The Price of Blood Part 16

"Hiram, get on Artis down there to tell the guests not to put the knives, forks, and spoons into the trash containers. Keep it separate. And the gla.s.ses."

"Okay, Mr. Cyrus," the servant replied and shuffled off.

LaPorte sighed. "I've been telling that man for ten years to drop the 'Mister.' Old habits."

"You were saying?" said Broker.

A puff of wind stirred the long curtains and LaPorte said, "Maybe we'll get an afternoon breeze. Let's go out on the balcony."

They sat in wrought-iron chairs as a tremble of impending rain ruffled the cascading impatiens. Beyond the hedges, the wedding party buzzed in pre-event conversation.

LaPorte looked up and found the sun in a hazy hole in the clouds. He stared directly at it unblinking and stated, "The fact is, I'm in a ticklish spot."

Broker hawked, leaned forward, and spit over the balcony. "You don't strike me as the ticklish kind. You're more the agony of psoriasis."

LaPorte cleared his throat. "Who else knows about the map?"

Broker answered offhand. "I called Mel Fisher for an opinion-"

"That's not funny," said LaPorte. "The Hue gold is a remote legend. I'd like to keep it that way. When the war ended the Communists didn't register a complaint that it had been stolen. Which is part of the mystery. It crops up from time to time as a low-key buzz in the international treasure hunting community. But, with Clinton getting ready to normalize relations with Vietnam, and with Nina Pryce waving around the Freedom of Information Act, I suspect interest will start picking up."

"So?"

"So answer the question."

"Nina Pryce. Me."

"Let's cut the bulls.h.i.+t. It's Jimmy Tuna I care about. If you can't see that, we're both wasting our time."

"Okay," said Broker. "He disappeared without a trace from Milan."

"Did you talk to the prison doctor?" asked LaPorte. Broker shook his head. "I did," said LaPorte. "Tuna has weeks left. Maybe days. He always was a hard luck guy..." LaPorte's eyes cruised the far wall where he kept his war mementos. "He married this foxy German girl in sixty-six. She gets over here, gets her citizens.h.i.+p, buys everything in sight, and then sends Tuna this tape of her s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g a guy as a Dear John." LaPorte shook his head. "He played it over and over. Her screaming with bed-springs in the background." LaPorte lapsed into a guttural German accent: "'Fok me, hunny,' Christmas Eve, 1970. Rainy night in the team house on the Laotian border." He sighed and shook his head. "Went off the deep end. Tried to rob a bank...prison all these years. Now cancer."

"Maybe robbing banks was habit forming," said Broker. The words hung in the heavy air with his cigarette smoke.

LaPorte leaned back in his chair, squinted into the sun, and shook his head. "It was the f.u.c.king war. We all went wrong." He turned to Broker. "Bound to happen when you lose human scale." He laughed cynically and slid in and out of past and present tense: "We let them bring in the gadgets. You know, like, they used to pollinate the jungle with these dealy bobs-body heat sniffers. So a monkey comes along and trips one. And it's B-52 time and it starts raining dead monkeys. Not to mention blowing a lot of fine hardwoods to bits..."

His leaden eyes drooped, too heavy for his face and his voice lowered, speaking to himself. "The hill tribesmen told me that the tigers were growing up without learning how to hunt. They just fed on all the dead monkey meat laying around. So they grow up and don't know how to teach their young to hunt..."

Cyrus LaPorte caught himself and laughed. "Do you know that they give recruits these stress cards now in Marine boot camp? If they're feeling abused they hold them up to the drill instructor. G.o.d in heaven; the new gadgeted-up American tiger that never learned how to hunt."

LaPorte became aware that Broker was staring at him and asked softly, "Does it really matter what happened that night?"

"It matters to Nina Pryce."

LaPorte grimaced and exhaled slowly. "Phil, she really doesn't want to know."

"Try me."

"Okay." LaPorte brought his palms down on the wire arms of the chair as if to rise. But it was meant as an emphatic gesture. "I'll f.u.c.king tell you then. Our former worthy foes are less worthy since they opened the door to the west. I'm doing some business over there, building a hotel in Hoi An; great site, virtually untouched. Which means I've had to spread the dash around. Take a few ranking party members out to dinner. Some long cruises on my boat.

"So I asked one of these gentlemen to do a little digging for me and it turns out we didn't know half of what was going on that night."

"Like what?"

LaPorte pointed his finger. "Who was the key to pulling former a.s.sets out of the central provinces?"

"Trin."

"Correct. And what was Trin's first rule?"

"Trust no one." Broker felt his shoulders curl forward, body-armoring against the tug of LaPorte's will.

"And who did Trin trust?"

"Pryce."

"Now, back to my Commie bureaucrat, who was panting like a b.i.t.c.h in heat for the new Land Rover I was going to buy him. He checked around. Didn't take much. A number of people made their reputations capturing Trin. According to this guy, Trin was grabbed in a secure house in Hue because the North Vietnamese were tipped by an American..."

LaPorte paused. "This alleged American arranged a clandestine meet, through a double agent. On the coast. To give up Trin. And hear this. My informant said it was written right in the report: The American was described as having a gold cigarette case."

"What did this guy get in return for handing over Trin?" asked Broker.

LaPorte smiled thinly. "b.a.s.t.a.r.d wouldn't tell me. That'd probably cost another Land Rover."

"Hearsay," said Broker.

"My a.s.s. It was planned in depth. First position Trin as the bait. Then send you in as the decoy. And I tried to defend that sonofab.i.t.c.h..." His eyes scanned the rustling foliage and he said softly, "For which I paid a very steep price." LaPorte stood up abruptly and seized the railing until his knuckles turned white. "Give me a cigarette, please," he asked softly.

There was a time when Broker could not imagine Cyrus LaPorte losing control. He shrugged and held out his pack. LaPorte took one and a light from Broker's lighter.

LaPorte inhaled, blew a stream of smoke and immediately rested two fingers on his left wrist to test his pulse. Broker remembered what his dad had said and he wondered if LaPorte, who was in his early sixties, had glimpsed death creeping the iron lilacs, staking out squatter's rights on his estate. LaPorte tossed the smoke away and made a face. "I haven't had one of those in eight years." He spun on Broker. "So you can see why I'm not crazy about Nina Pryce nosing around in my affairs."

"What do you care. You've found your helicopter."

"G.o.ddammit, man, we've gridded the bottom and sonar mapped the whole area. We've been all over that wreck and we've got bones and coral-wrapped hand grenades, but we've only brought up seven bars of gold," said LaPorte. "It's not there."

"And you think Tuna knows where it is?"

With a glare like point-blank muskets, LaPorte fumed, "Of course I do. Don't f.u.c.k around. So do you!"

29.

THE WOMAN WALKED OUT FROM BENEATH THE BALCONY, staying to the dappled shadows along the right side of the pool deck. Divots of sunlight peeked through the hedge and caught in her dark hair and flowed in snake-skin patterns on her olive arms and legs. She wore a high-necked T-s.h.i.+rt and light shorts like a coat of black cotton paint and she carried a faded blue rubber mat under her arm. She used absolutely every muscle in her body in the simple act of walking.

Broker's eyes stayed fixed on the woman as she knelt and smoothed out her mat.

"I don't know about Minnesota, but down here it's not considered polite to stare at a man's wife," said LaPorte.

"Very attractive," said Broker.

"Really? All you can see is her back."

"And young."

LaPorte snorted. "No, Lola's merely well preserved."

Impolitely, Broker continued to stare at Lola LaPorte as she swung her body through a continuous series of postures. Her limbs swung light as balsa, but they were anch.o.r.ed in the tension of driven pilings.

Yoga. Irene Broker studied it to file down the teeth of aging. But Mom did it on rocks.

LaPorte leaned over the balcony and called out, irritably, "Lola, cut that s.h.i.+t out and come over here."

Lightly she unwound from a pose and stood, staring up at them. Her large eyes, wide cheeks, full lips, and perfect shoulder-length hair communicated a certain taboo physical range: rich guy's wife. As cool in the tropical heat as a pristine winter shadow Lola LaPorte walked halfway to the balcony and put her hands on her hips. "What?" she said, annoyed, not turning her face up.

LaPorte rose and leaned over the balcony. "Mr. Phillip Broker is up here, he's the detective from Minnesota we discussed last night. I get the impression he's embarking on a new career as a blackmailer."

"Is he here to study or to practice?" said Lola in a bored voice. Broker appreciated that the LaPortes, in conversation, volleyed a siege energy of contempt.

LaPorte made a face and lowered his voice. "You married, Broker?"

"Divorced."

"Kids?"

Broker shook his head.

"I wanted kids," said LaPorte in a sour tone. Then he called to his wife. "I was thinking of inviting Mr. Broker to supper."

"Sorry, I have plans," said Broker who didn't want to seem too eager to curry LaPorte's favor.

"So does Cyrus," said Lola sweetly. She waved her wrist idly in parting and returned to her exercise.

LaPorte grimaced and then inclined his palm back toward his office and they went inside and sat in the chairs in front of the desk. This time their eyes were on the same level. "Let's get down to it, Phil. I'll tell you what I want. You tell me what you want."

Broker waited, expressionless.

"I need Nina Pryce contained," said LaPorte. "Bought off, diverted, made happy, whatever it takes. Things are too delicate right now to have a loose cannon on deck. Second, I have to locate Tuna." He held up his hand. "Let me enlarge a bit: I've had Tuna watched for years. Every approach I've made to him he turned down. When Nina started visiting him I had her watched. So, after she went to see you last January, I've had you checked out in detail.

"Bevode can do more than drag his knuckles. He ran a credit profile on you. We know you've been trying to arrange large loans through your employees' credit union. We've been in contact with Neil Naslund, the banker in Devil's Rock. We know about your problem." LaPorte steepled his fingers. "If we can find a way to cooperate, I can make that problem go away."

Broker's turn. He ad-libbed easily.

"The map I gave you is a Xerox. The original shows a grid coordinate circled in grease pencil that pinpoints a location well within the coastal waters of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. And I have the original chopper graphic. And a transcript of an FBI inquiry into a ruckus in the Milan Pen visitor's room between you and Tuna in 1980."

LaPorte stroked his chin ruefully. "Now there's a hitch that Robert Louis Stevenson didn't have to deal with. Xerox machines."

Broker paused to let it sink in. "I left them in a sealed envelope in my lawyer's files in St. Paul. And I wrote a speculative letter that mentions your name frequently. If anything unusual happens to me or Nina Pryce the envelope gets delivered to the United States Attorney. Another copy goes to the Vietnamese Emba.s.sy."

LaPorte glanced at his watch, then smiled. "Maybe you and Bevode Fret are more kin than you think. Have you put a figure on it?"

"First let's get Nina off the table."

LaPorte leaned forward. "Is she really...unbalanced?"

"She's just extreme."

"Okay, okay...What do you think would solve her problem?"

Broker smiled. "To see you hang for killing her father."

LaPorte chuckled. "Does she have a fallback position?"

"I could suggest one," said Broker.

LaPorte opened his hands in an entreating gesture. Broker continued. "You pay for a year of discreet counseling. I mean serious stuff, a psychiatrist. Then you make a good-faith effort to help her get reinstated in the army."

LaPorte sputtered and smiled at the same time, instantly grasping the symmetry in the solution. "Getting back in would make her well, huh?"

"Just my opinion."

LaPorte shook his head. "G.o.d. I'd lose my pension. The good old boys in the army think she's a libber fanatic b.i.t.c.h. She was all over the TV."

"You could do it," Broker said mildly.

"Jesus Christ, I don't know. Maybe with the Bush crowd but these Arkansas hippies-"

"Easier with the hippies. You could do it," repeated Broker. "For Ray."

"f.u.c.k Ray Pryce, the horse he rode in on, and the colonel who sent him." LaPorte thumped his chest. "I signed for that f.u.c.king helicopter he lost. They made me pay for it. You know how much a Chinook costs. I was pay-deducted through Ford and Carter and finally Reagan got me off the hook and got me my money back."

Broker found the outburst curious. In the public library he'd read that the LaPorte family was worth $70 million. His eyes strayed to the tall portrait of the pirate on the wall. "You're not in this strictly for the money, are you?" he asked.

"We're not talking about money. Money just sits in a bank and accrues. This is...treasure. I'm sixty-one years old. This is probably the last exciting thing I'll do in my life." LaPorte shook his head impatiently. "The Pryce kid? Will she shut up?"

"Can you grease the skids to get her back in?"

"That would take an absurd, and not entirely legal, contribution to a presidential campaign." He grimaced. "It might be done."

"I'll take that as a yes. Now for Jimmy Tuna-"

LaPorte raised a hand. His eyes glowed faintly and Broker had conflicting impressions. Sensuality. And molten lead being poured.