The Price of Blood

she shut up?”

“Can you grease the skids to get her back in?”

“That would take an absurd, and not entirely legal, contribution to a presidential campaign.” He grimaced. “It might be done.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. Now for Jimmy Tuna-”

LaPorte raised a hand. His eyes glowed faintly and Broker had conflicting impressions. Sensuality. And molten lead being poured.

“Are you sure you want to mix in our dirty business, Phil?”

Broker looked directly into LaPorte’s metallic eyes. “The Hue gold is…morally ambiguous.”

“The Eagle Scout I knew twenty years ago wouldn’t have said that.”

“People change.”

Something merry danced in LaPorte’s eyes and Broker thought it might be the old male slow dance; LaPorte wanted him to admit he was rolling over and baring his throat to the stronger alpha wolf. “Please continue, Phil,” said LaPorte.

“I don’t want Tuna hurt.”

“The man is dying,” LaPorte said impatiently. “Do you know where he is?”

“Not yet.”

The heat left LaPorte’s eyes and they froze with a subtle click of calculation above his smile. Broker had ceased to be important.

And Broker’s own false smile masked the ice pick that suddenly pinned his heart. He’d made a fatal mistake. A number of them. LaPorte had probably shut his eyes and drawn a circle on that map. The treasure map had no leverage power because it was a phony. Easy bait for an eager Nina. And he knew Fret wasn’t alone. His whole act was designed to siphon Broker off to New Orleans. And if I could figure out that the trail to Tuna led through his banking records, so could Cyrus LaPorte. They were still following her. And if they grabbed her coming out of the bank in Ann Arbor…

“How much?” said LaPorte with a convincing pained expression. Broker was treading water. LaPorte was comfortably standing on the bottom.

“Five hundred thousand. For Nina, for my silence, and for Tuna. Half now. Half when it’s done. And do it some way it can’t be traced.”

“I’m willing to pick up the note on your dad’s white elephant and hold it. If everything works out, you’ll get another hundred thousand.”

“That’s a hundred and fifty thousand shy of the figure I had in mind.”

“Let’s think about it.” LaPorte stood up briskly and pressed the button on his desk. “When are you leaving New Orleans?” he asked.

“Ten tomorrow morning.”

“Where are you staying?”

“The Doniat. On Chartiers.”

“I’ll pick you up at eight and drive you to the airport. We’ll see where we’re at then.” They shook hands.

The old black guy in the shiny trousers appeared at the door and LaPorte said cordially, “Hiram, show Mr. Broker out. I’m leaving through the garage. I’d drop you but I’m going in the other direction. Hiram can call you a cab, but you should really take the streetcar.” LaPorte smiled and walked energetically down the hall and through a doorway.

“I need to use a phone,” Broker immediately said to Hiram.

“Uh-huh, but you wait a second.” Hiram cocked his ear out the open balcony doors. Seconds slid by like abacus beads on a wire of sweat. Broker heard the faint squeal of tires on hot cement down near the pool apron.

“Okay. Now you use that phone right there,” said Hiram, pointing to the raised desk. Then he turned and shuffled into the hall.

Broker stabbed in Nina’s number. On the third ring a rough male voice answered, “Hello,” and Broker hammered the desk with his fist. Then the voice said, “I say, Merry. What do you say?”

Broker shook his head, blinked and then almost shouted, “Weather.”

“Hi there,” said Nina in a bright voice.

“Who-”

She cut him off. “I told you we shouldn’t split up. The only guy who was good at that was Robert E. Lee.”

“Nina?”

“Relax. I’m playing Scrabble with Sgt. Danny Larkins of the Michigan Highway Patrol. We took a grad course together, remember.”

In the background the deep voice said, “Sociology of deviance. It was boring.”

Nina continued. “For an outrageous amount of cash Danny has taken two personal leave days to squire me around and tuck me on an airplane. And he’s got this great big gun.”

“She’s just dying to touch it,” yodeled Danny Larkins. They both laughed.

Broker, glad that someone was having fun, sagged on LaPorte’s desk. “I screwed up.”

“That’s okay. I didn’t. How’s it going?”

“You’re it. They got me down here on a draw play. The map’s all bullshit. Watch yourself.” He wondered if the call could be monitored. “Especially tomorrow.”

“About what I figured. No sweat. We’re having a poker party tonight. Six cops. I’m buying the beer.”

“Strip poker. And all of us are these huge motherfuckers,” crowed Larkins.

“I gotta go, I’m using LaPorte’s phone,” said Broker.

“I’m covered. You take care,” said Nina. Broker thought he heard her blow a kiss into the receiver. He hung up, dismounted the dais, and started for the door. Hiram appeared in front of him.

“You ain’t leaving yet,” said the old man.

Broker glowered down at Hiram’s mostly bald beige skull. “Say again?”

Hiram shook his head. “Out there on the balcony. Go ahead. Somebody you gotta talk to.”

“Who? Why?”

Hiram’s voice was eloquent with the absurdity of watching white people. “Cause they in over they head just like you.”

Lola LaPorte smoothed her hands through her hair as she walked along the pool deck toward the balcony. When she was within easy speaking range, she looked up. Through a haze of anger and humiliation Broker saw that her features keyed to the way she moved, hard and soft, a mobile pentagram of squares and triangles seamlessly turning inside of circles. He thought that her wide, somber eyes might be light brown.

“He’s gone,” she called up to him. Nice voice when her husband wasn’t around. Full range, like the rest of her. Mature and disciplined. “When policemen visit my husband it usually concerns money. What exactly is Cyrus paying you to do, Mr. Broker?”

With a tight smile Broker grabbed at the only straw in sight. “Get some counseling for a girl named Nina Pryce and let Bevode Fret out of jail in Minnesota.”

She put her hands on her hips in a self-consciously mocking feminine pose and pitched her voice to match. “Nina Pryce is hardly a girl and I myself, given the opportunity to keep Bevode Fret in a jailhouse, would never consent to letting him go; a sentiment shared, I assure you, by half the sensible people of New Orleans. But then, half the sensible people in New Orleans would be a distinct minority.”

“What can I say-”

“Are you corrupt, Mr. Broker?”

“Only in Louisiana, so far.”

Broker tried to make out her expression, but she stood in a subtle riot of shadow cast by the hedges and he couldn’t tell.

“Relax, we’re alone for a while. I’ll be right up,” she said.