“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.