The Price of Blood pb-1

by Chuck Logan

  “I want everyone to get what they deserve.” Her brows knit, witchy, and her eyes shot a spark of wrath from way back in the cypress swamps. “You know what I want.”

  “I won’t do that.”

  “None of us know what we’ll do when we finally stare ten tons of gold in the face.”

  And that was the first truthful statement he’d heard in New Orleans. He said, “I’d say there’s a good chance Cyrus and Bevode could wind up in a Communist jail. Will that do?”

  “I already know that.” She threw up her hands. “Hell, they know that. Can you guarantee me he’ll go to jail before something happens to me?” she demanded.

  “I’ll give it a hell of a try.”

  “Phillip, did you really leave a letter implicating Cyrus in a lawyer’s office?”

  “Nah, why let word get out.”

  She shook her head. “Are you a cop or a thief? They go together easily enough down here but I don’t know about Minnesota.”

  They listened to the rain as Broker considered her question and lit a cigarette and smoked half of it. He turned to her. “Two questions. Can you help me get into that safe? Second, why would you?”

  “Yes,” she replied with finality. And, “To hurt him.”

  He believed the smolder in her eyes. For now.

  “What about that zoned-out kid on the stairs?” he asked.

  “We’ll spike his malt. Hiram and I.”

  Broker raised his trimmed eyebrows.

  She gave him a wry smile. “Cyrus once told me the army is run by clerks in peacetime and radiomen in wartime. Well, down here, homes of a certain station are run by the staff. Hiram gets Virgil a malt and a bucket of fried chicken every night. Don’t worry about him.” She cocked her head and concern pursed her lips. “I know you need money to help your folks, and that makes sense, but I’ll bet you’ve never stolen anything in your life.”

  Broker had thought about this a lot. “It’s not stealing. It’s like…capturing the flag.”

  “Ye God, this is for keeps. Men are such kids.”

  Broker drew himself up. “Some men,” he said stiffly.

  She peeled out of the T-shirt, rolled off the bed, and stooped for her dress. “I didn’t really want to do it with you anyway,” she said as the silk slithered over her tanned arms and fell to her knees. “Nothing personal. I just don’t like it anymore.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “No. Look, how do I get the damn key?”

  She spoke matter of factly as she dressed, called for a cab, and brushed her hair. “After midnight no one should be up except Hiram. He’ll be down in the den watching TV. Cyrus always locks up before he goes to bed, but I’ll leave the French doors to the study open. You can climb a tree, can’t you?”

  Broker nodded impatiently.

  “Okay.” Lola put on her coat. “Cyrus sleeps with the key on a thong around his neck. He always keeps his right hand tight in a fist around it. But if he’s lying on his back and he snores, poke him firmly in the left side. He’ll turn over and let go of the key and stop snoring.”

  She held out her hand. He took it and she said, “If you find Jimmy Tuna they’ll come after you hard. If you can detain Bevode it might help.”

  “As in ‘permanently’?”

  “No. Cyrus won’t go to Vietnam without him.” She slipped a business card from her pocket and handed it to him. The card was for the Century Riverside Hotel, 49 Le Loi Street, Hue, Vietnam. Imperial Room was written in flowing felt tip across the calligraphy-swirl red capital-C logo. “You’ll need all the help you can get once you’re over there. Till then.” She peered at him and was gone. He closed the door behind her.

  Broker stared at the card and filled in the silent question that had been in Lola’s eyes: If you get over there.

  35

  Broker removed the bowling bag from the closet and changed into his dark outfit while he had a conversation with himself in the bathroom mirror. If she wasn’t for real, he was on his way to eat a twelve-gauge. But he had something to prove to himself and he was going to do it.

  He’d put LaPorte on a pedestal once. Now that pedestal was a stack of stolen gold.

  Cut him off at the knees.

  He sat down on the toilet and stared at his injured thumb. Could slow him up. Slowly he unbandaged it and gingerly removed the gauze that stuck to the infected sutures.

  First he lightly dabbed some Vaseline on the finger and looped a single layer of gauze around it. The jelly held the gauze in place. He took a deep breath and eyed the roll of adhesive tape on the sink counter.

  He started to whistle “Everything’s Coming Up Roses.” When he wrenched the first turn of tape around the thumb all his saliva poured out at once. He spit it into the sink, took a second tight turn, and all his saliva dried up. When he’d finished, his whistling sounded like a shaky bone xylophone. There. Armored in adhesive. He tested it against the sink. Still painful as hell but less vulnerable.

  Then he strapped his.45 on and pulled on the light raincoat and Nikes. He smiled at the black wool watch cap, dropped it in the bag, and padded down the back stairs from his hotel room. This is how it all started.

  He’d rented a gray V8 Buick, in case he had to drive fast. Now he spread a street map of New Orleans on the seat and studied it by the dome light. He decided on the residential neighborhoods west of LaPorte’s place to find what he needed.

  Broker drove through the rain for three hours, back and forth, up and down quiet side streets under overarching canopies of old oaks and Spanish moss that shivered in the storm. On his third try he found what he was looking for. When he had it wrapped in his bowling bag he turned the car back toward the LaPorte mansion.

  He parked a block away. He quartered toward the house in the cheap gray raincoat and light slip-on rubber boots. The bowling bag was in his right hand, the.45 snug in its harness across his chest. He walked past a flower bed and a damp humus of soil and orchids brought back tatters of Lola’s perfume, a scent of murder, chilly bright and sharp as a fishhook. But this was payback for Bevode, moonlight financing, and a personal challenge he meant to slap in Cyrus LaPorte’s face.

  A trickle of lightning silently spiderwebbed the trees and the creepy turrets and gables jittered against the electric sky.

  Like a fucking pirate ship. Then came the boom.

  He slipped along the alley fence until he came to the overgrown portion he’d spied early in the afternoon. Then he placed the three trash cans, making sure their covers were secure. One, then two, in a stack. Steps. He climbed the cans and tossed his bag over the fence. Then he gripped the thick vines against the spear tips with his right hand and swung himself up, slid over on the bumpy massed vines, and dropped down on the other side.

  As a peal of thunder smacked the blowing trees, Broker slid along the inky hedge. The yard lights were out and the interior to the house was dark except for lights in the kitchen and another room downstairs. Fainter hall and stairway lights upstairs.

  He came to the base of the oak tree and squeezed past it and through the hedge and came out on the pool side. A dozen feet away, through the window, he saw Virgil Fret slouched in a chair at the kitchen table, nodding. An empty bucket of fried chicken sat next to a tall milkshake. Grease spots dribbled on his white T-shirt and the static on a TV screen three feet away on the counter monitored his brain waves. A bright, blocky 9mm pistol was stuffed into his waist band. Broker could almost hear him snoring through the steady rain.

  Too perfect. Like Lola’s hair. Keep going.

  He crept to the back of the home until he could observe the other light. Hiram sat in a den at the other side of the first floor, watching television. He returned to the dark corner formed by the hedge and the tree.

  He separated the looped handles of the bag and inserted his arms, effectively making the bag a backpack. The light cotton gloves had serrated rubber grips. He measured his distance and leaped up, seizing a low branch with his
strong right hand, grunting as his knees clamped the slippery bark.

  Sweat and rain blurred his vision as he struggled up the trunk, finally gaining the larger branches. With hand-and footholds he gained the branch he wanted. Balancing, he inched over the hedge.

  Now the decision. Try to leap for the gallery or take the shorter jump to the drainpipe.

  He figured the drainpipe wouldn’t hold. He gathered himself and sprung for the railing. He hit it mid-chest level. Locked his good hand over it. Pots of impatiens wobbled in their crockery saucers but the sound was drowned by the wind and rain. Nothing fell to the pool deck.

  Out of the rain, under the balcony, he quickly stripped off the raincoat and the boots, furled them, and tucked them aside. He removed the wet gloves and put on a fresh pair. The French doors swung open. No need for the jimmy.

  Dry as bone, he entered the sleeping home of Cyrus LaPorte like a bad dream.

  He squatted just inside the study until his eyes adjusted. He listened, separating out the sounds of the house from the storm. Television downstairs. Roof timbers creaking. Checked his wristwatch: 2:13 in the morning.

  Then he left his bag and crept down the varnished maple hallway to LaPorte’s bedroom. His eyes wandered up the stairwell to the third floor. Was she asleep? Or laying in her bed wide-eyed as a girl the night before the prom.

  LaPorte curled in the fetal position on the king-sized bed. Aquarium shadows undulated over him, cast by branches dancing in a streetlight and the grid of window sashes. He wore pajama bottoms. No sheet. The grizzled hair on his chest was white as hoarfrost.

  His right hand clenched against that silvery hair and slowly, in the weaving shadows, Broker picked out the irregular shape of the thong around LaPorte’s neck.

  Broker squatted behind the gun cabinet, where a flash of lightning would not delineate him, and waited. After a few minutes he could smell the sleeping man, a halitosis of sour alcohol and digestive juices gusting through raw sirloin. His breathing was deep and regular.

  Ten minutes later the sound of the television stopped downstairs. Broker strained his ears, thought he heard faint sounds. Hiram going to bed. Must sleep downstairs. Nothing from the kitchen. He wondered if Virgil made rounds. Used an alarm of some kind to wake up.

  His sweat felt like a swarming antbath, his legs started to cramp. He blinked to clear his eyes. His gloved hand checked the scissors tucked into his waistband and then squeezed his own neck pendant to calm himself.

  Lola was right. And Nina would second her. A lot of what men did was childish. Lord of the Flies childish.

  Forty-five tense, cramped minutes passed. Then, after a particularly loud clap of thunder, LaPorte squirmed in a stuttering white flash.

  Rolled on his back. Good. His left hand pawed the sheets briefly. Broker held his breath as LaPorte gurgled slightly, then stronger. C’mon, man, saw some wood.

  And finally, slowly, rhythmically, Cyrus LaPorte began to snore, a deep nasal gurgle, the troughs followed by long wheezes.

  Broker gave it ten more minutes. Checked his watch again. It was almost four. Be dawn soon. The storm was lessening.

  Gotta do it now. He eased around the side of the bed and leaned his right arm across the sheets. How would a wife poke a sleeping man? He tried to remember. Kim had always jabbed him with her elbow. Would his fist feel like an elbow? Probably not. The angle would be wrong.

  Absurdly, Broker carefully crawled into bed with Cyrus LaPorte and lay next to him. What would J.T. say? Fuck that. This was one story he wasn’t telling anybody.

  Broker inhaled, gathered up his nerve, held it, and jammed his right elbow into LaPorte’s side. LaPorte grunted but continued to snore. Broker’s hand quivered, about to reach for the Colt. Then he jammed him again, harder, deciding that Lola would not have a light touch faced with this ungodly racket.

  LaPorte sighed, the snoring ceased, and he rearranged himself, turning toward Broker who lay wide-eyed as LaPorte threw out a sleep-heavy right arm that landed on Broker’s hip. The dense shadow of the key lay on the sheet between them.

  Then LaPorte snuggled toward Broker and his right arm found a comfortable perch on Broker’s ass.

  Broker gasped. He had been holding his breath for almost a minute. Ever so slowly he eased the shears from his waistband and delicately snared the thong in the blades. Snip. He took another breath and gently reeled the leather out from between LaPorte’s throat and the pillow.

  Getting dizzy, he made himself breathe through his nose to calm down and closed his hand around the key. LaPorte stirred at the sound and moved closer. Like some precoital shimmy from the insect kingdom, LaPorte slowly squirmed his bony hips closer.

  Broker sat up, clutching the key, and slid away from LaPorte’s hand and pushed the other pillow toward the man. LaPorte grumbled and slowly folded himself around the pillow.

  In the hall Broker let out a deep breath and realized he was almost giddy with laughter, this insane helium balloon filling his chest. Taking very disciplined steps, he went back down the hall into the study.

  The key did not open the lock easily. It had to be inserted, turn one set of antique tumblers then inserted deeper. His hand was shaking when the lock finally popped.

  A corkscrew of excitement cored him and left his toe-nails tingling. So this is why the assholes do it. Broker had never seen bars of gold before. A wet mercury gleam in a flicker of lightning. With raised Chinese characters on them. Gold. Seven ingots. Cleaned up and shiny in the dark. Heavy too. Over five pounds apiece. More where that came from…

  He opened the bowling bag and removed the bundle of hotel towels. Set it aside and transferred the gold to the bag.

  Just crossing a line, he told himself. Not the line.

  He made himself quiet down to listen. Then he tiptoed back down the hall to make sure LaPorte was still out. Like a baby. Okay. Go back for the prize.

  The thick antique glass crock was banded and studded with discolored brass ribs. And it was damn near as heavy as three of the gold bars. He held it up and tried to decipher the contents in the weak light. Slosh. Looked like a rotten log in swamp water. Carefully he unwrapped the bundle of towels and swaddled the container. Used more towels to wedge it among the gold.

  Okay. Then he took the seriously dead cat that had been wrapped in the towels and placed it in the safe. It wasn’t completely black, but close enough. The first two he’d come upon were entirely wrong, a tabby and a spotted gray. Waffled with the tire tread of the vehicle that had flattened it, the cat’s viscera and bones curled like Technicolor fettuccine around the squashed fur. Welcome home to New Orleans, motherfucker.

  Broker left the safe door open.

  He left the key in the lock, put on his raincoat and boots, and slipped the bag over his shoulders. As he adjusted to the heft of the weight he looked up in a tremble of lightning. Royale LaPorte’s cracked enigmatic smile flickered down from the painting.

  Like he approved.

  A flash flood of adrenaline compensated for the weight and he made it swiftly down the tree. He opened the bag, took out the glass crock, waited for a lightning-thunder stroke, and smashed the container on the cement walk by the pool.

  The smell of history and pirate shanties maybe, briny and gruesome. Worse to touch it. Yuk. But Broker resolutely picked up the squishy, blackened hand and, in another crackle of lightning, saw that the fingernails had grown curled and thick as claws.

  Real monsters this time.

  He mounted a lawn chair and impaled the hand, wrist-down, with a sickening crunch on a lilac spear on the iron fence. Slippery damn mess. His gloved fingers struggled with it, but when he left, the middle finger was extended skyward and the other digits were folded back.

  36

  At 7:55 A.M.Broker leaned in the shadow of the gallery at the front door of the Doniat. Waiting on a cab and wondering if Cyrus LaPorte would show. Across the street, black kids in blue jumpers and slacks, white shirts and blouses, were herded by nuns toward the coloni
al whitewash of an Ursaline mission.

  He’d treated himself to an expensive pair of sunglasses and wore them now to disguise his bloodshot, sleepless eyes. The gold bars were tucked into the locked trunk of his rented car. Before dawn, he’d left the vehicle in the airport police garage at the New Orleans airport. He’d cabbed back into the city.

  His sports coat was open, the stump of the Colt was loose in the holster, and his airline ticket was tucked into the waistband of his jeans. He wore the black T-shirt with the city’s name spelled in dead alligators. He was drinking a Jax beer for breakfast.

  The big navy-blue Seville with tinted windows came around the corner so fast and low on its suspension that it raked sparks off the bricks and almost demolished a languidly moving mule-drawn carriage full of tourists. The school kids had excellent drive-by reflexes. They scattered and ran for cover.

  Broker smiled and took another sip of beer. He was enjoying himself. His thumb, still wrapped in adhesive, hardly bothered him.

  The car doors sprung open. Virgil Fret, his face as chalky as uncut cocaine, hopped out of the driver’s side and did a little stationary dance like he had to take a piss. His hand hovered to his baggy shirt. Cyrus LaPorte was entombed in the back seat in burgundy upholstery like an albino in an air-conditioned cave. His color seemed off, but that could have been the tinted glass.

  Broker ignored Virgil and pointed his beer bottle at LaPorte. “Get out and stand in the sun,” he said in a cordial voice.

  “Think you’re pretty smart,” said LaPorte, pushing up and out of the seat. He was ashen in the thick morning 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.”