“Fuck you,” said Broker. He eyed the cocaine pathology squirming in the punk’s sinuses and in his dilated pupils. The current American nightmare-armed, popcorn tough, ready to blow at a moment’s notice, and not much underneath to back it up after he’d touched off a magazine of nine millimeter. “Go announce me.”
He stared the punk down. The punk went.
Broker looked around. He didn’t know much about real money. So he didn’t really register the magnitude of the furnishings and art objects and the Persian carpets strewn all around him. He knew that the air became smoother, taking a subtle bounce along the pigment of paintings and the scarred volcanic faces of pre-Columbian art. He rubbed the sweaty stubble on his chin and felt like a Goth who’d slipped into Rome. And planned to be back with a lot of his pals.
The punk returned wearing an obsequious sneer and yanked his head for Broker to follow him. He was admitted to a spacious room with high ceilings and walls festooned with trophies and mementos. The room took up the right rear corner of the house. The foliage from the oak tree on the lawn shaded the windows that over-looked the wedding party.
The general would be with him in a moment and would he like a refreshment.
Broker ran his eyes over the decor and said, “Rum.” Then he eased into an upholstered leather chair that faced a heavy carved teak desk elevated on a two-step dais so that the man sitting behind the desk could look down on his visitors.
An elderly black man in a shiny black suitcoat and trousers, with a bulbous hearing aid growing in his left ear and his back bent by scoliosis, or the pressure of place, shuffled in. Eyes downcast, he carried a tray on which sat a bottle of rum, a glass, and a decanter of ice cubes. His tempo was geared to the listlessly turning ceiling fans, which slowly stirred the languid air. Time definitely slowed down here. Broker wondered if there was a plan to turn it back.
He poured a shot of rum and lit a Spirit and squirmed slightly in the studded leather upholstery. His thumb throbbed and sweat itched on his chin. The room made his bones glow like an X-ray machine.
It had never occurred to him that he could
Three of the walls held the bric-a-brac of the stillborn greatness of LaPorte’s life. Broker perused the athletic, academic, and military mementos. There was the glass case with eight rows of combat decorations, including two Distinguished Service Crosses and five Silver Stars. There were pictures of LaPorte with William Westmoreland and Creighton Abrams.
Another wall was an abattoir of trophy antlers and skulls mounted in the European style. The configuration of the horns was exotic to Broker’s Northwoods eyes. Things that died in Africa and Asia.
The last wall was a true museum, hung with plantation implements arranged in an almost votive pattern around an imposing, larger-than-life, full-length portrait.
Broker recognized the set of that intense furrowed brow and gimlet eyes staring down from the oil. The thin slash mouth and the stingy lips projected a cold Creole profile of power.
Royale LaPorte, a hero of the Battle of New Orleans, was portrayed in a gentleman’s ruffled shirt and a brocaded greatcoat. His left sleeve was empty and pinned to the shoulder. His right hand was inserted in his lapel, Napoleon fashion, and the buckled shoe on his stockinged right foot rested on a globe of the world.
Broker raised his glass to the painting and drank his shot of rum. He set the glass aside and continued his inspection. Directly underneath the painting a shiny braided bullwhip coiled on a wooden peg. Below the whip, its filigree all but melted by time from the steel, squatted a square antique safe. The safe took a key. The keyhole was nicked and bright from use.
French doors made up the fourth wall and opened out onto the gallery that overlooked the swimming pool. Broker’s eyes drifted back to the desk. Not one cubic inch of off-white computer plastic in the whole damn place. The phone was a 1940s ashtray style, obstinate black ceramic and heavy enough to crack a coconut. So LaPorte, like Broker, was still a wood-and-steel kind of guy.
An energetic beam of minty aftershave cut the bouillabaisse air.
“Broker. It’s been a long time, son.”
The voice was a generous muddy baritone, vigorous and amused. Broker turned his head and his skin prickled. Gen. Cyrus LaPorte ambled into the room with the alien grace and vigor of a six-foot-tall, two-legged spider.
28
Laporte wore snowy topsiders, a tan short-sleeved shirt, and casual pleated trousers. His bare, corded arms had shriveled but not weakened, and his neck compressed toward his shoulders, which added to the sidling insect gait. His eyes were pale blue, pitted and shiny as two musket balls, but seemed darker because of the pressure ridge of his brow. Salt-and-pepper short-cropped hair capped his bony head and the hand he extended was hard as tanned hide.
LaPorte pointed to the bandaged thumb. Broker did not respond. LaPorte’s smile effortlessly glossed over twenty years. “Appreciate you taking the time to come.”
He motioned for Broker to resume his seat, mounted the steps and sat, elevated behind his wide desk. The platform bothered Broker. It was a conceit that the LaPorte of twenty years ago would have had contempt for. He flipped open a manila folder and shot his lead eyes at Broker. “You were a lieutenant during that shitstorm back in seventy-five.” LaPorte let the folder fall shut. “Still a lieutenant, I see. Does policework agree with you, Phil?”
It was the first time that LaPorte had ever called him by his given name. Even prepared to discover that this man had arranged to leave him to die in Hue City, the small gesture affected Broker. He graced LaPorte with the most exhausted of cynical smiles.
“So,” said LaPorte, “you’re still mixed up with the Pryce family.”
“And now I’m mixed up with you.”
“You’ll recall, when we were at Benning for that witch hunt, I cautioned you to walk away. But you had to go over and help Marian move off the base.”
“Marian died and Nina doesn’t need any extra hassle. She has enough hassle inside her own head.”
“I hear you.” LaPorte squinted philosophically.
Broker withdrew the folded map from his inside jacket pocket and tossed it on LaPorte’s desk, knocking over a collection of terra cotta figurines. LaPorte pursed his lips and set the bundle aside.
“There’s your maps and sonar pictures. And I’ll let your friend Bevode go…” Broker pronounced Fret’s name Bee-voo-dee.
LaPorte corrected, with a dry smile, “Bevode. Rhymes with commode.”
“Whatever. I want your word that he leaves Nina Pryce alone.”
LaPorte grinned, revealing a half-inch of root on his molars. “My word.”
“I was thinking more along the lines that if you break it you and me will have a personal problem.”
LaPorte responded with a pompous tic, shooting the nonexistent cuffs on his thick wrists. “I can understand how you’d be upset. This came on sort of sudden.”
Broker rose slowly from his chair, letting his coat fall open to reveal the holster and his voice growled, intimate with menace. “Don’t think so. It’s been coming on for twenty years. And if you and I don’t reach an agreement, financial and otherwise, in the next few minutes I’m going to flat kick the slats out of your whole corncrib. I already stove in that pussy you sent up north.”
LaPorte shrugged his shoulders. “Bevode tends to be…overzealous.”
“He’s a punk. He had a fucking hickey on his neck.” Broker made a face and resumed his seat.
LaPorte leaned back and massaged a liver spot on his hand. “Would it surprise you to know that Bevode Fret was once a very dedicated cop, lavishly commended, and known throughout the parish as a man who couldn’t be bought?”
“Point being?”
LaPorte shrugged. The lead eyes probed. “Perhaps the work got to him. Does the work ever get to you?”
