The Price of Blood Part 35

"The revolution musta gone to h.e.l.l, 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, s.h.i.+t." He feebly waved his hand. "Take a break." He pointed to the Coleman cooler and his hollow eyes took on a keen l.u.s.ter of antic.i.p.ation. "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 s.h.i.+rt with a mealy steam of dog food that reeked of stomach acid. His bowels released and his upper lip curled up to reveal b.l.o.o.d.y 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 gooseb.u.mps. 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-s.h.i.+rt. Was.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+t 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 b.i.t.c.h 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 f.u.c.king Murphy, Annie f.u.c.king 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, G.o.ddammit! There's no way in h.e.l.l that can happen."

"Sonofab.i.t.c.h, I hate this soap opera s.h.i.+t! She bought you off. That's how you got that gold."

"She helped me take it, that's true-"

"f.u.c.k 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."

50.

"THIRSTY," SAID TUNA. HE FANNED HIS MOUTH. Parched. Nina darted into the cabin and returned with two open bottles of iced beer. He nodded and asked very politely, "Tony brought me some cherries last night, in a bowl in the icebox?" Nina turned promptly and returned with the large bowl of cherries. She placed them on the table next to Tuna's chair and handed him one of the chilled bottles. She tucked the extra between his legs in the baggy folds of his trousers.

Tuna drank one beer in a long dreamy gurgle. He set the empty aside and picked up the fresh bottle. He held the ice-sweating gla.s.s to the inside of his papery left forearm and sighed. Then his other hand fumbled on the table for a pack of Pall Malls. In slow motion he lit one and inhaled. Exhaled and coughed violently.

"s.h.i.+t's probably in my lungs," he said as heroin merriness flooded his sunken cheeks and twinkled in his cratered eyes. Seeing the corpselike figure animate with the strange current of energy and thinking about the rednecks laying stiff in the shade of an oak tree had the perverse effect of making Broker hungry. He chewed one of the ham and cheese sandwiches and washed it down with San Miguel.

Tuna began to eat the cherries, ferrying them one by one in his taloned hand, savoring them with a gluttonous sucking of lips and tongue. He spit the pits onto the deck where they collected like tiny red bodies. Ants formed industrious columns, going after the shreds of pulp.

Nina smiled tightly. "I wish there was some way we could record this."

The stoned laughter that gushed from Tuna's cherry-stained lips sounded like a flock of insane birds. There was some of the muscular oily humor of the old Tuna in that laugh. "How many words you think I got left? A thousand? Five hundred? I'll do my talking to people, not a G.o.dd.a.m.ned machine."

"Okay," said Nina, crossing her arms and waiting patiently.

Tuna cackled and his eyes and voice went into a glide. "Paget's disease," he whispered. "Four Purple Hearts and I walked away from each of them. f.u.c.king Indians have casinos. n.i.g.g.e.r kids got high-top tennis shoes, nine millimeters, and crack franchises. I got a fortune in gold and I get cancer. In prison..."

He smiled luridly. "The medical book says, get this," he quoted: "'The dread complication of Paget's disease is osteosarcoma, which fortunately occurs in fewer than one percent of the patients.'" He sucked on his Pall Mall. "That's quite a word-dread."

He bit his cracked lips. "It's in my r.e.c.t.u.m now. And my bladder. And my kidneys. When it gets to my lungs...hat roi."

Hat roi was the Vietnamese phrase for "all gone."

"Like taking a c.r.a.p through a turnstile." Tuna tried to laugh and began coughing again.

His eyes moistened. "We had some great days, Phil. Quang Tri City. That was like a chapter out of the f.u.c.king Bible. n.o.body even knew. Remember?"

"Yeah, Jimmy."

Tuna took a deep breath. "Okay. I'll give it to you straight. We left you and Trin..." He spun out the Vietnamese name and the sound twisted on the hot afternoon like a cool shadow. "h.e.l.l, we did more than that. We gave them Trin. We knew Pryce was crazy enough to go try to get him out."

"Pryce didn't know?" demanded Broker.

"Mama Pryce. You kidding? Him and Trin didn't know s.h.i.+t." Tuna chortled. "Trin's gonna freak..."

Broker couldn't imagine anything more distant from an angel than this talking corpse. But he'd just sprung Broker from Purgatory and put an avenging sword in his hand. Broker took a clean breath of fire.

Now Tuna looked Nina straight in the eye. "I killed your father. The plan was Cyrus's. But I pulled the trigger. He was dead before we got to Hue."

Nina stared at him, stone cold. Her voice buckled down tight. "And the pilots went along with this?"

"They were Air America, Cyrus's cronies from Laos. h.e.l.l, by then they'd flown more dope than the Medellin cartel."

"Go on," said Nina. Tip of the iceberg.

"After we hit the bank I changed the plan a little," said Tuna. He hefted the empty beer bottle and smiled helplessly. Nina averted her face. Broker went into the house and returned with two more bottles. When Tuna had taken a drink, Broker asked his main question: "Why'd you do it, Jimmy?"

Tuna squinted. "Cyrus don't like losing. Guess I don't either. It was plunder. We were soldiers. We wanted it, so we took it, G.o.ddammit."

Broker shook his head slowly. So under the pomp and medals, LaPorte was just another a.s.shole. A desire to crank the bracelets down on a retired general took precedence over dreams of gold. Automatically, he started asking questions like a cop.

"So how did you do it physically? Move all that gold out of the bank without drawing attention? There wasn't time that night."

Tuna cackled. "Haven't you figured it out? Wasn't in the f.u.c.kin' bank. It was crated up on a pallet in ammo boxes in back of the bank. The Commies didn't even know it was there. That's why they didn't raise h.e.l.l about it. That was the beauty of the thing. n.o.body knew it existed."

"Ammo boxes?" Broker was stymied.

"Look," said Tuna. "We had it disguised as a pallet of artillery rounds. We'd managed to get it as far as the courtyard of the bank. Then the Commies took Hue in March, remember? It just sat there for a month. All the gear the ARVNs left laying around when they split-who'd notice another pallet of ammo?"

"Where'd it come from?"

"Ask Cyrus, he got onto it. We didn't steal it. We found it. Spent two years looking for that stuff. He was like a crazy man. That's how it all started."

Broker shook his head. "Ten tons of gold just sat there for over a month?"

"It ain't just gold..."

"What do you mean?"

"You'll see," said Tuna. A spark of dark humor ignited in his tortured eyes.

"What about my dad, Jimmy?" Nina said in a level voice.

Tuna looked at her frankly. "You know about the original mission? How we were going in to bust Trin out of jail?"

Nina nodded.

"After Phil went in by boat, Cyrus personally changed the plan."

"But he was down the coast off Danang," said Broker slowly.

"He was, huh. Did you see him there?"

"I heard him on the radio..."

"He was on the radio, all right. In a light observation chopper about a mile from our boat. Cyrus could fly helicopters, you recall. He was gone from the fleet off Danang for a little over an hour, long enough to land and talk to Pryce. Then he popped back. Our guys off Danang thought he was out trying to spot refugees in the water." Tuna c.o.c.ked his head. "You remember anything about that minesweep? Like how the only Americans on it were you, me, Pryce, and the helicopter pilots? Like, no other witnesses."

Quietly Nina said, "How'd it happen?"

"Simple. Cyrus gave Ray new orders. Made it sound like it came down from on high. First go in and sling out the pallet and bring it back to the boat, then pick up Phil and Trin."

"New orders," said Nina.

"Yeah, except we never meant to go back." He paused, trying to wet his parched lips, staring at Nina. "Out of spit," he said.

"What about the radio call that was in the inquest record? Someone made a net call saying my dad had changed the orders and requesting clarification," said Nina.

"He was already dead. I made the call to s.h.i.+ft the blame on him. It was planned that way. When we got to the bank, in the confusion, he got dumped out the door."

"At the bank?" asked Broker, leaning forward.

"Yeah. We had two guys on the ground with a big forklift. They maneuvered the pallet in the net, scrambled up, and we boogied. Except the bird was shot up and the pilots were sweating it. Didn't think they could fly with the weight. I made a mayday call, said we were hit and we had to set down." Tuna smiled triumphantly. "Then it came to me. All those years I always did what Cyrus wanted. Suddenly I was in a position to do what I wanted. We were so d.a.m.n close anyway and I had the place all picked out. Just like that."

"The place?" asked Broker.