Chuck Logan - The Price of Blood

LaPorte pointed to the bandaged thumb. Broker did not respond. LaPorte’s smile effortlessly glossed over twenty years. “Appreciate you taking the time to come.”

He motioned for Broker to resume his seat, mounted the steps and sat, elevated behind his wide desk. The platform bothered Broker. It was a conceit that the LaPorte of twenty years ago would have had contempt for. He flipped open a manila folder and shot his lead eyes at Broker. “You were a lieutenant during that shitstorm back in seventy-five.” LaPorte let the folder fall shut. “Still a lieutenant, I see. Does policework agree with you, Phil?”

It was the first time that LaPorte had ever called him by his given name. Even prepared to discover that this man had arranged to leave him to die in Hue City, the small gesture affected Broker. He graced LaPorte with the most exhausted of cynical smiles.

“So,” said LaPorte, “you’re still mixed up with the Pryce family.”

“And now I’m mixed up with you.”

“You’ll recall, when we were at Benning for that witch hunt, I cautioned you to walk away. But you had to go over and help Marian move off the base.”

“Marian died and Nina doesn’t need any extra hassle. She has enough hassle inside her own head.”

“I hear you.” LaPorte squinted philosophically.

Broker withdrew the folded map from his inside jacket pocket and tossed it on LaPorte’s desk, knocking over a collection of terra cotta figurines. LaPorte pursed his lips and set the bundle aside.

“There’s your maps and sonar pictures. And I’ll let your friend Bevode go…” Broker pronounced Fret’s name Bee-voo-dee.

LaPorte corrected, with a dry smile, “Bevode. Rhymes with commode.”

“Whatever. I want your word that he leaves Nina Pryce alone.”

LaPorte grinned, revealing a half-inch of root on his molars. “My word.”

“I was thinking more along the lines that if you break it you and me will have a personal problem.”

LaPorte responded with a pompous tic, shooting the nonexistent cuffs on his thick wrists. “I can understand how you’d be upset. This came on sort of sudden.”

Broker rose slowly from his chair, letting his coat fall open to reveal the holster and his voice growled, intimate with menace. “Don’t think so. It’s been coming on for twenty years. And if you and I don’t reach an agreement, financial and otherwise, in the next few minutes I’m going to flat kick the slats out of your whole corncrib. I already stove in that pussy you sent up north.”

LaPorte shrugged his shoulders. “Bevode tends to be…overzealous.”

“He’s a punk. He had a fucking hickey on his neck.” Broker made a face and resumed his seat.

LaPorte leaned back and massaged a liver spot on his hand. “Would it surprise you to know that Bevode Fret was once a very dedicated cop, lavishly commended, and known throughout the parish as a man who couldn’t be bought?”

“Point being?”

LaPorte shrugged. The lead eyes probed. “Perhaps the work got to him. Does the work ever get to you?”

“You mean protecting the rich rats from the poor rats?”

“I mean too many rats in the cage. A man can start looking for options.”

Broker exhaled and inspected his hands. “Yeah, right. Crime’s supposed to be deviant behavior. Now there’s nothing to deviate from. Folks are choosing up sides. Some kind of cultural street challenge that’s going on.”

LaPorte smiled faintly. “Down here the rabble associate that dilemma with skin pigmentation.”

Broker flicked ashes into his turned-up Levi’s cuff. “It’s the climate. Encourages one-crop agriculture and simple-mindedness.”

LaPorte laughed and opened a drawer and stood up. He came around the desk and handed an ashtray to Broker. “Mind the ashes, Phil; that rug cost more than you earned last year.”

Broker took the ashtray and slowly rolled the ash into it. LaPorte leaned back on the desk and smiled. “Now, if we can get past the macho tantrums, I have a proposition for you.”

“Just like that,” said Broker. “After all this time. And your goon kicks down my door…”

LaPorte clasped his hands behind his back and walked to the window that overlooked the wedding party. He squinted down at the lawn then turned and picked up a pair of binoculars from a shelf on the wall. He bent, focused the glasses, then shook his head. He came back to his desk and pressed a button. He grinned at Broker and chuckled. “The minimum wage. They just can’t get it right.”

The elderly black man who had brought Broker his drink crab-walked into the room. LaPorte spoke with elaborate politeness.

“Hiram, get on Artis down there to tell the guests not to put the knives, forks, and spoons into the trash containers. Keep it separate. And the glasses.”

“Okay, Mr. Cyrus,” the servant replied and shuffled off.

LaPorte sighed. “I’ve been telling that man for ten years to drop the ‘Mister.’ Old habits.”

“You were saying?” said Broker.

A puff of wind stirred the long curtains and LaPorte said, “Maybe we’ll get an afternoon breeze. Let’s go out on the balcony.”

They sat in wrought-iron chairs as a tremble of impending rain ruffled the cascading impatiens. Beyond the hedges, the wedding party buzzed in pre-event conversation.

LaPorte looked up and found the sun in a hazy hole in the clouds. He stared directly at it unblinking and stated, “The fact is, I’m in a ticklish spot.”

Broker hawked, leaned forward, and spit over the balcony. “You don’t strike me as the ticklish kind. You’re more the agony of psoriasis.”

LaPorte cleared his throat. “Who else knows about the map?”

Broker answered offhand. “I called Mel Fisher for an opinion-”

“That’s not funny,” said LaPorte. “The Hue gold is a remote legend. I’d like to keep it that way. When the war ended the Communists didn’t register a complaint that it had been stolen. Which is part of the mystery. It crops up from time to time as a low-key buzz in the international treasure hunting community. But, with Clinton getting ready to normalize relations with Vietnam, and with Nina Pryce waving around the Freedom of Information Act, I suspect interest will start picking up.”

“So?”

“So answer the question.”

“Nina Pryce. Me.”

“Let’s cut the bullshit. It’s Jimmy Tuna I care about. If you can’t see that, we’re both wasting our time.”

“Okay,” said Broker. “He disappeared without a trace from Milan.”

“Did you talk to the prison doctor?” asked LaPorte. Broker shook his head. “I did,” said LaPorte. “Tuna has weeks left. Maybe days. He always was a hard luck guy…” LaPorte’s eyes cruised the far wall where he kept his war mementos. “He married this foxy German girl in sixty-six. She gets over here, gets her citizenship, buys everything in sight, and then sends Tuna this tape of her screwing a guy as a Dear John.” LaPorte shook his head. “He played it over and over. Her screaming with bed-springs in the background.” LaPorte lapsed into a guttural German accent: “‘Fok me, hunny,’ Christmas Eve, 1970. Rainy night in the team house on the Laotian border.” He sighed and shook his head. “Went off the deep end. Tried to rob a bank…prison all these years. Now cancer.”

“Maybe robbing banks was habit forming,” said Broker. The words hung in the heavy air with his cigarette smoke.

LaPorte leaned back in his chair, squinted into the sun, and shook his head. “It was the fucking war. We all went wrong.” He turned to Broker. “Bound to happen when you lose human scale.” He laughed cynically and slid in and out of past and present tense: “We let them bring in the gadgets. You know, like, they used to pollinate the jungle with these dealy bobs-body heat sniffers. So a monkey comes along and trips one. And it’s B-52 time and it starts raining dead monkeys. Not to mention blowing a lot of fine hardwoods to bits…”