“I’m going to kill him,” he said. His voice was cold. “I’m going to slit the son of a bitch’s throat.” He tightened his hands into fists and said, “I’m going to make him bleed, Rebecca. I’ll take him slow. I’ll take-”
“No, you won’t,” she said. “This is exactly why I was waiting to tell you the truth. I can’t allow you to make the situation worse than it already is.”
“So what’s your idea?” Owen said. “Call the sheriff? Think Tolliver’s going to arrest him?” He gave a disgusted laugh and shook his head.
This time, Arlen spoke for her.
“We’re going to kill him,” he said. “But we’re going to do it right. You need to be a part of it, and you need to have your damn head on straight when it’s done. You go off half-cocked, and you’ll end up dead yourself and probably take your sister with you. Don’t shake your head at me; that’s the damn truth of it. You better understand that.”
Owen stood and glared at him. Arlen finished tamping down the sand and then leaned on the shovel and looked him in the eye.
“You want him dead? You want to settle up?”
“Bet your ass I do. I’m going to see that it happens, too.”
“Good,” Arlen said. “Then let’s you and I climb in that fancy car he gave you and take a ride. We got some things to discuss.”
Owen looked from his sister back to Arlen and nodded. Rebecca was staring out at the ocean, her face grave. She didn’t like the idea. Didn’t want them to be discussing such things. She’d have to deal with it, though. The only thing in all this mess that Arlen was certain of had been told to him by the hands he’d just buried for the second time.
You couldn’t run from Solomon Wade. Not successfully.
39
PAUL WAS OUT ON the back porch when they returned. He watched them with a frown, and Arlen saw he had a glass of gin in his hand again.
“Family meeting finished?” he said.
“Yes,” Rebecca said. “I’m going to make us some food.”
Arlen set the shovel down beside the porch and then started around the side of the house and toward the car with Owen.
“Where are you going?” Paul called after them.
“Taking a ride,” Arlen said. “I want to see this silly buggy move.”
“I’ll go along.”
“You’ll stay.”
“That isn’t your decision to make.”
“It’s mine,” Owen said. “We’ll just be gone a bit.” His voice was soft and weary. Everything about him spoke of a sudden fatigue. He kicked along through the sand with his shoulders slumped and his hands jammed in his pockets, and he never even bothered to look at Paul. Paul didn’t argue, but when he sat back down his face was dark with anger.
“First thing you need to understand,” Arlen said when he’d slid into the passenger seat beside Owen, “is that we’re going to keep that boy out of this. Completely. You got that?”
Owen nodded. He’d put the car in gear, and now he looked at Arlen and said, “Where am I going?”
“Just take it down the road,” Arlen said. “You drive, and you talk. Tell me about Wade’s work. Tell me the things your sister doesn’t know. Tell me how you think he should be killed. Could be killed. And one more thing: tell me how we can lighten his pockets before we kill him.”
Owen stared at him, surprised.
“Make no mistake,” Arlen said, “people will likely give chase. We’ll need money to run. On that score, Walter Sorenson was right.”
Owen pulled out of the yard and onto the rutted road, the headlights capturing ghostly shadows from the Spanish moss that dangled just above the car.
“It’s going to be hard,” he said. “He’ll have a lot of men around for this next deal. Men like Tate McGrath.”
“I figured on that,” Arlen said. “Now let’s hear the whole scenario.”
It would be the sort of transaction that took place often at the Cypress House, but never while Wade was present. He kept his distance from the actual cargoes. The McGraths and the Cadys handled that task. Owen had started his work for Solomon Wade as a driver, taking truckloads of orange crates out of Corridor County and on to Memphis, New Orleans, and Kansas City. The crates contained heroin smuggled in from Cuba.
The money would come from Wade and be given to Owen a day before a group from Cuba was to arrive. They’d bring a boat up to the waters off the beach from the Cypress House and wait for a light signal that showed them it was safe to put in. Then they’d come all the way into the inlet, and the unloading would commence immediately. Tate McGrath and his sons would handle the unloading. The cargo would be crates and crates of oranges. Some of the crates would be marked with a single hole drilled in a side slat. Inside those marked crates were thin false bottoms, the grains of heroin packaged beneath. Owen didn’t know how much of the drug would come in, but it had to be plenty-the orange crates, once unloaded, were taken in trucks. Owen was expected to drive one truck, and he’d told Wade that Paul would be riding with him. It was supposed to be a sort of test for both of them, giving Wade an opportunity to determine that nothing about the prison stay had tainted Owen’s loyalty, giving him an opportunity to assess Paul’s loyalty for the first time.
Arlen asked for more details about the money. Owen said he knew that Wade paid thirty dollars for an ounce, and the next person in line probably paid sixty or seventy per ounce at least.
“How much money will he give you, though?” Arlen asked. “What are you going to pay these guys who bring it in?”
Owen said he couldn’t be certain because he had no way of knowing the exact size of the load, but if it held the pattern he’d seen before he was jailed, then they’d be bringing in at least three hundred ounces.
“Then he’ll be giving you nine thousand dollars,” Arlen said. The sum overwhelmed him. They were going to carry that much money down to a bunch of Cubans in a boat and hand it off in exchange for orange crates?
“That’s probably close to it,” Owen said. They were out on the paved road now, screaming along at close to seventy miles an hour, and with the wind whipping in the car it was hard to hear. Arlen didn’t want to tell him to slow down, though. He figured the kid needed to be in motion right now, needed to have his foot heavy on the gas.
“He just hands you that much money? He trusts you with that?”
“Well, everybody’s awful careful about their counting,” Owen said. “Come up a few dollars short, and it’s bad news, buddy.”
They were going to come up many dollars short this time around, if Arlen had any say in it. Tough for a dead man to miss the cash, though.
“You’re in charge of the cash? Not McGrath?”
Owen nodded. “Tate and his boys stay back in the inlet. They handle the unloading, but they never go out to meet the Cubans. I take our boat out and meet them before they bring it in. I give them half the money then, while they’re still on open water. They get the second half after everything’s been unloaded. Tate will have all his boys down there, with three or four trucks, and they go through the crates pretty quick. Time it gets finished, I hand over the rest of the money, and everybody heads in a different direction.”
“How much is your cut?”
“He said I’d get a hundred dollars for this one.”
A hundred dollars was a good month’s work for most men, but it also didn’t seem too hefty a cut when you considered the likelihood of a long prison stretch if you were caught. Arlen figured Wade had a carefully constructed alibi if anyone ever did take a bust and try to point back to him as the source of the money. He also figured the fool who tried to do such a thing would have a mighty short prison stay and wouldn’t be walking out of the cell when he left.
“You’ll have this money a full day ahead of time?” Arlen asked.
“That’s right. He doesn’t want to see me the day of the delivery. He won’t see anyone the day of the delivery.”