The Cypress House

by Michael Koryta

  “What are you talking about?”

  Paul lifted his head and met Arlen’s eyes. “I wanted to hurt you,” he said. “And her. How I wanted to hurt her.”

  “What in the hell are you—”

  “I didn’t come back because I had nowhere else to go,” Paul said. “I came back because I thought I could see you put in jail.”

  44

  THE TRAIN LEFT while he told it. They both watched it pull away and chug north, and neither of them commented.

  He’d made it to Hillsborough County’s CCC camp. That part was true enough. The rest of it had been a lie—had he desired to stay on at the camp, he could have. And would have. At least until his third day there, when a pair of unfamiliar men in suits showed up with a visitor from Corridor County: Thomas Barrett.

  “The shopkeep?” Arlen said.

  “Yes. He’s been working with them for nearly a year.”

  “Working with who?”

  “Federal Bureau of Narcotics,” Paul said. “That’s what they told me at least. I guess they approached him because he was at odds with Tolliver.”

  He surely was—had run against him for sheriff. Arlen thought back on the drive he’d made to the lumberyard with Barrett, and he could see it easy enough. If they’d wanted to enlist a local to help, Barrett made plenty of sense.

  “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.”

  “You know that’s true,” Arlen said. “That’s the way he runs his show, sure enough. And if they understand that much, then they ought to be able to believe what we have to say. Hell, they may have seen it before.”

  Owen blew out a held breath and leaned over and picked up the whiskey glass for the first time, drank until it was half gone.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s give it hell, then.”

  Arlen nodded. “We’ll go in the morning. First thing.”

  “To Barrett?”

  He nodded again.

  Rebecca said, “Owen should wait. I’ll go alone.”

  Arlen cocked his head and frowned. “I expect they’re going to want to talk with him, too. You can’t do his bidding for him.”

  “I don’t intend to. But by tomorrow, the police might not be the only ones watching. The two of us go into Barrett’s store and stay there long enough, or go off to wherever he’ll take us next, we’ll be seen. And on a day like tomorrow, that’s not something we want. Not all of us. Wade’s placed his trust in Owen, and he knows that I won’t do anything to jeopardize my brother. So as long as Owen stays here, we’ll keep them at ease.”

  Owen said, “She’s right,” but Arlen was already nodding.

  “Okay,” he said. “But I’ll go with you. We’ll see Barrett together. First thing in the morning.”

  “First thing in the morning,” she echoed, and with that Owen raised his glass and drained the rest of the whiskey. He didn’t say a word, but his face was the color of the stones that lined the fireplace behind him.

  45

  DAWN BROKE WITH A gorgeous crimson sunrise. No trace of the night’s rains remained, but all that red in the east was a warning sky. They ate a quiet breakfast as the sun cleared the treetops and filled the yard with warm light, and then Arlen said, “Well, we best be to it, don’t you think?”

  Rebecca nodded. “You’ll both stay here?” she said to Owen and Paul.

  “Sure,” Owen said. “Just another day.” But then he cleared his throat and said, without looking at her, “How are we fixed in the way of guns?”

  Everyone was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Why on earth—”

  “It’s a good question,” Arlen interrupted, “and a good idea. Leave him one of the pistols. We’ll take the other. There are rifles on the boat.”

  She didn’t seem to like it, but she went upstairs and returned with the Smith & Wesson revolvers. Owen accepted one, and Arlen took the other.

  “All right,” Arlen said. “Y’all keep a weather eye out till we’re back. Could be we’re coming back alone, could be with a few police.”

  Owen said, “Best not do that.”

  Arlen frowned. “I expect they’ll see it the other way.”

  “Maybe so,” Owen said, “but anybody who sets foot on this property today will be seen. You make them aware of that.”

  Rebecca said, “We should take the money with us.”

  “Why?” Arlen asked.

  “Show of good faith to Barrett. He’s not going to just believe us out of the good nature of his heart. We have to have something that backs up our story.”

  “What if someone comes looking for the money?” Owen said. “What if Solomon sends Tolliver or Tate to check on me? What in the hell am I supposed to tell them?”

  It wasn’t a bad point. Arlen thought about it, then said, “Okay, we leave half here, in that case Tolliver brought it down in. It doesn’t seem likely that they’ll actually count it. They trust you.”

  He hoped.

  There was nothing else to be said then, nothing else to be done except for Arlen and Rebecca to drive down the road and put this day in motion. Arlen turned to Paul, who looked up and met his eyes. He felt as if he should say something, offer some word of caution or advice, but none came to mind, so he settled for another nod, which Paul returned. Then he and Rebecca went out into the yard—Arlen tucking the pistol into his belt and guarding it with his arm, conscious of what Owen had said about watchers—and got into the truck. The golden light of the morning sun picked up Rebecca’s hair and made it shimmer as she sat behind the wheel and cast him an exhausted gaze.

  “This will help?” she said. “Won’t it?”

  “Yes,” he said. Then she started the truck and they were off.

  They didn’t say much as they rode, but once, she reached out for his hand across the cab. Her jaw was set and her face calm. She had firm bracings within her, he knew. After watching her deal with the hurricane and Wade and the delivery of that damned cigar box, he knew that awfully well. They’d hold today, just as they’d held before. He wasn’t worried about her.

  Owen was more of a question. He didn’t seem enamored with the plan, no doubt had a con’s natural disfavor of anything that involved cooperation with the law. So long as he stayed put at the inn and nobody came looking for him, though, there shouldn’t be trouble. Arlen wished Paul had left already, boarded that final train of the night, but after the revelation he’d shared just before its departure, that had hardly been an option.

  The roads were empty. Arlen watched the mirrors for a following car but saw none. He tended to agree with Owen, though; McGrath and his sons were keeping an eye on the activity at the Cypress House.

  The garage doors were up at Barrett’s service station, his day already begun. Rebecca parked in front, and they opened the door and saw the pretty Indian girl behind the counter again. The inside of the shop smelled of tobacco and molasses, already thick with humidity.

  Barrett’s wife nodded a hello to them, but before Rebecca could say a word the door from the garage opened and Barrett stepped inside. He’d seen them come in, Arlen could tell that from the way he entered, and for just a second something flickered in his face, a quick look of unease. Then he folded it beneath one of those grins of his and said, “Mornin’. What has y’all up so early?”

  “Is there someplace we could talk in private?” Rebecca said.

  He frowned. “Something the matter?”

  “Should anyone else happen by,” she said, “I doubt you’ll want this conversation overheard.”

  He gave up the game right then. Arlen expected he’d drag it out a bit, but instead he just nodded like he’d been ex
pecting this and said, “The boy talked.”

  “Because he needed to,” Arlen said. “He might’ve saved some lives, Barrett. You got no idea what sort of operation you’re putting into action tonight.”

  “No?” Barrett’s jaw worked, anger showing in his eyes, and then he said, “Okay, follow me.”

  He walked across the warped floorboards and back through the door into the garage. His wife didn’t say a word as they passed, but she looked noticeably tense, her eyes on the road as if she expected to see someone at their heels already. Arlen cast a look back at her as he went through the door and saw that there was a small revolver on a shelf beneath the cash register.

  Barrett tugged the overhead garage doors down, sealing them in the dank, musty room. He put a stool in front of Rebecca and then sat on a stack of tires by the far wall. Arlen stood.

  “I could have y’all arrested right now,” Barrett said. “And maybe I still will. But I’ll hear it first.”

  “It’s her story,” Arlen said, “so I’ll let her do the telling. But let’s make something clear at the start—you want Wade. Not Rebecca, not Owen, not McGrath. You’re after Wade and Tolliver.”

  “I want to clean the trash out of this county, and I’ll do that one at a time if I need to.”

  Arlen said, “Really?”

  Barrett held his eyes for a long time and then said, “I want Wade.”

  “Okay,” Arlen said. “Well, we’re the best chance you’ve got of getting him. And a damn sight less useful in jail than out.”

  “I could reach a different conclusion.”

  “You won’t,” Arlen said, and then he nodded to Rebecca. “Tell it.”

  She told it. Started with her father and wound through the past six months and the threats that had been levied at her brother. When she got to the part about Wade delivering Sorenson’s hands, Barrett’s face darkened, and he said, “You let that pass? You took evidence and tossed it into the sea? That’s the level of cooperation you care to show?”

  “Cooperation with whom?” she shot back. “Was I supposed to call Tolliver? All you were to me was another local. And, I thought, a friend. Back then I didn’t know you were waiting to lock me up.”