“You mean protecting the rich rats from the poor rats?”
“I mean too many rats in the cage. A man can start looking for options.”
Broker exhaled and inspected his hands. “Yeah, right. Crime’s supposed to be deviant behavior. Now there’s nothing to deviate from. Folks are choosing up sides. Some kind of cultural street challenge that’s going on.”
LaPorte smiled faintly. “Down here the rabble associate that dilemma with skin pigmentation.”
Broker flicked ashes into his turned-up Levi’s cuff. “It’s the climate. Encourages one-crop agriculture and simple-mindedness.”
LaPorte laughed and opened a drawer and stood up. He came around the desk and handed an ashtray to Broker. “Mind the ashes, Phil; that rug cost more than you earned last year.”
Broker took the ashtray and slowly rolled the ash into it. LaPorte leaned back on the desk and smiled. “Now, if we can get past the macho tantrums, I have a proposition for you.”
“Just like that,” said Broker. “After all this time. And your goon kicks down my door…”
LaPorte clasped his hands behind his back and walked to the window that overlooked the wedding party. He squinted down at the lawn then turned and picked up a pair of binoculars from a shelf on the wall. He bent, focused the glasses, then shook his head. He came back to his desk and pressed a button. He grinned at Broker and chuckled. “The minimum wage. They just can’t get it right.”
The elderly black man who had brought Broker his drink crab-walked into the room. LaPorte spoke with elaborate politeness.
“Hiram, get on Artis down there to tell the guests not to put the knives, forks, and spoons into the trash containers. Keep it separate. And the glasses.”
“Okay, Mr. Cyrus,” the servant replied and shuffled off.
LaPorte sighed. “I’ve been telling that man for ten years to drop the ‘Mister.’ Old habits.”
“You were saying?” said Broker.
A puff of wind stirred the long curtains and LaPorte said, “Maybe we’ll get an afternoon breeze. Let’s go out on the balcony.”
They sat in wrought-iron chairs as a tremble of impending rain ruffled the cascading impatiens. Beyond the hedges, the wedding party buzzed in pre-event conversation.
LaPorte looked up and found the sun in a hazy hole in the clouds. He stared directly at it unblinking and stated, “The fact is, I’m in a ticklish spot.”
Broker hawked, leaned forward, and spit over the balcony. “You don’t strike me as the ticklish kind. You’re more the agony of psoriasis.”
LaPorte cleared his throat. “Who else knows about the map?”
Broker answered offhand. “I called Mel Fisher for an opinion-”
“That’s not funny,” said LaPorte. “The Hue gold is a remote legend. I’d like to keep it that way. When the war ended the Communists didn’t register a complaint that it had been stolen. Which is part of the mystery. It crops up from time to time as a low-key buzz in the international treasure hunting community. But, with Clinton getting ready to normalize relations with Vietnam, and with Nina Pryce waving around the Freedom of Information Act, I suspect interest will start picking up.”
“So?”
“So answer the question.”
“Nina Pryce. Me.”
“Let’s cut the bullshit. It’s Jimmy Tuna I care about. If you can’t see that, we’re both wasting our time.”
“Okay,” said Broker. “He disappeared without a trace from Milan.”
“Did you talk to the prison doctor?” asked LaPorte. Broker shook his head. “I did,” said LaPorte. “Tuna has weeks left. Maybe days. He always was a hard luck guy…” LaPorte’s eyes cruised the far wall where he kept his war mementos. “He married this foxy German girl in sixty-six. She gets over here, gets her citizenship, buys everything in sight, and then sends Tuna this tape of her screwing a guy as a Dear John.” LaPorte shook his head. “He played it over and over. Her screaming with bed-springs in the background.” LaPorte lapsed into a guttural German accent: “‘Fok me, hunny,’ Christmas Eve, 1970. Rainy night in the team house on the Laotian border.” He sighed and shook his head. “Went off the deep end. Tried to rob a bank…prison all these years. Now cancer.”
“Maybe robbing banks was habit forming,” said Broker. The words hung in the heavy air with his cigarette smoke.
LaPorte leaned back in his chair, squinted into the sun, and shook his head. “It was the fucking war. We all went wrong.” He turned to Broker. “Bound to happen when you lose human scale.” He laughed cynically and slid in and out of past and present tense: “We let them bring in the gadgets. You know, like, they used to pollinate the jungle with these dealy bobs-body heat sniffers. So a monkey comes along and trips one. And it’s B-52 time and it starts raining dead monkeys. Not to mention blowing a lot of fine hardwoods to bits…”
His leaden eyes drooped, too heavy for his face and his voice lowered, speaking to himself. “The hill tribesmen told me that the tigers were growing up without learning how to hunt. They just fed on all the dead monkey meat laying around. So they grow up and don’t know how to teach
Cyrus LaPorte caught himself and laughed. “Do you know that they give recruits these stress cards now in Marine boot camp? If they’re feeling
LaPorte became aware that Broker was staring at him and asked softly, “Does it really matter what happened that night?”
“It matters to Nina Pryce.”
LaPorte grimaced and exhaled slowly. “Phil, she really doesn’t want to know.”
“Try me.”
“Okay.” LaPorte brought his palms down on the wire arms of the chair as if to rise. But it was meant as an emphatic gesture. “I’ll fucking tell you then. Our former worthy foes are less worthy since they opened the door to the west. I’m doing some business over there, building a hotel in Hoi An; great site, virtually untouched. Which means I’ve had to spread the dash around. Take a few ranking party members out to dinner. Some long cruises on my boat.
“So I asked one of these gentlemen to do a little digging for me and it turns out we didn’t know half of what was going on that night.”
“Like what?”
LaPorte pointed his finger. “Who was the key to pulling former assets out of the central provinces?”
“Trin.”
“Correct. And what was Trin’s first rule?”
“Trust no one.” Broker felt his shoulders curl forward, body-armoring against the tug of LaPorte’s will.
“And who did Trin trust?”
“Pryce.”
“Now, back to my Commie bureaucrat, who was panting like a bitch in heat for the new Land Rover I was going to buy him. He checked around. Didn’t take much. A number of people made their reputations capturing Trin. According to this guy, Trin was grabbed in a secure house in Hue because the North Vietnamese were tipped by an American…”
LaPorte paused. “This alleged American arranged a clandestine meet, through a double agent. On the coast. To give up Trin. And hear this. My informant said it was written right in the report: The American was described as having a gold cigarette case.”
“What did this guy get in return for handing over Trin?” asked Broker.
LaPorte smiled thinly. “Bastard wouldn’t tell me. That’d probably cost another Land Rover.”
“Hearsay,” said Broker.
“My ass. It was planned in depth. First position Trin as the bait. Then send you in as the decoy. And I tried to defend that sonofabitch…” His eyes scanned the rustling foliage and he said softly, “For which I paid a very steep price.” LaPorte stood up abruptly and seized the railing until his knuckles turned white. “Give me a cigarette, please,” he asked softly.
There was a time when Broker could not imagine Cyrus LaPorte losing control. He shrugged and held out his pack. LaPorte took one and a light from Broker’s lighter.
