The Price of Blood pb-1 Page 11

  “What’s the big deal about this map?” asked Broker.

  “Not real sure on that, bro,” said Fret, smiling broadly and winking. “Not my area of expertise. Something to do with illegal oil drilling General LaPorte detected over in Asia. General LaPorte has these do-good projects, sorta like Jimmy Carter, you understand. Some deal with the Vietnamese government. If it gets in the wrong hands, it could create a problem. But it ain’t the paper. It’s her intent. General LaPorte is a prominent member of the community. Don’t need extra hassle from a nutcase.”

  “So you’re up here on a goodwill mission?”

  “Yeah,” said Fret. “Just my nature, I guess.” He paused and massaged his hands together and a lazy, bullying contempt surfaced in his swampy eyes. “You could say all my life big dogs been lickin’ my hand.”

  The ugly challenge hung like smoke between them. The barest of smiles drew down Broker’s lips. This new ogre was intentionally goading him.

  Fret, enjoying himself, asked, “You her boyfriend, huh?”

  “Friend of the family,” Broker said.

  “Oh yeah?” said Fret. They were playing a game. Broker didn’t mind games.

  “Yeah,” said Broker. “She’s been…upset. Since her mother died. She doesn’t need any more crap in her life.”

  Fret became absorbed in dusting at a dirt smudge on his trousers with his big hands. And Broker chastised himself for being so cavalier about security last night. Fret had contempt for them, and he was vain. Mind the threads. He had worn a suit. He didn’t expect to get dirty. He had planned to get caught. I’m letting you do this, you understand. Just a sadistic sonofabitch who couldn’t resist killing something. Casually, Fret looked up. “She don’t count, bro. Turns out now it’s you the general wants to talk to.”

  Broker stood up. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Do that,” said Fret. As Broker left the room he sang out, “Hey, sun’s coming up. Can a guy get some breakfast?”

  Jeffords pushed off the wall when Broker came into the hall. “How long can you hold him?” Broker asked.

  “Thirty-six-hour rule,” said Jeffords. “Which doesn’t include weekends. So it’s Saturday. So I can run him up to county and lock him up and the clock will start as of midnight on Sunday. We don’t have to charge him till noon on Tuesday. That give you enough time?”

  “That’ll do just fine.”

  “What are we doing here?” said Jeffords.

  Broker nodded at the door. They took their coffee to the waterfront. Sunlight steamed the dew on the boulders.

  “I was eavesdropping in the hall,” said Jeffords. “So, is she really a nutcase?”

  “I suppose she is, the way Joan of Arc was a nutcase.”

  “What? She hears voices?”

  “She has a fixed idea that drives her life. Maybe Fret has a point. LaPorte was her dad’s commanding officer in the army. He pressed charges against her dad for stealing. She’s really twisted about it. Maybe it’s time she faced up to the truth.” Broker spoke easily, playing into the scenario that Fret had sketched. Dissembling, something he’d watched Trin do effortlessly to Americans in Vietnam, that he had perfected when he first started working undercover with J.T. Merryweather: Let ’em see the black man and they can’t see the person. Gives me extra room to maneuver on their ass. Stillwater prison was full of people who suspected everybody in the state, except Phil Broker, of turning them. They saw a limited, dangerous blue-collar mensch who worked with his hands when they looked at Broker, and he flowed naturally into their expectations. Talking to Fret he did it innately. Now he was doing it with a friend.

  Tom exhaled. “So now what?”

  “I’ll have a heart to heart with her and then I’ll talk to this LaPorte. Arrange to get him his stuff back. If he’ll drop charges on her, then we let the redneck go. A trade.”

  “Tuesday noon. And I keep the Tazer.”

  “Let Fret know I’m trying to work something out. Then let him use the phone.”

  “What about Mike’s dog?”

  “That’ll be between him and me when he gets out. You all right with that?”

  “You want to get your butt sued, fine. Just don’t get my butt sued,” said Tom Jeffords.

  Walking heavily, Broker was on his way to find his folks and tell them about Tank when he spotted Fatty Naslund wheel his tomato-red, perfectly restored ’55 Thunderbird up to the bank. Broker stepped off the street into a space between two stores until the banker was out of his car and inside. He didn’t want to see Fatty now. He’d see him later.

  Because Broker had decided he was going to New Orleans to see a man whom he had idolized in his youth. To see for himself if that man was who Nina Pryce said he was.

  20

  The northeastern sky was a pile of cumulonimbus, the color of spoiled mushrooms. Superior coiled flat and green in eerie anticipation. The air hung in sticky olive sheets.

  After telling his folks about their dog, Broker followed Mike’s station wagon home.

  Okay. It was personal now and it was starting to look very tricky. LaPorte wanted to see him? These folks sure had a strange way of sending an invitation.

  It was always a good idea to follow the money. In this case, ten tons of gold. Jimmy Tuna was the only living person who had been near that gold. Maybe everybody wanted to locate old Jimmy. Because maybe Jimmy was the only person who knew exactly where it was.

  A lot of maybes. But there was the pure adolescent thrill…

  Arrgh. What might yer name be, matey?

  Why, Jim Hawkins, sir.

  A sunken treasure. Yesterday the voice had been tiny inside him. Today it had grown to small. Small like Mighty Mouse. I’m gonna do this.

  More soberly, he caught a spark from Nina’s long, patient fury.

  They killed my dad.

  After meeting Fret, Broker no longer ruled that out. And if that was true, then they’d used him to do it.

  His folks turned off and drove toward the main house and a tarp that made a blue lump over Tank on the lawn by the porch. Mike and Irene got out of the car and stood by the tarp.

  Nina waited on Broker’s porch, sipping coffee. They went inside and Broker slapped the Xeroxed copies of the map and the sonar picture on the table. She poured a cup of coffee and handed it to him. Then she sat down and smoothed out the map. She’d put on sweat pants and a fresh T-shirt. The shirt didn’t hide the scarlet and purple bruises that raked her bare forearms. A red bandanna around her neck hid the bruising there. If she hurt, she didn’t show it.

  The bruises were a reminder. Fret could have killed her if he’d wanted to. Broker paced with his coffee cup and reconsidered Nina Pryce.

  His method was to start reading a person with their body, to observe how they occupied their space. Some people were barely connected, flophouse tenants in their own flesh; some were entombed or asleep. Others were conflicted.

  Nina wore herself like a veteran, not an ounce more than was necessary. She’d shaken off the attack of this morning and now she sat alert, crackling with energy, keyed on him.

  Maybe seeing her as obsessed in a crazy way had been his easy way out. And it had been easy to see her over-achiever performance in academics, athletics, and the military as a warped proof that she could outrun her father’s shame.

  People had said, Broker had said: Something is wrong with her.

  Broker took a deep breath and considered the possibility that it was the other way around: Something is wrong with people who choose to live with a criminal lie.

  He was still pondering his mea culpas when Nina asked, “What did Fret say?”

  “He said LaPorte wants to see me.”

  “Oh.”

  “Fret gave me the scenario. I work out a deal; we drop charges on him if LaPorte doesn’t charge you in Louisiana. I guarantee that you leave LaPorte alone.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I’ll go to New Orleans and personally return the map. Except what I give LaPorte will be a
copy. We’ll keep the original to mess with his mind.”

  “And?”

  “I’ll find out what’s going on.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet.” He paused and said, “I never gave you a fair shake. It was easier to see you as a kind of victim.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around,” said Nina. “Back during the army flap, this chichi feminist reporter had trouble seeing me as a soldier. She felt obligated to ask me if my father ever abused me. I told her I thought abuse was a sexual option you had when you were alone.”

  They both laughed a little. Like a good officer, she told an off-color joke to ease the tension of a new relationship. Nina tapped the sonar graphic on the table and raised her eyebrows.

  “It’s a sonar image of a Chinook,” said Broker.

  “Laying in one hundred feet of water off the coast of central Vietnam.”

  “We have to be sure.”

  “The guy LaPorte hired to take the picture told me.”

  “No bullshit?”

  “No bullshit,” she said evenly.

  She was Ray Pryce’s kid. She had that offhand charisma: How about you and me go out today and see if we can get ourselves killed in a good cause.

  Nina Pryce grinned. It was the most dangerous kind of grin; it had youth and moral courage and principle and affection in it, and revenge and a crisp-honed edge of duty. But Broker saw a cold flicker of something else there. Something really scary. Ambition.

  “I need all the background,” said Broker. “Facts, not theories.”

  She nodded. “I’m out of the army, back at the U of M. You know how I did a search on Tuna and found out he was in Milan. And he wouldn’t see me. There was a state highway patrolman in one of my classes, Danny Larkins, and we went out a few times. I mentioned this prisoner in Milan I wanted to talk to and how he wouldn’t return my letters or calls. This cop made an inquiry and came up with this interesting fact.

  “In July 1980 Tuna got in a brawl in the visitor’s room with Gen. Cyrus LaPorte-”

  Broker cocked his head. “That police report you have-”

  “Right,” said Nina. “What was LaPorte doing in some medium-security federal prison in Michigan in 1980? He was working in the Pentagon in Washington, trying to resurrect his career with the Reagan crowd. LaPorte tried to get the beef put on Tuna, but the guards witnessed it and they all agreed. The guy from Washington in the Armani suit attacked the convict. Not just attacked him but totally lost his cool, raving and throwing things. It was investigated by the FBI. LaPorte wound up paying a fine for misdemeanor assault.”

  “Did Tuna tell you what it was about?”

  “Jimmy Tuna was a very messed-up guy by the time he agreed to see me. I figured-the way his mind was working-he probably forgot it even happened.”

  “This is looking more and more like Tuna’s show. Assume everything he did was for a reason.”

  She nodded. “It placed the two of them together and it got me thinking.”

  Broker sat back abruptly. “Nineteen-eighty,” he muttered, stabbing the air with his index finger. The shadow of an idea nibbled, tantalizing, but refused to take shape. Gone.

  He clicked his teeth together. “So then you got into your scene with Tuna.”

  “Suddenly he puts me on his visitors list. The first visitor he’d had since LaPorte in 1980. He never mentioned Nam or the gold or my dad. All he’d talk about was funerals. And how much they cost. The advantages and disadvantages of cremation. Whatever. We talked for hours about funerals. He was worried he couldn’t pay for it. So I gave him five grand for his alleged funeral expenses.”

  Broker held up his good hand. “Okay, here’s the thing. If we’re going to work together we have to understand each other.”

  “Sure,” she said, not quite following.

  “You’ve got this overall picture and you jam in the pieces. I have to work with pieces and see how they fit into patterns…”

  Nina shook her head.

  “Look,” said Broker. “Tuna’s a retired master sergeant. He had more than twenty years in. They don’t stop your pension because you’re in jail. He’s been collecting a pile of bread for nearly twenty years. He didn’t need your money.”

  Nina slumped back, chastised. “I totally missed it.”

  “Not your fault,” said Broker, starting to warm to it. “You follow Mars, the god of the overworld. I follow Pluto, I turn over rocks in the underworld.”

  “Christ, you sound like your mother,” Nina quipped and sagged in her chair, brows knit, reappraising. “When you were talking to Mike last night she was quizzing me on astrology. My birth time. She said you had this heavy influence, a Mars-Pluto conjunction.” She studied Broker’s face and said slowly, “Unlimited potential for good or evil…”

  Broker grinned. “Irene’s brain is stuck back in the McGovern campaign.”

  Nina worried her lower lip between her teeth. “Okay, so Tuna…I played along. I figured he’d talk eventually. The day he was supposed to get out I made him an appointment at a mortuary in Ann Arbor. He said he wanted to see the coffin. He wanted to know who did the actual digging. What were the exact dimensions of the grave. Gruesome stuff like that.”

  “But he got out early.”

  “Left me standing at the prison gate in a tastefully cut black dress. When I got home a package was waiting with my apartment caretaker, with the Newsweek page and the note about you.”

  “When did he get out?”

  “Ten days ago. I walked a circle in my carpet and got completely wired into this thing. I wondered if LaPorte had nabbed him so I flew to New Orleans, rented a car, and hung around LaPorte’s house.”

  “How are you paying for this?”

  “Mom’s insurance, her savings, and money from the sale of her house.”

  “How much?”

  “Enough for anything we might need to do. Within reason.” She paused. “And going to Vietnam is definitely within reason. Which reminds me, I have visa forms.”

  “Confident, aren’t you.”

  She adjusted the scarf on her neck. “Tuna wasn’t there, but a lot of other people were. I followed some of them to a restaurant in the French Quarter.”

  “People like Fret?”

  “No. Oceanographers. Greenpeace guys. They were all staying in the Quarter. And they hung out in this restaurant on Decatur Street. They were throwing around a lot of money, so I did a little makeover and got next to one of them.”

  “The tattoo, the girly outfit?”

  Nina nodded. “This nice young guy named Toby was smitten with my tattoo and impressed me with tales of taking pictures of the bottom of the South China Sea.”

  “He took the picture?”

  “Correct, he was just back from a month on the Lola. They were documenting illegal oil drilling, taking water samples, stuff like that. He said they had way more high-tech stuff than they needed: a diving sphere, submersibles. But then he said something weird, the crew didn’t get to do a dive. They were flown out-bang-just like that, immediately after they located the wreck. Some rough-looking Cajuns came in, salvage guys from Louisiana.”

  “Divers,” said Broker.

  She nodded. “So I encouraged Toby to think he could get lucky if he took me back to LaPorte’s house to a going-away pool party. That’s where I met Fret. He hit on me. But I snuck into the house and rifled the office. I found the maps and the pictures under his blotter on the desk. There’s a safe in his office and I wish I could have got a look into it. Fret must have spotted me coming out.”

  Broker leaned back thoughtfully. “Think about that,” he said.

  She met his gaze. After a moment she said, “It was too easy.”

  Broker nodded. “Remember last winter. The snowstorm. That restaurant in Wisconsin where we met?”

  “Sure.”

  “I bet LaPorte had someone following you, probably sitting in the next booth. He’s probably had you watched ever since Tuna agreed to m
eet with you.”

  She eyed him, looking a little uneasy after his last remarks. “Okay. Then it really got weird. I called back to Ann Arbor to check my voice mail and there’s this creepy voice on my machine. You know, ‘Hi, Nina, looking forward to seeing you.’ So, being very paranoid at this point, I wisely deduced I was in over my head and took Tuna’s advice to find you. Somehow Fret tailed me.” She looked frankly into Broker’s eyes. “What’s your take on it?”

  “They’re after Jimmy. You were his only contact. Now I’m a loose end connected to you. And Jimmy Tuna always was a cagey fella. They were watching you and I bet that’s how Jimmy slipped by them,” said Broker.

  “He convinced me his brain had turned to oatmeal. I keep going over our talks. We’d sit in this room at Milan.”

  “Describe it.”

  “Wooden tables, chairs, plastic ashtrays. A lot of black guys and their families and-”

  “C’mon-”

  “The black guys, the young ones bothered him. Not that he said it but I could see it. And then…he’d talk about the building, the prison itself. How he’d miss the walls, the walls protected him. You could trust the walls. He said that a lot the last time I saw him and he’d smile at me.”

  “Did he ask for anything else besides the money?”

  “A picture of me. But that isn’t it. It’s the other reference, to the walls.” Her voice accelerated. “Yesterday morning, at the hospital, I checked voice mail again. Same creepy voice, but…”

  She picked up Broker’s phone off the table and punched in a number, waited, punched in another number, and handed the receiver to him.

  A computer voice said, You have one new message. To listen to your messages, press one.

  Broker pressed one.

  First message, left Thursday, May-at 11:03 A.M.: A slow rasping voice. Aldo Ray on downers crawling over broken glass and enjoying it. “Yeah, ah, Miss Pryce. My name’s Waldo and you don’t know me but I know what you look like and I, ah, put you on my list if you know what I mean.” Broker replayed the message and then erased it. He stared at Nina.