Chuck Logan - The Price of Blood

Broker left Nina with Jeffords at the police station, then made a quick stop at Mike and Irene’s to pick up his truck. Now he whipped the Jeep down gravel back roads, through thick forest. J.T. sat in the passenger seat. “Now I’m going to mess this guy up-” said Broker.

“Like the old days,” yawned J.T.

“But not too much.”

“You know me, pard, the model of restraint,” said J.T. He took out a pair of soft leather gloves and slapped them on his thigh.

The old days .

They had been old-fashioned cops together. Dirty Harry dinosaurs. Back when Broker thought he could make a difference.

He and J.T. worked triage on the streets. They’d developed an eye for who could be saved and who belonged in the toilet. They had agreed on a personal approach. They put the word out that people were accountable to them personally. They told the punks, “If you don’t have a father one will be assigned to you. You can have him or me.”

They were consequences. They were rough. They played Catcher in the Shit. Some of those kids were now in the service or in college.

Elected officials, human services, neighborhood organizations, and the press had a different description of what they did. They said it verged on police brutality. Broker decided he wanted off the streets. He didn’t want to wind up shooting some fifteen-year-old kid. He had moved toward the margins and then the shadows, into undercover work.

Bevode Fret wasn’t no kid. He was a cold-blooded, dog-killing swamp animal.

J.T. pulled his gloves tight and glanced at Broker. “Don’t know I like you looking so happy.”

“Man should be happy when he’s killing snakes,” said Broker.

“You know, Phil, for years brother cops been coming to me for reassurance you ain’t a psycho. Say I’m not a liar.”

“Dead cool,” said Broker, thinking ahead. I’ve been waiting for something like this my whole life .

Bevode fret was let out of a police car at the town limits of Devil’s Rock on a dirt road that ended on a deserted cobble beach. Broker waited on the shore. He kept the motor running in his Jeep.

Bevode held up his handcuffed hands to Lyle Torgeson, who sat behind the wheel of the police car. Lyle, his eyes unavailable behind sunglasses, tossed a key to Broker. Then he dropped a manila envelope out the car window and drove away.

“Pick it up,” said Broker, nodding to the envelope.

Bevode smiled. “You and Cyrus have a good time down home? Get all reacquainted…” He stooped and picked up the envelope that contained the personal possessions he had been carrying in his pockets. When he regained his full stature he stared at Broker. He was an inch taller, maybe five, six years; younger. Probably in better shape.

He opened the envelope, reached in and retrieved a pocket comb. Taking a stance with his hips spread and shoulders hunched like a teenager preening in front of a mirror, he ran the comb through his thick blond hair two handed.

He was handsome and he was vain and he was totally self-assured. He was fearless. He couldn’t be scared. He could be destroyed or he could be greatly inconvenienced.

A gull flew over and its shadow touched both of them. Bevode smiled.

Bevode put the comb away. In a smooth deceptively fast motion, Broker’s right hand came from under his sports coat, brought the big Colt out, and, without pausing, with a twist of his trunk and shoulders, brought the heavy automatic sideways through the air and cracked Bevode across the mouth with the barrel.

Bevode groaned and staggered to his knees. Blood drops dotted the clean round cobbles. His cuffed hands went to his swelling mouth. Broker saw with satisfaction that one of Fret’s front teeth came loose in a gout of red. Bevode tendered it in his slippery fingers and stared at it in disbelieving fury.

“That’s for Nina,” said Broker. “And to slow you up. I’ll bet even an autographed invitation from Mr. Cyrus won’t get you back on the street till you get that smile fixed.” Broker grinned. “Now get in the car.”

He shoved the staggered man into the passenger seat and strapped the seat belt over his arms. Then he drove up the access road, across Highway 61, and followed the gravel road into the woods.

Bevode’s muddy eyes were steamy with pain, but also concentration, as they left the gravel and shot down a bumpy logging trail, and the trees grew thicker and the shadows cut off the light. From the corner of his eyes Broker watched Bevode try to keep himself oriented, looking for the sun, but soon the trees and foliage and close green shadows closed off the sky. They came out on a gravel road again and pulled through a gated entrance to an overgrown parking area.

Broker stopped the truck, got out and pulled an old gate across the access. Then he drove into a camping area.

There was a solitary picnic table, a fire ring, a pipe with a faucet, a trash barrel where a convention of flies were feeding, and a sturdy Minnesota Department of National Resources park toilet.

“Get out,” said Broker, unclipping the seat belt.

Bevode warily got out and looked around. His eyes were feral, calculating. Unflinching.

And Broker, who wanted to stay reasonably in control about this, found that he couldn’t. In a surge he rushed Bevode and knocked him back against the toilet door. “So you’re going to save Lola from Cyrus, huh?”

An expression of incredulous enlightenment flickered on Bevode’s torn features. “Oh no ,” he groaned. “The bitch tried to get to you, too.”

Broker stayed his punch in midair and squinted at Bevode, who grinned horribly with his gap-toothed smile and his puffy lips. “That yoga-shit really builds up the old pudenda, don’t it. Lola can fire a harpoon out of that jelly roll.” He shook his head with great sincerity and laughed bitterly. “Knew I shouldn’t’ve left Cyrus alone with her.”

His candor was thoroughly believable and he was still utterly unafraid. “Aw, man,” he said. “Lemme guess.”

“Shut up.” Broker pushed him against the toilet door again.

Bevode chuckled, slobbering blood. He raised his cuffed hands to his neck, to the faded hickey, and then pointed at Broker’s neck, at the tell-tale blood bruise coiled under his left ear. “Looks like we been bit by the same snake, bro. That lady is relentless.” Despite the damage to his face, Bevode Fret winked.

Broker stepped back and grimaced.

“Hey, I can dig it,” said Bevode fraternally. “I started out the same way. Just tryin’ to help.” He shook his head. “Get wise, you sorry Yankee piece of shit.”

Bevode had opened his bloody palms in a reassuring gesture and took a half step toward Broker. “I mean,” he said, “she wants it all for herself, you dig? She gets everybody fighting each other. She’s down there right now telling Cyrus that I’m ready to back-stab him, don’t you get it?”

Bevode took another half step encouraged by the frown on Broker’s face. “Hey, don’t feel bad,” he sympathized. “You ain’t the first guy she took in. Hell, look what she did to ole Cyrus. Sold him a load of bullshit about where she came from…and he’d’ve fathered her mulatto child for an heir to the LaPorte fortune if I hadn’t sniffed out the nigger in that woodpile.”

Bevode made his move. His cuffed hands flashed instinctively for Broker’s injured thumb, his weak spot. Broker anticipated it and made a fist around the painful digit. Bevode’s powerful hands, still slick from his bleeding mouth, slipped off Broker’s knuckles and Broker happily kicked him in the balls and sent him back against the toilet.

Bevode came off the door in a crouch, not even breathing hard, still game to try again. A deep, gleeful voice boomed behind him, resonating against the plastic door: “ Fee fie fo fum. I smell the blood of a white motherfucker !”