The Price of Blood

by Chuck Logan

  “Did Tuna tell you what it was about?”

  “Jimmy Tuna was a very messed-up guy by the time he agreed to see me. I figured—the way his mind was working—he probably forgot it even happened.”

  “This is looking more and more like Tuna’s show. Assume everything he did was for a reason.”

  She nodded. “It placed the two of them together and it got me thinking.”

  Broker sat back abruptly. “Nineteen-eighty,” he muttered, stabbing the air with his index finger. The shadow of an idea nibbled, tantalizing, but refused to take shape. Gone.

  He clicked his teeth together. “So then you got into your scene with Tuna.”

  “Suddenly he puts me on his visitors list. The first visitor he’d had since LaPorte in 1980. He never mentioned Nam or the gold or my dad. All he’d talk about was funerals. And how much they cost. The advantages and disadvantages of cremation. Whatever. We talked for hours about funerals. He was worried he couldn’t pay for it. So I gave him five grand for his alleged funeral expenses.”

  Broker held up his good hand. “Okay, here’s the thing. If we’re going to work together we have to understand each other.”

  “Sure,” she said, not quite following.

  “You’ve got this overall picture and you jam in the pieces. I have to work with pieces and see how they fit into patterns…”

  Nina shook her head.

  “Look,” said Broker. “Tuna’s a retired master sergeant. He had more than twenty years in. They don’t stop your pension because you’re in jail. He’s been collecting a pile of bread for nearly twenty years. He didn’t need your money.”

  Nina slumped back, chastised. “I totally missed it.”

  “Not your fault,” said Broker, starting to warm to it. “You follow Mars, the god of the overworld. I follow Pluto, I turn over rocks in the underworld.”

  “Christ, you sound like your mother,” Nina quipped and sagged in her chair, brows knit, reappraising. “When you were talking to Mike last night she was quizzing me on astrology. My birth time. She said you had this heavy influence, a Mars-Pluto conjunction.” She studied Broker’s face and said slowly, “Unlimited potential for good or evil…”

  Broker grinned. “Irene’s brain is stuck back in the McGovern campaign.”

  Nina worried her lower lip between her teeth. “Okay, so Tuna…I played along. I figured he’d talk eventually. The day he was supposed to get out I made him an appointment at a mortuary in Ann Arbor. He said he wanted to see the coffin. He wanted to know who did the actual digging. What were the exact dimensions of the grave. Gruesome stuff like that.”

  “But he got out early.”

  “Left me standing at the prison gate in a tastefully cut black dress. When I got home a package was waiting with my apartment caretaker, with the Newsweek page and the note about you.”

  “When did he get out?”

  “Ten days ago. I walked a circle in my carpet and got completely wired into this thing. I wondered if LaPorte had nabbed him so I flew to New Orleans, rented a car, and hung around LaPorte’s house.”

  “How are you paying for this?”

  “Mom’s insurance, her savings, and money from the sale of her house.”

  “How much?”

  “Enough for anything we might need to do. Within reason.” She paused. “And going to Vietnam is definitely within reason. Which reminds me, I have visa forms.”

  “Confident, aren’t you.”

  She adjusted the scarf on her neck. “Tuna wasn’t there, but a lot of other people were. I followed some of them to a restaurant in the French Quarter.”

  “People like Fret?”

  “No. Oceanographers. Greenpeace guys. They were all staying in the Quarter. And they hung out in this restaurant on Decatur Street. They were throwing around a lot of money, so I did a little makeover and got next to one of them.”

  “The tattoo, the girly outfit?”

  Nina nodded. “This nice young guy named Toby was smitten with my tattoo and impressed me with tales of taking pictures of the bottom of the South China Sea.”

  “He took the picture?”

  “Correct, he was just back from a month on the Lola. They were documenting illegal oil drilling, taking water samples, stuff like that. He said they had way more high-tech stuff than they needed: a diving sphere, submersibles. But then he said something weird, the crew didn’t get to do a dive. They were flown out—bang—just like that, immediately after they located the wreck. Some rough-looking Cajuns came in, salvage guys from Louisiana.”

  “Divers,” said Broker.

  She nodded. “So I encouraged Toby to think he could get lucky if he took me back to LaPorte’s house to a going-away pool party. That’s where I met Fret. He hit on me. But I snuck into the house and rifled the office. I found the maps and the pictures under his blotter on the desk. There’s a safe in his office and I wish I could have got a look into it. Fret must have spotted me coming out.”

  Broker leaned back thoughtfully. “Think about that,” he said.

  She met his gaze. After a moment she said, “It was too easy.”

  Broker nodded. “Remember last winter. The snowstorm. That restaurant in Wisconsin where we met?”

  “Sure.”

  “I bet LaPorte had someone following you, probably sitting in the next booth. He’s probably had you watched ever since Tuna agreed to meet with you.”

  She eyed him, looking a little uneasy after his last remarks. “Okay. Then it really got weird. I called back to Ann Arbor to check my voice mail and there’s this creepy voice on my machine. You know, ‘Hi, Nina, looking forward to seeing you.’ So, being very paranoid at this point, I wisely deduced I was in over my head and took Tuna’s advice to find you. Somehow Fret tailed me.” She looked frankly into Broker’s eyes. “What’s your take on it?”

  “They’re after Jimmy. You were his only contact. Now I’m a loose end connected to you. And Jimmy Tuna always was a cagey fella. They were watching you and I bet that’s how Jimmy slipped by them,” said Broker.

  “He convinced me his brain had turned to oatmeal. I keep going over our talks. We’d sit in this room at Milan.”

  “Describe it.”

  “Wooden tables, chairs, plastic ashtrays. A lot of black guys and their families and—”

  “C’mon—”

  “The black guys, the young ones bothered him. Not that he said it but I could see it. And then…he’d talk about the building, the prison itself. How he’d miss the walls, the walls protected him. You could trust the walls. He said that a lot the last time I saw him and he’d smile at me.”

  “Did he ask for anything else besides the money?”

  “A picture of me. But that isn’t it. It’s the other reference, to the walls.” Her voice accelerated. “Yesterday morning, at the hospital, I checked voice mail again. Same creepy voice, but…”

  She picked up Broker’s phone off the table and punched in a number, waited, punched in another number, and handed the receiver to him.

  A computer voice said, You have one new message. To listen to your messages, press one.

  Broker pressed one.

  First message, left Thursday, May—at 11:03 A.M.: A slow rasping voice. Aldo Ray on downers crawling over broken glass and enjoying it. “Yeah, ah, Miss Pryce. My name’s Waldo and you don’t know me but I know what you look like and I, ah, put you on my list if you know what I mean.” Broker replayed the message and then erased it. He stared at Nina.

  “Walls could be Waldo?” she wondered aloud.

  “You know,” said Broker. “I can go into a prison and talk to a convict in total confidence, you can’t. You always have guards around. And LaPorte can afford to buy a few prison guards. Maybe that’s why Tuna wanted you to get me. To have a secure conversation. That’s why he talked in circles to you…dropping bread crumbs—”

  “Clues?” said Nina.

  “Could be.” Broker rubbed his palms together, carefully, because of the thumb.
“Let’s shake the system and see if anything falls out.” He picked up the phone and punched in the number for ATF in St. Paul.

  “Is Ryan there, this is Phil Broker. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s Saturday. Yeah, it looks like a burnt bratwurst.” Broker whistled soundlessly, stared at his swollen thumb. “Hey, Ryan, how do you like Rodney? He’s a real sweetheart, isn’t he. Sure. Look, I need a favor. There’s a federal prisoner who just got out of Milan. Bank robber named James Tarantuna, goes by Jimmy Tuna. Could you find out if he hung with a guy named Waldo in the joint? Another thing. Back in 1980 Tuna got in a beef in the visitors room with a Cyrus LaPorte. Could you check with the FBI and get me all the paper on that. Fax it to Tom Jeffords at the Devil’s Rock cop shop. Right. I’m up north at my cabin resting the thumb.” Broker gave Ryan his number. Said thanks and hung up.

  “So,” said Nina, “Tuna never had a visitor between the time he had the fight with LaPorte and the moment he contacted me.”

  Broker nodded. “Could be he had a buddy inside he confided in and might use as a mailbox. Let’s see what Ryan comes up with in federal corrections.” He stood up.

  “There’s more, he gave me—” she said.

  “Not now. Watch the phone. I need to take a walk.”

  Storm shadows seeped up from the rock crevasses and ran inky between the smooth lakeshore cobbles. Boulders wore an ebony sheen. Broker had to force the charged air into his lungs and then wring it out.

  He walked up the driveway and turned north onto Highway 61. He liked to jog along the shore road, but he usually took Tank on those runs.

  Today he changed his pattern and crossed the highway and took an overgrown gravel lane inland until he came to a buckled, tar, two-lane road that ran parallel to the highway. The creepy old road had grass marching across the washouts and the rickety skeletons of wood-frame houses dotted the brush. It was a depressing place that he usually avoided.

  Nineteen-eighty was stuck in his memory. Don’t try to figure it head on. Unfocus. Trick it out. Think normal thoughts. He turned right on the road and followed it north. Two hundred yards away, screened by dense poplar and birch, he heard the traffic race toward Grand Portage and the casino up there, toward the Canadian border, toward the millennium. The year 2000.

  The smart thing would be to just move up here, run the lodge, live out the century in a landscape that was familiar…But his thoughts turned back to Jimmy Tuna and his fascination with funerals.

  Tuna had not been a normal NCO. A lot of high-ranking officers are abetted by Machiavellian senior sergeants. Tuna was in that mold, with the appearance and the wile of a Renaissance condottieri. Why would he beg for money and fixate on his own last rites over and over with Nina? Funerals. Burial. Graves.

  Another thing about Tuna. Always the joker.

  He stopped in mid-thought. The unmistakable stench of decaying flesh clotted the heavy air. Fifty yards ahead, a black shiny shape spilled from the brush into the road.

  He padded forward, instinctively checking the surrounding forest. Alone with the sweaty zing of cicadas, he closed the distance to the feeding frenzy of the flies.

  A heavy-duty, black plastic garbage bag was dumped in the weeds. Under the fat swarming deer flies, Broker saw the boned-out ribcage of a deer and the maggots that foamed on the shreds of sun-spoiled meat. His gag reflex cocked.

  Another argument for winter.

  Broker stepped back and grabbed for a cigarette. Why he’d started smoking in Vietnam—it put a lid on that particular odor. He thought of Bevode Fret sitting in jail and mused that New Orleans might smell a little bit like the deer carcass, slick with gamey sweat on the edge of the Tropic of Cancer.

  Then the shadow flitted in his memory and he clearly recalled the Chinook struggling up over the flare-lit tile rooftops of Hue, straining with the dangling cargo net while tracer rounds stitched the rainy night.

  Broker grinned. Jimmy, you sneaky old fucker, what are you up to? He turned and ran back toward the cabin.

  21

  NINA JUMPED UP FROM A BENCH ON THE BACK porch and waved him in. “He called, the ATF guy.”

  Broker breathing hard, his thumb banging, “What did he say?”

  “Wouldn’t talk to me, said for you to call him back.”

  Broker punched in Ryan’s number. Nina plucked the cordless phone from the bedroom.

  Ryan said, “Your guy’s cell mate is a lifer who’s never getting out. Name is Waldo Jenke. He’s a real yard bull. I mean big. Name he goes by in the joint is Walls. Whiskey alpha lima lima sierra.”

  “What’s he in for?” But Broker was thinking. Jimmy needed someone to watch his back if Cyrus was after him.

  “Creepy shit. He kidnapped children and their pets in Michigan and Illinois in the late seventies. When he was through with them he buried them together on his farm. He was back before video. He took Polaroids.”

  “Any notes on him?”

  “Ah, he fixated on pictures of his victims. That’s what caught him. They found a picture of a Rottweiler named Heidi in his truck during a routine traffic stop. They let him out of maximum security five years ago and put him out to pasture in Milan. The bureau hasn’t been forth-coming on the paperwork thing.”

  “Keep trying. Thanks, Ryan.”

  Nina came into the main room and gave Broker a thumbs-up sign. He went to the fridge, took out a bottle of Grain Belt and popped it open on the opener screwed to the counter. Grinning, he kicked open the screen door and went out through the front porch, down the stairs and the path, and out to his favorite rock. Nina followed him.

  He sat down and watched the storm marshal its artillery.

  “Nineteen-eighty.” Broker savored a swig of beer and poked the bottle at Nina. “In July 1980 the gold market peaked. That’s why LaPorte lost his cookies with Tuna.”

  “All that gold appreciating like hell and it’s rusting at the bottom of the ocean and only Tuna knows where it went down.”

  “Gold doesn’t rust,” said Broker.

  “LaPorte found a helicopter wreck,” Nina speculated. “But maybe it’s the wrong wreck—”

  “Could be. And if Jimmy knows where it is, he’s willing to tell us something. He sure isn’t making himself available to LaPorte.” Broker pulled Tuna’s crumpled note from his pocket, smoothed it out and pointed to Trin’s name.

  Nina cocked her head. “Trin and my dad were friends. But I don’t see how he fits.”

  “It could mean that Tuna, in prison, somehow located Trin in Vietnam after twenty years.” The idea excited Broker. “If Trin’s in our future he’d work better with somebody he knows. And the trail Tuna is setting up probably needs an investigator to follow.” Broker paused. “The thing about Jimmy Tuna, he loved pulling practical jokes. And setting booby traps. Fall asleep on ambush, Jimmy would tie your bootlaces together.”

  “So it could be a trap for us, too?”

  “That’s the fun, isn’t it?” said Broker with a tight smile.

  “What about Trin? The phone number?” Nina asked. “You want to give it a try?”

  “Let’s wait. I don’t want to bump into Trin blind after twenty years.”

  “He helped save your neck in Quang Tri City. You saved his. I thought he was a buddy?”

  “Nguyen Van Trin was a strange guy. He fought for the Commies and for us and was disgusted with both sides. He even designed his own flag. A white lotus in a sea of fire.” Broker shook his head. “The only person Trin is buddies with is the ghosts of his ancestors. We’ll wait.”

  Their voices had dropped a register and their heads had drawn close. Nina’s eyes were slits. “Now that you’re hooked on gold fever, let me explain where my interest lies. He knows how to get LaPorte. Jimmy does.”

  “Wishful thinking.”

  “No. He knows. He showed me. But it was like the pension. I didn’t see it.” Her voice trailed off and her eyes conjured.

  Her enthusiasm was going to be a definite obstacle. But he needed her. How much he wasn’t s
ure. At least to talk to this Jenke character and hopefully pick up Tuna’s trail. As an excuse to see LaPorte.

  “How about we find Jimmy Tuna and ask him,” Broker said with a gentle hint of rebuff. “And let’s spend some of your money. Grab a charter to Ann Arbor and talk to Waldo Jenke. Then I’ll need a day in New Orleans to see LaPorte before Bevode Fret gets out of jail.”

  “There’s fifty thousand in the bank in Ann Arbor. I’ll spend it all to clear Dad’s name and to see LaPorte stand trial.”

  Broker cautioned her again. “None of this is proof. The fact LaPorte may have found gold in the ocean doesn’t connect him with the alleged robbery or your dad’s death.”

  “But he was in command,” said Nina.

  “True,” said Broker patiently. “But he wasn’t there. And Tuna would have to change his story and impeach his earlier testimony, which means he’s a liar. And he’s dying. LaPorte has the right to cross-examine his accuser. And there’s no court with the jurisdiction to charge LaPorte for a criminal act during an undeclared war twenty years ago in a country that doesn’t even exist anymore.”

  Nina stood up and put her hands on her hips. “Wrong. When you take that oath to the U.S. Constitution, it’s forever, mister. I told you. Tuna knows a way.” She spun and tramped up the path to the cabin. A minute later she came back down the path and tossed a thick oxblood-covered text book into his lap. Broker read the cover: UNITED STATES CODE ANNOTATED, TITLE 10, ARMED FORCES, 1 TO 835.

  Broker clicked his teeth. The UCMJ. The Uniform Code of Military Justice. A Post-it note marked the pages. He opened to it and struggled through a paragraph underlined in yellow marker: “803. Article 3. Jurisdiction to try certain personnel: (a) Subject to section 843 of this title (article 43), a person who is in a status in which the person is subject to this chapter and who committed an offense against this chapter while formally in a status in which the person was subject to this chapter is not relieved from amenability to the jurisdiction of this chapter for that offense by reason of a termination of that person’s former status.”