The Price of Blood

Broker took a deep breath and considered the possibility that it was the other way around: Something is wrong with people who choose to live with a criminal lie.

He was still pondering his mea culpas when Nina asked, “What did Fret say?”

“He said LaPorte wants to see me.”

“Oh.”

“Fret gave me the scenario. I work out a deal; we drop charges on him if LaPorte doesn’t charge you in Louisiana. I guarantee that you leave LaPorte alone.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I’ll go to New Orleans and personally return the map. Except what I give LaPorte will be a copy. We’ll keep the original to mess with his mind.”

“And?”

“I’ll find out what’s going on.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet.” He paused and said, “I never gave you a fair shake. It was easier to see you as a kind of victim.”

“There’s a lot of that going around,” said Nina. “Back during the army flap, this chichi feminist reporter had trouble seeing me as a soldier. She felt obligated to ask me if my father ever abused me. I told her I thought abuse was a sexual option you had when you were alone.”

They both laughed a little. Like a good officer, she told an off-color joke to ease the tension of a new relationship. Nina tapped the sonar graphic on the table and raised her eyebrows.

“It’s a sonar image of a Chinook,” said Broker.

“Laying in one hundred feet of water off the coast of central Vietnam.”

“We have to be sure.”

“The guy LaPorte hired to take the picture told me.”

“No bullshit?”

“No bullshit,” she said evenly.

She was Ray Pryce’s kid. She had that offhand charisma: How about you and me go out today and see if we can get ourselves killed in a good cause.

Nina Pryce grinned. It was the most dangerous kind of grin; it had youth and moral courage and principle and affection in it, and revenge and a crisp-honed edge of duty. But Broker saw a cold flicker of something else there. Something really scary. Ambition.

“I need all the background,” said Broker. “Facts, not theories.”

She nodded. “I’m out of the army, back at the U of M. You know how I did a search on Tuna and found out he was in Milan. And he wouldn’t see me. There was a state highway patrolman in one of my classes, Danny Larkins, and we went out a few times. I mentioned this prisoner in Milan I wanted to talk to and how he wouldn’t return my letters or calls. This cop made an inquiry and came up with this interesting fact.

“In July 1980 Tuna got in a brawl in the visitor’s room with Gen. Cyrus LaPorte-”

Broker cocked his head. “That police report you have-”

“Right,” said Nina. “What was LaPorte doing in some medium-security federal prison in Michigan in 1980? He was working in the Pentagon in Washington, trying to resurrect his career with the Reagan crowd. LaPorte tried to get the beef put on Tuna, but the guards witnessed it and they all agreed. The guy from Washington in the Armani suit attacked the convict. Not just attacked him but totally lost his cool, raving and throwing things. It was investigated by the FBI. LaPorte wound up paying a fine for misdemeanor assault.”

“Did Tuna tell you what it was about?”

“Jimmy Tuna was a very messed-up guy by the time he agreed to see me. I figured-the way his mind was working-he probably forgot it even happened.”

“This is looking more and more like Tuna’s show. Assume everything he did was for a reason.”

She nodded. “It placed the two of them together and it got me thinking.”

Broker sat back abruptly. “Nineteen-eighty,” he muttered, stabbing the air with his index finger. The shadow of an idea nibbled, tantalizing, but refused to take shape. Gone.

He clicked his teeth together. “So then you got into your scene with Tuna.”

“Suddenly he puts me on his visitors list. The first visitor he’d had since LaPorte in 1980. He never mentioned Nam or the gold or my dad. All he’d talk about was funerals. And how much they cost. The advantages and disadvantages of cremation. Whatever. We talked for hours about funerals. He was worried he couldn’t pay for it. So I gave him five grand for his alleged funeral expenses.”

Broker held up his good hand. “Okay, here’s the thing. If we’re going to work together we have to understand each other.”

“Sure,” she said, not quite following.

“You’ve got this overall picture and you jam in the pieces. I have to work with pieces and see how they fit into patterns…”

Nina shook her head.

“Look,” said Broker. “Tuna’s a retired master sergeant. He had more than twenty years in. They don’t stop your pension because you’re in jail. He’s been collecting a pile of bread for nearly twenty years. He didn’t need your money.”

Nina slumped back, chastised. “I totally missed it.”

“Not your fault,” said Broker, starting to warm to it. “You follow Mars, the god of the overworld. I follow Pluto, I turn over rocks in the underworld.”

“Christ, you sound like your mother,” Nina quipped and sagged in her chair, brows knit, reappraising. “When you were talking to Mike last night she was quizzing me on astrology. My birth time. She said you had this heavy influence, a Mars-Pluto conjunction.” She studied Broker’s face and said slowly, “Unlimited potential for good or evil…”

Broker grinned. “Irene’s brain is stuck back in the McGovern campaign.”

Nina worried her lower lip between her teeth. “Okay, so Tuna…I played along. I figured he’d talk eventually. The day he was supposed to get out I made him an appointment at a mortuary in Ann Arbor. He said he wanted to see the coffin. He wanted to know who did the actual digging. What were the exact dimensions of the grave. Gruesome stuff like that.”

“But he got out early.”

“Left me standing at the prison gate in a tastefully cut black dress. When I got home a package was waiting with my apartment caretaker, with the Newsweek page and the note about you.”

“When did he get out?”

“Ten days ago. I walked a circle in my carpet and got completely wired into this thing. I wondered if LaPorte had nabbed him so I flew to New Orleans, rented a car, and hung around LaPorte’s house.”

“How are you paying for this?”

“Mom’s insurance, her savings, and money from the sale of her house.”

“How much?”

“Enough for anything we might need to do. Within reason.” She paused. “And going to Vietnam is definitely within reason. Which reminds me, I have visa forms.”

“Confident, aren’t you.”

She adjusted the scarf on her neck. “Tuna wasn’t there, but a lot of other people were. I followed some of them to a restaurant in the French Quarter.”

“People like Fret?”

“No. Oceanographers. Greenpeace guys. They were all staying in the Quarter. And they hung out in this restaurant on Decatur Street. They were throwing around a lot of money, so I did a little makeover and got next to one of them.”

“The tattoo, the girly outfit?”

Nina nodded. “This nice young guy named Toby was smitten with my tattoo and impressed me with tales of taking pictures of the bottom of the South China Sea.”

“He took the picture?”

“Correct, he was just back from a month on the Lola. They were documenting