The Price of Blood

“What’s the big deal about this map?” asked Broker.

“Not real sure on that, bro,” said Fret, smiling broadly and winking. “Not my area of expertise. Something to do with illegal oil drilling General LaPorte detected over in Asia. General LaPorte has these do-good projects, sorta like Jimmy Carter, you understand. Some deal with the Vietnamese government. If it gets in the wrong hands, it could create a problem. But it ain’t the paper. It’s her intent. General LaPorte is a prominent member of the community. Don’t need extra hassle from a nutcase.”

“So you’re up here on a goodwill mission?”

“Yeah,” said Fret. “Just my nature, I guess.” He paused and massaged his hands together and a lazy, bullying contempt surfaced in his swampy eyes. “You could say all my life big dogs been lickin’ my hand.”

The ugly challenge hung like smoke between them. The barest of smiles drew down Broker’s lips. This new ogre was intentionally goading him.

Fret, enjoying himself, asked, “You her boyfriend, huh?”

“Friend of the family,” Broker said.

“Oh yeah?” said Fret. They were playing a game. Broker didn’t mind games.

“Yeah,” said Broker. “She’s been…upset. Since her mother died. She doesn’t need any more crap in her life.”

Fret became absorbed in dusting at a dirt smudge on his trousers with his big hands. And Broker chastised himself for being so cavalier about security last night. Fret had contempt for them, and he was vain. Mind the threads. He had worn a suit. He didn’t expect to get dirty. He had planned to get caught. I’m letting you do this, you understand. Just a sadistic sonofabitch who couldn’t resist killing something. Casually, Fret looked up. “She don’t count, bro. Turns out now it’s you the general wants to talk to.”

Broker stood up. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Do that,” said Fret. As Broker left the room he sang out, “Hey, sun’s coming up. Can a guy get some breakfast?”

Jeffords pushed off the wall when Broker came into the hall. “How long can you hold him?” Broker asked.

“Thirty-six-hour rule,” said Jeffords. “Which doesn’t include weekends. So it’s Saturday. So I can run him up to county and lock him up and the clock will start as of midnight on Sunday. We don’t have to charge him till noon on Tuesday. That give you enough time?”

“That’ll do just fine.”

“What are we doing here?” said Jeffords.

Broker nodded at the door. They took their coffee to the waterfront. Sunlight steamed the dew on the boulders.

“I was eavesdropping in the hall,” said Jeffords. “So, is she really a nutcase?”

“I suppose she is, the way Joan of Arc was a nutcase.”

“What? She hears voices?”

“She has a fixed idea that drives her life. Maybe Fret has a point. LaPorte was her dad’s commanding officer in the army. He pressed charges against her dad for stealing. She’s really twisted about it. Maybe it’s time she faced up to the truth.” Broker spoke easily, playing into the scenario that Fret had sketched. Dissembling, something he’d watched Trin do effortlessly to Americans in Vietnam, that he had perfected when he first started working undercover with J.T. Merryweather: Let ’em see the black man and they can’t see the person. Gives me extra room to maneuver on their ass. Stillwater prison was full of people who suspected everybody in the state, except Phil Broker, of turning them. They saw a limited, dangerous blue-collar mensch who worked with his hands when they looked at Broker, and he flowed naturally into their expectations. Talking to Fret he did it innately. Now he was doing it with a friend.

Tom exhaled. “So now what?”

“I’ll have a heart to heart with her and then I’ll talk to this LaPorte. Arrange to get him his stuff back. If he’ll drop charges on her, then we let the redneck go. A trade.”

“Tuesday noon. And I keep the Tazer.”

“Let Fret know I’m trying to work something out. Then let him use the phone.”

“What about Mike’s dog?”

“That’ll be between him and me when he gets out. You all right with that?”

“You want to get your butt sued, fine. Just don’t get my butt sued,” said Tom Jeffords.

Walking heavily, Broker was on his way to find his folks and tell them about Tank when he spotted Fatty Naslund wheel his tomato-red, perfectly restored ’55 Thunderbird up to the bank. Broker stepped off the street into a space between two stores until the banker was out of his car and inside. He didn’t want to see Fatty now. He’d see him later.

Because Broker had decided he was going to New Orleans to see a man whom he had idolized in his youth. To see for himself if that man was who Nina Pryce said he was.

20

The northeastern sky was a pile of cumulonimbus, the color of spoiled mushrooms. Superior coiled flat and green in eerie anticipation. The air hung in sticky olive sheets.

After telling his folks about their dog, Broker followed Mike’s station wagon home.

Okay. It was personal now and it was starting to look very tricky. LaPorte wanted to see him? These folks sure had a strange way of sending an invitation.

It was always a good idea to follow the money. In this case, ten tons of gold. Jimmy Tuna was the only living person who had been near that gold. Maybe everybody wanted to locate old Jimmy. Because maybe Jimmy was the only person who knew exactly where it was.

A lot of maybes. But there was the pure adolescent thrill…

Arrgh. What might yer name be, matey?

Why, Jim Hawkins, sir.

A sunken treasure. Yesterday the voice had been tiny inside him. Today it had grown to small. Small like Mighty Mouse. I’m gonna do this.

More soberly, he caught a spark from Nina’s long, patient fury.

They killed my dad.

After meeting Fret, Broker no longer ruled that out. And if that was true, then they’d used him to do it.

His folks turned off and drove toward the main house and a tarp that made a blue lump over Tank on the lawn by the porch. Mike and Irene got out of the car and stood by the tarp.

Nina waited on Broker’s porch, sipping coffee. They went inside and Broker slapped the Xeroxed copies of the map and the sonar picture on the table. She poured a cup of coffee and handed it to him. Then she sat down and smoothed out the map. She’d put on sweat pants and a fresh T-shirt. The shirt didn’t hide the scarlet and purple bruises that raked her bare forearms. A red bandanna around her neck hid the bruising there. If she hurt, she didn’t show it.

The bruises were a reminder. Fret could have killed her if he’d wanted to. Broker paced with his coffee cup and reconsidered Nina Pryce.

His method was to start reading a person with their body, to observe how they occupied their space. Some people were barely connected, flophouse tenants in their own flesh; some were entombed or asleep. Others were conflicted.

Nina wore herself like a veteran, not an ounce more than was necessary. She’d shaken off the attack of this morning and now she sat alert, crackling with energy, keyed on him.

Maybe seeing her as obsessed in a crazy way had been his easy way out. And it had been easy to see her over-achiever performance in academics, athletics, and the military as a warped proof that she could outrun her father’s shame.

People had said, Broker had said: Something is wrong with her.