Chuck Logan - The Price of Blood

“You know the Tennessee Williams line about us southern girls relying on the kindness of strangers.”

“She was a drunk and I ain’t Marlon Brando.”

“True. Brando has gone to fat. You don’t look like you ever will. Does it bother you that so many police officers have Michelin tires around their waists these days?”

Lola got up and mounted the dais and sat behind her husband’s desk. She opened the manila folder that LaPorte had referred to earlier and held up a sheet of paper. “On the other hand, Cyrus can’t resist a clean cop.” She folded her arms on the desk. “Another cop who was too good to be true stood in this office once. Cyrus knew Bevode Fret was so good that he was only one cold-blooded murder away from being very, very bad. You see, my husband has turned into a collector. Before I met him he used to collect medals and honors. But after that incident in seventy-five they were holding him back in the army. He decided he needed a trophy wife to talk up the generals’ wives at the club. And there I was, a Tulane graduate with two years of law school up against the financial wall so I was clerking in a firm downtown and he sized me up like a doll on a shelf and said, ‘I’ll take that one.’ He always said when he retired we’d raise a family. I think he started to come apart when the Berlin Wall came down.” She smiled bitterly. “That fucking wall was apparently holding up his character…”

She placed her palms together. “Well, we didn’t have a family. Instead he went through his antler phase. Cyrus has come a long way since he won those medals. Now he has a little bottle where he collects people’s souls.”

“Sounds like true love.”

She frowned. “I’ve lived with that man so long I’m not sure I’d recognize a good guy when he’s standing right in front of me.”

Broker shrugged.

“You are one of the good guys, aren’t you?” she asked. Broker started to laugh, but, seeing her serious expression, he stopped. She went on. “I mean, you wouldn’t really sell Nina out for money, would you?”

Broker shivered a little in the filmy heat. She was utterly unreadable as, he supposed, he was. It gave them an odd intimacy.

She shook her head. “Poor Broker. Standing there thinking you’re touching bottom.”

“No. I was recently disabused of that illusion,” he said.

“Then you know you’re standing on a dying man’s shoulders.”

“Jimmy Tuna,” said Broker.

She nodded. “When Jimmy goes, so do you, and so does young Nina Pryce.” You could bury empires in Lola’s sad, empty eyes.

“You have any suggestions?” asked Broker.

She said, “I’ve been married to Cyrus LaPorte for fifteen years and this house is full of lies I raised from infancy. I suggest you start telling somebody the truth.”

Broker met her gaze. He stood far from home, on alien ground, surrounded by whips, skulls, twisted antlers, and an eight-foot-tall, one-armed pirate.

Lola left the desk, turned her back on him, and walked to the window, where she gazed down on the wedding crowd. “I wonder if she has any idea what she’s getting into?” she mused.

“You calling me a liar?” Broker enunciated.

She faced about, leaned back on the windowsill, and the gauzy curtains enfolded her like embroidered wings. “Hardly. I’m calling you honest .”

They stared at each other for a full minute.

She continued. “Honest and I’d say pretty dumb. You’re way off your beat. This is New Orleans and you’re messing with Cyrus LaPorte. You can disappear like that.” She snapped her fingers. “And the sewers wouldn’t even belch.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Broker. “Looks to me like the palace guard is down to one coked-up kid making sure nobody steals the stairs. And I’ve got the general’s pet creep in a jail up north. Am I missing anything?”

She leaned back. “Ah, you mean the boys. The boys are in sunny Vietnam, diving and watching over the boat.”

“That leaves one naked general.”

Lola inclined her head. “Really.”

Broker stared, pointed at the safe, waited a moment and said, “How’s the addition so far?”

She walked in the direction of his eyes, stopped and traced the circle of the bullwhip on the wall. Her finger traveled down the suspended lash and touched the top of the safe. “Are you really that bold, Mr. Broker?”

“How alone are we? What about the punk on the stairs?” he asked.

“Virgil Fret,” she said with distaste, “is driving Cyrus across town to commit adultery with some bimbo milkmaid.”

“There’s lawyers. This thing called divorce.”

“Cyrus is old fashioned. You know, ‘till death do us part.’”

Broker cocked his head.

Lola’s smile was practical. “I haven’t wasted a word or a dollar since I turned twenty-one years old. So listen very carefully. That painting up there is not symbolic. You’re among pirates, Mr. Broker. Cyrus plans to kill you and Nina as soon as you lead him to that poor dying convict. Which is the risk you run for your high adventure. But I’m not having anything like an adventure and the fact is-he plans to kill me, too.”

She paused to let Broker evaluate her words, which were veined with intrigue and not necessarily going in the direction of sincerity. Then she caressed the old safe with her palm. “Have you ever seen fifty pounds of pure gold that’s been cradled in the salt sea? It’s better than diamonds.”

She left the safe and walked toward the doorway to the hall. “Now I have to shower and get dressed. That should take about fifteen minutes. I suggest you use the time well. I’ve told the officers downstairs that you’re my guest so they won’t interfere.” She paused at the door. “There’s nothing on the third floor. That’s where I live.”

Broker stared at the safe. He hadn’t stolen anything since he got caught shoplifting comics at Nestor’s Drug Store when he was nine.

Best way to hurt a fucking pirate. Take his gold.

It involved getting in. Getting out. And a key. Once he’d established that he was alone on the second floor he peeked into the bedrooms and checked the French doors and windows for evidence of motion detectors. None. He went into the bathroom and urinated. After he washed his hands he eased open the linen closet and saw a 12-gauge shotgun nestled among the towels and sheets. It was loaded with buckshot. Remington, not Westinghouse, was the local security system.

He walked down the stairs, avoided a room full of wedding guests at a wet bar, and went out on the pool deck and continued on past a three-car garage to the side street driveway. His eyes inspected the heavy wrought-iron fence.

A flushed woman in a bale of lavender lace tumbled up to him. “Are you the help for setting up the band?” she asked breathlessly. Her cheeks were rouged with excitement and champagne.

“Take off,” growled Broker. The woman flared the whites of her eyes and departed.

He tracked the iron lilacs and his eyes stopped at a thick tangle of vines that engulfed the fence in the corner by the pool. No cameras. No sensors. No dogs. Probably a few armed good ole boys usually hung out here. But more than that. Reputation guarded the place. Nobody in town would be dumb enough to incur LaPorte’s disfavor.

Broker, of course, didn’t live here.

On the way back in he studied the twisted oak that grew up over the hedge and shaded the house. One of its Spanish moss-draped branches curled next to the gallery off LaPorte’s study. A sturdy drainpipe ran down the corner of the house. But would it hold a heavily laden man? Probably not. The tree was more reliable.

He went back inside and walked past an unconcerned uniformed patrolman who leaned against the staircase, lifted a fork from a plate of food, and nodded. Upstairs, he padded the hall for a closer look at LaPorte’s bedroom at the end of the hall. Inside he saw a king-sized bed with fresh sheets turned down, a long gun cabinet, and two sets of mounted antelope horns on the wall next to a Frederic Remington cavalry print. Nothing in the room or in the long closet suggested that Lola LaPorte slept there.