Chuck Logan - The Price of Blood

Broker nodded. Tuna leaned back and glided behind his eyes. His vision focused and he asked, “You figure it out yet?”

Broker chewed his lip. “Cyrus found some gold next to the chopper wreck. Your note said-”

Tuna cackled and held up a shaky hand. “Be patient. Let me tell it my way.” He coughed and looked around. “Well, shit. You turned into a fuckin’ cop. Which don’t surprise me, you always had that Boy Scout look in your eyes. And you found me but this ain’t NYPD Blue you’re messin’ in, kid. Uh-uh.” He coughed again and glanced down into the oak grove.

Broker looked around and said, “Will the shots bring cops?”

“Hell no, way out here? And I been plunking away from this deck for a week with this old piece to kill time.” Tuna’s sunken eyes fixed in space. “Now that’s an odd phrase, don’t you think? Kill time.”

He held up a withered hand and turned his attention to Nina. “Forgetting my manners. Hello there, Miss Pryce.”

“Hello, Jimmy,” said Nina evenly. “So this is where you got to with your ‘funeral’ money.”

With difficulty he put his hand in his trouser pocket and withdrew a folded bank check. He handed it to her. “Didn’t need your money, but I had to bait the hook. Sorry about the puzzle palace you had to go through to find me. Cyrus has been on me for years. Guards. Other inmates coming at me. Thank God for conservative Republican bankers. Cyrus couldn’t get into those records.”

“How the hell did you find Trin?” asked Broker.

“That was hard. But I had a lot of time. You talked to the bank in Ann Arbor, right?”

“I did,” said Nina. “And Kevin Eichleay.”

Tuna nodded. “Kevin told the banker, said Trin looked like hell. The Commies must have worked him over good. Reeducated him. But he’s there. And he’s Trin. Was going to be my ace in the hole.” Tuna gritted his teeth at a stab of real or psychological pain. “Yours now.”

“What does he know?”

“He knows I’m his padrone. I’m a fuckin’ one-man charity. Set up his vet’s home for wayward Viet Cong. Helped him get started in the tour business. I was coming as a tourist. Now you and Nina are going in my place. I paid him to set up a tour. Hanoi to Hue. Reserved rooms both places for two weeks. Didn’t know when you’d show up. What’d he say to you?”

“He thinks you’re still in the joint.”

“I used Tony’s phone. Called him up a week ago. Told him I was detained. That I was sending you instead.”

“He wanted to know when our plane arrived, pretty straightforward stuff.”

“The revolution musta gone to hell, huh? They’re all nuts to make a buck off tourists over there now. Trin too, I guess.” He fell back heavily into the chair, spent.

“All these years. You were planning to go back for it…” said Broker.

“Yeah. I was dumb back in seventy-six. Thought I could bankroll the trip with that bank job. Not dumb anymore…aw, shit.” He feebly waved his hand. “Take a break.” He pointed to the Coleman cooler and his hollow eyes took on a keen luster of anticipation. “What’s for lunch?”

Nina took out eight cold bottles of San Miguel beer and some ham and cheese sandwiches. There was a Tupperware container in the bottom. It contained a neatly folded white cloth napkin. Tuna held out his hand, fingers fluttering in a gimme gesture. She handed over the cloth, which he unfolded with great ceremony. A plastic packet full of white powder lay in the center.

He flipped up a corner of a towel that covered a low redwood table next to his chair and revealed a syringe, a spoon, and a length of rubber tubing. Methodically he tied off his frail arm and pumped his fist. Then he pushed some of the powder into the spoon with his little finger. He thumbed a plastic lighter and cooked up. When the chemical bubbled and cooled to liquid, he inserted the syringe and drew down a shot. Then he pumped his hand again.

“Never used smack, not even in the joint. I even joined AA once. Now it’s the only medicine that works,” he said cheerfully, and his hand floated out and touched the plump vein on the hollow of Broker’s right elbow. “Man, what I wouldn’t give for that storm sewer you got in your arm.”

In the short noon shadows they watched Tuna fix. Watched him tremble and nod back in his chair until spittle dribbled from his caked lips and his eyes turned up into his head like a shark before it bites. His voice surged. “So,” he said, grinning directly into the sun. “What took you guys so long?” Then he vomited at a leisurely pace, fouling the emaciated wattles at his throat and his shirt with a mealy steam of dog food that reeked of stomach acid. His bowels released and his upper lip curled up to reveal bloody gums and long, yellowed teeth. Sightless eyes wide open, Jimmy Tuna glared at them like a raging Jolly Roger.

“Now what? He’s out cold. What if he dies on us?” Nina muttered. Had to be ninety in the shade. Her arms still bubbled with goosebumps. One hand hugged the small grinning skull and crossbones on her shoulder.

“He’ll come around. We’re what’s keeping him alive,” said Broker. Suddenly he was very thirsty. He saw the powerline running into the cabin. “Let me get this beer out of the sun.” He went into the cool interior. The kitchen was right inside the door. He tried a light switch, saw that the electric worked and spied the icebox. He put the beer inside, found an opener in a drawer next to the sink, and opened two bottles. San Miguel. Tuna’s old favorite.

Nina entered the kitchen, paused for a moment, got her bearings and disappeared into a back room. She returned with towels and clean folded clothing. Then she filled a basin with water and went back out to the deck.

Broker followed her outside and stood in a patch of shade and sipped his beer. Nina bent over Tuna and methodically removed his fouled trousers, bundled them, and tossed them aside.

Broker averted his eyes from Tuna’s emaciation and the tumor that torqued out of his left hip. The Tuna he remembered from twenty years ago had been muscled like a Greco-Roman wrestler. “Do you have to do that right now?”

“Not the first time I’ve seen a man mess his pants,” she muttered and cast a dirtied towel aside and rinsed a fresh one. She tossed the dirty water over the patio, slapped the messy trousers in the empty basin, and handed it to Broker. “Lend a hand, this old jailbird just saved our lives.” Broker set down his beer and went for more water.

Tuna lolled in their hands as they washed his white loose flesh and then pulled on new underwear, a pair of baggy cotton trousers, and a clean T-shirt. Washing their hands in the kitchen they heard someone moving on the stairs…

Tony Sporta stuck his curly head into the kitchen. Sweat dripped from his nose. “He shit his pants again,” he said. “And there’s two dead guys in the woods.” He frowned like he wasn’t sure which of his observations vexed him most.

“Jimmy says you should put the dead guys in the swamp,” said Broker.

“Are you sure you’re a cop?”

“Way down in the swamp,” said Broker.

Sporta threw his hands in the air. He paused long enough to stick the.44 revolver in his pocket and then marched down the stairs, cursing. His voice carried all the way down the field to the trees.

Nina came out of the cabin and stood next to him. “What will Cyrus do now?”

“Keep after us until he knows where it is…” Some wooden wind chimes rattled in the breeze. Tuna’s paper lungs made a shallow rustle. Cicadas buzzed in the brush. “Should have told you before. We may have an ally inside LaPorte’s bunch. We’re supposed to think so, anyway,” he said.