The Price of Blood (32 page)

T
HE HOTEL FACED A TRAFFIC CIRCLE AT THE EDGE of the Old City. The van arrived and, as they snailed through the cramped, smoky medieval alleys, Broker began to see evidence of the strip-malling of Hanoi. Gaudy mini-hotels and satellite dishes sprouted like brick and plaster burdock among the ramshackle twelfth-century architecture. Hanoi’s callused palm had been crossed with silver and hope rode a shiny new motor scooter.

All the bicycles in the world jostled the van with anthill North Vietnamese energy and aggravated Broker’s jet lag. His eyes ached. He wanted to get out of the city. Into the countryside and fresh air. Get the thing moving.

Mr. Hai, the driver, turned with a sturdy grin. “Roger, wilco, wait one,” he said.

Just trying to be friendly.

Broker winced as a woman on a bike scraped the side of the van. He saw his first cop: gray shirt, Kermit green trousers with a red stripe. “The cops don’t carry guns,” he said.

“There are lots of guns, never very far away. Just criticize the government. You’ll see,” said Trin.

Nina sat quietly, meditating on the street scene. She toyed with one of the silver earrings, turned and smiled. “You know. If the people doing it are crazy enough, it just might work,” she said.

They came out of the dense side streets and onto a broad French boulevard on which thousands of people waited patiently in line. Trin pointed at the top of a gray stone pyre that poked through the trees. They parked and waited while Trin ran into an office. He returned with tickets and slipped a guard a U.S. dollar. The guard escorted them to the head of the line. American tourists were allowed to take cuts. Broker averted his eyes from the squints of dour peasant veterans, their shirts clanking with medals, who stood patiently in the sun.

They joined a procession of elementary school kids who wore white shirts, blue trousers and skirts, and had red scarves tied around their necks. The kids walked in orderly ranks minded by their teachers.

“Pioneers,” sniffed Trin. “Communist youth movement.”

The shrine rose in blocky tiers of pharaonic Russian granite. Soldiers in red-trimmed rust-brown uniforms stood mannequin-stiff at attention. White gloves. Gleaming carbines. Huge urns of bonsai flanked the carpeted entrance. Trin smiled tightly. “I’ve never been in here.”

“Me either,” said Broker. The joke died on their faces under the quiet brown gaze of the Young Pioneers. Feeling like someone being initiated into a solemn pagan ritual, Broker walked up the steps, around a corner and shuffled down a ramp into the chilled, dimly lit inner sanctum. Nina squeezed his hand. “This is our first real date,” she whispered reverently. Holding hands, they filed past the glass sarcophagus that held the frail, embalmed cadaver of the little man with the goatee who had stared down the Free World.

Back in the sunlight Trin fidgeted and lit a cigarette in an explosion of nerves. He muttered in Vietnamese. Broker put a hand to his shoulder. “You all right?”

Trin bared his teeth. “We said a lot of things. He said a single thing, ‘Vietnam is one.’” Trin exhaled and recited under his breath. “The mountains can be flattened, the rivers can be drained, but one truth remains: Vietnam is one.” Trin shook his head ruefully. “That guy was focused.”

“I know somebody like that,” said Broker playfully.

Nina punched him softly on the arm, then she raised her hand. “Listen,” she said.

Broker cocked his head and heard music in the trees. A PA speaker played Hanoi Muzac near the tomb. The procession of Young Pioneers marched away to a twanging rendition of “Oh Susannah.”

Broker stared at Trin. Trin shrugged and shook his head. “On traditional instruments, too.”

Nina laughed, really starting to enjoy herself. “I’m beginning to see how this place could screw up your mind.”

Trin reverted to tour guide, leading them past an opulent French Colonial building to the contrasting austere wood house on stilts where Ho had lived, pointing out the pool where the carp would come when he clapped his hands.

“There’s a debate in the party,” said Trin on the way back to the van. “In his will President Ho specified that he wanted to be cremated and have his ashes scattered on three mountain tops. Maybe he will finally get his wish and be liberated from that Russian meat locker.”

“Now what?” asked Nina.

“The military museum,” said Trin, giving directions to Mr. Hai. The museum was a few minutes away, through the swarm of bicycles. Nina sat up abruptly and said, “Hello! Is that what I think it is?”

“Absolutely,” said Trin. “The last statue of Lenin in the world, I think.” The statue dominated a square directly across from the museum.

“I should have brought a camera,” said Nina. Trin immediately dug in his bag and produced an Instamatic.

“I want you two in front of the statue,” said Nina. Trin had Mr. Hai pull over and explained the simple camera mechanism to Nina. They got out and a swirl of street kids surrounded them like blown gum wrappers. Selling postcards. Trin brushed off the kids and they walked up the shallow steps into the paved park toward the obstinate charcoal-gray statue. Paralyzed in larger-than-life bronze and contradictions, Lenin clasped his right lapel in one hand and knit his sooty devil’s eyebrows.

Nina, camera in one hand, shooed a group of kids playing soccer out of her way. She directed Trin and Broker to stand back a few paces, took several snapshots, and then moved down the steps to get a wide-angle shot.

Broker put his arm around Trin’s shoulder. It was very warm. A spoon band of cicadas clacked in gaps in the traffic. Foliage swooned in the breeze. A bright trickle of sweat ran from Trin’s hairline down his temple and into his scars. Mr. Hai wove across the busy street toward the military museum ticket booth. A tall tourist meandered, adjusting his direction so as not to interfere with the picture-taking. Nina was bent forward, her purse dangling from her shoulder, camera extended, elbows out. A spear of sunlight pierced Broker’s eyes from one of her earrings.

He blinked sweat.

They both sensed it ahead of conscious thought. Something in the languid summer tempo on the square showed its teeth. Trin and Broker dropped to a slight forward crouch. Broker’s right hand flashed instinctively to the small of his back.

The anonymous black car angled from a cloud of bicycles and rolled over the curb. At the same moment the tall Caucasian in sunglasses, floppy shorts, and a tourist cap accelerated from his amble across the square. The car and the trotting man converged on Nina. Not fast, but very smooth. Professional.

Broker and Trin were moving. Starting to shout.

Too late.

The rear door of the car swung open and the jogging man wrapped Nina in his arms and toppled with her into the open door. The car revved its engine, the window on the driver’s side rolled down. Broker, running flat out, saw Virgil Fret, patches of his sweaty scalp showing through his stringy red hair, lean out from the driver’s side. Grinning like a Bicycle deck joker, Virgil flipped Broker the bird. They could make out a struggle in the back seat through the windows. The door was not quite shut. An object flew out the door and flopped on the paving stones. Then Virgil popped the clutch and the car burned a squealing double track of rubber off the cobble apron.

Broker and Trin collided in a cloud of exhaust where the car had been a second before. Broker stooped and snatched up the purse Nina had thrown from the car. Trin whipped off his sunglasses and tried to catch the license plate as the car disappeared into a tornado of traffic.

“Did you get it?” yelled Trin.

“No,” panted Broker. He opened the purse and saw that it contained the copy of the U.S. Code, her passport and money. Then—

“
Wait
.” Broker’s frown resembled Lenin’s bronze wrinkles.

Across the street, down a block, he saw a lean raw-boned man wearing a safari shirt round the corner. Hatless, his head and shoulders bobbed, fearsome as a Roman eagle, above the crowd of Vietnamese pedestrians.

“Be cool,” said Broker. “They’re sending someone to deal. We don’t want to draw any attention to ourselves.” He pulled a wad of currency from his pocket and passed fifty thousand dong notes out to the kids who had been playing soccer and who now stood wide-eyed in the vacuum of the kidnapping. The kids grabbed the bills; fifty thousand dong was the biggest denomination of Vietnamese currency, worth five bucks. They squealed and raced away.

The man paused and leaned on a wall in a patch of shade. When he saw the kids leave, he heaved his shoulders off the wall of the Dien Bien Phu Military Museum and casually raised a comb and thrust his hips in a posture that only American narcissism would strike. The long, oiled blond hair glittered in the sun.

Broker could hear Trin’s tense breathing. He saw Hai coming across the street at an urgent trot.

“Send Mr. Hai back to the car,” said Broker in a calm voice.

Trin barked in Vietnamese. Hai reluctantly stopped and walked back to the van, looking over his shoulder.

The American barged across the street, coming straight toward them. A bicycle skidded and overturned, brakes screeched.

Trin made a low contemptuous sound in his throat that sounded like a guttural “Meeow.” Broker’s memory placed the word. It was a derisive reference, an insult. The worst thing a Vietnamese could call an American.

And he remembered the traditional screens that the Vietnamese employed to block the doorways to their houses and their tombs so you had to zigzag to enter. The screens warded off evil spirits, who, like Bevode Fret, could only travel in straight lines.

I
T WAS WINTER IN HANOI WHERE BROKER STOOD. As Bevode approached, he saw that the Cajun had used cosmetic base to disguise some of the bruising on his puffy lip. His face was contorted, absent its easy smile and one of its front teeth.

Broker’s smile, by contrast, was chilly as an autopsy slab. “Well, I’ll be dipped in shit. How you doing, Bevode?”

“You and me got some personal stuff, but it can wait,” said Bevode straight-faced. He stared with fixed interest at the purse Nina had thrown out the window. Broker tightened his grip on it.

“Du ma…” began Trin.

“Wazzat?” asked Bevode.

“Not sure, something about your mother,” said Broker.

“Tell Gunga Din to wipe the stupid grin off his face,” said Bevode.

“They smile when they’re nervous,” said Broker.

“So why’s he nervous?”

“He just saw an American citizen kidnapped in broad daylight in downtown Hanoi.”

“Nah, just some friends gave her a lift,” said Bevode. He glanced around the square. “Sorta hoped you’d have that big nigger along. Want to meet him again, yes I do.”

“Just us,” said Broker.

Bevode squinted. “You had to get tricky and bring the cunt.” He shook his head. “Went and got yourself on Cyrus’s shitlist.” He brightened. “Lola’s moved up from hind tit; she got herself off the list to make room for you. We’re all just dyin’ to talk with you, Broker. Now that you been to Loki fucking Wisconsin—”

“So talk.”

“Get rid of the gook.”

“He’s with me.”

Bevode shrugged, “His funeral,” and despite his damaged mouth, he smiled crookedly. “I been studying the local customs. I heard the worst thing you can do to one of these dwarfs is touch their head. That true?” He reached over and playfully knuckled Trin’s hair. Trin reared back and coiled in a Kung Fu snit.

“I’d watch that if I was you,” said Broker.

“Aw, we know all about Gunga here. Sad story. He’s come down in the world. Just a small-time smuggler and hotel pimp known to the police in Hue City. Had a little talk with them. Professional courtesy, you understand. And speaking of the police, Cyrus wants us to keep it friendly, no firearms, no rough stuff. Don’t want to offend the Commies.”

“We deal for Nina, is that it?” asked Broker.

Bevode sniffed and thumped his flat gut. “I’m hungry. You hungry? Hate to discuss business on an empty stomach. Tell Gunga to get us a cab.”

“You tell him.”

“I don’t speaka da birdtalk.”

“We can use the van,” said Trin in icy English.

“No shit,” said Bevode. “He talks American.”

They followed Trin to the van and got in. “Where to?” asked Trin.

“How ’bout the hotel where you all were staying? They got a restaurant,” said Bevode agreeably.

“You see that?” exclaimed Bevode. “There’s a woman dropping her drawers and taking a dump right in that alley and she got black teeth. And these motherfuckers whipped the United States of America?” He shook his head and flung open the van door, pushed through a crowd of tourists in front of the hotel, and went in. Broker and Trin followed.

“That man makes me nostalgic for being a Viet Cong. Let’s kill him and dump him in the Red River,” hissed Trin.

“What about Nina?”

“Torture him first. He’ll tell us where she is.”

“Let me handle this, okay?” said Broker. They both stopped short in the lobby. Broker groaned. The giant drunken Aussie from Air Vietnam—shirt unbuttoned, barefoot, and with his fly unzipped—loomed in the entrance to the restaurant, eyeball to eyeball with Bevode Fret.

“What the fuck
is
your problem, boy?” implored Bevode, unable to pass around the besotted mountainous Australian. Deftly he inserted two fingers in the giant’s nostrils, led him aside, and shoved him into a lounge chair. Showing his gap-toothed smile, Bevode summoned Broker and Trin to come on with an overhand gesture. Trin growled. Broker recalled that the Vietnamese used that particular motion to call animals; people were summoned with an underhand wave.

Bevode grinned at the Aussie, who was conversing with a member of the reception staff in hundred proof Down Under. “Thought for a minute that was one of my relatives,” said Bevode, cool, showing them that he was not without humor. His muddy eyes rippled at Broker. “Speaking of relatives, I just come up shy one. You’re going to have to answer for Cousin Willie.”

They sat at the same table where Broker and Trin had breakfast with Nina. This time Broker didn’t watch the street.

“What’s good?” asked Bevode scanning the menu. “How about this? Three bowls of eel soup.” He indicated an item to the waiter. “And some beer.”

Trin spoke quickly to the waiter who scurried off.

Bevode studied the pair of chopsticks wrapped in a paper napkin beside his plate. He split the paper and picked one up, hefted it in his fingers, and twirled it like a miniature baton. “I heard,” he said to Trin, “that at one point in your career you was a Commie. I seen in a movie where the Commies used to pound these things into little kids’ ears.” He squinted at the slender utensil. “Looks to me like it’d break…”

Trin squirmed in his chair, practically levitating. Broker put a hand on his arm. The beers arrived.

“Ah,” sighed Bevode, taking a long sip. “That tastes good.”

“How’d you find us?” said Broker.

“These people’d sell their mamma for the U.S. dollar. We spread some money around. Got your visas, port of entry, and your flight number. Easy. Now where were we?”

“Nina Pryce,” said Broker.

“You understand I’m really doing you a favor taking her off your hands,” said Bevode. “If we didn’t have her, we’d have to tickle
your
gonads with a blowtorch. This way, if you don’t tell us where the goddamn gold is, we just let my horny little brother fuck her till her nose bleeds. Then we use her to bait sharks. I kinda like to pop a shark now and then off the fantail of the
Lola
. Not much else to do since we’re finding jack shit moving sand around by that helicopter wreck.”

“Do tell,” said Broker.

“Do the right thing, Broker. Just tell us where it is.”

“Don’t hurt that girl,” warned Broker.

“No need. Just a little incentive to get negotiations going. Wow, man,” said Bevode, “dig this. Eel soup. I always wanted some eel soup.” The waiter expertly unloaded three steaming bowls of soup from his tray.

Bevode leaned forward and blew on the broth and inspected the ingredients. “All it needs is a few craw-daddys, eh.” He picked up his chopsticks and carefully tucked them in the chest pocket of his safari jacket. Then he took up the large shoehorn-shaped spoon next to his bowl.

“Cyrus says it’s a good idea to wipe down the flatware before eating. The sanitation department ain’t exactly up to speed.” Bevode lowered the spoon to his lap and began polishing it with the tablecloth. “You know, I told Cyrus not to trust Cousin Willie to track you down. Should have waited for me. I got there eventually. Found the county sheriff and deputies all over that swamp. Ole Jimmy Tuna’s dead, Broker.”

“What’s to stop me from going to the local cops and blowing this thing wide open?” said Broker.

Bevode grinned, his hands busy with the tablecloth and spoon. Then he extended the spoon across the table and tipped it into Broker’s soup.

The earlobe had been severed cleanly with something very sharp.

The silver and jade earring nestled in the bowl, in a swirl of noodles. The pale flap of skin attached to the jewelry was slightly sunburned. There were freckles on it. Beads of drying blood melted to crimson mist in the hot broth.

“You were saying?” said Bevode. He dug into his soup and began eating noisily.

Broker’s stomach tightened. Sweat wormed on his upper lip. The wave of nausea piggybacked on a blind rage and rose to his sternum. He started to spring. A restraining forearm crossed Broker’s chest like an iron bar. Trin’s face was a study in napalmed ivory—two thousand years of perfect hatred.

Bevode appeared unconcerned. Between spoonfuls of the soup, he asked, “So where is it?”

“You touch her again,” said Trin, “you all die.”

“Go play in traffic,” said Bevode, irritated. “I didn’t come all around the world to talk so some itty-bitty yellow nigger.” His lazy hazel eyes swung to Broker.

“You heard him,” said Broker. Calm now.

Bevode shook his head and put down his spoon. “Looky here, goddammit. I got my faults. But my cokehead little brother—well, there’s a word for guys like him. Slips my mind at the moment but basically he hates women, you understand. Something to do with him never fully accepting the idea that babies come from the same place he sticks his dick.” He paused. “Won’t be pretty.”

Then he tipped the bowl up and scooped a last mouthful. “And if you go for the cops, we’ll know. That’s just another phone call. Cyrus is wired in tight with this crowd.” He paused and pushed his bowl aside. “You, ah, going to finish your soup?” he asked.

Broker stared at him.

“Didn’t think so.” Bevode reached across the table and curled his knobby hand around the bowl and pulled it toward him. Casually he plucked the flap of flesh and the jewelry from the bowl and deposited it on the clean, starched white tablecloth in front of Broker. A tiny thread of blood dissolved in the spreading soup stain. Broker couldn’t move. Boulders crowded his lungs. Lava spilled through his heart.

“Jesus Christ, you savage,” said Bevode indignantly. “That’s your girlfriend there. Least you can do is give her a fuckin’ Christian burial.”

Slowly, Broker folded the earlobe and the earring in his napkin and tucked it in his pocket.

Slurping, Bevode finished the soup and smacked his lips. “Not bad. I
might
even consider eating her pussy.” He grinned. “After I cook it a little.”

He stood up abruptly, fished his comb from his pocket, and ran it through his hair. He smoothed a hand over his ear. “Like I said. Take some time. Think it over on the train. Oh yeah, we know about that too. It’s Tuesday. You got till noon the day after tomorrow. That’ll be Thursday. We don’t hear from you, we’ll feed her to Virgil. We’ll be in the Century Hotel in Hue…down upon the Perfume River,” he sang, then winked. “Ring us up when you hit town.”

Bevode Fret ambled from the restaurant and paused in the lobby at the chair where the Aussie was slouched, mouth open, head tipped, sound asleep. Very delicately he removed one of the chopsticks from his pocket and inserted it in the giant’s upturned ear. Then he gave it a casual shove with his open palm. The Aussie lurched and bellowed as his eyes popped open and his huge hands pawed at his ear. Smiling serenely, Bevode strolled away, unconcerned. The stunned doorman trembled and smiled and started to open the door. Bevode pushed him roughly aside, heaved open the door, and towered off into the crowd of Hanoians.

“I’m going to kill that guy,” said Broker.

“No you’re not,” said Trin calmly.