by Chuck Logan
“What the fuck is this?” grumbled J.T. suspiciously.
Broker held up a hand. Patience.
Nina spread a sheaf of official looking Xeroxes down on the hotel table like four aces. They bore strange stamps in Vietnamese. Stars and sheaves of rice. “Approvals that Kevin negotiated on trips he made. From a local People’s Committee all the way up to the Vietnamese General Assembly. Get this: For the last five years Tuna has been sponsoring an old vets’ home for Viet Cong amputees. Guess who runs it?”
Broker shook his head. “Oh boy,” he said softly.
“You got that right,” said Nina. “Nguyen Van Trin manages it. Tuna worked through the banker to bankroll Kevin to go to Nam in eighty-nine to find Trin. I showed Kevin the phone number in Hue and he confirmed it as the number Trin uses.”
“Where’s this home located?” asked Broker slowly.
“On the beach, in Quang Tri Province, exactly where Tuna wanted it built,” said Nina mysteriously. She placed both hands on Broker’s shoulders and shook him with infectious excitement. “And, Tuna bought them a serious boat to go fishing with. Kevin said it was way too much boat, big enough to run heavy cargo on the high seas. But Tuna insisted on it. That’s what most of the bread went for. Permits for the boat. The Vietnamese government went through a sensitive period about people with boats.”
“God, he had it all planned, for years,” said Broker.
“Yep. Put everything in place and then he got cancer,” said Nina.
“Trin.” Broker said the name like an incantation.
“Yeah,” said Nina. “How much does he know?”
“Whoa. Wait. Man, what the fuck is this?” J.T. stood up, raising his hands to dodge the high-energy splinters zipping off Broker and Nina.
“You don’t want to know,” said Broker.
“I want to know,” said J.T.
“Okay.” Broker reached down and unzipped his bowling bag. With a flourish he whipped out a glittering bar of gold and tossed it across the room.
J.T. caught it, hefted the surprising weight and groaned, “Oh oh…”
“Wow,” said Nina. “You got into his safe!”
“Huh?” J.T. blinked.
“There’s this guy who thinks he’s a pirate and he’s looking for a sunken treasure,” explained Broker.
“Except it’s not sunken, it’s buried,” added Nina. She startled. “Or is it? Where’d he find the gold?”
“By the chopper. But only seven ingots and they’ve had a crew over there churning up the bottom.”
“I don’t get it,” said Nina.
Broker shrugged. “Maybe it’s in two locations?”
J.T.’s eyes went first to Nina, then to Broker, and back to Nina again. “Right,” he said.
“It’s all dirty and we’re going to bust his ass,” explained Broker, throwing his hands in the air.
“A pirate.” J.T. glowered at the gold ingot in his hand. “A treasure.” He shook his head. “In Duluth?” he asked incredulously.
“In Vietnam. If you can get a week off you can come with us,” said Broker.
“Fuck that. Once was enough.” J.T. carefully put down the gold bar on the table and said, “You’re right, I don’t want to know. I’ll just help you talk to that guy and quietly depart.”
“Talk to what guy?” asked Nina.
“Bevode Fret,” said Broker, stashing the bar back in the bag.
“Talk?”
“Yeah, the kind of talk that’ll keep him in traction for a while,” said Broker.
Nina said, “Not a good idea. We lost those guys in Lansing but they know where Bevode is. You go after him, they’ll pick us up again.”
Broker shook his head, he’d been looking forward to this. “Bevode gets his comeuppance. If somebody heavy is tailing us they’ll stick out like a sore thumb in Devil’s Rock.”
“Along with me,” said J.T. with a calm demented smile.
Nina folded her arms. “We already screwed up once. If I didn’t know Danny, where would we be?”
Broker grimaced and rubbed his eyes. “If LaPorte can buy prison guards he can probably penetrate a commercial airline’s scheduling computer. We aren’t going to lose whoever’s following us for long. And we’re all going to the same place.”
“We have to ditch them if we find Tuna,” said Nina.
“When we find Tuna,” said Broker. “It’s in here.” He sat down at the table and spread out the contents of Nina’s folder. He pushed the Italian correspondence aside. He wondered if a man dying of cancer would try to make it to Vietnam. Tuna had prepared this for a long time.
An hour of eye-strain went by as Broker scanned through the records looking for incidental payments that could have gone for a forged passport and ID. Nina’s Reeboks squeegeed on the glossy floor, pacing behind him. J.T. snored lightly, stretched out on three chairs. Finally Broker turned to the checks issued to Ann Marie Sporta. He looked at his watch, got up, and went looking for a phone, hoping that Ed Ryan had gone to bed early the night before.
In silence, red-eyed and grumpy, they drove north from Duluth in a rental car. They stopped in Two Harbors and Broker called Fatty Naslund. He told Fatty to meet him north of town at C.R. Magney State Park, near a violent waterfall called the Devil’s Kettle, where they had played as kids.
Then he called Tom Jeffords at the Devil’s Rock police station and made an arrangement concerning Bevode Fret. Then he called Ed Ryan, who had been shaken out of bed by Broker’s first call and was now at the ATF office and who was grumbling about Broker having used up all his chits. But he was working the computers and talking to the FBI. Broker hung up the phone and found Nina and J.T. sound asleep in the car. Broker drove to the park on stale adrenaline fumes and black Amoco station coffee.
The Kettle was reputed to be bottomless, and while he waited, Broker toyed with the concept of throwing Bevode Fret into it. Another reason to have J.T. along.
Fatty Naslund drove up cautiously in his T-Bird, avoiding mud holes. When he got out he grimaced at the mud splatters along the rocker panels.
He arched a disapproving eye at the rented car and the unmoving forms curled on the seats. “That’s a black guy and a white woman?”
“They’re with me,” said Broker.
Fatty straightened his cuffs. Just the reflex motion. He had been working out and wore a ribbed T-shirt ordered out of a Patagonia catalogue. He was a compulsively lean, neat man who kept a rowing machine in his office at the bank so he could work up a sweat while he watched Rush Limbaugh on cable. He had been perversely nicknamed Fatty by the other kids because he was the banker’s son. Now he lived in fear of excess body weight, had little calipers to pinch and measure his body fat, and went once a month to a clinic in Duluth to submerge in a tank and compute his fat-to-muscle ratio. Fatty was fastidious. He still thought copper pennies counted.
“Little unusual, isn’t this?” said Fatty, striding toward the picnic table where Broker sat. He grinned his best chamber of commerce grin. His brilliant white teeth were so healthy they looked like they had definition and veins in them.
Broker unzipped the bowling bag and methodically removed the seven flat ingots of gold and stacked them in a blazing pyramid in the early morning sun. Fatty’s eyes went wide then cranked down to suspicious slits.
Then Broker took out the Colt, racked the slide back, and sat it beside the metal bars.
“Holy shit,” said Fatty in feigned shock. “This is like payday in basic training. PFC Naslund reports for pay.”
“How long you known me, Fatty?”
“Since kindergarten.”
“You ever know me to throw you a curve on anything?”
“Where’d the gold come from, Phil?” Fatty fingered an ingot, caressing the Chinese ideograms embossed on its surface.
“From a gray area.”
Fatty sat down at the table and carefully prodded the barrel of the .45 with his index finger so the muzzle pointed toward the waterfall upstream. “A g
ray area like New Orleans?”
“What gives you that idea?”
Fatty pointed at Broker’s chest. “The T-shirt. And certain inquiries from a big property management firm down there. I faxed them Mike’s loan history this week.”
“You hear about the guy who killed Mike’s dog?”
Fatty nodded. “All over town.”
“He works for the guy who owns the property outfit in New Orleans.”
Fatty stared at the gold with a pained smile. “Ah, look, Phil—”
“Don’t worry. It’s going to wind up perfectly legal.”
“But it isn’t right now, is it?”
“Remember how you always ask me about what I do? This fantasy of yours, about being involved in an undercover operation?”
“Yeeaah…”
“Well, this is going to be the biggest thing I ever tried.”
“But is it legal? You know. Gavels. Juries. Cell doors clanging shut.”
“Fatty, this is evidence,” said Broker seriously.
“Then why is it sitting on a picnic table in Magney State Park instead of on the attorney general’s desk?”
“I’m in the preliminary stage of an investigation.”
“Yeaah?”
“In the meantime, I’d like you to secure these items in a safe place and tell absolutely no one.”
“That’s all?”
“No. Chain up the developer you sicced on my dad. One way or another this gold is going to settle that note.”
“You know, Phil, there’s enough weight here to take care of the loan. Maybe throw in a new Lexus,” estimated Fatty. “Hmmm, and it looks real old. If it’s rare it could be worth even more…” He reached out and petted a bar like it was a cat.
Broker said, “Forget the inquiry from New Orleans. It never happened.”
“Is it legal?” he asked again.
Broker leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “Fatty, it’s exciting. Haven’t you ever wanted to do something…exciting?”
“Jesus, Phil.” Fatty swallowed and looked around the deserted camping area again. “How exciting?” he whispered.
“It’s Communist gold,” whispered Broker.
Fatty Naslund straightened up and said, “Well, in that case, fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.”
38
BROKER LEFT NINA WITH JEFFORDS AT THE POLICE station, then made a quick stop at Mike and Irene’s to pick up his truck. Now he whipped the Jeep down gravel back roads, through thick forest. J.T. sat in the passenger seat. “Now I’m going to mess this guy up—” said Broker.
“Like the old days,” yawned J.T.
“But not too much.”
“You know me, pard, the model of restraint,” said J.T. He took out a pair of soft leather gloves and slapped them on his thigh.
The old days.
They had been old-fashioned cops together. Dirty Harry dinosaurs. Back when Broker thought he could make a difference.
He and J.T. worked triage on the streets. They’d developed an eye for who could be saved and who belonged in the toilet. They had agreed on a personal approach. They put the word out that people were accountable to them personally. They told the punks, “If you don’t have a father one will be assigned to you. You can have him or me.”
They were consequences. They were rough. They played Catcher in the Shit. Some of those kids were now in the service or in college.
Elected officials, human services, neighborhood organizations, and the press had a different description of what they did. They said it verged on police brutality. Broker decided he wanted off the streets. He didn’t want to wind up shooting some fifteen-year-old kid. He had moved toward the margins and then the shadows, into undercover work.
Bevode Fret wasn’t no kid. He was a cold-blooded, dog-killing swamp animal.
J.T. pulled his gloves tight and glanced at Broker. “Don’t know I like you looking so happy.”
“Man should be happy when he’s killing snakes,” said Broker.
“You know, Phil, for years brother cops been coming to me for reassurance you ain’t a psycho. Say I’m not a liar.”
“Dead cool,” said Broker, thinking ahead. I’ve been waiting for something like this my whole life.
39
BEVODE FRET WAS LET OUT OF A POLICE CAR AT the town limits of Devil’s Rock on a dirt road that ended on a deserted cobble beach. Broker waited on the shore. He kept the motor running in his Jeep.
Bevode held up his handcuffed hands to Lyle Torgeson, who sat behind the wheel of the police car. Lyle, his eyes unavailable behind sunglasses, tossed a key to Broker. Then he dropped a manila envelope out the car window and drove away.
“Pick it up,” said Broker, nodding to the envelope.
Bevode smiled. “You and Cyrus have a good time down home? Get all reacquainted…” He stooped and picked up the envelope that contained the personal possessions he had been carrying in his pockets. When he regained his full stature he stared at Broker. He was an inch taller, maybe five, six years; younger. Probably in better shape.
He opened the envelope, reached in and retrieved a pocket comb. Taking a stance with his hips spread and shoulders hunched like a teenager preening in front of a mirror, he ran the comb through his thick blond hair two handed.
He was handsome and he was vain and he was totally self-assured. He was fearless. He couldn’t be scared. He could be destroyed or he could be greatly inconvenienced.
A gull flew over and its shadow touched both of them. Bevode smiled.
Bevode put the comb away. In a smooth deceptively fast motion, Broker’s right hand came from under his sports coat, brought the big Colt out, and, without pausing, with a twist of his trunk and shoulders, brought the heavy automatic sideways through the air and cracked Bevode across the mouth with the barrel.
Bevode groaned and staggered to his knees. Blood drops dotted the clean round cobbles. His cuffed hands went to his swelling mouth. Broker saw with satisfaction that one of Fret’s front teeth came loose in a gout of red. Bevode tendered it in his slippery fingers and stared at it in disbelieving fury.
“That’s for Nina,” said Broker. “And to slow you up. I’ll bet even an autographed invitation from Mr. Cyrus won’t get you back on the street till you get that smile fixed.” Broker grinned. “Now get in the car.”
He shoved the staggered man into the passenger seat and strapped the seat belt over his arms. Then he drove up the access road, across Highway 61, and followed the gravel road into the woods.
Bevode’s muddy eyes were steamy with pain, but also concentration, as they left the gravel and shot down a bumpy logging trail, and the trees grew thicker and the shadows cut off the light. From the corner of his eyes Broker watched Bevode try to keep himself oriented, looking for the sun, but soon the trees and foliage and close green shadows closed off the sky. They came out on a gravel road again and pulled through a gated entrance to an overgrown parking area.
Broker stopped the truck, got out and pulled an old gate across the access. Then he drove into a camping area.
There was a solitary picnic table, a fire ring, a pipe with a faucet, a trash barrel where a convention of flies were feeding, and a sturdy Minnesota Department of National Resources park toilet.
“Get out,” said Broker, unclipping the seat belt.
Bevode warily got out and looked around. His eyes were feral, calculating. Unflinching.
And Broker, who wanted to stay reasonably in control about this, found that he couldn’t. In a surge he rushed Bevode and knocked him back against the toilet door. “So you’re going to save Lola from Cyrus, huh?”
An expression of incredulous enlightenment flickered on Bevode’s torn features. “Oh no,” he groaned. “The bitch tried to get to you, too.”
Broker stayed his punch in midair and squinted at Bevode, who grinned horribly with his gap-toothed smile and his puffy lips. “That yoga-shit really builds up the old pudenda, don’t it. Lola can fire a harpoon out
of that jelly roll.” He shook his head with great sincerity and laughed bitterly. “Knew I shouldn’t’ve left Cyrus alone with her.”
His candor was thoroughly believable and he was still utterly unafraid. “Aw, man,” he said. “Lemme guess.”
“Shut up.” Broker pushed him against the toilet door again.
Bevode chuckled, slobbering blood. He raised his cuffed hands to his neck, to the faded hickey, and then pointed at Broker’s neck, at the tell-tale blood bruise coiled under his left ear. “Looks like we been bit by the same snake, bro. That lady is relentless.” Despite the damage to his face, Bevode Fret winked.
Broker stepped back and grimaced.
“Hey, I can dig it,” said Bevode fraternally. “I started out the same way. Just tryin’ to help.” He shook his head. “Get wise, you sorry Yankee piece of shit.”
Bevode had opened his bloody palms in a reassuring gesture and took a half step toward Broker. “I mean,” he said, “she wants it all for herself, you dig? She gets everybody fighting each other. She’s down there right now telling Cyrus that I’m ready to back-stab him, don’t you get it?”
Bevode took another half step encouraged by the frown on Broker’s face. “Hey, don’t feel bad,” he sympathized. “You ain’t the first guy she took in. Hell, look what she did to ole Cyrus. Sold him a load of bullshit about where she came from…and he’d’ve fathered her mulatto child for an heir to the LaPorte fortune if I hadn’t sniffed out the nigger in that woodpile.”
Bevode made his move. His cuffed hands flashed instinctively for Broker’s injured thumb, his weak spot. Broker anticipated it and made a fist around the painful digit. Bevode’s powerful hands, still slick from his bleeding mouth, slipped off Broker’s knuckles and Broker happily kicked him in the balls and sent him back against the toilet.
Bevode came off the door in a crouch, not even breathing hard, still game to try again. A deep, gleeful voice boomed behind him, resonating against the plastic door: “Fee fie fo fum. I smell the blood of a white motherfucker!”
“Huh?” ejected Bevode, his jaw going slack.