Chuck Logan - The Price of Blood

“Whiteout,” said Broker.

Nina nodded. “From nowhere. A real live killer blizzard. We weren’t dressed for it. I was too young, I didn’t know how bad it was. He gave me a job, which was to read the compass. Then he unzipped his parka and put me inside with my arms and legs around his waist. He belted me in and then zipped the coat over me. Every few minutes he’d unzip and ask me to show him the compass.

“He kept going on a compass heading through that storm. Sometimes he counted to himself, over and over. One, two, three, four.” She smiled. “You know, like cadence. Finally he found a fence line and he walked along it for hours, with one hand on the barbed wire. When he found a mailbox and a driveway his glove was torn to bloody shreds. I don’t remember the things he said. I remember that he kept me warm and he smelled like sweat inside his coat and he didn’t leave me and he didn’t quit and he kept his rifle.”

She turned to him and spoke with uncomplicated conviction. “I didn’t have to spend a lot of time with him to know him.”

Broker clicked his teeth. “I believed in LaPorte. I even went down to New Orleans still half believing in him.”

“You were blinded. You’re about to get your sight back. LaPorte’s Darth Vader. And Bevode is his monster and Tuna is a trickster. I have no idea who Trin is.” She smiled and spoofed him. “All we need is a princess, huh?”

She unfolded the road map and studied the index. “Loki. Population forty-three.” She referenced the locators and put her finger on a spot. “How long will it take us to get there?”

“About three hours once we cross into Wisconsin at Duluth and we’re about forty minutes out of Duluth.”

She looked at the sky. “Do we want to roll into Loki in the dark? I doubt that Tony Sporta lives in the cheese factory. And we’re both shot. We need some sleep.”

Broker exhaled. “You have a point.”

She raised up in the seat. “What’s that up ahead, on the left?”

“Sloden’s Resort. A real yuppie tourist trap. They have shops, masseurs, two restaurants. I think they even have baby-sitters for your cat.”

Nina drew her fingers through her slack unwashed hair. “If there’s a room, let’s spend the night. My treat.”

Nina removed a tube of lipstick from her purse, medicated her dry lips, and mugged in the rearview mirror. She ogled Broker’s mild frown and exclaimed, “What?”

They were closer now and Broker pointed to the large road sign that said: VACANCY and ROOMS STARTING FROM $79.00. The parking lot was half full, divided with white lines like a shopping center. “No problem finding a room. Season doesn’t really start up here until June fifteenth,” he explained. “School’s not out yet.” With a touch or irony he added, “This part of the year is called the ‘quiet time’ in resort lingo.”

“Just what I had in mind,” said Nina.

They parked the Jeep and carried their bags across the parking lot, past the tennis court and toward a kiosk-looking office that had a registration sign above the door. On the way, they skirted little islands of curbed grass with barbecue grills cemented into them. Seeing the transplanted suburban grills made Broker think that Sloden’s was the kind of place that Fatty Naslund wished someone would build in Devil’s Rock, probably on Mike’s land-until Fatty lifted a bowling bag full of gold.

There was an auditorium, meeting rooms, and a health spa, with two saunas, an indoor pool, an outdoor pool, a hot tub, and a workout room. The units were Cape Cod, cookie-cutter clapboard, smartly painted Prussian Blue and cream and as monotonous as a rank of Continental soldiers. Just right for fussy city people who didn’t want to get too near the woods.

The young lady at the registration desk showed them a map of the grounds and explained that the gravel Lakewalk along the shore led to a mini-mall where they could find an espresso and pastry shop and a boutique.

“Good,” said Nina. “I can go shopping.”

Broker wasn’t listening. He watched traffic on the highway. Since they’d turned into the resort no other car had entered the parking lot. Maybe she had lost them in Lansing.

Nina discovered that there was a hair salon in the resort proper, next to the video arcade. She fingered her head of copper straw and issued an appeal that brought a sympathetic response from the receptionist. Broker grinned. Colt.45 in her bag and she was girl-talking. The receptionist quickly dialed a number and cajoled somebody into staying late for an appointment.

Then Nina splurged and took the third most expensive room in the joint, with a king-sized bed, full bath, and a Jacuzzi overlooking Lake Superior. “Spectacular view,” said the brochure.

They signed in and got the key and carried their bags up to their room. The king-sized bed looked good. But Nina insisted on going shopping. It was nearly five-thirty, her appointment was at six.

They practically ran the Lakewalk. In the boutique, Broker blundered into a jangling deja vu ambush when Nina stepped out of a dressing room wearing a snug, dark purple dress with price tags hanging off it. She said, “Do you think this is too tight?”

Little alarms flashed in the back of his mind. Many mornings when he was a married man, Kimberly would come down the stairs and say exactly those words.

“It’s fine,” said Broker, backpedaling.

“What about the way it fits here?” She ran her fingers along the taut material over her left hip- where the Iraqis shot her -and she continued, word for word what his ex-wife used to say: “Give me an honest opinion.”

“I think you should get it,” said Broker.

“Just tell me how it looks when I walk away, from behind.”

“Well, it does kind of show off your…” Oh shit .

“So it is too tight or…”

Broker spun on his heel and went outside before he got pulled into the vortex of the F-word. Not the one that stood for “unlawful carnal knowledge,” the one that ended in at .

He smoked a cigarette and watched the highway, the resort parking lot, and the Lakewalk. Finally Nina came out of the shop with an armful of bags and immediately set off across the road. He jogged to catch up. She headed for a strip of stores: a grocery, a liquor store, and a sporting goods-bait shop. She headed for the door with the prominent neon sign that blared GUNS.

With the same easy aplomb she’d shown among the dresses and the shoes, she bought two pistol cleaning kits, one for a 9mm and one for the Colt, and a box of Federal.45 caliber, 230 grain ball rounds.

As they left the store and hurried across the highway, Broker asked, “What the hell are you doing?”

“You had hollow points in the Colt,” she explained in a professional voice that sounded like, you dumb shit .

“Aw, God,” groaned Broker.

Then she convinced him that Bevode Fret and company were nowhere in sight and that they certainly weren’t going to snatch her from the beauty shop. So Broker carried all the shopping bags up to the room. He stripped and stayed under the shower for twenty minutes and emerged from the bathroom clean and shaven. He changed the bandage on his thumb. The swelling had gone down. He experimented with making a fist.

He put on his only change of clothes, the light sport jacket he’d worn to New Orleans, cotton slacks, a short-sleeved shirt, and worn loafers. All slightly wrinkled.

He took a Heineken from the small refrigerator and sat out on the balcony to revive himself with the “spectacular view” of a dead flat Lake Superior. A loon motored by, some gulls dived, three ducks landed. He tapped his index finger at the circle Nina had drawn around Loki, Wisconsin, on the map. Then he stared at a castle of clouds and thought about Nguyen Van Trin.