Chuck Logan - The Price of Blood

“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.

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.”