Chuck Logan - The Price of Blood

The smell of history and pirate shanties maybe, briny and gruesome. Worse to touch it. Yuk. But Broker resolutely picked up the squishy, blackened hand and, in another crackle of lightning, saw that the fingernails had grown curled and thick as claws.

Real monsters this time.

He mounted a lawn chair and impaled the hand, wrist-down, with a sickening crunch on a lilac spear on the iron fence. Slippery damn mess. His gloved fingers struggled with it, but when he left, the middle finger was extended skyward and the other digits were folded back.

At 7:55 A.M.Broker leaned in the shadow of the gallery at the front door of the Doniat. Waiting on a cab and wondering if Cyrus LaPorte would show. Across the street, black kids in blue jumpers and slacks, white shirts and blouses, were herded by nuns toward the colonial whitewash of an Ursaline mission.

He’d treated himself to an expensive pair of sunglasses and wore them now to disguise his bloodshot, sleepless eyes. The gold bars were tucked into the locked trunk of his rented car. Before dawn, he’d left the vehicle in the airport police garage at the New Orleans airport. He’d cabbed back into the city.

His sports coat was open, the stump of the Colt was loose in the holster, and his airline ticket was tucked into the waistband of his jeans. He wore the black T-shirt with the city’s name spelled in dead alligators. He was drinking a Jax beer for breakfast.

The big navy-blue Seville with tinted windows came around the corner so fast and low on its suspension that it raked sparks off the bricks and almost demolished a languidly moving mule-drawn carriage full of tourists. The school kids had excellent drive-by reflexes. They scattered and ran for cover.

Broker smiled and took another sip of beer. He was enjoying himself. His thumb, still wrapped in adhesive, hardly bothered him.

The car doors sprung open. Virgil Fret, his face as chalky as uncut cocaine, hopped out of the driver’s side and did a little stationary dance like he had to take a piss. His hand hovered to his baggy shirt. Cyrus LaPorte was entombed in the back seat in burgundy upholstery like an albino in an air-conditioned cave. His color seemed off, but that could have been the tinted glass.

Broker ignored Virgil and pointed his beer bottle at LaPorte. “Get out and stand in the sun,” he said in a cordial voice.

“Think you’re pretty smart,” said LaPorte, pushing up and out of the seat. He was ashen in the thick morning heat. Icy with control.

“Stand back from him, General,” said Virgil Fret. Sniffing, hitching up his crotch, opening and closing his spare muscular fingers.

“Leave us be, Virgil,” said LaPorte, exasperated.

“Tell him to get back in the car,” said Broker.

“Get back in the car,” ordered LaPorte. Twisting in a tight flurry of catnip reflexes, Virgil started to protest. “Now, you nitwit,” growled LaPorte. The punk dropped his shoulders and got back in the car. LaPorte turned to Broker. “You have something that belongs to me.”

“You got a beef? Call the cops.”

“You’re out of your depth, Broker.”

“Don’t think so. You’re the one coming up empty in a hundred feet of salt water.”

LaPorte executed a thin frosty smile. “It’s too big for you. I know my way around over there. You don’t.”

“Watch me.”

LaPorte squinted at him and burst into incredulous laughter. “No shit, you waited around just to taunt me?”

Across the street the school kids milled in front of the mission, antsy in their uniforms. It was nice out, they were eager for school to end. Through the Caddy’s tinted windows Virgil’s fitful shadow bounced on the seat.

Broker smiled and wondered how he was doing as a pirate. “No,” he said, “to caution you. You saved my life once, so I figure you deserve a warning.”

“ You ,” sputtered LaPorte, “threatening me !”

“That’s right. It’s you and me now. Winner take all, General, and if you go to Vietnam you’ll never come back. Consider yourself warned.”

Broker sat the empty beer bottle down on the curb as his cab pulled up. LaPorte couldn’t stop himself from seizing at Broker’s bag. Broker didn’t resist. The weight told LaPorte it contained only clothing. He dropped his arms to his sides in frustration. Broker opened the cab door and tossed in his grip. He turned and smiled. “It’s been fun. Anytime you need a hand, just let me know.” He left LaPorte looking like he might eat the tires off that Caddy and, hopefully, furious enough to make a mistake.

They followed the cab. They followed him into the airport. LaPorte left Virgil stranded at the metal detector and came down the concourse to check the flight number.

When Broker got to the actual airplane door he flipped his badge and talked to the attendant. When he’d dropped off the rental car he’d made arrangements with the airport police. He explained that he was a Minnesota state investigator and he had to get back into the terminal without going back up the walkway. The attendant nodded and directed him to the maintenance stairway. Broker went down the stairs and rode a baggage cart back to the terminal.

He threaded through a subterranean warren of baggage conveyors and went for a phone.

He dialed Nina’s in Ann Arbor. No answer. Damn. He paced in a break area and drank a cup of coffee. An airport cop met him with a concourse buggy and whisked him underground to his car.

An hour later Broker had his baggage checked and was waiting in the underground on another flight to the Twin Cities. He thought of calling Ed Ryan to keep an eye on his aborted Northeast flight into Minneapolis-St. Paul, to see if anybody interesting turned up to meet it. He decided against it. Too many people were already involved.

He had a last cigarette in New Orleans, out of sight, in a baggage handler laughing-place behind a deplaning ramp. Then he tried Nina’s again. No answer. He tried J.T.’s home but got the machine. Everybody was stuck in between. Hoping that Danny Larkins was on the job, he boarded his airplane.

“She didn’t call you?”

“Nah, man, nothing,” said J.T. who had gone out to meet Nina’s plane and checked the manifest when she wasn’t on it. J.T. was working, so Broker had to keep paging him. They were having their sixth phone conversation in five hours. It was 11:45 P.M. Broker leaned, exhausted, over a telephone in the lobby of the Minneapolis Airport Holiday Inn. His arm ached from lugging the heavy bowling bag. He had taken a room when he got in, early afternoon. Nina was nowhere in sight. Had left no messages.

Broker thought about calling the Michigan State Police, but decided to wait and tried her apartment again. Nothing.

He had called the Liberty State Bank in Ann Arbor just before they closed and a tight-ass banker had given him a lecture on the Right to Financial Privacy Act. Broker’s name over the phone was not enough to authenticate his identity. The banker would not confirm or deny that Nina Pryce had been in his office. He called J.T. again.

“I need a favor,” said Broker.

“I thought I was already doing you a favor,” said J.T. in that apprehensive voice.

“Could you get free for a day? I made three reservations for a hop to Duluth. We can rent a car and get to Devil’s Rock.”

“Uh-huh?”

“Leaves at five-”

“In the morning?”

“Yeah. There’s a guy in county up in St. Louis, he gets out noon tomorrow, thirty-six-hour rule. I’m going to fuck him up and…well, if you aren’t there I just might overdo it.”

“This an open case?”

“This is personal.”

“And it’s got to do with Nina being missing?”