blurred watercolors of the wedding party and out the front gate onto St. Charles and, from the corner of his eye, he caught the arc of a flung bouquet flash against the leafy swaying air and the outstretched hands and then, as he walked away, he laughed hilariously when he heard the happy applause.
33
There was music, but he didn’t hear it. He walked the cramped streets of the French Quarter, looking for a barbershop. The grillwork sagged from the galleries like twisted metal guts and the people looked like lost groupie- pilgrims searching for a rock concert. A tattooed man walked by carrying a full-grown python over his arms and shoulders. Broker shook his head. Warm weather all year round was like life support for a lot of people that a good blizzard would weed out.
He grabbed a pay phone in a shopping arcade and dialed Nina’s number in Ann Arbor. Busy. Sweat ran in his eyes. He was a boreal hunter in the near tropics and right now he was shedding his winter coat. Melting. He spied a barber pole and recalled that barbers were originally surgeons. The pole stood for bloody ribbons. Bandages.
He told the barber to take it up above the ears. The dark ponytail went in one crisp snip. Not for Lola. He wasn’t going to truck all that hair through Vietnam in the summer.
If Nina found the way to Jimmy.
He hoped her copper friend was on the job. It occurred to him that if she were here she’d veto what he was going to do. Nina would put Lola off limits in two seconds flat.
But he needed a backdoor into LaPorte. Even if it swung both ways. He smiled. A handle…
The barber sheared off his burrs and Broker emerged like scrubbed bark, clean, eyebrows trimmed, but still rough to the touch. Then came steaming towels. After today, he owed himself a close shave. So he sighed and closed his eyes and enjoyed the taut scrape of the straight razor on his throat.
He allowed himself a minute of enjoyment, then he asked the barber for the Yellow Pages. As the barber massaged tonic around his temples Broker called the nearest Hertz rental and arranged for a car.
Then he hailed a cab, went to Hertz, and filled out the paperwork on the vehicle, hit the street, and parked in the nearest mall. He took some of Nina’s money shopping.
In a sporting goods store he bought a pair of black Nike crosstrainers, a baggy pair of dark cotton slacks, a loose long-sleeve matching shirt, two pairs of dark cotton gloves, a cheap charcoal gray raincoat, and a pair of thin black rubber galoshes. He searched for a heavy, strong-stitched grip bag. Finally he bought a stout black bowling bag. Then he went to a hardware store and picked up a small Wonder Bar and a sturdy razor-sharp scissors. On the way out he grabbed a couple of souvenir T-shirts for Mike and Irene.
No phone messages back at the hotel. He called Nina’s apartment in Ann Arbor. Busy again. He dug the note from his wallet where he’d noted Nina’s flight from Detroit to Minneapolis-St.Paul and called J.T.’s machine. He left another message reminding his old partner to meet her.
He took a long cool shower. Then he changed the dressing on his thumb, doused it in hydrogen peroxide, and bandaged it loosely.
He took a Jax beer from the small refrigerator under the TV and lay on the four-poster bed and talked for an hour on the phone to Northwest Airlines, rescheduling his departure. During long periods on hold, he watched the fan turn slowly on the high ceiling. Then he called Nina again. Still busy.
He picked up the TV remote and scanned the cable channels and happened on an installment of
The thing about this British cop show was:
He turned off the TV and watched the late afternoon shadows ink in the curlicue grillwork on the balconies across the street. Fireflies of faraway lightning flickered through the tall gallery windows.
Was Lola for real? Did it matter? She was right about one thing: No one would report that gold to the police if it went missing.
He reached for the phone and called Nina in Ann Arbor. This time he got through.
“I miss you,” she said with wispy intuition. She sounded like a woman who had been sitting watching a phone, except she’d been on the damn phone for hours.
“Down here everybody’s smiling and we’re all lying through our teeth. I called but your phone’s been busy.”
“I called some people.”
“What kind of people?” He sat up.
“Some army folks. Don’t worry. I’m being cool. Just trying to get a line on the MIA office in Hanoi. I intend to recover Dad’s remains.”
Jesus, Broker knuckled his forehead. “Is that cop still with you?”
“I’m drowning in testosterone and guns. Tomorrow I’ll be knee deep in his pals from the bank all the way to the airport.”
“Okay. Call J.T. and confirm your flight and arrival time. He’ll go with you to the Holiday Inn. I’ll meet you there tomorrow afternoon.”
“What are you going to do?”
“LaPorte wants to talk to me in the morning so,” he paused to hurtle a canyon of omission, “tonight I’ll treat myself to a meal and maybe catch some jazz.”
She said circumspectly, “You’re not a jazz kind of guy.”
“Do what J.T. says. No side trips,” Broker said a little hotly. He hung up the phone without saying good-bye. Why wasn’t he a jazz kind of guy? Hell, he could be any kind of guy he wanted. And what the hell was she doing calling around to the army…He caught himself. He sensed that he and Nina were on the verge of a boy-girl dilemma complicated by who was going to run the show. And right now she was ahead on points. He could feel a fight coming. The kind of fight where you make up in bed.
At 7 P.M. Broker went out and ate frog’s legs, a bowl of turtle soup, and an enormous bread pudding. He did not check out the musical fare because Nina was essentially right. He had been kicked out of his high school band- alto sax-no sense of rhythm.
The storm stalked the edge of the city as he took his time walking an elaborate pattern back to the hotel. If anybody was following him they were better than he was. He called room service and ordered a pot of coffee.
Broker took the tray out on the gallery and watched the street lights come on. As he sipped the thick Creole java the first crooked trident of lightning branched and quivered on the rooftops.
He counted, waiting for the punch of thunder.
The sky boomed and the suffocating rain came straight down and brought no relief from the heat.
34
She came in a cab and she wore a loose gray trenchcoat unbuttoned in a furl of triangle lapels and buckles. Her black dress slung around her hips like a raw silk lariat. Bareheaded, she walked across Chartiers in two-inch heels that stabbed a reflected band of neon. The raindrops sizzled at her every step. She looked up and saw him standing above her.
He left the gallery and waited in the shadowed archway at the top of the stairs.
“Much better,” she said, seeing the haircut.
The dress had a low scoop neck and buttons down the front. Rain slipped down her throat and trickled from her tanned collarbones. Her perfume was homicide beaded on a razor’s edge and it slit the air. “You’re wet,” he said.
“Do we understand each other?” she asked.
