The Cypress House

by Michael Koryta

  “I worked here for a time,” Paul said. “Came down with Arlen.”

  “Yeah? Why’d you leave?”

  Paul looked at Arlen and then Rebecca and said, “I was hoping to catch some work down near Tampa. It didn’t go well.”

  “Ain’t that the way anymore?” Owen lit the cigar and took a puff. “Well, welcome back to the Cypress House, Paul Brickhill. Stay as long as you’d like. We’re not busy, as you’ve probably noticed.”

  “He’s not staying,” Arlen said.

  Everyone gave him a hard look at that.

  “Actually,” Paul said, “I think I will be until I get things straightened out.”

  Arlen shook his head. “It isn’t safe for you here. It—”

  “I told you that I don’t want to hear any more about that. It’s a pack of damned lies, and I won’t listen to it ever again. I’m not intending on staying here long, trust me. But I need a bed for a few days while I figure it out. You’d refuse me that?”

  He stared at Arlen with challenging eyes.

  Owen said, “What in the hell are you all talking about?”

  Nobody answered.

  “Listen here,” Owen said, tapping some ash free from his cigar, “I’ll not have anyone else laying out the rules for who stays here and how long. Rebecca’s not the owner. I am. When our daddy died, he left it to me. And I’m damn sure”—he pointed at Arlen with the cigar—“that he didn’t leave it to you.”

  He waited for somebody to object. When no one did, he smiled, satisfied, and said, “So, Paul Brickhill, you stay as long as you’d like.”

  “Thank you.”

  Arlen said, “You keep the hell away from Solomon Wade while you’re here. Understand me? You keep the hell away from him.”

  “Oh shit, my sister’s got you singing her song, does she?” Owen said, giving a theatrical groan as he walked around the bar in pursuit of booze.

  Arlen ignored him, looking hard at Paul. The boy turned away from the stare.

  That night Paul sat up with Owen Cady and listened to the latest round of gangster stories. Rebecca had gone upstairs in a cold silence, and Arlen went outside and circled back to the front porch, where he was beside an open window and could hear what they were saying. He slid down until he was sitting on the porch floor with his back against the wall, then put a cigarette in his mouth and listened.

  Owen Cady was singing the praises of Solomon Wade.

  “Man doesn’t look like much, and doesn’t sound like it either. Just a judge in a backwater town nobody’s ever heard of, right? Well, I’ll tell you this: you go around the country, you’ll find men who know the name. New Orleans, Miami, New York. They’ve heard of him, and they respect him.”

  Arlen waited on one of two things: Paul’s rebuttal, or his silence. What he heard was Paul’s encouragement for Owen Cady to keep running his mouth.

  “You been working with him for long?” Paul asked.

  “Few years, ever since I was old enough to be worth a damn to him. See, he and my father used to run liquor through here, back in Prohibition days. Bring boats into the inlet or keep them off the coast and go out and meet with them.”

  “Rebecca was around for this?”

  “No, she was in Georgia. She never understood my father anyhow. He was a good man, but he was also a smart one. Knew what had to be done to make it in this world. Rebecca’s never gotten that. Be better for me if she left again.”

  “You want to stay here?”

  “Hell, no, but I need to for the time being. Solomon Wade, he’s holding my ticket for wherever it is I want to go, understand? I can make more money in a month of working with him than I could in two years doing anything else. I’ll build my nest egg and then head out of this place.”

  “Where would you go?”

  “New York, maybe. Chicago? Hell, I don’t know. Someplace where there’s always things going on. It’s a big world, brother, and I intend to see it.”

  “I’d like to myself,” Paul said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “Where you from?”

  “Jersey. Be damned if I’ll go back there, though. But I can’t get back into the CCC, and I’ve got no money. It’s why I came back.”

  “How’d you boys end up here anyhow?”

  “Arlen’s out of his mind, that’s how,” Paul said. “I’m not fooling either. He’s crazy. We were on a train headed down to the Keys, and he pulled us off because he thought he saw dead men aboard.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Not a bit. He pulled us off that train, and we got into a car with a guy named Walter Sorenson.”

  “I know Walt.”

  On they went, Paul narrating the events that had led him to the Cypress House, cursing Arlen at every turn, and Owen Cady offering grunts of disbelief. Arlen still hadn’t lit his cigarette. It dangled from his lip, going soft as he listened.

  “I want to get out of here,” Paul said. “Go someplace brand-new, start over. But I don’t have a dime to my name.”

  Tell him why not, Arlen thought. Tell him what contribution the great Solomon Wade has made to your fortune.

  But Paul said, “Any chance you could find me some work? Maybe I could help out, make a few dollars.”

  Arlen almost came up off the porch and went through the door. He wanted to grab the kid by the neck and slam him around, slap him in the mouth and ask him what in the hell had gotten into him, how stupid could a person be? He held his place on the porch floor, though. He knew what had gotten into the kid—Arlen and Rebecca. He was different now than he had been before, sullen and bitter, hardened. It was no mystery what had made him that way.

  I thought it was the right decision. I thought it was the only way.

  Inside, Owen said, “You said you run across Wade in the jail?”

  “That’s right, but I haven’t done a thing to cause him trouble since.”

  He’s caused you trouble, though, Arlen thought. He put smoke in your eyes, Paul. That man will be your death.

  He jerked the cigarette out of his mouth and crushed it in his palm and flung it into the yard.

  “Let me talk to him,” Owen said. “I’ll put in the good word. I bet he goes along with it. I’m going to need a hand with this thing we’ve got coming in.”

  “What is it?” Paul said.

  Owen Cady laughed. “Not yet, Paulie. Not yet. You ain’t cleared.”

  “Well, get me cleared,” Paul said. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make some money. I want to get out of this place, and I don’t want to do it walking down the highway. Not again.”

  “You get in with Wade, and you’ll leave this place in a Cadillac.”

  * * *

  They went on for another hour at least. Arlen sat where he was the whole time, listening to them and shaking his head, thinking that Paul sounded like an entirely different kid. Like someone Arlen had never met. He was trying to act hard, for one thing, and for another he was buying into Owen Cady’s bullshit. It didn’t seem like the same kid who’d been so hellfire determined to repair the generator and the clock, didn’t seem like the same kid who’d charged Tate McGrath in that barroom and nearly gotten killed.

  That was on Arlen, though. Paul wasn’t the same kid, damn it. He’d left the Cypress House a different person, and his time on the road had done nothing to help, just allowed him to soak in his bitterness.

  All I wanted was for you to leave, Arlen thought, because I knew what staying would mean. Why can’t you see that it was the truth?

  He didn’t see it, though, and now he was back and planning to partner up with whatever Owen Cady had to offer. Arlen thought of the way Paul’s eyes had swirled to smoke during that handshake with Wade, the way it had vanished as soon as the man released his grip, and he knew what had to be done.

  He was going to have to kill Solomon Wade.

  37

  OWEN ROSE EARLY and took off in the convertible, and Paul went with him. They didn’t leave word of where they w
ere going or when they’d be back.

  When Tate McGrath arrived, Arlen somehow had a feeling he’d known that it would be just Arlen and Rebecca at the inn. The old truck clattered into the yard, and Arlen took one look and then went upstairs and found the pistol he’d left under the bed. He checked the load and snapped the cylinder shut and then held the gun close to his leg as he walked down the steps. He stopped halfway down when he heard Rebecca at the door.

  “Solomon wanted y’all to have this” was all McGrath said. Then the door swung shut and Arlen heard his boots slap across the porch. Arlen came down the steps and looked outside in time to see him getting into the truck.

  “What are you doing with that?” Rebecca said, looking at the gun. She was holding a sealed envelope.

  “I don’t like that son of a bitch. I’d rather have a gun in hand anytime he pays a visit.” He nodded at the envelope. “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know.” She tore the envelope open and slid a folded piece of paper out. As she unfolded it, Arlen saw it was a newspaper clipping. He set the gun on the bar and came to her side, studied the picture with her. The face was familiar—it was the man who drove the black Plymouth.

  The article was from the Orlando newspaper, detailing the discovery of two bodies dragged from a swamp in a desolate stretch outside the village of Cassadaga. Both bodies were male, both were homicide victims, but only one had been identified: David A. Franklin, a Tampa native and known underworld figure. The second victim’s identity was unconfirmed, police said, due to the fact that both of his hands were missing. Anonymous sources suggested that the corpse was Walter H. Sorenson, also from Tampa, and a close associate of Franklin’s.

  “Sorenson?” Arlen said. “That’s whose hands we have? That can’t be.”

  Rebecca slid slowly away, almost soundlessly, dropped until she was sitting on the floor and her back was against the bar. Her eyes were distant.

  “I didn’t… I thought it was the other man,” she said. “Franklin. I didn’t understand what they wanted me to know.”

  “Those can’t be Sorenson’s hands. He burned…” Arlen’s voice faded and he turned his head and looked out the window at the spot in the yard where Sorenson’s Auburn had exploded. He thought of how quickly the body had gone up, how the flesh had already been singed beyond recognition when Arlen reached the car.

  I would have seen it coming, he thought. I would have seen smoke in his eyes, would have known before he stepped out this door.

  “That wasn’t him in the Auburn,” Arlen said.

  Rebecca shook her head.

  “I thought the man in the Plymouth killed him,” Arlen said. “That man was David Franklin, probably. But he didn’t kill him. If he had, I’d have seen the signs. No, Sorenson had a chance when he left this place. He had a chance, and they tracked him down, and they took that chance away.”

  Rebecca didn’t answer.

  “Franklin drove that Plymouth down here to help him,” Arlen said. “Is that it? He came down to pick him up and set fire to that car so we’d be left thinking the man was dead.”

  “Yes.”

  He stared at her. “You knew this. You’ve always known it.”

  “No. But I’ve wondered.”

  Arlen got slowly to his feet. He left her sitting there on the floor and walked around the bar and poured himself a drink, though it was not yet nine in the morning. When he spoke again, he couldn’t even see her.

  “I want to hear it,” he said. “I want to hear it all.”

  For the first time since the hurricane, she drank with him. They sat at a table beside the fireplace and drank, and she told him about Walter Sorenson.

  Sorenson was intrigued by Rebecca. He didn’t understand why she’d stayed at the Cypress House after her father’s death, and he didn’t buy the drowning story that had been offered. He inquired about it often.

  “He was here about twice a month,” she said. “It would vary depending on whether there was money to collect. The way it worked was that he’d come by to pick up what was owed to Solomon. If you didn’t have the right amount, it wouldn’t be Walter who came back for you. It would be Tate McGrath and his sons.”

  At first she resented him in the way she did everyone else affiliated with Solomon Wade. But over time, as he confided in her, as he told her how badly he wanted out of the enterprise he’d joined, she began to trust him.

  “I told him the truth in July,” she said. “Told him what had really happened to my father and why I was still here, that I was waiting on Owen.”

  Sorenson had been sympathetic but not shocked. He’d expected as much since Rebecca first replaced her father at the inn. He inquired about her plan to leave once Owen was free, and was unimpressed.

  “All I knew was that I’d take Owen and we’d go,” she said. “That seemed like enough to me. He said we’d need money. That if we tried to leave without money, we’d end up seeking help from my family, and if we did that, Solomon would find us. So it was the breadline, he said. That was where we were headed. I told him that trying to steal money would only make Solomon search for us harder, and he disagreed. He said Solomon would do it anyhow, and that we couldn’t hide without money.”

  “It won’t be easy for you if you’re broke,” Arlen admitted.

  “That’s what Walter said. He told me that my father’s plan was almost right, just missing a few touches: money and witnesses.”

  “Witnesses,” Arlen echoed.

  She nodded.

  “That’s why he picked Paul and me up,” Arlen said. “We served a role. So did you. We’d all tell the story in the same way.”

  “I think you’re right,” she said. “But he also called you a good-luck charm. Apparently he stopped to speak with David Franklin’s girl in Cassadaga, and she offered him some sort of advice. You even said that yourself; I remember you told it to Tolliver. That she’d told him to watch for hitchhikers.”

  “For travelers in need,” Arlen said. He thought about that conversation, the bolita game, the way Sorenson had let Paul drive the Auburn. His mood had changed dramatically when they arrived at the Cypress House, when the next step of his attempt at escape loomed large.

  “I wish he’d made it,” he said, and he was surprised at the sadness in his voice for a man he’d hardly known. “I wish the son of a bitch had made it.”

  “Me, too.”

  He looked at her. “You didn’t know this. You truly did not?”

  “No. I’m making guesses, and that’s all. But I think they’re good guesses. I didn’t recognize the hands, though. Wade must have thought I would.”

  “He also must have suspected you were involved.”

  “I know that he did. They confronted me about it, Solomon and Tolliver and McGrath. I think the only reason they believed me in the end was that you and Paul were telling the same story.”

  “So we were good-luck charms,” Arlen said, “but not for Sorenson.”

  “They asked me a lot of questions about David Franklin,” she said. “Whether he’d ever been around with Walter, things like that. I’d never seen him. Had no idea who he was. Not until the night… the night they brought him here.”

  “Gwen, the one from Cassadaga, she was Franklin’s girl,” Arlen said. “They used her to get to Franklin, and Franklin to get to Sorenson. But who in the hell burned in that car? If it wasn’t Sorenson, who was it?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Well, they didn’t just find a body. Someone was killed. Who?”

  “I just said that I have no idea. But Walter… he wasn’t a murderer. He wouldn’t have killed anyone.”

  “Well, it wasn’t a mannequin that burned in that car.”

  “He wouldn’t have killed anyone,” she repeated stubbornly.

  Arlen lifted the newspaper article. “Why’d they bring this to you? Why today?”

  “Reminder,” she said. “Solomon likes me to be refreshed, time to time, on what happens to those who cross him. Now tha
t Owen’s out, he can’t hold that one over me. So he’s turning to other things.”

  She lifted her hands to her face as if shielding her eyes from a bright light. “Poor Walter. He was the best of them. Not a bad man at his core. Just a man who’d made too many concessions for money.”

  “If you’re right, then he didn’t make the concession he needed most,” Arlen said. “He was a thief but not a killer. Right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, to get away from Solomon Wade, he needed to be the latter.”

  She lowered her hands and looked at him.

  “He has to die,” Arlen said simply. “There’s no running from him. All this is simply more proof of that. We can’t afford to leave him behind.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Yes,” he answered. “I’m going to do it, Rebecca. It’s the only chance you’ve got. You aren’t going to walk away from him.”

  “You can’t kill him. I can’t let you do that. Not for me, not for Paul, not for anyone.”

  “It’s not a matter of what you can let me do,” he said, “it’s a matter of what needs to be done. What has to be done. You want out of this mess? This is the way you’ll get out. I don’t believe there’s any other.”

  “We’re not killing anyone. No matter how evil they are, we’re not going to do murder ourselves.”

  “Then he’ll find us,” Arlen said, “and he will settle the score. I wonder who will get your hands as a reminder? Mine? Your brother’s?”

  They shared a long stare, and then she broke it and turned away.

  “It’s not just him, though,” she said. “Solomon Wade is valuable to people we’ve never even heard of, dangerous people. He’s part of a chain, and if we remove that part, don’t you think those other men will want to retaliate?”

  “I don’t intend to leave a calling card saying it was me that killed him,” Arlen said. “And if he’s in as deep as you say, then they’ll have plenty of other people to worry about. We’re nothing to them.”

  “Arlen, no.”

  “The way to leave this place without having to look over your shoulder every day for the rest of your life,” Arlen said, “is by leaving with Wade dead. You know too much about what he does. You’re a danger to him. The things you could tell the law, they’re things that put him at risk. He’ll find a way to keep you under his control, just as he always has. Last time it was with your brother. This time he may have to give up on any such patient technique.”