heat. Icy with control.
“Stand back from him, General,” said Virgil Fret. Sniffing, hitching up his crotch, opening and closing his spare muscular fingers.
“Leave us be, Virgil,” said LaPorte, exasperated.
“Tell him to get back in the car,” said Broker.
“Get back in the car,” ordered LaPorte. Twisting in a tight flurry of catnip reflexes, Virgil started to protest. “Now, you nitwit,” growled LaPorte. The punk dropped his shoulders and got back in the car. LaPorte turned to Broker. “You have something that belongs to me.”
“You got a beef? Call the cops.”
“You’re out of your depth, Broker.”
“Don’t think so. You’re the one coming up empty in a hundred feet of salt water.”
LaPorte executed a thin frosty smile. “It’s too big for you. I know my way around over there. You don’t.”
“Watch me.”
LaPorte squinted at him and burst into incredulous laughter. “No shit, you waited around just to
Across the street the school kids milled in front of the mission, antsy in their uniforms. It was nice out, they were eager for school to end. Through the Caddy’s tinted windows Virgil’s fitful shadow bounced on the seat.
Broker smiled and wondered how he was doing as a pirate. “No,” he said, “to caution you. You saved my life once, so I figure you deserve a warning.”
“
“That’s right. It’s you and me now. Winner take all, General, and if you go to Vietnam you’ll never come back. Consider yourself warned.”
Broker sat the empty beer bottle down on the curb as his cab pulled up. LaPorte couldn’t stop himself from seizing at Broker’s bag. Broker didn’t resist. The weight told LaPorte it contained only clothing. He dropped his arms to his sides in frustration. Broker opened the cab door and tossed in his grip. He turned and smiled. “It’s been fun. Anytime you need a hand, just let me know.” He left LaPorte looking like he might eat the tires off that Caddy and, hopefully, furious enough to make a mistake.
They followed the cab. They followed him into the airport. LaPorte left Virgil stranded at the metal detector and came down the concourse to check the flight number.
When Broker got to the actual airplane door he flipped his badge and talked to the attendant. When he’d dropped off the rental car he’d made arrangements with the airport police. He explained that he was a Minnesota state investigator and he had to get back into the terminal without going back up the walkway. The attendant nodded and directed him to the maintenance stairway. Broker went down the stairs and rode a baggage cart back to the terminal.
He threaded through a subterranean warren of baggage conveyors and went for a phone.
He dialed Nina’s in Ann Arbor. No answer. Damn. He paced in a break area and drank a cup of coffee. An airport cop met him with a concourse buggy and whisked him underground to his car.
An hour later Broker had his baggage checked and was waiting in the underground on another flight to the Twin Cities. He thought of calling Ed Ryan to keep an eye on his aborted Northeast flight into Minneapolis-St. Paul, to see if anybody interesting turned up to meet it. He decided against it. Too many people were already involved.
He had a last cigarette in New Orleans, out of sight, in a baggage handler laughing-place behind a deplaning ramp. Then he tried Nina’s again. No answer. He tried J.T.’s home but got the machine. Everybody was stuck in between. Hoping that Danny Larkins was on the job, he boarded his airplane.
37
“She didn’t call you?”
“Nah, man, nothing,” said J.T. who had gone out to meet Nina’s plane and checked the manifest when she wasn’t on it. J.T. was working, so Broker had to keep paging him. They were having their sixth phone conversation in five hours. It was 11:45 P.M. Broker leaned, exhausted, over a telephone in the lobby of the Minneapolis Airport Holiday Inn. His arm ached from lugging the heavy bowling bag. He had taken a room when he got in, early afternoon. Nina was nowhere in sight. Had left no messages.
Broker thought about calling the Michigan State Police, but decided to wait and tried her apartment again. Nothing.
He had called the Liberty State Bank in Ann Arbor just before they closed and a tight-ass banker had given him a lecture on the Right to Financial Privacy Act. Broker’s name over the phone was not enough to authenticate his identity. The banker would not confirm or deny that Nina Pryce had been in his office. He called J.T. again.
“I need a favor,” said Broker.
“I thought I was already doing you a favor,” said J.T. in that apprehensive voice.
“Could you get free for a day? I made three reservations for a hop to Duluth. We can rent a car and get to Devil’s Rock.”
“Uh-huh?”
“Leaves at five-”
“In the morning?”
“Yeah. There’s a guy in county up in St. Louis, he gets out noon tomorrow, thirty-six-hour rule. I’m going to fuck him up and…well, if you aren’t there I just might overdo it.”
“This an open case?”
“This is personal.”
“And it’s got to do with Nina being missing?”
“Could be. I shouldn’t have left her alone.”
“You going to tell me about it?”
“Ah, there could be a problem with perjury.”
Silence. “Airport Holiday Inn.”
“Right.”
“Fly to Duluth.”
“Yeah, J.T.”
“Fuuack. Gimme an hour.”
At 2:15 A.M. Broker kneed J.T., who was dozing next to him, and shot out of the couch in the Holiday Inn lobby when Nina Pryce marched through the door in the company of a guy with a handlebar mustache who looked like a side of buffalo squeezed into jeans and cowboy boots. Bobbing in a porcupine quill aura of caffeine and adrenaline, hair frizzed, pupils enlarged; she crowed in hollow-cheeked triumph, “I’m in the wrong business. I should be the freakin’ detective.”
“Where the hell have you been?” demanded Broker.
“Meet Danny Larkins. Hello, J.T.,” said Nina.
“Always a pleasure.” J.T. yawned. Broker’s hand disappeared into Larkins’s giant hoof.
“Two guys,” said Larkins. “They picked us up in Ann Arbor and followed us to Lansing.”
“Lansing?” mumbled Broker.
“I’ll explain,” said Nina. She stared quizzically at Broker’s lopsided posture and at the bowling bag grafted to his right hand.
“We lost them at the Lansing airport when we got on the shuttle to Detroit. I was the last guy on the plane and they did not board,” said Larkins.
“You get a description?” asked Broker.
“I saw them, Broker, you can ask me,” Nina interjected.
Larkins yawned. “One’s tall, Caucasian, middle-aged but strong like a carpenter. Looks like a fucking hound dog. Wore sunglasses. The other was ordinary white bread. They stayed in their car, a gray Nova. They must have thought they were the president with a state cruiser in front and behind.”
