illegal oil drilling, taking water samples, stuff like that. He said they had way more high-tech stuff than they needed: a diving sphere, submersibles. But then he said something weird, the crew didn’t get to do a dive. They were flown out-bang-just like that, immediately after they located the wreck. Some rough-looking Cajuns came in, salvage guys from Louisiana.”
“Divers,” said Broker.
She nodded. “So I encouraged Toby to think he could get lucky if he took me back to LaPorte’s house to a going-away pool party. That’s where I met Fret. He hit on me. But I snuck into the house and rifled the office. I found the maps and the pictures under his blotter on the desk. There’s a safe in his office and I wish I could have got a look into it. Fret must have spotted me coming out.”
Broker leaned back thoughtfully. “Think about that,” he said.
She met his gaze. After a moment she said, “It was too easy.”
Broker nodded. “Remember last winter. The snowstorm. That restaurant in Wisconsin where we met?”
“Sure.”
“I bet LaPorte had someone following you, probably sitting in the next booth. He’s probably had you watched ever since Tuna agreed to meet with you.”
She eyed him, looking a little uneasy after his last remarks. “Okay. Then it really got weird. I called back to Ann Arbor to check my voice mail and there’s this creepy voice on my machine. You know, ‘Hi, Nina, looking forward to seeing you.’ So, being very paranoid at this point, I wisely deduced I was in over my head and took Tuna’s advice to find you. Somehow Fret tailed me.” She looked frankly into Broker’s eyes. “What’s your take on it?”
“They’re after Jimmy. You were his only contact. Now I’m a loose end connected to you. And Jimmy Tuna always was a cagey fella. They were watching you and I bet that’s how Jimmy slipped by them,” said Broker.
“He convinced me his brain had turned to oatmeal. I keep going over our talks. We’d sit in this room at Milan.”
“Describe it.”
“Wooden tables, chairs, plastic ashtrays. A lot of black guys and their families and-”
“C’mon-”
“The black guys, the young ones bothered him. Not that he said it but I could see it. And then…he’d talk about the building, the prison itself. How he’d miss the walls, the walls protected him. You could trust the walls. He said that a lot the last time I saw him and he’d smile at me.”
“Did he ask for anything else besides the money?”
“A picture of me. But that isn’t it. It’s the other reference, to the walls.” Her voice accelerated. “Yesterday morning, at the hospital, I checked voice mail again. Same creepy voice, but…”
She picked up Broker’s phone off the table and punched in a number, waited, punched in another number, and handed the receiver to him.
A computer voice said,
Broker pressed one.
“Walls could be Waldo?” she wondered aloud.
“You know,” said Broker. “I can go into a prison and talk to a convict in total confidence, you can’t. You always have guards around. And LaPorte can afford to buy a few prison guards. Maybe that’s why Tuna wanted you to get me. To have a secure conversation. That’s why he talked in circles to you…dropping bread crumbs-”
“Clues?” said Nina.
“Could be.” Broker rubbed his palms together, carefully, because of the thumb. “Let’s shake the system and see if anything falls out.” He picked up the phone and punched in the number for ATF in St. Paul.
“Is Ryan there, this is Phil Broker. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s Saturday. Yeah, it looks like a burnt bratwurst.” Broker whistled soundlessly, stared at his swollen thumb. “Hey, Ryan, how do you like Rodney? He’s a real sweetheart, isn’t he. Sure. Look, I need a favor. There’s a federal prisoner who just got out of Milan. Bank robber named James Tarantuna, goes by Jimmy Tuna. Could you find out if he hung with a guy named Waldo in the joint? Another thing. Back in 1980 Tuna got in a beef in the visitors room with a Cyrus LaPorte. Could you check with the FBI and get me all the paper on that. Fax it to Tom Jeffords at the Devil’s Rock cop shop. Right. I’m up north at my cabin resting the thumb.” Broker gave Ryan his number. Said thanks and hung up.
“So,” said Nina, “Tuna never had a visitor between the time he had the fight with LaPorte and the moment he contacted me.”
Broker nodded. “Could be he had a buddy inside he confided in and might use as a mailbox. Let’s see what Ryan comes up with in federal corrections.” He stood up.
“There’s more, he gave me-” she said.
“Not now. Watch the phone. I need to take a walk.”
Storm shadows seeped up from the rock crevasses and ran inky between the smooth lakeshore cobbles. Boulders wore an ebony sheen. Broker had to force the charged air into his lungs and then wring it out.
He walked up the driveway and turned north onto Highway 61. He liked to jog along the shore road, but he usually took Tank on those runs.
Today he changed his pattern and crossed the highway and took an overgrown gravel lane inland until he came to a buckled, tar, two-lane road that ran parallel to the highway. The creepy old road had grass marching across the washouts and the rickety skeletons of wood-frame houses dotted the brush. It was a depressing place that he usually avoided.
Nineteen-eighty was stuck in his memory. Don’t try to figure it head on. Unfocus. Trick it out. Think normal thoughts. He turned right on the road and followed it north. Two hundred yards away, screened by dense poplar and birch, he heard the traffic race toward Grand Portage and the casino up there, toward the Canadian border, toward the millennium. The year 2000.
The smart thing would be to just move up here, run the lodge, live out the century in a landscape that was familiar…But his thoughts turned back to Jimmy Tuna and his fascination with funerals.
Tuna had not been a normal NCO. A lot of high-ranking officers are abetted by Machiavellian senior sergeants. Tuna was in that mold, with the appearance and the wile of a Renaissance condottieri. Why would he beg for money and fixate on his own last rites over and over with Nina? Funerals. Burial. Graves.
Another thing about Tuna. Always the joker.
He stopped in mid-thought. The unmistakable stench of decaying flesh clotted the heavy air. Fifty yards ahead, a black shiny shape spilled from the brush into the road.
He padded forward, instinctively checking the surrounding forest. Alone with the sweaty zing of cicadas, he closed the distance to the feeding frenzy of the flies.
A heavy-duty, black plastic garbage bag was dumped in the weeds. Under the fat swarming deer flies, Broker saw the boned-out ribcage of a deer and the maggots that foamed on the shreds of sun-spoiled meat. His gag reflex cocked.
Another argument for winter.
Broker stepped back and grabbed for a cigarette. Why he’d started smoking in Vietnam-it put a lid on that particular odor. He thought of Bevode Fret sitting in jail and mused that New Orleans might smell a little bit like the deer carcass, slick with gamey sweat on the edge of the Tropic of Cancer.
Then the shadow flitted in his memory and he clearly recalled the Chinook struggling up over the flare-lit tile rooftops of Hue, straining with the dangling cargo net while tracer rounds stitched the rainy night.
Broker grinned.
21
