Chuck Logan - The Price of Blood

Too perfect. Like Lola’s hair. Keep going .

He crept to the back of the home until he could observe the other light. Hiram sat in a den at the other side of the first floor, watching television. He returned to the dark corner formed by the hedge and the tree.

He separated the looped handles of the bag and inserted his arms, effectively making the bag a backpack. The light cotton gloves had serrated rubber grips. He measured his distance and leaped up, seizing a low branch with his strong right hand, grunting as his knees clamped the slippery bark.

Sweat and rain blurred his vision as he struggled up the trunk, finally gaining the larger branches. With hand-and footholds he gained the branch he wanted. Balancing, he inched over the hedge.

Now the decision. Try to leap for the gallery or take the shorter jump to the drainpipe.

He figured the drainpipe wouldn’t hold. He gathered himself and sprung for the railing. He hit it mid-chest level. Locked his good hand over it. Pots of impatiens wobbled in their crockery saucers but the sound was drowned by the wind and rain. Nothing fell to the pool deck.

Out of the rain, under the balcony, he quickly stripped off the raincoat and the boots, furled them, and tucked them aside. He removed the wet gloves and put on a fresh pair. The French doors swung open. No need for the jimmy.

Dry as bone, he entered the sleeping home of Cyrus LaPorte like a bad dream.

He squatted just inside the study until his eyes adjusted. He listened, separating out the sounds of the house from the storm. Television downstairs. Roof timbers creaking. Checked his wristwatch: 2:13 in the morning.

Then he left his bag and crept down the varnished maple hallway to LaPorte’s bedroom. His eyes wandered up the stairwell to the third floor. Was she asleep? Or laying in her bed wide-eyed as a girl the night before the prom.

LaPorte curled in the fetal position on the king-sized bed. Aquarium shadows undulated over him, cast by branches dancing in a streetlight and the grid of window sashes. He wore pajama bottoms. No sheet. The grizzled hair on his chest was white as hoarfrost.

His right hand clenched against that silvery hair and slowly, in the weaving shadows, Broker picked out the irregular shape of the thong around LaPorte’s neck.

Broker squatted behind the gun cabinet, where a flash of lightning would not delineate him, and waited. After a few minutes he could smell the sleeping man, a halitosis of sour alcohol and digestive juices gusting through raw sirloin. His breathing was deep and regular.

Ten minutes later the sound of the television stopped downstairs. Broker strained his ears, thought he heard faint sounds. Hiram going to bed. Must sleep downstairs. Nothing from the kitchen. He wondered if Virgil made rounds. Used an alarm of some kind to wake up.

His sweat felt like a swarming antbath, his legs started to cramp. He blinked to clear his eyes. His gloved hand checked the scissors tucked into his waistband and then squeezed his own neck pendant to calm himself.

Lola was right. And Nina would second her. A lot of what men did was childish. Lord of the Flies childish.

Forty-five tense, cramped minutes passed. Then, after a particularly loud clap of thunder, LaPorte squirmed in a stuttering white flash.

Rolled on his back. Good. His left hand pawed the sheets briefly. Broker held his breath as LaPorte gurgled slightly, then stronger. C’mon, man, saw some wood .

And finally, slowly, rhythmically, Cyrus LaPorte began to snore, a deep nasal gurgle, the troughs followed by long wheezes.

Broker gave it ten more minutes. Checked his watch again. It was almost four. Be dawn soon. The storm was lessening.

Gotta do it now. He eased around the side of the bed and leaned his right arm across the sheets. How would a wife poke a sleeping man? He tried to remember. Kim had always jabbed him with her elbow. Would his fist feel like an elbow? Probably not. The angle would be wrong.

Absurdly, Broker carefully crawled into bed with Cyrus LaPorte and lay next to him. What would J.T. say? Fuck that. This was one story he wasn’t telling anybody.

Broker inhaled, gathered up his nerve, held it, and jammed his right elbow into LaPorte’s side. LaPorte grunted but continued to snore. Broker’s hand quivered, about to reach for the Colt. Then he jammed him again, harder, deciding that Lola would not have a light touch faced with this ungodly racket.

LaPorte sighed, the snoring ceased, and he rearranged himself, turning toward Broker who lay wide-eyed as LaPorte threw out a sleep-heavy right arm that landed on Broker’s hip. The dense shadow of the key lay on the sheet between them.

Then LaPorte snuggled toward Broker and his right arm found a comfortable perch on Broker’s ass.

Broker gasped. He had been holding his breath for almost a minute. Ever so slowly he eased the shears from his waistband and delicately snared the thong in the blades. Snip. He took another breath and gently reeled the leather out from between LaPorte’s throat and the pillow.

Getting dizzy, he made himself breathe through his nose to calm down and closed his hand around the key. LaPorte stirred at the sound and moved closer. Like some precoital shimmy from the insect kingdom, LaPorte slowly squirmed his bony hips closer.

Broker sat up, clutching the key, and slid away from LaPorte’s hand and pushed the other pillow toward the man. LaPorte grumbled and slowly folded himself around the pillow.

In the hall Broker let out a deep breath and realized he was almost giddy with laughter, this insane helium balloon filling his chest. Taking very disciplined steps, he went back down the hall into the study.

The key did not open the lock easily. It had to be inserted, turn one set of antique tumblers then inserted deeper. His hand was shaking when the lock finally popped.

A corkscrew of excitement cored him and left his toe-nails tingling. So this is why the assholes do it . Broker had never seen bars of gold before. A wet mercury gleam in a flicker of lightning. With raised Chinese characters on them. Gold. Seven ingots. Cleaned up and shiny in the dark. Heavy too. Over five pounds apiece. More where that came from…

He opened the bowling bag and removed the bundle of hotel towels. Set it aside and transferred the gold to the bag.

Just crossing a line, he told himself. Not the line.

He made himself quiet down to listen. Then he tiptoed back down the hall to make sure LaPorte was still out. Like a baby. Okay. Go back for the prize.

The thick antique glass crock was banded and studded with discolored brass ribs. And it was damn near as heavy as three of the gold bars. He held it up and tried to decipher the contents in the weak light. Slosh. Looked like a rotten log in swamp water. Carefully he unwrapped the bundle of towels and swaddled the container. Used more towels to wedge it among the gold.

Okay. Then he took the seriously dead cat that had been wrapped in the towels and placed it in the safe. It wasn’t completely black, but close enough. The first two he’d come upon were entirely wrong, a tabby and a spotted gray. Waffled with the tire tread of the vehicle that had flattened it, the cat’s viscera and bones curled like Technicolor fettuccine around the squashed fur. Welcome home to New Orleans, motherfucker .

Broker left the safe door open.

He left the key in the lock, put on his raincoat and boots, and slipped the bag over his shoulders. As he adjusted to the heft of the weight he looked up in a tremble of lightning. Royale LaPorte’s cracked enigmatic smile flickered down from the painting.

Like he approved.

A flash flood of adrenaline compensated for the weight and he made it swiftly down the tree. He opened the bag, took out the glass crock, waited for a lightning-thunder stroke, and smashed the container on the cement walk by the pool.