“At first all they wanted to do was talk to me,” Paul said. “Find out what I’d seen and heard. But I kept asking questions, said I wouldn’t tell them a thing unless I knew the situation, and once they told me…”
“You saw it was a chance to hurt us. Just like we’d hurt you.”
Paul didn’t say anything, but he nodded.
“Why in the hell haven’t they gone to Rebecca?” Arlen said. “She’d have helped.”
“Barrett doesn’t trust her. Said her father was close with Wade, and her brother was, too, and that she’d just come on down and fallen right in with them.”
She had done that. At least from an outsider’s view.
“It was her brother,” Arlen said. “Damn it, they were as good as holding him hostage even though he was in prison.”
“That’s not how the agents saw it,” Paul said. “What Barrett and the others told me was she’s as bad as any of them.”
“You actually believed it?”
Paul looked away. “Wanted to at least.”
“So what’s about to come down on us?” Arlen said. “What have you done?”
Paul winced at that, then said, “They’ll be watching tomorrow night for the boat coming in. Barrett already told them Wade wouldn’t be there himself. That he keeps his distance. So they’ll arrest everyone else and lock them up and push the charges hard, hoping they can get more information, more evidence.”
“You were to have been there,” Arlen said.
Paul nodded.
“You’d have watched us go off in handcuffs.”
Paul couldn’t look at him now, and Arlen gave a slow shake of his head and then cranked the window down and lit a cigarette. The rain was still falling but without the wind to push it, and the air was cooler now.
“I guess we had you pretty well soured if you could do a thing like that.”
“It’s why I told you,” Paul said softly, head down.
“You were mighty close to letting us run right into that hornet’s nest,” Arlen said. “Why didn’t you?”
Paul looked up at him. “Because you said you couldn’t leave her behind. Not even with all this. That made it… I don’t know. It meant something, that’s all. It meant something.”
Arlen nodded and smoked and thought. After a time he said, “When you hiked up the road today, you went to report in with Barrett.”
“Yes.”
“So they know exactly what the plan is. They know, and they’ll be watching.”
“Yes.”
“If we were to leave,” Arlen said, “all of us, leave tonight, there wouldn’t be anybody left for them to arrest but McGrath and the Cubans.”
“I suppose not.”
“But that wouldn’t give them much. Because the Cubans won’t come in without the light signal, and McGrath and his boys won’t be holding a damn thing that’s of value-no money, no dope.”
Paul didn’t answer.
“And then they’d all be looking for us,” Arlen said. “These government agents who are counting on you, for one. Solomon Wade, for another. By then he’ll know exactly what was set up, and he’ll know who did it.”
“So what do we do?” Paul said.
Arlen raised his eyebrows and blew smoke and held his hands up, palms raised. “That’s the question, Brickhill. And I’ll be damned if I have a good answer. We go ahead with what we had planned, we’ll all end the day in jail. We could go to Barrett and tell him we want to help. Or we could warn Wade of what’s about to commence, gain his trust, and hold the fight till another day.”
“They think Owen and Wade are awful close,” Paul said. “That’s why they held me off coming back as long as they did. They wanted Owen to be there. Wanted me to try and get in good with him.”
“They were close,” Arlen said, “until Owen found out Wade had been using him against Rebecca. Until he found out the son of a bitch had his father killed.”
“So what do we do?” Paul repeated.
Arlen smashed the cigarette out on the door frame and tossed it into the street and started the truck again.
“We go back,” he said. “And let everyone have their say.”
It was more a case of letting everyone have their silence than their say, though. When he showed up with Paul still in tow, Rebecca and Owen were surprised, to say the least. When he let the kid tell what he’d been helping to arrange, they went from surprised to stunned. Even Owen didn’t mouth off much. Just shook his head like he didn’t believe it and poured himself a glass of whiskey, which he let sit untouched.
“I swear,” he said, “it was an easier fix I had at Raiford.”
“From the sound of it,” Arlen said, “your return there can be arranged easily enough.”
Rebecca gave him a sharp look, and he shrugged. She got up from her chair and went to the window and stared out into the darkness as if the agents were already circling through the woods, watching. Hell, maybe they were.
“We can leave now,” she said. “We’ve got the money. We can leave now, and then they can all tangle together tomorrow and forget we ever existed.”
“I don’t reckon they’ll forget,” Arlen said. “Not a one of them, on either side. They’ll be at our heels by sundown. And when it comes to that, we’d best hope for the law to catch us first.”
“You go, then. You and Paul. You’ve done nothing wrong. This trouble belongs to no one but Cadys.”
Arlen said, “No.” Quiet but firm. She turned to look at him, and Owen did the same, and he looked from one to the other and shook his head.
“All right,” Owen said, “then what in the hell do you propose?”
He’d been thinking on that for the whole hour’s silent drive back from the train station. None of the options was appealing, but only one made any real sense to him.
“We’ve got to go to Barrett,” he said, “and offer to help.”
“According to Paul, we’re the ones he’s intending to arrest,” she said.
“That might be the case right now. But he’s not entirely ignorant-it’s Wade he’s really after. He thinks removing the two of you might help him get to Wade. We’ll have to convince him you don’t need to be jailed to do that. In fact, you’re a hell of a lot more help to him out of jail than in it.”
Rebecca looked at Owen, uncertain.
“I’ve helped them,” she said. “I’ve handled his money and allowed my property to be used for any number of horrible things, and I’ve not said a word.”
“Because you feared for your brother,” Arlen said.
“You understand that,” she said. “Will they?”
“I expect they might.”
“So then we end up working for them against him.”
“That’s right.”
She didn’t answer.
“You don’t think they’re good enough, do you?” Arlen said.
“They’re not,” Owen said. He’d been listening with a distant stare and that untouched glass of whiskey near his hand.
“You can’t say that for sure.”
“The hell I can’t. You know how long Solomon’s been running this part of the state? You don’t think the law’s taken some shots at him before this? Taken some shots at the Italians he’s in with down in Tampa, and at the boys in New Orleans? Shit, that’s all they do, take shots at men like that. And year after year some of them go under. Wade, though? Wade gets stronger.”
“Well, maybe,” Arlen said, “this is his year.”
They were all quiet again. The rain had finally ceased altogether, and the wind was flat and all that could be heard was the ticking of the mantelpiece clock and, very soft, the breakers out on the beach.
“He’ll listen,” Paul said.
They all turned to look at him.
“Barrett,” he said. “He’ll listen to you. He’ll understand.”
“You haven’t been around long enough to guess at who can be trusted and who can’t,” Owen said.
“I think I have. And I can tell you this: Arlen was right. Barrett and those that he’s working for, they want Solomon Wade. All you and Rebecca are to them is a chance to work toward him. They’d do most anything to arrest him, I think. The way Barrett told it to me, Wade’s near impossible to get at because of the way he isolates himself. Both by living in a place like this and by having people like…” He hesitated, then finished, “… people like you do his dirty work.”