The Price of Blood

“He wanted to know when our plane arrived, pretty straightforward stuff.”

“The revolution musta gone to hell, huh? They’re all nuts to make a buck off tourists over there now. Trin too, I guess.” He fell back heavily into the chair, spent.

“All these years. You were planning to go back for it…” said Broker.

“Yeah. I was dumb back in seventy-six. Thought I could bankroll the trip with that bank job. Not dumb anymore…aw, shit.” He feebly waved his hand. “Take a break.” He pointed to the Coleman cooler and his hollow eyes took on a keen luster of anticipation. “What’s for lunch?”

Nina took out eight cold bottles of San Miguel beer and some ham and cheese sandwiches. There was a Tupperware container in the bottom. It contained a neatly folded white cloth napkin. Tuna held out his hand, fingers fluttering in a gimme gesture. She handed over the cloth, which he unfolded with great ceremony. A plastic packet full of white powder lay in the center.

He flipped up a corner of a towel that covered a low redwood table next to his chair and revealed a syringe, a spoon, and a length of rubber tubing. Methodically he tied off his frail arm and pumped his fist. Then he pushed some of the powder into the spoon with his little finger. He thumbed a plastic lighter and cooked up. When the chemical bubbled and cooled to liquid, he inserted the syringe and drew down a shot. Then he pumped his hand again.

“Never used smack, not even in the joint. I even joined AA once. Now it’s the only medicine that works,” he said cheerfully, and his hand floated out and touched the plump vein on the hollow of Broker’s right elbow. “Man, what I wouldn’t give for that storm sewer you got in your arm.”

In the short noon shadows they watched Tuna fix. Watched him tremble and nod back in his chair until spittle dribbled from his caked lips and his eyes turned up into his head like a shark before it bites. His voice surged. “So,” he said, grinning directly into the sun. “What took you guys so long?” Then he vomited at a leisurely pace, fouling the emaciated wattles at his throat and his shirt with a mealy steam of dog food that reeked of stomach acid. His bowels released and his upper lip curled up to reveal bloody gums and long, yellowed teeth. Sightless eyes wide open, Jimmy Tuna glared at them like a raging Jolly Roger.

49

“Now what? He’s out cold. What if he dies on us?” Nina muttered. Had to be ninety in the shade. Her arms still bubbled with goosebumps. One hand hugged the small grinning skull and crossbones on her shoulder.

“He’ll come around. We’re what’s keeping him alive,” said Broker. Suddenly he was very thirsty. He saw the powerline running into the cabin. “Let me get this beer out of the sun.” He went into the cool interior. The kitchen was right inside the door. He tried a light switch, saw that the electric worked and spied the icebox. He put the beer inside, found an opener in a drawer next to the sink, and opened two bottles. San Miguel. Tuna’s old favorite.

Nina entered the kitchen, paused for a moment, got her bearings and disappeared into a back room. She returned with towels and clean folded clothing. Then she filled a basin with water and went back out to the deck.

Broker followed her outside and stood in a patch of shade and sipped his beer. Nina bent over Tuna and methodically removed his fouled trousers, bundled them, and tossed them aside.

Broker averted his eyes from Tuna’s emaciation and the tumor that torqued out of his left hip. The Tuna he remembered from twenty years ago had been muscled like a Greco-Roman wrestler. “Do you have to do that right now?”

“Not the first time I’ve seen a man mess his pants,” she muttered and cast a dirtied towel aside and rinsed a fresh one. She tossed the dirty water over the patio, slapped the messy trousers in the empty basin, and handed it to Broker. “Lend a hand, this old jailbird just saved our lives.” Broker set down his beer and went for more water.

Tuna lolled in their hands as they washed his white loose flesh and then pulled on new underwear, a pair of baggy cotton trousers, and a clean T-shirt. Washing their hands in the kitchen they heard someone moving on the stairs…

Tony Sporta stuck his curly head into the kitchen. Sweat dripped from his nose. “He shit his pants again,” he said. “And there’s two dead guys in the woods.” He frowned like he wasn’t sure which of his observations vexed him most.

“Jimmy says you should put the dead guys in the swamp,” said Broker.

“Are you sure you’re a cop?”

“Way down in the swamp,” said Broker.

Sporta threw his hands in the air. He paused long enough to stick the.44 revolver in his pocket and then marched down the stairs, cursing. His voice carried all the way down the field to the trees.

Nina came out of the cabin and stood next to him. “What will Cyrus do now?”

“Keep after us until he knows where it is…” Some wooden wind chimes rattled in the breeze. Tuna’s paper lungs made a shallow rustle. Cicadas buzzed in the brush. “Should have told you before. We may have an ally inside LaPorte’s bunch. We’re supposed to think so, anyway,” he said.

“Who?”

“Someone who hates LaPorte.”

“Broker!”

Broker grinned. “His wife.”

Nina laughed sarcastically. “Wonderful. It’s Terry and the Pirates. And now we got Lola the freaking Dragon Lady.” She rolled her eyes. “All I need. Some glamorous facelift bitch who has a boat named after her.” She squinted. “You slept with her, didn’t you-”

“No I didn’t,” said Broker frankly. “She says we have…mutual interests.”

“I’ll bet.”

“We needed an in with them. Well, I’m in,” Broker patiently explained. “LaPorte has a roving eye for younger women for breeding purposes.” He wiped a handful of sweat from his brow. “Lola thinks she may get to Vietnam and get pushed off that boat that’s named after her and accidentally drown. So turnabout is fair play.”

Nina reached up and clipped his chin. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you go to New Orleans alone. You don’t know anything about women. I tried to tell you in Ann Arbor. They,” she paused, “we, are your weak spot.”

Broker cleared his throat. It was different, explaining this to the woman you slept with the previous night and who turned out to be, in addition to Audie fucking Murphy, Annie fucking Oakley. “She wants someone to, ah, sort of disappear her husband in the course of events. She gets to wear black for a while and haul in the family estate.”

“Someone, Broker? When did you develop this subtle speech impediment?”

“Okay. Me.”

Nina frowned. “I thought we agreed. I don’t want LaPorte murdered. I want him tried.”

Broker stood up, irritated. “Nina, goddammit! There’s no way in hell that can happen.”

“Sonofabitch, I hate this soap opera shit! She bought you off. That’s how you got that gold.”

“She helped me take it, that’s true-”

“Fuck you. You got what you want and now you’re getting cold feet.” She scowled. “I got in bed with you…”

And saved my life. Broker tried to placate her. “We can still nail him. Not exactly the way you want, but maybe we can get him busted by the Vietnamese as a thief. You’ll have to settle for that.”

Jimmy Tuna stirred and opened one cadaverous eye. Then he smiled so slowly that his teeth appeared one by one like corroded yellow bullets in the wrinkled maw of his lips. He croaked emphatically, “Wrong.”