The Price of Blood

“We have to ditch them if we find Tuna,” said Nina.

“When we find Tuna,” said Broker. “It’s in here.” He sat down at the table and spread out the contents of Nina’s folder. He pushed the Italian correspondence aside. He wondered if a man dying of cancer would try to make it to Vietnam. Tuna had prepared this for a long time.

An hour of eye-strain went by as Broker scanned through the records looking for incidental payments that could have gone for a forged passport and ID. Nina’s Reeboks squeegeed on the glossy floor, pacing behind him. J.T. snored lightly, stretched out on three chairs. Finally Broker turned to the checks issued to Ann Marie Sporta. He looked at his watch, got up, and went looking for a phone, hoping that Ed Ryan had gone to bed early the night before.

In silence, red-eyed and grumpy, they drove north from Duluth in a rental car. They stopped in Two Harbors and Broker called Fatty Naslund. He told Fatty to meet him north of town at C.R. Magney State Park, near a violent waterfall called the Devil’s Kettle, where they had played as kids.

Then he called Tom Jeffords at the Devil’s Rock police station and made an arrangement concerning Bevode Fret. Then he called Ed Ryan, who had been shaken out of bed by Broker’s first call and was now at the ATF office and who was grumbling about Broker having used up all his chits. But he was working the computers and talking to the FBI. Broker hung up the phone and found Nina and J.T. sound asleep in the car. Broker drove to the park on stale adrenaline fumes and black Amoco station coffee.

The Kettle was reputed to be bottomless, and while he waited, Broker toyed with the concept of throwing Bevode Fret into it. Another reason to have J.T. along.

Fatty Naslund drove up cautiously in his T-Bird, avoiding mud holes. When he got out he grimaced at the mud splatters along the rocker panels.

He arched a disapproving eye at the rented car and the unmoving forms curled on the seats. “That’s a black guy and a white woman?”

“They’re with me,” said Broker.

Fatty straightened his cuffs. Just the reflex motion. He had been working out and wore a ribbed T-shirt ordered out of a Patagonia catalogue. He was a compulsively lean, neat man who kept a rowing machine in his office at the bank so he could work up a sweat while he watched Rush Limbaugh on cable. He had been perversely nicknamed Fatty by the other kids because he was the banker’s son. Now he lived in fear of excess body weight, had little calipers to pinch and measure his body fat, and went once a month to a clinic in Duluth to submerge in a tank and compute his fat-to-muscle ratio. Fatty was fastidious. He still thought copper pennies counted.

“Little unusual, isn’t this?” said Fatty, striding toward the picnic table where Broker sat. He grinned his best chamber of commerce grin. His brilliant white teeth were so healthy they looked like they had definition and veins in them.

Broker unzipped the bowling bag and methodically removed the seven flat ingots of gold and stacked them in a blazing pyramid in the early morning sun. Fatty’s eyes went wide then cranked down to suspicious slits.

Then Broker took out the Colt, racked the slide back, and sat it beside the metal bars.

“Holy shit,” said Fatty in feigned shock. “This is like payday in basic training. PFC Naslund reports for pay.”

“How long you known me, Fatty?”

“Since kindergarten.”

“You ever know me to throw you a curve on anything?”

“Where’d the gold come from, Phil?” Fatty fingered an ingot, caressing the Chinese ideograms embossed on its surface.

“From a gray area.”

Fatty sat down at the table and carefully prodded the barrel of the.45 with his index finger so the muzzle pointed toward the waterfall upstream. “A gray area like New Orleans?”

“What gives you that idea?”

Fatty pointed at Broker’s chest. “The T-shirt. And certain inquiries from a big property management firm down there. I faxed them Mike’s loan history this week.”

“You hear about the guy who killed Mike’s dog?”

Fatty nodded. “All over town.”

“He works for the guy who owns the property outfit in New Orleans.”

Fatty stared at the gold with a pained smile. “Ah, look, Phil-”

“Don’t worry. It’s going to wind up perfectly legal.”

“But it isn’t right now, is it?”

“Remember how you always ask me about what I do? This fantasy of yours, about being involved in an undercover operation?”

“Yeeaah…”

“Well, this is going to be the biggest thing I ever tried.”

“But is it legal? You know. Gavels. Juries. Cell doors clanging shut.”

“Fatty, this is evidence,” said Broker seriously.

“Then why is it sitting on a picnic table in Magney State Park instead of on the attorney general’s desk?”

“I’m in the preliminary stage of an investigation.”

“Yeaah?”

“In the meantime, I’d like you to secure these items in a safe place and tell absolutely no one.”

“That’s all?”

“No. Chain up the developer you sicced on my dad. One way or another this gold is going to settle that note.”

“You know, Phil, there’s enough weight here to take care of the loan. Maybe throw in a new Lexus,” estimated Fatty. “Hmmm, and it looks real old. If it’s rare it could be worth even more…” He reached out and petted a bar like it was a cat.

Broker said, “Forget the inquiry from New Orleans. It never happened.”

“Is it legal?” he asked again.

Broker leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “Fatty, it’s exciting. Haven’t you ever wanted to do something…exciting?”

“Jesus, Phil.” Fatty swallowed and looked around the deserted camping area again. “How exciting?” he whispered.

“It’s Communist gold,” whispered Broker.

Fatty Naslund straightened up and said, “Well, in that case, fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.”

38

Broker left Nina with Jeffords at the police station, then made a quick stop at Mike and Irene’s to pick up his truck. Now he whipped the Jeep down gravel back roads, through thick forest. J.T. sat in the passenger seat. “Now I’m going to mess this guy up-” said Broker.

“Like the old days,” yawned J.T.

“But not too much.”

“You know me, pard, the model of restraint,” said J.T. He took out a pair of soft leather gloves and slapped them on his thigh.

The old days.

They had been old-fashioned cops together. Dirty Harry dinosaurs. Back when Broker thought he could make a difference.

He and J.T. worked triage on the streets. They’d developed an eye for who could be saved and who belonged in the toilet. They had agreed on a personal approach. They put the word out that people were accountable to them personally. They told the punks, “If you don’t have a father one will be assigned to you. You can have him or me.”

They were consequences. They were rough. They played Catcher in the Shit. Some of those kids were now in