Colt from his waistband, put it on the table. Went into the bedroom, glanced at the shotgun. Nah, too obvious. He picked up the Beretta, spare magazines for both handguns, and carried it all out. He stopped. Nina was hefting the heavy .45.

“Trust me on this,” she said in that heels-dug-in tone.

They stared at each other. She wasn’t going to give it up. Deal with it later. She tucked the heavy pistol in her tote bag. Broker kept the Beretta.

It took Broker thirty seconds and two quick hugs to say good-bye to Mike and Irene.

Their concerned faces made brief cameos in his rearview mirror. His tires chewed clods of dirt and splattered the pine trees with gravel shrapnel. Broker and Nina exchanged exhausted demented smiles. Off to see the Wizard.

“Makes sense.” Broker pounded the steering wheel with his injured left hand, oblivious to the pain. “He had Waldo Jenke to watch his back in the joint but now he’s on the run and he’s hurting bad.”

“So he can’t go far,” said Nina.

“Family.” Broker grinned. “He’s
Italian
.” He ran the stop light in Devil’s Rock and smoked past the fifty-five mph speed limit sign doing twenty mph over.

“Now we’ll get some answers,” he said. “The cards are going to fall where they fucking fall.”

“Fine with me.” Nina grinned wryly.

“What?”

“You’re like a kid, we could be charging into an ambush and you’re happy,” said Nina. “That’s why I came to you. No one else would be nuts enough to go for this.”

He
was
happy. The doubts and insecurities of an hour ago had evaporated. It was a quest. Now blessed by a strange serendipity.

They gassed up at the Holiday Station in Tofte. As he got back behind the wheel he handed a travel cup of coffee and a Wisconsin road map to Nina and asked, “You know who Loki was?”

“Norse God.”

“Yeah.” Broker wedged his coffee cup between his thighs and tore the cellophane off a beef jerky with his teeth and spit it out the window. “He liked to play pranks. He made an arrow out of Mistletoe and deceived Odin’s blind son into shooting it into his brother Balder. Balder’s death set the gods on the path to Ragnarokk.”

“Like kaput,” said Nina.

“Right. The end.” Broker grinned. “So it kind of makes sense that Jimmy Tuna’s holed up in a place called Loki, dying and laughing.”

“How could you be a cop for all this time and still think like this?” asked Nina.

Broker shrugged it off. But he saw by her watchful eyes that it was meant as a serious question. Well, they had some serious talking to do.

He lit a cigarette and settled behind the wheel. “Besides my dad the four men who shaped my life were LaPorte,
your
dad, Tuna, and Trin. After knowing them, how the hell was I supposed to go back and have an ordinary life?

“It’s like a riddle. How could they be so solid and then fly apart in this gold scam?” He eyeballed her. “What if we find out they were all in it together? Except for Trin, who was in jail.”

“The army never cared about the bank. They censured Dad for desertion. I’m not saying he wouldn’t knock off an enemy bank. I’m saying he wouldn’t leave you up shit creek to do it,” she stated simply.

“C’mon. You barely knew him. He was always gone.”

“He told me once that the most important thing was for kids to grow up in a home where there was nothing to hide. He was there even when he wasn’t there. He was an ordinary guy, Broker; being an officer was a big deal for him. It didn’t come easy.”

“So we both have our myths.”

Nina sipped her coffee and stared at the twinkling horizon of Lake Superior. “When I was seven he came back to Georgia on leave and we went to Michigan to visit Mom’s relatives. It was deer season and Dad went hunting with two of my uncles. I said I wanted to go along and he agreed to take me.

“We went up north, into a big woods beyond some farms. There wasn’t even much snow. I remember that he had this red Elmer Fudd hunting hat with the funny flaps over the ears. He took out a county map and showed me the roads and where we were going. Then he gave me his compass and explained what to do if I got separated and lost. Go west until I came to a road. Then go to a farmhouse and ask to use the telephone.

“But we didn’t get separated. We didn’t see any deer either. The sky changed and the wind came up and the snow…suddenly it got so cold it hurt and we couldn’t see.”

“Whiteout,” said Broker.

Nina nodded. “From nowhere. A real live killer blizzard. We weren’t dressed for it. I was too young, I didn’t know how bad it was. He gave me a job, which was to read the compass. Then he unzipped his parka and put me inside with my arms and legs around his waist. He belted me in and then zipped the coat over me. Every few minutes he’d unzip and ask me to show him the compass.

“He kept going on a compass heading through that storm. Sometimes he counted to himself, over and over. One, two, three, four.” She smiled. “You know, like cadence. Finally he found a fence line and he walked along it for hours, with one hand on the barbed wire. When he found a mailbox and a driveway his glove was torn to bloody shreds. I don’t remember the things he said. I remember that he kept me warm and he smelled like sweat inside his coat and he didn’t leave me and he didn’t quit and he kept his rifle.”

She turned to him and spoke with uncomplicated conviction. “I didn’t have to spend a lot of time with him to know him.”

Broker clicked his teeth. “I believed in LaPorte. I even went down to New Orleans still half believing in him.”

“You were blinded. You’re about to get your sight back. LaPorte’s Darth Vader. And Bevode is his monster and Tuna is a trickster. I have no idea who Trin is.” She smiled and spoofed him. “All we need is a princess, huh?”

She unfolded the road map and studied the index. “Loki. Population forty-three.” She referenced the locators and put her finger on a spot. “How long will it take us to get there?”

“About three hours once we cross into Wisconsin at Duluth and we’re about forty minutes out of Duluth.”

She looked at the sky. “Do we want to roll into Loki in the dark? I doubt that Tony Sporta lives in the cheese factory. And we’re both shot. We need some sleep.”

Broker exhaled. “You have a point.”

She raised up in the seat. “What’s that up ahead, on the left?”

“Sloden’s Resort. A real yuppie tourist trap. They have shops, masseurs, two restaurants. I think they even have baby-sitters for your cat.”

Nina drew her fingers through her slack unwashed hair. “If there’s a room, let’s spend the night. My treat.”