The Price of Blood (3 page)

R
ODNEY HAD COME AND GONE, BUT NOT WITHOUT some difficulty. So far it was running smoothly. Broker hummed “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” an old habit from the dope deal days, as he straightened up the living room.

Two in the afternoon. Sunlight filtered through the dusty venetian blinds on the living room windows and cut mote-filled stripes across his couch. He was proud of his couch, a garish fabric design that resembled burning tires in black, yellow, and green. He had found it on the I-94 shoulder about a mile west of the Hudson Bridge. Must have fallen off a Goodwill truck. Broker was on it, had it in the back of
his
truck in a minute flat.

He had a Goodwill armchair to go with the couch and that did it for the living room unless you counted the stripped down Harley chopper frame that sat on a poncho with its steel innards neatly arranged around it and smelling faintly of gasoline. And the hunk of marble that perched on a beer case for a coffee table.

And the whole wall of books in cheap pine shelves, used paperbacks, mostly, that he’d bought by the crate from the bookstores that lined Stillwater’s main street.

Besides the five dully gleaming M16A2/203s lined up in a row on the couch and the ammo boxes stacked to the side, the books were the only orderly objects in the whole damn house.

Broker smiled in anticipation. Antsy for it to get over.

Right on time, a brown Econoline van with tinted windows and—hello—
Alabama
plates pulled to the curb in front of his house and Tabor stepped from the passenger side wearing powdery soft stonewashed jeans and a matching jacket, an oatmeal-colored sweatshirt, and a pair of blinding white Nike crosstrainers. Looks like a coach. Broker tested the battery in his beeper. C’mon, coach, it’s game time, baby.

So Tabor’s buyers were out of state and they packed some muscle. The driver had arms like he juggled railroad ties and a beer-pudding belly filling up a loud red T-shirt. As they came up the steps, Broker read the slogan on the shirt spread around the silhouette of an assault rifle.

The other guy, who’d been riding in the back of the van, was lean, with close-cropped silvery hair, and he wore a nylon running suit. He carried an attaché case.
Yes
. He was the guy to watch. He looked like he’d been seriously trained at some time in his life and had kept up the habit.

Broker met them on the porch steps. Tabor introduced his companions. Red beer gut was Andy. Running suit was Earl. Earl took Broker’s hand and pierced him with pale blue lifer’s eyes and said “Howdy, pleased to meet you,” in a deeply sincere southern accent.

Earl did not let go of Broker’s hand. He had vicegrips for a forearm and the more Broker saw of Earl the more Tabor looked like a balloon with the air going out of it. Okay, so Earl’s the man. So he wasn’t surprised when Earl gave orders in a quiet drawl. “Andy, you go in there and take a look around.”

Andy nodded. “Most ricky tic, Earl.”

“Hey,” said Broker, breaking Earl’s hold with a sharp twist of his hand, “Tabor, what is this?”

Tabor smiled. “It’s their money.”

So. Okay. Broker wondered if they would try to take him off. In his previous dealings with handshaking Jules Tabor that eventuality had not occurred to him. But Earl was a kind of dangerous cottonmouth with a soft voice and cold swampwater in his veins. What the hell was Earl doing up here in the recently unfrozen north?
Why, shopping away from the federal heat down south. Fucking machine guns. Where is my brain. Should have stayed with grass
.

Broker and Earl deciphered each other for two minutes and silently agreed; they were natural enemies. Broker’s face was relentlessly northern European, an angular German forging under the lobo eyebrows, with a touch of his mother’s stormy Norwegian melancholy informing his eyes. Earl’s face was a True Believer knot, cracked with stress, yanked way too tight. But Broker detected dangerous reserves of strength seething in Earl’s pale eyes. Like he’d grown up breathing poisonous ideas.

Andy came back to the front door. “He’s all right, Earl, keeps a messy house but seems all right. Stuff’s in on the couch. Nobody else here.”

“Where’s the guy?” Earl asked.

Broker tapped the pager on his belt. “He calls in half an hour, leaves a number. If everything’s cool, he drops by, you meet. I get paid and you go off and develop a business relationship.”

“Suppose that’s sensible,” said Earl. Everyone smiled.

Broker let his surface relax. “You boys had me going for a while there. C’mon in and have a beer.”

That’s when two cars rounded the corner. The first, an airport cab, pulled up right behind the van. With a soft squeal of tires, the second car, a green Saturn, pitched forward on its suspension and suspiciously backed up and disappeared around the block. Everyone halted in mid-stride on Broker’s squeaky porch steps.

He saw who was in the cab and, given a choice, at this precise moment, Broker would have preferred to see a nuclear fireball blossom on the North Hill of Stillwater, Minnesota. And he just fuckin’ knew. His life was about to spectacularly blow up right in his face.

Again
.

N
INA PRYCE!

She was intense and she was not bad looking and she had been famous once for a few brief days and she was a goddamned freak who trailed a guidon of tragic purpose. And she was getting out of the airport cab.

Broker groaned. Quicksand. Under his feet.

A pair of seriously athletic thighs and calves hinged by perfect carved knees swung from the car door followed by a lithe young woman in an outrageous apricot miniskirt, sandals, and a flimsy tan top that had these string things holding it up. Bare shoulders and a bronze cap of short hair caught spears of sunlight.

Her big, gray Jericho eyes were danger deep and nothing but intelligent—problem was, they fed current into a challenge to the world to knock them down. And he saw the spidery, brand-new skull and crossbones tattoo that grinned a merry fuck you on the supple, defined muscle of her left shoulder. And—
aw God
—she stood up with that sinewy ramrod presence that couldn’t be disguised in the trashy good-time-gal duds she wore.

There is a quality that is scary enough in a man. Broker found it mildly terrifying in an attractive woman. The Germans, naturally, had a word for it. They called it
Stramm
.

The rest of the world called it military bearing.

She’d be about twenty-nine now. Five eight and put together, in her case, like a brick latrine. As she paid the fare and slung her bag over her shoulder and hauled out a suitcase, Tabor, Earl, and Andy put their eyes on Broker. Broker smiled. It was his innate smile and revealed his soul and the lessons of his life in a flicker through the grate of his rugged features. The smile said:
Fuck me dead
.

Broker did the only thing he could do, he laughed.

He’d always thought that she was nice to look at as long as she didn’t move. Nina in motion suggested the Waspish grace of training events that involved guns, swords, and horses. And she was moving and she glowed with an unhealthy excitement that looked to Broker like the moral pollution of some big city. Down South, judging from her surface tan and her clothing. She paused on the sidewalk and plunked down her suitcase. Twenty feet away and she radiated the energy of Excalibur plunged into the cement.

Earl, impressed, removed his hat.

Broker blurted, “You heard of the telephone?”

“Aw, Broker, if I would have called you would have split on me, just like last time.” Slang didn’t ride well on her clear, chiseled diction. Broker stared: deceptive tiger-kitty freckles, ascetic slightly sunken cheeks that bespoke hours of sweat hitting varnished gym floors, gray eyes, and a straight tidy nose. Full lips, but set in a straight, austere line. Way too clean for present company.

And he cringed further because she was trying to slip into a raunchy vernacular that didn’t fit her erect posture. Nina knew what Broker did for a living, but she got her ideas about it from books and movies.

As if to allay his fears, she lifted a pint of whiskey from her purse, held it up like a prop, unscrewed the cap, and took a long drink. The tendons of her throat struggled with the gulp, but she got it down and her smile brightened. Maybe she figured she’d come off less obvious when drunk. The problem was, she didn’t drink. The quicksand was about to his knees.

She came up the steps and Earl gallantly went to help her with the suitcase. And her miniskirt and sandals were a million raunchy miles off from Minnesota in May and she was a lot exhausted and she smelled of cognac and a night of insomnia and nicotine and a musk of travel that needed a wash and she was definitely in the wrong place at the wrong time and the edge in her gray eyes took in Broker and the scene he had going and it was clear she couldn’t care less.

“You can’t be here…
now
,” he fumed.

“Got no place else to go.” She shot a glance over her shoulder. “And there’s some creep following me.”

Broker backed up a step and dry-swallowed.

“Guess you guys scared him off.” She shrugged and started for the door. Earl and Tabor scanned the street defensively. Andy moved to block her, big hands out, warding.

Nina cocked her head and took a stance that really annoyed Broker because, right now, he didn’t need any utter fearlessness of youth bullshit. She read the sentiment on Andy’s gross belly. “You married, Sport?”

“Yeah, so,” said Andy.

“If I was your wife and I caught you wearing that I’d wait till you were asleep and lump you good with a castiron frying pan.”

Andy looked past Nina. “Earl?”

“Who’s following you?” asked Earl.

“This New Orleans cop,” said Nina. “Don’t worry, he’s a dirty New Orleans cop. Off the force.”

“Why’s he after you?” asked Earl.

“I stole something from his boss, okay? Jesus, what is this—a Boy Scout meeting?”

“Let her go,” said Earl. He turned and peered into Broker’s eyes. Broker’s shock was real, it couldn’t be faked. He removed his cap, scratched his sweaty hair, and glanced up and down the street, finishing with his arms out, palms up.

They went in. Broker grimaced when Nina sang out from the living room, “Holy shit, Broker. You’re not selling grass to college kids anymore.”

“Ah, Earl,” said Andy with a touch of gruff alarm in his voice.

Nina had kicked off her sandals and stood barefoot on the stained hardwood floor holding one of the fierce-looking weapons up and inspecting it. There was no other way to say it, even though it was not correct in circles Nina wouldn’t be caught dead in. She didn’t hold a gun like a girl.

Earl, Andy, and Tabor noticed this instinctively.

“Nina, what are you doing?” demanded Broker.

She smiled. “Haven’t handled one of these in a while.”

“Where?” asked Earl, quietly fascinated.

“Where what?” Nina placed the rifle back in its place on the couch.

“Did you handle one of those?” finished Earl.

Nina shrugged. “In the Gulf.”

“You were in Desert Storm?” asked Earl.

Nina drew her fingers through her sunstreaked hair and cocked her head and her hips and purred in a honkytonk drawl. “Honey, I
still
got sand leaking into my shorts.”

Broker clamped his eyes shut and grimaced. When he opened them he saw Earl studying her with a queer reverence, like she was alien royalty or a deadly new virus. Earl wasn’t sure. He shrugged and looked intrigued. “It’s possible. There were women over there.” He squinted. “You look kinda familiar.”

“You get up to Michigan much?” asked Nina.

“I been to Flint.”

“Ann Arbor,” said Nina. She flopped into the easy chair and picked up the pint bottle of Hennessy cognac from where she’d left it on the floor.

Broker’s wince deepened.
Her dad’s label
. Nina took a pull on the bottle and narrowed her eyes.

“Nina, you never could drink,” stated Broker. “No drinking. Go clean up.”

“Let her be,” puffed Earl. “If her New Orleans cop shows up it’s his tough luck. Hell, she alone’s worth the trip up here.” He turned to Andy. “Check ’em out,” nodding at the military hardware. Then Earl swung the briefcase up on the marble slab.

“Aw right,” breathed Broker.

“First why don’t we look in the lady’s purse and suitcase, just to keep the game friendly,” said Earl. “Jules, check it out.”

While Tabor went into Nina’s things, Earl paced the room. He stopped at the bookcases and scanned the titles.

“You read a lot for a guy who fixes washing machines,” he said flatly.

“The dude I bought this place from left them.”

“Uh-huh, he liked history.”

Tabor wheezed and stood up. He tossed items from the purse on top of the briefcase. “Airline ticket. Northwest flight from New Orleans landed not over an hour ago. Two thousand, three hundred, and change in cash. Another two thousand in travelers checks. College ID from the University of Michigan. Driver’s license issued to Nina Pryce, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Picture matches.”

Earl raised his eyebrows. Nina swigged on her pint and shrugged. She lit a cigarette like she’d watched too many French movies and almost coughed when she inhaled. “The suitcase,” said Earl.

“Clothes, travel things, toothpaste, makeup, and
this
.” Tabor stacked a pile of manila folders and a roll of paper on the coffee table.

Broker’s sternum vibrated like a wishbone being cranked back for a big wish. He stared at Nina hard. She held his eyes with an unshakable conviction that was out of place in this room, at this moment, with these people.

Earl riffled the pages in the top folder and squinted at Nina. “Very interesting,” he breathed. “Xeroxed copies of some kind of classified military inquiry. Fort Benning, July 1975. Just gets curiouser and curiouser, don’t it?”

He paged through the folders and studied the contents of a slender one. He held up a photostat for Jules and Andy to see. “Copy of a police report on a Cyrus LaPorte. For misdemeanor assault in a federal prison.”

Broker groaned out loud.

Earl squinted and his lumpy jaw muscles rippled, mulling as he rolled open the map. “This what you stole?”

“Yep,” said Nina.

“Isn’t LaPorte the retired general, the one with the boat?”

Nina smiled and crossed her legs. They were the kind of legs that laughed at nylons, and they sliced the air like scissors.

Broker, not known for attacks of nerves, felt a mild panic corkscrew up his spine. He had to take control of the situation. “We’re through with the preliminaries. Nina’s going to walk down to the corner for a pack of cigarettes—” he said.

“Uh-uh. I kinda like having her around,” said Earl. “Go ahead. Open it.” He nodded at the briefcase.

Broker stooped and shot back the latches. Hello, sixteen grand. He opened the top and stood upright, tensed, hands floating at his sides. “What the fuck is this shit?”

The briefcase held a King James Bible, a video cassette tape, and a .45 semiautomatic Colt pistol. The pistol butt was a vacant cavity. Empty. In the ominous silence, Nina giggled. Broker felt the raw nerves in her giggle tickle him like poison ivy. He saw she was starting to lose it to the booze.
Damn
. Broker started to sweat.

“I thought I was dealing with Tabor, who are you, coming in here like this,” he seethed at Earl, “with this…bullshit.”

Earl reached over, acquired the pistol, brought a magazine from the pocket of his jacket, inserted it and racked the slide. He did not set the safe. With the pistol hanging casually in his hand he proposed in a calm voice, “We all sit here for a few minutes and get acquainted and see if anything unusual happens. We already got notice of one cop in the area. Let’s see if a million Yankee cops come through the door.”

Across the room Andy methodically worked down the row of weapons, clearing bolts, checking chambers, toggling with the breech of the launchers. A cold metal snap and precision clacked in the tense room.

Nina leaned forward and looked into the briefcase and plucked out the cassette and studied the label. In the process she spilled a little of the cognac. The amber liquid splashed lightly on her knee and trickled slowly between her thighs.

“The truth about the alleged Holocaust. Lectures by Rev. Earl Devine,” she read. Broker watched her eyes. The cloudy shiver in them. Little muscles at the corner of her lips twitched. “You gotta be fuckin’ kidding,” she said.

“Watch it, pottymouth,” said Andy. “Earl’s an ordained minister. Just thought you should know.”

“You need a bath, Nina,” said Earl. “I can smell you.”

“Not as good as I can smell you,
Elmer
.”

Earl chuckled. “Andy, Jules tells me that Mr. Broker carries a nine-mil Beretta in a hideout over the crack of his ass under that baggy T-shirt. Take a look.”

Broker put up with a rough hand stiff arming his neck, another frisking his back. “He’s clean, Earl.”

“Check his socks.” Andy did.

“Take the battery out of that pager,” said Earl.

Andy unclipped the device and dumped the battery to the floor.
Uh oh
, thought Broker. Then Andy tossed the pager to Earl who placed it on the marble slab next to the briefcase. With a casual show of force he raised the butt of the .45 and smashed the plastic device.

“This isn’t going to work. My guy won’t show unless he beeps a number,” said Broker. “Deal’s off. And you people are outta here. Nina, get upstairs.”

“I’m enjoying my conversation with Elmer here,” she said. There was murder in her eyes, way more complicated than these good old boys could ever know. It was time to pull the plug. Fuck the money.

Andy giggled at Nina’s defiance. “Nice for a man to be taken so seriously in his own house.”

“You just shut up, Broker,” added Earl with a thin smile. “This lady don’t add up and she’s got some explaining to do. The kind of explaining that might take all night,” said Earl with a thin smile.

Broker shot a poison look at Nina. The anger in his voice was real. “What the hell are you doing here, goddammit!”

Nina tipped the bottle up, swallowed, and sneered.

“Gawdamn,” grinned Earl, “do that again, honey, I love the way you swallow.”

“I just want my fucking money,” muttered Broker. Earl waved him silent with the big Colt.