The Price of Blood Part 25

He pushed through the wedding crowd and spied Hiram stooped over, with a platter of finger food balanced precariously on his shoulder. Gracefully the old man sidled up. "Take one of the crabmeats, they pretty good. When this tray empty you follow me back into the house."

Broker stood like a hard-bitten scarecrow staked to the gra.s.s among the whirling finery and bright eyes of the wedding guests. He glowered at a sharp blonde in a black dress with a Nikon who snapped several shots of him. Finally Hiram reappeared with an empty tray and he followed him around the back of the house and through a door into the steaming kitchen.

A young black woman in a drenched white ap.r.o.n and a glaze of sweat stood at a stainless steel sink counter drying and sorting a huge lump of plastic forks, knives, and spoons. Broker tapped Hiram on the shoulder and pointed at the piles of plastic.

Hiram giggled. "Mr. Cyrus use that plastic s.h.i.+t over and over to cut the overhead. Never miss a chance to make a buck. He 'fraid somebody steal his silverware if he put it out there. C'mon, we go in here."

He pushed open a door and they entered a narrow room with folding chairs and a banquet table. Two waiters were sitting down sipping from cups and smoking. When they saw Hiram and Broker they both quickly rose and left. Hiram pointed to a chair. Broker sat. Hiram took a chair across the table.

The old man dug in his pocket and produced the gold chain. "See, all cleaned up." The chain and the tooth sparkled in Broker's hand and he noticed that a narrow sliver of polished bone had been affixed to the chain next to the gold-capped tooth. He raised an eyebrow.

"Maybe that tooth help you up north but down here I give you a little added protection." Hiram smiled, showing even nicotine-stained teeth. "That a piece out of a black cat's tail. Go on, put it on."

Broker slipped the pendant over his head and tucked it in his s.h.i.+rt. He squinted at Hiram and eased back the lapel of his jacket so Hiram could see the Colt .45 slung in the shoulder rig. "You know who I am, old man."

"Hey, be cool, I just the messenger." Hiram winked.

Broker opened his mouth to ask a question but Hiram wagged a wrinkled index finger in his face. "Miss Lola hope you a smart man, so be smart and listen to somebody who been breathing and kicking for seventy-six years. She send you down here to listen not play bada.s.s d.i.c.k." Hiram took the hearing aid from his ear. He grinned. "Yeah, and I still got most all my teeth too."

Hiram leaned back in his chair and slipped a flat half-pint of Old Granddad from his pocket. He raised it to his lips, drank and sighed. He held the flask out to Broker. Broker declined and handed it back. Hiram put it back in his pocket.

"Now," said Hiram, as he fished the stump of a cigar from another pocket and put it in his mouth unlit. "Some things you should know. Mr. Cyrus and Mr. Bevode think they real smart, too. 'Specially Mr. Bevode.

"Man is like a child, swing his skinny a.s.s in the bathroom, sing to the mirror like old Elvis Presley. Ain't hardly a man at all, more like a dog, wish he was a dog too, then he could lick his own b.a.l.l.s.

"Mr. Bevode grew up way back in the swamp so he say he can smell things. So right after he come to work here, he always looking for ways to get on Mr. Cyrus's good side. Problem was, that's where Miss Lola always was. Well, he sniffed around Miss Lola and think he smell something and so he go diggin', just like a d.a.m.n dog.

"He go paw around in this courthouse down in Jack Bayou where she born and he discover that Miss Lola's maternal grandmother was Octoroon. You know what that mean down here?"

Broker nodded his head.

"Well, Mr. Bevode got out his pencil stub and sat down at the kitchen table and do his multiplying on the back of a grocery bag and come up with Miss Lola having one sixty-fourth Nigra blood. Tongue hanging out he scoot to Mr. Cyrus. And alla sudden Miss Lola look less like some pretty Baton Rouge white trash gal who better herself and she start looking more like Lena Horne. And there go Miss Lola's plans to have a family in this fine big house. Mr. Cyrus been trying to get rid of her ever since. They have separate bedrooms for five years so it don't surprise me she let you know she a bit lonely." Hiram grinned lasciviously.

"Why doesn't he divorce her?" asked Broker.

"What if everybody know Mr. Cyrus a dumb fool marry a n.i.g.g.e.r gal. And she say half all this hers. They deadlocked. I said she smart. Didn't say she was ever gonna make saint. But you be gentle with her, not force her like Mr. Cyrus used to do."

Broker c.o.c.ked his head. "Used to do?"

"Uh-huh. She won't let him touch her no more. Not after what happened." Hiram paused and studied Broker's face. "Now this either goin' scare you away or it gonna p.i.s.s you off. I hope it p.i.s.s you off."

Broker wiped sweat from his chin and lit a Spirit. The cigarette turned soggy in the humid air.

"You sure sweat a lot," said Hiram. "You gonna carry that piece down here, get you a baggy sports s.h.i.+rt..."

Then Hiram's words sliced the steamy air into cold autopsy slices. "Mr. Cyrus got likkered blind drunk one night and beat her with that whip he keep and then he get the urge to f.u.c.k her when she b.l.o.o.d.y...push her down the stairs. After that night Miss Lola find out she can't have no baby ever."

"Why does she stay?" asked Broker.

"Man hate hot and forget. Woman hate ice cold forever. She been waiting for Mr. Cyrus want something as much as she want a child. And now that he's found his heart's desire maybe she been waiting for someone to appear who could help her deny it to him." Hiram squinted. "She think that man might be you."

"Why in the h.e.l.l do you stay around here?"

Hiram shrugged and rolled his cigar stub across his broad lips and said frankly, "Mr. Cyrus and I attached, like a cancer. Problem run in both our families."

Broker slipped his hand in his pocket and palmed one of Nina's hundred-dollar bills. He slid it across the table until their fingers touched. Hiram smoothly drew his hand back and dropped it in his lap.

"Royale LaPorte's hand really in the safe in the study?" asked Broker.

Hiram's eyes popped, polished hard as marbles. A gleam of fire deep inside. "Marie Laveau pack that dead hand in a special jar way back. Mr. Cyrus check on it every morning."

"Where's the key?"

"Never leaves his body. Wear it on a cord around his neck."

"He a sound sleeper?"

"Like out cold when he been drinking and lately he been drinking, especially with Mr. Bevode gone."

Another hundred-dollar bill moved swiftly across the table.

"That kid, Virgil, he any good?" Broker asked.

"Little dope fiend. Surprise Mr. Cyrus let him have a loaded gun. His big brother slap him up alongside the head more than once for blowin' that toot."

"So, not real alert."

"Not after midnight."

Broker stood up and walked to the small rectangular louvered window and cranked it open a few inches more and squinted at a patch of fitful sky. "Storm tonight," he said.

Hiram grinned. "Big one. Probably tip over some of them brick and mortar graves around town. Scatter bones. Dogs be busy in the morning."

"What would scare the s.h.i.+t out of Mr. Cyrus?"

Hiram grinned broadly and extended his withered right hand and delicately squeezed the s.h.i.+ny clip of bone on the chain around Broker's neck. He winked elaborately.

Broker tucked the tiger tooth charm into his s.h.i.+rt, b.u.t.toned his sports coat, and reached over and shook Hiram's hand.

The old man opened his palm and saw a third folded hundred. He leaned back and grinned. "Be nice if Mr. Cyrus and Mr. Bevode be gone and Miss Lola be in charge in this house. Maybe we chuck that plastic s.h.i.+t and be polis.h.i.+ng the silverware again."

Broker was out the door, pus.h.i.+ng through the broiling kitchen onto the lawn but there was no fresh air, just a poisonous steam of magnolias and azaleas against the sticky iron lilacs. Head down, he shouldered through the blurred watercolors of the wedding party and out the front gate onto St. Charles and, from the corner of his eye, he caught the arc of a flung bouquet flash against the leafy swaying air and the outstretched hands and then, as he walked away, he laughed hilariously when he heard the happy applause.

33.

THERE WAS MUSIC, BUT HE DIDN'T HEAR IT. HE walked the cramped streets of the French Quarter, looking for a barbershop. The grillwork sagged from the galleries like twisted metal guts and the people looked like lost groupie-pilgrims searching for a rock concert. A tattooed man walked by carrying a full-grown python over his arms and shoulders. Broker shook his head. Warm weather all year round was like life support for a lot of people that a good blizzard would weed out.

He grabbed a pay phone in a shopping arcade and dialed Nina's number in Ann Arbor. Busy. Sweat ran in his eyes. He was a boreal hunter in the near tropics and right now he was shedding his winter coat. Melting. He spied a barber pole and recalled that barbers were originally surgeons. The pole stood for b.l.o.o.d.y ribbons. Bandages.

He told the barber to take it up above the ears. The dark ponytail went in one crisp snip. Not for Lola. He wasn't going to truck all that hair through Vietnam in the summer.

If Nina found the way to Jimmy.

He hoped her copper friend was on the job. It occurred to him that if she were here she'd veto what he was going to do. Nina would put Lola off limits in two seconds flat.

But he needed a backdoor into LaPorte. Even if it swung both ways. He smiled. A handle...

The barber sheared off his burrs and Broker emerged like scrubbed bark, clean, eyebrows trimmed, but still rough to the touch. Then came steaming towels. After today, he owed himself a close shave. So he sighed and closed his eyes and enjoyed the taut sc.r.a.pe of the straight razor on his throat.

He allowed himself a minute of enjoyment, then he asked the barber for the Yellow Pages. As the barber ma.s.saged tonic around his temples Broker called the nearest Hertz rental and arranged for a car.

Then he hailed a cab, went to Hertz, and filled out the paperwork on the vehicle, hit the street, and parked in the nearest mall. He took some of Nina's money shopping.

In a sporting goods store he bought a pair of black Nike crosstrainers, a baggy pair of dark cotton slacks, a loose long-sleeve matching s.h.i.+rt, two pairs of dark cotton gloves, a cheap charcoal gray raincoat, and a pair of thin black rubber galoshes. He searched for a heavy, strong-st.i.tched grip bag. Finally he bought a stout black bowling bag. Then he went to a hardware store and picked up a small Wonder Bar and a st.u.r.dy razor-sharp scissors. On the way out he grabbed a couple of souvenir T-s.h.i.+rts for Mike and Irene.

No phone messages back at the hotel. He called Nina's apartment in Ann Arbor. Busy again. He dug the note from his wallet where he'd noted Nina's flight from Detroit to Minneapolis-St.Paul and called J.T.'s machine. He left another message reminding his old partner to meet her.

He took a long cool shower. Then he changed the dressing on his thumb, doused it in hydrogen peroxide, and bandaged it loosely.

He took a Jax beer from the small refrigerator under the TV and lay on the four-poster bed and talked for an hour on the phone to Northwest Airlines, rescheduling his departure. During long periods on hold, he watched the fan turn slowly on the high ceiling. Then he called Nina again. Still busy.

He picked up the TV remote and scanned the cable channels and happened on an installment of Prime Suspect, the BBC series featuring Helen Mirren as Inspector Jane Tennyson. He opened another beer and watched for a while.

The thing about this British cop show was: no guns. Intricate storyline, snappy dialogue you had to pay attention to, and no guns. Broker stretched out, sipped his beer, and wondered what it would be like to catch a bad guy who spoke in complete sentences. And no guns.

He turned off the TV and watched the late afternoon shadows ink in the curlicue grillwork on the balconies across the street. Fireflies of faraway lightning flickered through the tall gallery windows.

Was Lola for real? Did it matter? She was right about one thing: No one would report that gold to the police if it went missing.

He reached for the phone and called Nina in Ann Arbor. This time he got through.

"I miss you," she said with wispy intuition. She sounded like a woman who had been sitting watching a phone, except she'd been on the d.a.m.n phone for hours.

"Down here everybody's smiling and we're all lying through our teeth. I called but your phone's been busy."

"I called some people."

"What kind of people?" He sat up.

"Some army folks. Don't worry. I'm being cool. Just trying to get a line on the MIA office in Hanoi. I intend to recover Dad's remains."

Jesus, Broker knuckled his forehead. "Is that cop still with you?"

"I'm drowning in testosterone and guns. Tomorrow I'll be knee deep in his pals from the bank all the way to the airport."

"Okay. Call J.T. and confirm your flight and arrival time. He'll go with you to the Holiday Inn. I'll meet you there tomorrow afternoon."

"What are you going to do?"

"LaPorte wants to talk to me in the morning so," he paused to hurtle a canyon of omission, "tonight I'll treat myself to a meal and maybe catch some jazz."

She said circ.u.mspectly, "You're not a jazz kind of guy."

"Do what J.T. says. No side trips," Broker said a little hotly. He hung up the phone without saying good-bye. Why wasn't he a jazz kind of guy? h.e.l.l, he could be any kind of guy he wanted. And what the h.e.l.l was she doing calling around to the army...He caught himself. He sensed that he and Nina were on the verge of a boy-girl dilemma complicated by who was going to run the show. And right now she was ahead on points. He could feel a fight coming. The kind of fight where you make up in bed.

At 7 P.M. Broker went out and ate frog's legs, a bowl of turtle soup, and an enormous bread pudding. He did not check out the musical fare because Nina was essentially right. He had been kicked out of his high school band-alto sax-no sense of rhythm.

The storm stalked the edge of the city as he took his time walking an elaborate pattern back to the hotel. If anybody was following him they were better than he was. He called room service and ordered a pot of coffee.

Broker took the tray out on the gallery and watched the street lights come on. As he sipped the thick Creole java the first crooked trident of lightning branched and quivered on the rooftops.

He counted, waiting for the punch of thunder.

The sky boomed and the suffocating rain came straight down and brought no relief from the heat.

34.

SHE CAME IN A CAB AND SHE WORE A LOOSE GRAY trenchcoat unb.u.t.toned in a furl of triangle lapels and buckles. Her black dress slung around her hips like a raw silk lariat. Bareheaded, she walked across Chartiers in two-inch heels that stabbed a reflected band of neon. The raindrops sizzled at her every step. She looked up and saw him standing above her.

He left the gallery and waited in the shadowed archway at the top of the stairs.

"Much better," she said, seeing the haircut.

The dress had a low scoop neck and b.u.t.tons down the front. Rain slipped down her throat and trickled from her tanned collarbones. Her perfume was homicide beaded on a razor's edge and it slit the air. "You're wet," he said.

"Do we understand each other?" she asked.

"You better dry off," he said.

"Take me to your room."

The gumbo rain beat on the gallery as the curtains billowed through the open windows and people shouted happily, running, in the street. Across the way, loud music cranked up louder to compete with the thunder-Warren Zevon, "Roland, the Headless Thompson Gunner."

She touched her wet hair, excused herself, and went into the bathroom. Broker sat down in an armchair and stared at the bathroom door. When it came to women, the last few years, his work had cast him, at best, in a slick beer commercial.

Lola had the complex fine detail of a David Lean epic, which is to say, of Broker's fantasies. And he thought how Lean should have made a film about New Orleans. No need to build a set. The whole place was theater. The air itself was special effects and the brochure on the bedside table said this hotel had been built in 1847. Broker loved a good historical epic and he loved to read history, which he saw as a cold record of solved crimes...