The Price of Blood Part 18

Broker shrugged.

"You are one of the good guys, aren't you?" she asked. Broker started to laugh, but, seeing her serious expression, he stopped. She went on. "I mean, you wouldn't really sell Nina out for money, would you?"

Broker shivered a little in the filmy heat. She was utterly unreadable as, he supposed, he was. It gave them an odd intimacy.

She shook her head. "Poor Broker. Standing there thinking you're touching bottom."

"No. I was recently disabused of that illusion," he said.

"Then you know you're standing on a dying man's shoulders."

"Jimmy Tuna," said Broker.

She nodded. "When Jimmy goes, so do you, and so does young Nina Pryce." You could bury empires in Lola's sad, empty eyes.

"You have any suggestions?" asked Broker.

She said, "I've been married to Cyrus LaPorte for fifteen years and this house is full of lies I raised from infancy. I suggest you start telling somebody the truth."

Broker met her gaze. He stood far from home, on alien ground, surrounded by whips, skulls, twisted antlers, and an eight-foot-tall, one-armed pirate.

31.

LOLA LEFT THE DESK, TURNED HER BACK ON HIM, and walked to the window, where she gazed down on the wedding crowd. "I wonder if she has any idea what she's getting into?" she mused.

"You calling me a liar?" Broker enunciated.

She faced about, leaned back on the windowsill, and the gauzy curtains enfolded her like embroidered wings. "Hardly. I'm calling you honest."

They stared at each other for a full minute.

She continued. "Honest and I'd say pretty dumb. You're way off your beat. This is New Orleans and you're messing with Cyrus LaPorte. You can disappear like that." She snapped her fingers. "And the sewers wouldn't even belch."

"Oh, I don't know," said Broker. "Looks to me like the palace guard is down to one c.o.ked-up kid making sure n.o.body steals the stairs. And I've got the general's pet creep in a jail up north. Am I missing anything?"

She leaned back. "Ah, you mean the boys. The boys are in sunny Vietnam, diving and watching over the boat."

"That leaves one naked general."

Lola inclined her head. "Really."

Broker stared, pointed at the safe, waited a moment and said, "How's the addition so far?"

She walked in the direction of his eyes, stopped and traced the circle of the bullwhip on the wall. Her finger traveled down the suspended lash and touched the top of the safe. "Are you really that bold, Mr. Broker?"

"How alone are we? What about the punk on the stairs?" he asked.

"Virgil Fret," she said with distaste, "is driving Cyrus across town to commit adultery with some bimbo milkmaid."

"There's lawyers. This thing called divorce."

"Cyrus is old fashioned. You know, 'till death do us part.'"

Broker c.o.c.ked his head.

Lola's smile was practical. "I haven't wasted a word or a dollar since I turned twenty-one years old. So listen very carefully. That painting up there is not symbolic. You're among pirates, Mr. Broker. Cyrus plans to kill you and Nina as soon as you lead him to that poor dying convict. Which is the risk you run for your high adventure. But I'm not having anything like an adventure and the fact is-he plans to kill me, too."

She paused to let Broker evaluate her words, which were veined with intrigue and not necessarily going in the direction of sincerity. Then she caressed the old safe with her palm. "Have you ever seen fifty pounds of pure gold that's been cradled in the salt sea? It's better than diamonds."

She left the safe and walked toward the doorway to the hall. "Now I have to shower and get dressed. That should take about fifteen minutes. I suggest you use the time well. I've told the officers downstairs that you're my guest so they won't interfere." She paused at the door. "There's nothing on the third floor. That's where I live."

Broker stared at the safe. He hadn't stolen anything since he got caught shoplifting comics at Nestor's Drug Store when he was nine.

Best way to hurt a f.u.c.king pirate. Take his gold.

It involved getting in. Getting out. And a key. Once he'd established that he was alone on the second floor he peeked into the bedrooms and checked the French doors and windows for evidence of motion detectors. None. He went into the bathroom and urinated. After he washed his hands he eased open the linen closet and saw a 12-gauge shotgun nestled among the towels and sheets. It was loaded with buckshot. Remington, not Westinghouse, was the local security system.

He walked down the stairs, avoided a room full of wedding guests at a wet bar, and went out on the pool deck and continued on past a three-car garage to the side street driveway. His eyes inspected the heavy wrought-iron fence.

A flushed woman in a bale of lavender lace tumbled up to him. "Are you the help for setting up the band?" she asked breathlessly. Her cheeks were rouged with excitement and champagne.

"Take off," growled Broker. The woman flared the whites of her eyes and departed.

He tracked the iron lilacs and his eyes stopped at a thick tangle of vines that engulfed the fence in the corner by the pool. No cameras. No sensors. No dogs. Probably a few armed good ole boys usually hung out here. But more than that. Reputation guarded the place. n.o.body in town would be dumb enough to incur LaPorte's disfavor.

Broker, of course, didn't live here.

On the way back in he studied the twisted oak that grew up over the hedge and shaded the house. One of its Spanish moss-draped branches curled next to the gallery off LaPorte's study. A st.u.r.dy drainpipe ran down the corner of the house. But would it hold a heavily laden man? Probably not. The tree was more reliable.

He went back inside and walked past an unconcerned uniformed patrolman who leaned against the staircase, lifted a fork from a plate of food, and nodded. Upstairs, he padded the hall for a closer look at LaPorte's bedroom at the end of the hall. Inside he saw a king-sized bed with fresh sheets turned down, a long gun cabinet, and two sets of mounted antelope horns on the wall next to a Frederic Remington cavalry print. Nothing in the room or in the long closet suggested that Lola LaPorte slept there.

He glanced up and down the hall and slipped into the master bedroom. He slid open the drawer on the bedside table and saw the dull gleam of gun metal, a snub .38 Smith. Some change, some business cards. Didn't figure he'd leave the key to the safe just laying around.

Probably kept it with him all the time.

There were three other bedrooms on the second level. In the first one the bed and furniture were stockaded with sheets. When he opened the second door he hesitated on the threshold, stayed by a potent sense of trespa.s.s.

The room contained an ornate, white wicker ba.s.sinet, a cradle, a changing table, and a baby bed bundled with a gaily colored b.u.mper and matching quilt and pillow. The furniture items and the shelves on the wall were piled with a Noah's Ark of stuffed animals and dolls. A glider rocking chair and ottoman were positioned in the corner by the window. Next to the chair he noticed a basket full of children's books. He could read the t.i.tle of the top book, Baby Bug. A little boy and a little girl played with a rabbit on the cover.

Someone used this room. It was spotlessly maintained and the smell of freshly ironed cotton hugged the sunlight filtering through the fluffy curtains. Broker backed into the hall and slowly closed the door. He wondered if he had just stumbled into the dungeon where Lola LaPorte visited her emotions.

Okay. He reminded himself. It's all too easy. They were tricky folks. But so was he.

The third bedroom adjoined LaPorte's and was unvisited by the cleaning staff.

A bench and a set of weights were strewn around the unmade king-size bed and a stipple of suspicious stains stiffened the sheets. Candystripe Calvin Klein briefs and a pile of socks lay in a corner. The dresser drawers were askew and a silk T-shirt draped from one of them. There were a dozen suits cloaked in cellophane from a dry cleaner in the closet, and a dozen pairs of shoes lined up below them. A rainbow of expensive silk ties littered the door. He went in.

The walls were bare except for a yellowed newspaper clipping that had been matted and expensively framed under gla.s.s. Broker went closer and read the sentiment that was scrawled on the mat paper. "To Bevode. Happy birthday-Cyrus."

The folio line announced the Picayune, an incomplete date, August; it looked like 1880 something.

Fragments of a story about a Cholera epidemic ran off the clipping. The headline read: HOW TO TELL WHETHER A PERSON IS DEAD OR ALIVE.

Apply the flame of a candle to the tip of one of the great toes of the supposed corpse, and a blister will immediately rise. If the vitality is gone, this will be full of air, and will burst with some noise if the flame be applied to it a few seconds longer; if life is not extinct, the blister will be full of matter and will not burst.

Broker sniffed. Bevode Fret's room had the polecat funk of marsh gra.s.s where a big animal had lain and soaked up a belly full of meat. A keen ray of something Broker hadn't smelled in a long time-fingernail polish-cut across the tiger-house scent. He turned. Lola, silent on barefeet, stood in the doorway wearing a simple, sleeveless white cotton dress. Her wet hair was pulled tight against her skull and she had painted her fingernails a livid funereal purple. "Our child's room," she said with icy contempt.

Lola's fingernails rattled an anxious tattoo on LaPorte's shiny, ma.s.sive teak desk.

"Cyrus believes that manageable people have handles. The handle allows them to be controlled. You and Nina have handles until Tuna is found. I'm afraid I never grew any. No handles. You get dropped."

Broker's eyes roved the walls and he wondered how many years she'd spent collecting and decorating this house for Cyrus LaPorte's pleasure. What plans she'd made here...

When she'd come up from the pool, even a little lathered from exercise, her makeup had still been precisely applied. Now, with her hair limp and wearing nothing on her face except her skin, she looked drawn and vulnerable to the harsh Louisiana light that hunted shadows around her cheeks, the edges of her lips, and the corners of her eyes.

The gruesome painted fingernails continued to chatter on the wood. "Please say something, Mr. Broker," she demanded.

"How do you know he wants to get rid of you?" said Broker.

"Bevode told me." She pushed the b.u.t.ton for service. Hiram appeared almost instantly. "Could we have some coffee, Hiram, out on the gallery?" she said.

"Sure, Miss Lola," said the decrepit old man affectionately. "I make it good and thick for you and the genman."

When they were alone again she went out on the gallery and leaned on the railing. When he stood beside her she looked at him from the corner of her eye and chose her words carefully. "Nina is in danger. Cyrus believes the way to Tuna lies through her," she said.

"She's covered," said Broker.

"I hope you're right. But the price Cyrus pays for luring you down here is having Bevode off the field. Perhaps Tennessee Williams is apropos."

"Go on."

She held up her right hand and stared at her palm. "My grandmother read my palm when I was twenty-one. See this line? It's the lifeline. Mine branches, one fork ends, the other continues on into this happy nest of wrinkles." She c.o.c.ked her head and placed her left index finger on the small juncture of creases in her skin. "I'm right here, right now. With you."

An acoustic flip in the breeze brought a trill of happy laughter from the wedding party up over the hedges. Broker heard it as a crazy jungle sound.

They stayed that way for two minutes, exploring the twists and barbs of a silence as tangled as the iron lilacs that fenced General LaPorte's home. Then a clatter of metal announced Hiram returning with a tray and silver service. After he set it on the table between the chairs, he bent and whispered in Lola's ear. She smiled and turned to Broker. "Hiram is curious about what you wear on the gold chain around your neck."

Broker pulled the tiger tooth out. Hiram executed a delicate hop, ancient and birdlike, and stared at the pendant. "It need cleanin' up," he said. "I got just the thing for it down in the pantry."

Lola nodded indulgent a.s.sent, so Broker removed the chain and handed it to the septuagenarian butler, who cradled it in his creva.s.sed palm and withdrew.

Lola held her coffee cup in both hands and blew on the thick liquid. The heat clotted around them and her voice sounded far away, underwater. "It says in your dossier that you work undercover..."

Clouds hid the sun and in the diffuse light her skin acquired the parchment softness of a Renaissance Madonna. She had long dark eyelashes. He wondered if they were real.

"But so far you've only played the sticks. How do you think you'd do in the big time?"

He cleared his throat. "Define big time."

"The difference between Minnesota and the big time, Broker, is the difference between the frying pan and the f.u.c.king fire."

She was grabbing at straws, too.

"I heard your husband's wish list. What's yours?" asked Broker.

"Sometimes I sit up here and I think how nice it would be if I were a widow before I was a corpse."

"A very rich widow," said Broker. The subject was murder.

"Exactly." She inhaled and steepled her fingers. "I am chattel in this house, Mr. Broker-"

"Phillip."

She inclined her head slightly. "I have no money of my own to speak of. But, with Bevode gone, we are quite insecure at the moment. Virgil is hardly reliable." She took a deep breath. "If the gold in that safe disappeared, considering where it came from no one is going to report it missing." She exhaled. "Be discreet and it could make your loan problem go away." She continued to gaze at the slowly tossing foliage. "We could call it a good faith down payment. Do we understand each other?"

"So far."

She turned and drew an X with one cool finger at the base of his throat where the tiger tooth chain had hung. "Don't forget, Cyrus has your little pendant," she said.

"I have some questions..."

She patted her cheeks lightly with her palms as a flush of color rose from her throat. "In time. Right now there are some words I find difficult to get past my lips."

They stood up together, without a signal. A mutual arising.

"Where are you staying?" she asked.

"The Doniat. On Chartiers," he said for the second time.

"I'll come see you. At nine," she said, still staring into the distance.

Broker smelled the lingering mint of LaPorte's after-shave evaporate like frost in the humid air and he heard the rattle of a streetcar and the hooves of a mule-drawn carriage clip-clop on St. Charles. Below them and through a screen of hedge, the bride and groom a.s.sembled in front of a white gazebo where a flutist played a wedding march. A hot gust of Gulf wind grabbed the stately notes and threw them in their faces.

Impulsively, she seized his arm and tugged him off the gallery, into the study, into hiding, in a furl of billowing curtain. She arched up on tiptoe and kissed him on the throat, on an electric spot just under his left ear. Her lips lingered in a wanton squirm of tongue that sent shivers down the inside of his chest and almost pried his stomach muscles inside out.

She stepped back and inspected his reaction, which was biologically predictable. She drew a cool tentative finger down his cheek. "You should really stop at a barber shop, Phillip. That long hair is all wrong for your face."

Lola LaPorte spun away and ran down the hall, as light on her feet as a girl.