The Price of Blood Part 52

Then Broker learned why he was being kept alive. LaPorte was concerned that, given Jimmy Tuna's fascination with demolition and practical jokes, the gold pit could be b.o.o.by trapped.

Footsteps in the sand. Broker was so sensitive to the blister of the sun that he could feel a man's shadow. He smelled fresh, hot coffee, not the soupy Vietnamese stuff. American.

"I thought you might like some coffee, Phil." The relaxed, deep voice had a slight drawl, not enough to be regional, just enough to be interesting. LaPorte. Talking with macabre nonchalance while he tracked blood. Did he learn that from Bevode? Or did Bevode learn it from him?

The lip of a cup touched Broker's cracked lips. Even hot, the coffee was wonderful and tasted like home. He felt a cigarette tuck in the corner of his mouth. Heard the flare of a lighter. After one drag the cigarette was removed, Broker wondering what he had to do to get it back. The cup returned and then the smoke.

His throat and senses lubricated, he asked, "How did you get to Trin?"

Sounds. The sand stirring. LaPorte was sitting down, getting comfortable. His voice was practical.

"Don't underestimate Bevode. He wasn't in Wisconsin because he tarried in Lansing, Michigan. Lucky for him...I guess."

"Kevin Eichleay." Broker winced. He got a picture of yellow police tape strung at a charity relief office.

LaPorte chuckled. Broker was allowed another sip of coffee. This time the cigarette was left in his mouth. "Oh, Kevin still has all his fingers and toes," said LaPorte. "Fingers are probably in a cast by now, though. Bevode motivated him to give us Jimmy's Vietnam connection. I guess he was pretty tough. All Bevode got was Trin's name and a phone number. I d.a.m.n near s.h.i.t when I heard that."

LaPorte's voice took on an absent quality, ruminating. "You know, Bevode grew up in one of those Christian cults, way back in the swamp. Snake handlers. He used to suffer in this moral quandary. He drank a lot when he was a cop. I guess the problem of evil really bothered him. He's been sober since I revealed to him that he really was just a s.a.d.i.s.tic sociopath."

Broker had another sip of coffee. LaPorte continued. "Bevode has been here with me before. One of the things he does is run security checks with the police on potential employees. So he ran Trin with the cops in Hue. To set up his gimp day care he needed permits. Our Communist brethren are sticklers for paperwork. It left a trail. From People's Committees, the district, the province on up to the state. He followed the trail out here."

"Still doesn't tell me how you turned him," said Broker.

LaPorte's baritone shook with laughter. "Turned him? From what? h.e.l.l, he was using you and he meant to use me. Your buddy has been picked up for vagrancy, drunkenness, petty theft, and pimping in the new hotels. He's suspected of smuggling and running scams on tourists. I just gave him his head."

Broker grimaced. LaPorte continued. "Oh, we made him an offer, manager of the hotel I'm building, threw in a new car..." LaPorte laughed. "These people are nuts about new cars. Do you know the Koreans have the inside track on widening Highway One into a four-lane freeway? The way these guys drive, I'm thinking of investing in a national ambulance service."

"Why'd you string up that poor dude on the flagpole?"

"I didn't. Bevode got a little carried away. But to answer the question: Trin was thinking bigger than hotel manager. The Hue cops suspect that he's been bribing the local militia post for years. Uses this stretch of beach for smuggling."

Broker winced. The cigarette had burned down and the paper was stuck to his lip. LaPorte plucked it away.

"So," said LaPorte, "figuring Trin might be up to his old tricks, I sent Bevode and all the boys in early to have a visit with the militia. Caught them at dinner. Dumb s.h.i.ts had their guns locked up. With a little persuasion, they talked. Trin planned his trap for tomorrow morning. We would have come ash.o.r.e into twenty AKs and a machine gun. He even tried to delay me and tipped the customs police. They showed up at our hotel and combed through our luggage. Looking for art objects. Fortunately, bribery is a way of life in the Orient."

"What did you do with the militia?" Broker asked grimly.

"Paid them off. Got two men watching them way back in the dunes. Don't worry, we won't hurt them," LaPorte added. "In fact, they wanted to be tied up for appearance's sake. They're ignorant kids out to make a buck."

"He was after the boat, and the whole thing," Broker said grudgingly.

"There you go. Why would he break cover and come into Hue after he had the jackpot? Certainly not just for the girl. But she was an excuse to deal with me. He needed a method of moving the stuff. He was going to ambush us with his rag-tag militia, rip me off, and sail off with a vessel full of gold."

Broker exhaled carefully. "I thought the militia was coming to arrest you. Next time I'll learn the language."

"I figured you to be a better judge of character, Phil. Trin's a drunk, with delusions of grandeur."

Broker heard LaPorte stand up. Dust off his pants. After a moment, LaPorte said softly, "Trin makes sense. And I can understand you blundering in here and him taking advantage of you. But the girl still doesn't fit. We leaned on her hard and she didn't even peep."

Broker sat, head bowed. Silent.

"It's ironic," mused LaPorte. "But my being here has saved you and the Pryce kid." He paused. "He was going to cut your throat, Phil."

Another cigarette was placed between Broker's lips. And lit. "Give you some advice. Don't p.i.s.s Bevode off. He's got the idea you're trying to wipe out his family."

LaPorte's footsteps faded in the sand. And Broker puffed on the cigarette and tried not to think of last smokes and firing squads. LaPorte was just toying with him. He and Nina had witnessed Lola's murder. He wondered why Trin hadn't tried to cop a plea about Ray Pryce's incriminating skeleton being in that hole. Maybe he didn't believe it.

The sun gradually changed on Broker's skin. He could hear the shadows stretch longer. Fatigue took priority over waiting. He slept on a sand pillow.

Then the moment came and the blindfold was ripped off. Broker's eyes exploded, almost blinded by the indifferent glory of the sunset. He saw...

Bevode Fret. Powerful, rested, smiling.

Bevode cracked his whip and the rational energy of Dachau and the homespun industry of the Old South convened on a deserted beach in central Vietnam.

74.

THEY WERE REUNITED WITH TRIN AT THE PIT. TRIN'S hands were not tied. LaPorte gave them a little pep talk. "Right now I own this beach," he said. "I can grant absolution. You can still get out of this." LaPorte walked away.

Two of the Europeans untied Nina and Broker. The second that Broker's hands were free they flew like springs to Trin's throat.

Blue Shirt and two of his comrades jumped in and pried them apart. Blue Shirt explained patiently. "Work together and you live. Keep this up and we shoot the girl. More work for you two."

He threw them three shovels, a net sack full of water in plastic liter bottles, a pack of Gauloises, and a book of matches.

"Arbeit macht frei," he said without irony.

Bevode had not returned Nina's jeans. Her bare shanks were streaked with sand, dried blood, and mosquito bites. Bevode came for a visit and slowly dragged his coiled whip up the front of her body, raising her dirty T-shirt, ending with the harsh braid distorting her cheek. He leaned over and whispered in her ear, "Before the sun comes up you'll beg me for it."

Nina's face tightened and found a sticking point. She had dispensed with shaking and was now composed. She now had something to measure the rest of her life against.

"You'll understand," said Bevode, "if we stay back aways in case it's rigged to blow." He walked away.

They stood alone in the escaping light, blinking, ma.s.saging their wrists, painfully shuffling their feet to get the circulation going. Trin's hands shook as he tore open the cigarettes. He held the pack to Broker, who craved one. Broker curled his lip. With trembling fingers Trin manipulated the matches and lit a Gauloise. His dark eyes burned with a disturbing fix in the twilight. He stooped, picked up the shovels and handed one to Broker, then to Nina.

"I told them it might be set with explosives," he said under his breath.

"f.u.c.k you," said Broker.

"If we dig and load it and last till dawn, we live," said Trin. "It's that simple."

"Cyrus tell you that." Broker spat contemptuously.

"I'm telling you that," he countered, grandiose to the end. And he smelled of dementia, sweat, exhaustion, garlic and onions, and sour, leftover alcohol. But strangely not of fear. With psychotic energy, he tore into the sand with his shovel.

"You wanted it for yourself," Broker accused. "You were going to kill us all-Cyrus, her, me. Then you could take the boat. But Cyrus foxed you."

Nina grimaced. Her eyes tightened. Broker wanted to touch her face. He'd never see her again in the light.

Not much light left.

"n.o.body begs," she said in a barren implacable voice. She set her mouth. Okay, she had her epitaph to go out on. But it sounded like fatalism. Surrender. Broker wondered what she was thinking right now, standing nine or ten feet over her father's bones. She drove her shovel into the sand. Maybe she had to see if they were really there.

Even if it meant digging her own grave.

Broker set his thresholds. He would not talk to Trin. He would not beg. His life was a few tons of sand running through his fingers. He wished he had a cigarette. Trin had the cigarettes and matches in his pocket.

There was pain and fear and fatigue. There was no adrenaline to run with it. Broker's muscles balked, cold taffy. He discovered that he wanted to dig to warm his blood.

To feel alive.

He had the shovel. He could use it as a weapon if Bevode got close enough. At the right time. Swing it like an ax. Take his f.u.c.kin' head off.

They worked side by side, each in their private bargaining with what comes next. Trin giggled. "This is the second time I've dug up this d.a.m.n hole."

Broker felt Nina's irritation at Trin spike the night.

And now, in total darkness, there were practical demands. "We need some light," yelled Broker. Blue Shirt came over with two battery bar lights. Broker hacked shelves in the sand. The widening pit filled with soft illumination. They could see each other's faces. Seeing the mad expression on Trin's dripping face, it was a mixed blessing.

He had never looked so foreign. Digging. He was sp.a.w.ned from a tribe of resolute diggers. In his chromosomes, Broker supposed, thousands of years of piling up the dikes to control the water to grow the rice to keep the circle of the seasons turning. One of the great warrior-digger races of history. They dug at Dien Bien Phu, at Cu Chi, at Khe Sanh...

Were Ray's bones really down there? All the graves in this d.a.m.n country. You'd hit skeletons anywhere you dug. Bone City. Stacked up for millennia and cross-fertilizing a culture of ancestor worship and reincarnation and pretty soon there'd be no room left.

Nothing but graves.

Nice thing about a big young country. You could travel for days and never see a grave...

f.u.c.k this. Broker threw down his shovel, pushed Trin aside, and grabbed at the cigarettes in his chest pocket. He was so tense he bit right through the first one and had to light another. With a loony smile, Trin advised him, "Relax."

They worked. Drank water. And worked some more. Trin kept widening the hole and at first Broker fought a flush of petty resentment. Making more work. But a bigger hole meant more time. Time was what they had. They emptied it, shovel by shovel, out of the hourgla.s.s of their lives.

Deep in his own bones he began to hear the whispers of childhood.

Our father, who art in Heaven...

He looked up. Great d.a.m.n stars. He didn't recognize any of them. His torn tennis shoe slipped off the shovel and he almost fell. Stumble-footed. He kicked at the empty plastic bottles. They b.u.mped and staggered like sleepwalkers.

Too done in to do the work. Out of time.

Trin read their fatigue. "We must finish what we started," he panted. Nina fell to her knees and yanked at her T-shirt. Sodden with sweat and wet sand, it interfered with her movement. She tore at the cloth, ripping a two-foot piece above the hem. Freer in the abbreviated shirt she wiped her face with the ripped cloth. Trin extended his hand for the rag. She threw it at him. He wiped sweat from his face and then handed it to Broker. "We work slow and steady," Trin insisted.

Nina glared at Trin. A copper wraith, her bare stomach was coated with a sugar of sand and sweat. She sucked in a harsh breath and spat, "How could you deal with them?"

Trin's smile was pure gook insane. "If we finish the work we live. That's the deal. Now don't quit on me!" he snarled at her.

"f.u.c.k you," she hissed and drove her shovel into the sand. Trin smiled. A Vietnamese smile. Two thousand years old. Broker tried to decipher the expression on the short man's square face. He was keeping them going.

And so they dug with a new bizarre agenda within the grim prospect that waited. They would not fall down on the job. A credo Broker was raised with. He was a machine stuffed full of bullets. The bullets popped out as sweat.

Six feet into the pit. Even with the already loosened sand from their previous labors, Broker's arms burned with every lift of the shovel. Each time it became harder to clear the lip of the hole. Nina's breath was a dry rattle.

Scoop, swing, toss.

Trin's shovel stabbed into wood with a hollow thunk. Again.

Loose ingots appeared haphazardly, as brilliant in the electric light as details from a Van Gogh. Must have spilled them in their haste their first time in this G.o.dd.a.m.n hole. Nina cradled one of them in her hands like a small flat loaf of bread. She put the bar down and touched the moldy webbing of the cargo sling that twisted around the pallet. The sling had not been treated with preservative and it crumbled in her hand.

One by one Broker heaved the gold ingots up into the night, twenty, thirty of them.

A flurry of flashlight beams played above the pit. LaPorte and his crew still stayed back, wary of their imagined b.o.o.by trap. But they were no longer silent. The night animated with their excited voices.

"We've hit the pallet. We're taking a break," Broker yelled, throwing down his shovel and collapsing in the sand.

"That's fair. We're sending over some food." LaPorte's voice sounded in the night. His reasonable, collector's voice. Trin slowly climbed to get it.

He scrambled back down into the pit with a handful of candy bars, energy bars, some donuts, and more water bottles. They squatted like cave dwellers, tearing at the cellophane wrappers with hooked grave-digger fingers. Broker chewed sand along with mouthfuls of an energy bar. Trin bent over a wrapper near one of the lights: brain-dead, he read the list of ingredients.

Nina averted her eyes from this weird normal moment and chewed methodically. Sand cascaded into the pit. Looking up, they saw Bevode's shadow loom over them, outlined against the stars, catching enough spill from the lanterns to define the leer on his face.

In leisurely stages, Bevode unzipped his fly and eased out his d.i.c.k. For a long time he ma.s.saged himself pleasurably and then he let a thick stream of urine splatter down. The p.i.s.s steadied in one spot and splashed on the wooden lid of one of the ammo boxes.

"Break's over," said Bevode. He zipped his pants and slowly uncoiled his bullwhip.

75.

THE YEAR 2000 WAS FIVE YEARS AWAY AND BROKER was building the pyramids in reverse, in the dark. Cyrus's pyramid.

Grunt and heave. His leg muscles coiled and nearly cracked. He was growing into his injured thumb. His thumb screamed as he dragged a box up the long sand ramp that Trin had stamped and shoveled into the side of the pit.

He had lost track of time since the leather eye of the whip started watching him in the night. He was bleeding from the right shoulder now, where the whip saw something it didn't like. Just him and the whip and the ramp and the Imperial weight of Ming Mang's gold.

Long f.u.c.king way up that ramp. Rope handles on the ammo boxes. Like a wire brush, stiff with tar. Ripped his hands. He'd torn the pockets from his pants and tried to use the blood-stained tatters as makeshift gloves. Trin was barechested, his sweaty torso muscled like a bantamweight. Lost his tiger tooth? He'd torn his shirt up and shared it with Nina to use on the cutting ropes.

Broker stared at the ammo crate. Weighed anywhere from a hundred to two hundred pounds apiece. The rough wooden box had waited twenty years in its chrysalis of sand for him. This must be what slavery was like. Suffering doled out one drop of sweat at a time. Gimme water, gimme rest, gimme food, gimme another hour...

History was turning backward in the pit.