Chuck Logan - The Price of Blood

Her eyes started slowly and then accelerated and flowed over his face like an army of marcher ants testing every crease and plane and pore for a way into his thoughts.

“Just exactly what do you want?” asked Broker.

“I want everyone to get what they deserve.” Her brows knit, witchy, and her eyes shot a spark of wrath from way back in the cypress swamps. “You know what I want.”

“I won’t do that.”

“None of us know what we’ll do when we finally stare ten tons of gold in the face.”

And that was the first truthful statement he’d heard in New Orleans. He said, “I’d say there’s a good chance Cyrus and Bevode could wind up in a Communist jail. Will that do?”

“I already know that.” She threw up her hands. “Hell, they know that. Can you guarantee me he’ll go to jail before something happens to me?” she demanded.

“I’ll give it a hell of a try.”

“Phillip, did you really leave a letter implicating Cyrus in a lawyer’s office?”

“Nah, why let word get out.”

She shook her head. “Are you a cop or a thief? They go together easily enough down here but I don’t know about Minnesota.”

They listened to the rain as Broker considered her question and lit a cigarette and smoked half of it. He turned to her. “Two questions. Can you help me get into that safe? Second, why would you?”

“Yes,” she replied with finality. And, “To hurt him.”

He believed the smolder in her eyes. For now.

“What about that zoned-out kid on the stairs?” he asked.

“We’ll spike his malt. Hiram and I.”

Broker raised his trimmed eyebrows.

She gave him a wry smile. “Cyrus once told me the army is run by clerks in peacetime and radiomen in wartime. Well, down here, homes of a certain station are run by the staff. Hiram gets Virgil a malt and a bucket of fried chicken every night. Don’t worry about him.” She cocked her head and concern pursed her lips. “I know you need money to help your folks, and that makes sense, but I’ll bet you’ve never stolen anything in your life.”

Broker had thought about this a lot. “It’s not stealing. It’s like…capturing the flag.”

“Ye God, this is for keeps. Men are such kids.”

Broker drew himself up. “Some men,” he said stiffly.

She peeled out of the T-shirt, rolled off the bed, and stooped for her dress. “I didn’t really want to do it with you anyway,” she said as the silk slithered over her tanned arms and fell to her knees. “Nothing personal. I just don’t like it anymore.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“No. Look, how do I get the damn key?”

She spoke matter of factly as she dressed, called for a cab, and brushed her hair. “After midnight no one should be up except Hiram. He’ll be down in the den watching TV. Cyrus always locks up before he goes to bed, but I’ll leave the French doors to the study open. You can climb a tree, can’t you?”

Broker nodded impatiently.

“Okay.” Lola put on her coat. “Cyrus sleeps with the key on a thong around his neck. He always keeps his right hand tight in a fist around it. But if he’s lying on his back and he snores, poke him firmly in the left side. He’ll turn over and let go of the key and stop snoring.”

She held out her hand. He took it and she said, “If you find Jimmy Tuna they’ll come after you hard. If you can detain Bevode it might help.”

“As in ‘permanently’?”

“No. Cyrus won’t go to Vietnam without him.” She slipped a business card from her pocket and handed it to him. The card was for the Century Riverside Hotel, 49 Le Loi Street, Hue, Vietnam. Imperial Room was written in flowing felt tip across the calligraphy-swirl red capital-C logo. “You’ll need all the help you can get once you’re over there. Till then.” She peered at him and was gone. He closed the door behind her.

Broker stared at the card and filled in the silent question that had been in Lola’s eyes: If you get over there.

Broker removed the bowling bag from the closet and changed into his dark outfit while he had a conversation with himself in the bathroom mirror. If she wasn’t for real, he was on his way to eat a twelve-gauge. But he had something to prove to himself and he was going to do it.

He’d put LaPorte on a pedestal once. Now that pedestal was a stack of stolen gold.

Cut him off at the knees .

He sat down on the toilet and stared at his injured thumb. Could slow him up. Slowly he unbandaged it and gingerly removed the gauze that stuck to the infected sutures.

First he lightly dabbed some Vaseline on the finger and looped a single layer of gauze around it. The jelly held the gauze in place. He took a deep breath and eyed the roll of adhesive tape on the sink counter.

He started to whistle “Everything’s Coming Up Roses.” When he wrenched the first turn of tape around the thumb all his saliva poured out at once. He spit it into the sink, took a second tight turn, and all his saliva dried up. When he’d finished, his whistling sounded like a shaky bone xylophone. There. Armored in adhesive. He tested it against the sink. Still painful as hell but less vulnerable.

Then he strapped his.45 on and pulled on the light raincoat and Nikes. He smiled at the black wool watch cap, dropped it in the bag, and padded down the back stairs from his hotel room. This is how it all started .

He’d rented a gray V8 Buick, in case he had to drive fast. Now he spread a street map of New Orleans on the seat and studied it by the dome light. He decided on the residential neighborhoods west of LaPorte’s place to find what he needed.

Broker drove through the rain for three hours, back and forth, up and down quiet side streets under overarching canopies of old oaks and Spanish moss that shivered in the storm. On his third try he found what he was looking for. When he had it wrapped in his bowling bag he turned the car back toward the LaPorte mansion.

He parked a block away. He quartered toward the house in the cheap gray raincoat and light slip-on rubber boots. The bowling bag was in his right hand, the.45 snug in its harness across his chest. He walked past a flower bed and a damp humus of soil and orchids brought back tatters of Lola’s perfume, a scent of murder, chilly bright and sharp as a fishhook. But this was payback for Bevode, moonlight financing, and a personal challenge he meant to slap in Cyrus LaPorte’s face.

A trickle of lightning silently spiderwebbed the trees and the creepy turrets and gables jittered against the electric sky.

Like a fucking pirate ship . Then came the boom.

He slipped along the alley fence until he came to the overgrown portion he’d spied early in the afternoon. Then he placed the three trash cans, making sure their covers were secure. One, then two, in a stack. Steps. He climbed the cans and tossed his bag over the fence. Then he gripped the thick vines against the spear tips with his right hand and swung himself up, slid over on the bumpy massed vines, and dropped down on the other side.

As a peal of thunder smacked the blowing trees, Broker slid along the inky hedge. The yard lights were out and the interior to the house was dark except for lights in the kitchen and another room downstairs. Fainter hall and stairway lights upstairs.

He came to the base of the oak tree and squeezed past it and through the hedge and came out on the pool side. A dozen feet away, through the window, he saw Virgil Fret slouched in a chair at the kitchen table, nodding. An empty bucket of fried chicken sat next to a tall milkshake. Grease spots dribbled on his white T-shirt and the static on a TV screen three feet away on the counter monitored his brain waves. A bright, blocky 9mm pistol was stuffed into his waist band. Broker could almost hear him snoring through the steady rain.