and scanned her one-bedroom digs.
The refrigerator held a barky-looking bottle of V-8 juice, some yogurt with expired labels, and three cans of Vernor’s ginger ale. He opened one of the cans and roamed her space. The books on her desk had titles that suggested she had been taking graduate studies in business administration. No television set. No stereo. No magazines and no houseplants. Like she hung herself in the closet like a bat.
A scalloped, varnished wooden edge that protruded from between two textbooks caught his eye. He pulled it out. A plaque. A trophy statuette holding a pistol was affixed in gilt relief. And the inscription:
Captain Nina Pryce, U.S. Army
45 Caliber Pistol, Second Place,
50 Yard Slow Fire
National Inter-Service Match
1992. Camp Perry, Ohio.
Reverently, Broker, who barely kept his police qualification at twenty-five yards with his Beretta, tucked the award back between the books. Outshoot her with a rifle, he told himself.
The only personal touch on her desk were two framed photos. One was of her mother, father, and herself standing in what looked like Georgia pines when she was about seven. The other showed Ray Pryce and Broker himself, sitting on some baked paddy dike wearing olive drab that was busted out with sweat fade. And that foreign red dirt.
Broker picked up the picture and scanned the husky freckled man with the bluff features and sandy red hair. The guy who did everything by the book-
They had not been friends in the strict sense. Too much of an age difference.
Nina came out of her bedroom in an extra-large olive drab T-shirt with black jump wings stenciled on it. The hem swept her thighs like a Spartan chiton. She opened the windows wider and turned on a fan. “The smoke, sorry.”
“What happened to your brother?” he asked, returning the picture to the desk.
“Yuppie puke lawyer in Atlanta.”
Broker hitched up his sheet and took the rest of his butt out on the small balcony. Nina fished another Vernor’s from the icebox and joined him.
The wind combed through her short hair as she pushed off the railing and turned to him. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
“Shoot.”
“You have any gremlins that will make going back to Vietnam a problem?”
Broker laughed. But he lit another cigarette off the smoldering butt of the one he had going. “You see
“Everybody did, and
“You see me in any of them?”
“What’s your point?”
“Your ideas about Nam come from Hollywood. Hell, my ideas about Desert Storm come from CNN. Anyway, I missed the rock-and-roll drug opera. I had pure Greek tragedy at the end.”
“Let me put it another way. You thought pretty highly of LaPorte once; and my dad, Tuna, Trin. The way you talked about them, that summer I stayed with you…it’s like you still couldn’t believe what happened.”
“No hang-ups, Nina. Nothing that will get in the way,” Broker said emphatically.
Tenacity and tact debated in her eyes and she proposed carefully, “Maybe we should both go to New Orleans.”
Broker shook his head. “We have too much ground to cover.”
Seeing that he was adamant, she switched the subject. “What about the gold maybe buried out in the jungle? You get any interesting vibes off that? Like it coming between us and you maybe slitting my throat?”
“Do you?”
She hugged herself. “Scares me. Excites me. But I don’t think so.”
“What about ‘Tempts you’?” he asked.
“Not my style, Broker. And I never figured you for the money type.”
“Oh?”
“That’s right.” She touched his cheek lightly. “And we’re not the stay at home, cozy type either. The soaps weren’t invented for us. Or diapers. No patience for the little things. Sound familiar…” Her voice trailed a hint of sadness.
She moved behind him and the immediate silence balanced precariously and became charged. Through the budding trees Broker watched traffic curl on a freeway. Her fingers trolled his bare shoulders. Gently kneaded the muscle.
“We’re fixers,” she said. “We sit around waiting for something bad to happen so we can jump in.” Her warm breath was scented with Colgate and trailed softly across his neck. “Doesn’t mean we don’t get lonely.”
The moment reared, strong enough to topple them off the balcony and into each other’s arms.
“Nina, when I met you, you were wearing braces.”
“I’m not your little sister. I’m probably the only woman who could put up with you. Better than that bitch you married.”
Broker stood up and propped himself against the railing a safe distance away. He looked up. Ann Arbor made a glitter dome of freeway traffic. Rows of fast-food signs stole the heavens.
He changed the subject. “LaPorte was one of the great ones out there, like John Vann and Tim Randall.”
In a flat voice, she said, “People change.”
“And you’re right. I still have trouble believing he made a wrong turn. Or your dad.”
She turned away. “Their whole generation did, yours too.” She faced him and stood up straight and her voice chiseled away her fugue of hormones. “Now it’s up to my generation to square it.”
She wasn’t talking about generations. She was talking about herself. Broker flipped his cigarette past her in an arc of sparks that briefly scouted her profile. Was it a warrior-virgin he saw in those taut, pure features? Could that be the source of her strength?
An hour later he was asleep on the couch and awoke suddenly to find her sitting over him, watching him. She turned on the lamp and he saw a stealthy shadow of intimacy peek from behind her crinkled eyes.
She leaned over and kissed him on the lips, a chaste kiss on the surface, but a little way down he felt the jolt of quiet longing.
“You’re not like a lot of guys, but you really don’t know anything about women, do you?” She winced fondly and rose and went away without finishing the thought.
27
The Northwest flight bumped down its flaps and the wheels jerked for terra firma. Broker sat back and gripped the armrests. Getting older, he had discovered, meant worrying that the Rodneys of the world were overrepresented in the machinist union that serviced jet engines.
While the other passengers deplaned he took some Tylenol. The infection in his thumb smacked festered lips, anticipating the heat and a bumper crop of germs.
He had a thousand dollars in his pocket, room reservations for the night in a French Quarter hotel, and a gold
