Chuck Logan - The Price of Blood

“Oh boy,” she breathed.

Now they paced. They re-aired all their speculations and anxieties. They finished a pot of coffee and made another one. They watched the sun sink lower in the sky. They stared at the phone.

Finally it rang. Broker picked it up and Ed Ryan said, “I don’t know why I do this shit for you.”

“Ann Marie Sporta attended the university of Wisconsin at Madison between 1988 and 1993,” said Ryan. “Which is interesting, because her mother was collecting food stamps in Chicago and Ann Marie wasn’t on a scholarship. We checked. Her grades weren’t that good…”

And Broker thought: Jimmy Tuna, sponsor , champion of gimpy Viet Cong and underachieving college students.

Ryan paused for tantalizing seconds. “Her father, Anthony Sporta out of Skokie, was a guest of the government at Marion at the time, for transporting a stolen car across state lines.” Ryan paused again. “So you probably want to know why your guy in Milan was his daughter’s benefactor…”

“Ryan?”

“Aw. Take a guess.”

Broker batted at the air, too tired for jokes. But he had pulled Ryan out of bed at four A.M.

“Give up?” taunted Ryan. “Okay. Tony Sporta’s father married James Tarantuna’s aunt. They’re fucking cousins . And I just happen to know where Tony Sporta is because I thought you might ask.”

“Ryan, I love you,” shouted Broker. He flipped Nina a bandaged thumbs up.

With mock sobriety, Ryan stated, “We here at ATF have been through diversity, team, and sensitivity training. Doesn’t mean you can get near my asshole.”

“Where?”

“You ever hear of Loki, Wisconsin?”

“Spell it.”

“Lima Oscar kilo India. Sounds Indian…” Ryan speculated.

Ryan was Boston. Southie. Irish. Broker shook his head. Not Indian. Norski. In the stories Irene told him as a little boy, Loki ran with Thor and Odin. “Where is it?” he asked.

“Polk County. Near Amery. There’s nothing there-literally-except a cheese factory. And a lot of cows standing around.”

“Shit, that’s right across the river from the Twin Cities. What’s Sporta doing in Loki fucking Wisconsin?”

“Runs the cheese factory. According to the bureau, there’s certain Italian gentlemen in Chicago who own the Red, White, and Green pizza franchise. It does a good cash business and that’s always a great way to launder money. They make lotsa pizza. So they need cheese in bulk. So they bought this factory. I have no idea why they put Tony in there. By the way, you never told me what you’re doing.”

“Thanks, buddy.” Broker slammed down the phone and jumped up from the chair. He pawed at the air. “Wisconsin road map!” Nina dashed out to look in the glove compartment of the Jeep. Broker rifled his kitchen drawers and shelves. Outside, Nina held her hands, palms up.

“Forget it, we’ll grab one on the road,” he yelled. They went sparky as frayed live wires. The cabin snapped with brown energy as they grabbed up their meager, unpacked travel bags. He had to call Larson and check on flights. The visas. Christ, their passports were with the visa applications. Later.

They had money stuffed in the security belts. Credit cards for backup.

Weapons…

He pulled the Colt from his waistband, put it on the table. Went into the bedroom, glanced at the shotgun. Nah, too obvious. He picked up the Beretta, spare magazines for both handguns, and carried it all out. He stopped. Nina was hefting the heavy.45.

“Trust me on this,” she said in that heels-dug-in tone.

They stared at each other. She wasn’t going to give it up. Deal with it later. She tucked the heavy pistol in her tote bag. Broker kept the Beretta.

It took Broker thirty seconds and two quick hugs to say good-bye to Mike and Irene.

Their concerned faces made brief cameos in his rearview mirror. His tires chewed clods of dirt and splattered the pine trees with gravel shrapnel. Broker and Nina exchanged exhausted demented smiles. Off to see the Wizard.

“Makes sense.” Broker pounded the steering wheel with his injured left hand, oblivious to the pain. “He had Waldo Jenke to watch his back in the joint but now he’s on the run and he’s hurting bad.”

“So he can’t go far,” said Nina.

“Family.” Broker grinned. “He’s Italian .” He ran the stop light in Devil’s Rock and smoked past the fifty-five mph speed limit sign doing twenty mph over.

“Now we’ll get some answers,” he said. “The cards are going to fall where they fucking fall.”

“Fine with me.” Nina grinned wryly.

“What?”

“You’re like a kid, we could be charging into an ambush and you’re happy,” said Nina. “That’s why I came to you. No one else would be nuts enough to go for this.”

He was happy. The doubts and insecurities of an hour ago had evaporated. It was a quest. Now blessed by a strange serendipity.

They gassed up at the Holiday Station in Tofte. As he got back behind the wheel he handed a travel cup of coffee and a Wisconsin road map to Nina and asked, “You know who Loki was?”

“Norse God.”

“Yeah.” Broker wedged his coffee cup between his thighs and tore the cellophane off a beef jerky with his teeth and spit it out the window. “He liked to play pranks. He made an arrow out of Mistletoe and deceived Odin’s blind son into shooting it into his brother Balder. Balder’s death set the gods on the path to Ragnarokk.”

“Like kaput,” said Nina.

“Right. The end.” Broker grinned. “So it kind of makes sense that Jimmy Tuna’s holed up in a place called Loki, dying and laughing.”

“How could you be a cop for all this time and still think like this?” asked Nina.

Broker shrugged it off. But he saw by her watchful eyes that it was meant as a serious question. Well, they had some serious talking to do.

He lit a cigarette and settled behind the wheel. “Besides my dad the four men who shaped my life were LaPorte, your dad, Tuna, and Trin. After knowing them, how the hell was I supposed to go back and have an ordinary life?

“It’s like a riddle. How could they be so solid and then fly apart in this gold scam?” He eyeballed her. “What if we find out they were all in it together? Except for Trin, who was in jail.”

“The army never cared about the bank. They censured Dad for desertion. I’m not saying he wouldn’t knock off an enemy bank. I’m saying he wouldn’t leave you up shit creek to do it,” she stated simply.

“C’mon. You barely knew him. He was always gone.”

“He told me once that the most important thing was for kids to grow up in a home where there was nothing to hide. He was there even when he wasn’t there. He was an ordinary guy, Broker; being an officer was a big deal for him. It didn’t come easy.”

“So we both have our myths.”

Nina sipped her coffee and stared at the twinkling horizon of Lake Superior. “When I was seven he came back to Georgia on leave and we went to Michigan to visit Mom’s relatives. It was deer season and Dad went hunting with two of my uncles. I said I wanted to go along and he agreed to take me.

“We went up north, into a big woods beyond some farms. There wasn’t even much snow. I remember that he had this red Elmer Fudd hunting hat with the funny flaps over the ears. He took out a county map and showed me the roads and where we were going. Then he gave me his compass and explained what to do if I got separated and lost. Go west until I came to a road. Then go to a farmhouse and ask to use the telephone.

“But we didn’t get separated. We didn’t see any deer either. The sky changed and the wind came up and the snow…suddenly it got so cold it hurt and we couldn’t see.”