The Price of Blood

by Chuck Logan

  Abruptly Jenke got up, turned and lumbered to the door. He nodded to the guard and never looked back. The door opened and Waldo Jenke disappeared.

  The guard came to the table and pointed to the Bible. “He told me that’s for the lady. Because she used to visit Jimmy. No good to Walls. He’s terminally dyslexic. He can’t read word one. All TV, that guy.” The guard paused. “Ah, you all right, miss?”

  “Oh yes,” said Nina. Her eyes glistened. “Just fine.”

  25

  THEY SAT ON THE FLOOR IN NINA’S APARTMENT halfway through a deluxe Domino’s pizza with excitement smearing their eyes as hot as the grease on their fingers. Broker took in the reins on his runaway imagination. When you’re charged up, you overlook things.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “Where’s that Bible?” He got up and washed and dried his hands. When he picked up the Bible, Nina squirreled in close and recited, “Everything Jimmy Tuna does is for a reason.”

  “Need a sharp knife,” said Broker.

  With a small paring knife he slit the plump water-swollen back cover and peeled away the mildewed cardboard. He removed a square of folded paper.

  “Bingo,” said Broker.

  “What is it?”

  “Follow the money.” He unfolded the paper and held it up for her to see. “It’s a customer consent form from the goddamn bank allowing Nina Pryce to see his records.”

  “He’s playing games with us,” mused Nina. “Poor Jimmy, sitting on a fortune, then—do not pass go, do not collect ten tons of gold, go directly to jail and get cancer.”

  Abruptly Broker looked her in the eye. Their visit with Waldo had nudged him toward her conspiracy theory. “Nina, this ‘poor’ guy might have killed your father.”

  Nina went out on her small balcony and stood in the light rain for a few minutes. She returned more sober and said, “During the inquiry, it came out. The radio call. They were damaged and setting down for repairs. Remember?”

  Broker remembered. “Tuna testified they didn’t land.”

  “They made an emergency landing.”

  “Maybe,” said Broker.

  “They did, and they dumped my dad with it.” On their knees, bumping foreheads, they unrolled LaPorte’s Xeroxed nautical map. Broker studied the familiar coast of central Vietnam—Quang Tri Province below the old DMZ. Where he’d been. LaPorte had marked the wreck off the coast of the next province to the south, Thua Thien, where Hue City was located.

  Broker shook his head. “That’s for a boat. We need a one to fifty thousand grid, a tactical map. Then what have we got? We could draw an arc around Hue based on a loaded Chinook’s probable flight time. And it was rainy, humid; that affects a chopper’s lift. To handle a ten-ton load they probably cut back on fuel. And it was hit by ground fire. So how do we estimate the air speed or even if they were flying in a straight line? It could be anywhere, north into Quang Tri Province, south. Hell, they could get to Laos. Even if we find him, if he doesn’t have a precise location we’re screwed.”

  But they were getting close.

  Nina’s brow bunched in concentration. “So how do we find him?”

  “It has to be in his banking records. That’s your job.” Broker waved his pizza slice at the consent form on the coffee table. “I go to New Orleans and get reacquainted with Cyrus LaPorte.”

  “I don’t like splitting up,” she said.

  “It’ll save time.”

  Nina studied him carefully and backed off before it became a test of wills. “Okay,” she said.

  Broker nodded. “Up till now it’s been mostly talk. Once I call LaPorte the thing’s in motion.”

  “How are you going to play it?” she asked.

  Broker shrugged. “Burned-out cop starts doing an old war buddy’s daughter a favor and sniffs a stash of found money to which he has a peculiar link. He has a map with a location. He sees a once in a lifetime blackmail angle to parley that map into an early retirement bonus.” Which wasn’t that far from the truth.

  “And me?”

  Broker grinned. “I think you’re the nutcase albatross hanging around everybody’s neck. LaPorte’s playing philanthropist. I’ll appeal to his charitable side to get you some help: Expensive long-term therapy. How’s that sound?”

  “Kiss my rock-hard buns.”

  “I thought you’d like it.”

  Nina reached for the phone and handed it to Broker. “Let’s do it.”

  Broker nodded and punched in the New Orleans number. LaPorte’s screening machine was purely utilitarian. “You have reached…leave a message.”

  After the beep Broker said in his best judgmental cop voice: “This is Det. Lt. Phillip Broker from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. We’re old asshole army buddies. Right now I have a fugitive from an Elvis lookalike contest named Bevode Fret cooling it in a jail cell. He keeps getting calls at his hotel room from this number. I also have Ray Pryce’s daughter, who can charge Fret with felonious assault. Let’s talk.” He left Nina’s number.

  The call from New Orleans came back in ten minutes. A callow young voice, “So why should General LaPorte talk to some Yankee copper?”

  “Ask him what doesn’t fly anymore and sits in a hundred feet of water. I’ll be on LaPorte’s doorstep tomorrow at three P.M. Put me first on his schedule.”

  There was a pause. Then, “I’ll pass it on.”

  “Three o’clock in the afternoon, cornpone.” Broker hung up and smiled.

  “You’re having a good time.”

  “Absolutely.” Then Broker pawed in his wallet for the flight numbers and times he’d gotten from Larson. He called J.T.’s home in St. Paul and left a message on his machine. “Calling in a chit. Nina is arriving at Minneapolis-St. Paul on Northwest 97 from Detroit at five-thirty P.M. on Monday. Need you to meet her at the airport. Appreciate it if you could keep an eye on her till I get back in town.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Nina reminded him.

  “I know. I’m just old fashioned.”

  The phone calls completed, Broker leaned back and sighed.

  “Good. What else?”

  “We’re set,” said Nina.

  “My flight leaves Detroit at nine-thirty in the morning.”

  Nina nodded. “I should get you to the gate by nine A.M.”

  “By eight. I need to play credentials with airport security about that.” Broker pointed to the .45 laying in its holster on a chair. “Enough. We need some sleep.”

  26

  BROKER TOOK A SHOWER, CHANGED THE DRESSING on his thumb, and swallowed two Tylenol. Leery of using too many antibiotics, he’d left them behind in Minnesota.

  The rain had stopped and now a sweet, warm June breeze teased in through the open windows and balcony door. Nina’d laid out sheets for him on the couch so he draped a sheet toga-fashion around his waist and shoulders and scanned her one-bedroom digs.

  The refrigerator held a barky-looking bottle of V-8 juice, some yogurt with expired labels, and three cans of Vernor’s ginger ale. He opened one of the cans and roamed her space. The books on her desk had titles that suggested she had been taking graduate studies in business administration. No television set. No stereo. No magazines and no houseplants. Like she hung herself in the closet like a bat.

  A scalloped, varnished wooden edge that protruded from between two textbooks caught his eye. He pulled it out. A plaque. A trophy statuette holding a pistol was affixed in gilt relief. And the inscription:

  Captain Nina Pryce, U.S. Army

  45 Caliber Pistol, Second Place,

  50 Yard Slow Fire

  National Inter-Service Match

  1992. Camp Perry, Ohio.

  Reverently, Broker, who barely kept his police qualification at twenty-five yards with his Beretta, tucked the award back between the books. Outshoot her with a rifle, he told himself.

  The only personal touch on her desk were two framed photos. One was of her mother, father, and herself standing in what looked like Georgia
pines when she was about seven. The other showed Ray Pryce and Broker himself, sitting on some baked paddy dike wearing olive drab that was busted out with sweat fade. And that foreign red dirt.

  Broker picked up the picture and scanned the husky freckled man with the bluff features and sandy red hair. The guy who did everything by the book—I put twenty years of insulation between us, Ray. He lit a cigarette and studied Ray Pryce’s face through what seemed like twenty feet of plate glass.

  They had not been friends in the strict sense. Too much of an age difference.

  Nina came out of her bedroom in an extra-large olive drab T-shirt with black jump wings stenciled on it. The hem swept her thighs like a Spartan chiton. She opened the windows wider and turned on a fan. “The smoke, sorry.”

  “What happened to your brother?” he asked, returning the picture to the desk.

  “Yuppie puke lawyer in Atlanta.”

  Broker hitched up his sheet and took the rest of his butt out on the small balcony. Nina fished another Vernor’s from the icebox and joined him.

  The wind combed through her short hair as she pushed off the railing and turned to him. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “You have any gremlins that will make going back to Vietnam a problem?”

  Broker laughed. But he lit another cigarette off the smoldering butt of the one he had going. “You see Platoon?”

  “Everybody did, and Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket.”

  “You see me in any of them?”

  “What’s your point?”

  “Your ideas about Nam come from Hollywood. Hell, my ideas about Desert Storm come from CNN. Anyway, I missed the rock-and-roll drug opera. I had pure Greek tragedy at the end.”

  “Let me put it another way. You thought pretty highly of LaPorte once; and my dad, Tuna, Trin. The way you talked about them, that summer I stayed with you…it’s like you still couldn’t believe what happened.”

  “No hang-ups, Nina. Nothing that will get in the way,” Broker said emphatically.

  Tenacity and tact debated in her eyes and she proposed carefully, “Maybe we should both go to New Orleans.”

  Broker shook his head. “We have too much ground to cover.”

  Seeing that he was adamant, she switched the subject. “What about the gold maybe buried out in the jungle? You get any interesting vibes off that? Like it coming between us and you maybe slitting my throat?”

  “Do you?”

  She hugged herself. “Scares me. Excites me. But I don’t think so.”

  “What about ‘Tempts you’?” he asked.

  “Not my style, Broker. And I never figured you for the money type.”

  “Oh?”

  “That’s right.” She touched his cheek lightly. “And we’re not the stay at home, cozy type either. The soaps weren’t invented for us. Or diapers. No patience for the little things. Sound familiar…” Her voice trailed a hint of sadness.

  She moved behind him and the immediate silence balanced precariously and became charged. Through the budding trees Broker watched traffic curl on a freeway. Her fingers trolled his bare shoulders. Gently kneaded the muscle.

  “We’re fixers,” she said. “We sit around waiting for something bad to happen so we can jump in.” Her warm breath was scented with Colgate and trailed softly across his neck. “Doesn’t mean we don’t get lonely.”

  The moment reared, strong enough to topple them off the balcony and into each other’s arms.

  “Nina, when I met you, you were wearing braces.”

  “I’m not your little sister. I’m probably the only woman who could put up with you. Better than that bitch you married.”

  Broker stood up and propped himself against the railing a safe distance away. He looked up. Ann Arbor made a glitter dome of freeway traffic. Rows of fast-food signs stole the heavens.

  He changed the subject. “LaPorte was one of the great ones out there, like John Vann and Tim Randall.”

  In a flat voice, she said, “People change.”

  “And you’re right. I still have trouble believing he made a wrong turn. Or your dad.”

  She turned away. “Their whole generation did, yours too.” She faced him and stood up straight and her voice chiseled away her fugue of hormones. “Now it’s up to my generation to square it.”

  She wasn’t talking about generations. She was talking about herself. Broker flipped his cigarette past her in an arc of sparks that briefly scouted her profile. Was it a warrior-virgin he saw in those taut, pure features? Could that be the source of her strength?

  An hour later he was asleep on the couch and awoke suddenly to find her sitting over him, watching him. She turned on the lamp and he saw a stealthy shadow of intimacy peek from behind her crinkled eyes.

  She leaned over and kissed him on the lips, a chaste kiss on the surface, but a little way down he felt the jolt of quiet longing.

  “You’re not like a lot of guys, but you really don’t know anything about women, do you?” She winced fondly and rose and went away without finishing the thought.

  27

  BROKER HAS STEPPED ACROSS THE ORIGIN OF Mississippi where it trickles out of Lake Itasca and now, from five thousand feet, he sees the other end of the river drape a sluggish coil around Lake Pontchartrain. New Orleans squeezes between the lake and the river like a dark sponge soaking up the downhill poison of a continent. Farther out, the Gulf horizon stews in a muddy ultramarine haze that nurses the energy of sharks and hurricanes.

  A place where it never freezes can never be clean.

  The Northwest flight bumped down its flaps and the wheels jerked for terra firma. Broker sat back and gripped the armrests. Getting older, he had discovered, meant worrying that the Rodneys of the world were overrepresented in the machinist union that serviced jet engines.

  While the other passengers deplaned he took some Tylenol. The infection in his thumb smacked festered lips, anticipating the heat and a bumper crop of germs.

  He had a thousand dollars in his pocket, room reservations for the night in a French Quarter hotel, and a gold tiger tooth combing the sweat worming through his chest. He felt naked in his muggy clothes. As per airline regulations, his weapon resided in the baggage compartment, unloaded; the ammunition packed separately in a shaving kit bag under the eye of the Detroit Airport Police.

  A few minutes later, slick with sweat, he stood at the baggage conveyer and grimaced when he spotted his AWOL bag trundle down the line, shaving kit attached. The floppy, blaze orange, steal-me tag brayed: FIREARM ENCLOSED.

  In a men’s room, past the metal detectors, he slipped in a toilet stall, unpacked the bag, and put on the shoulder rig. With the .45 slung like an overdeveloped steel muscle in leather tendons under his left armpit, he felt better.

  He smiled, despite his thumb and the close heat, and savored his independence as he strolled through baggage into the southern afternoon. The Louisiana air was wet gauze tented on spiked palms. In three seconds he was mummy-wrapped in the temperature of jaded blood. The barrier of his skin dissolved in a bath of sweat, and Broker, a lonely white corpuscle, floated into the gaudy fever stream of New Orleans.

  On the street travelers cued up for cabs and a black woman in an airport uniform directed him to the next available car. The driver was a black man in his sixties with a neck and shoulders like a pliant fireplug. He turned in his seat with tourist maps in his hand and a relaxed smile on his broad lips.

  His eyes assumed a familiarity, warm and alive and immediate, that would shock people up north. They sized up Broker’s shoulders, the ponytail, the bandaged hand. They noted the sag under the lapel of his light sports coat. The cabby laughed. A patois of gristly inflection that rode a high-pitched chuckle. “Po-leese. Where from?”

  “Minnesota.”

  “Get you a baggy shirt to cover all that iron. You gonna die wearing that jacket down here.”

  Beads dangled from the rear-view mirror, family pictures and som
e pendants of suspicious origin twined with a cameo of the Virgin Mary.

  Broker laughed and gave the cabby LaPorte’s address.

  “Uh-huh. Gen. Cyrus LaPorte lives in that big house on St. Charles in the Garden District. The Tourrine Mansion. Now that belonged originally to a Confederate general. The LaPorte family acquired it back in 1909. He pretty big too, get his picture in the paper a lot.”

  Broker rolled down the window and lit a cigarette. “It always this hot?”

  “Ain’t hot. Hot come out at night.”

  They rode a freeway, turned off and passed acres of white ramshackle tombs. “Cemetery,” said the cabby. “Above ground. This whole fallin’-down motherfucker built in a swamp.”

  Broker, from bedrock country, nodded. It was a pushed-around moraine and delta city built on debris the glaciers had kicked down the length of North America. Then they were on St. Charles, and there were mule-drawn carriages and a green street car. But Broker noticed the fences. Friendly people but lots of tall iron fences.

  “You going to the wedding?” asked the cabby.

  “What?”

  “You my second airport ride to the Tourrine. Wedding this afternoon. They rent it out for weddings.”

  “Why’s a rich guy like LaPorte rent his house out for weddings?”

  “Rich man never quit findin’ ways to make money. Why he rich,” said the cabby. “That’s it, that white monster on the right, takes most of the block.”

  The three-story house wore a crisp petticoat of new white paint, but it was Mansard-gabled, gargoyled and turreted with enough sinister energy to inspire Edgar Allan Poe. The seven-foot fence that surrounded the grounds was stylized black wrought iron. Curved spears articulated as thickly clustered blooming lilacs.

  A uniformed New Orleans cop lounged at the entrance. Banquet tables were being set up on the broad lawn by black men in short-waisted white coats and dark slacks who sleepwalked in the drowsy heat.

  “Drive around the block and up the alley,” said Broker.

  The cabby chuckled. “You planning to rob the place, huh, you casing it now.”