We counted what was there, added it together. We had just over four hundred thousand. Trudy took the money and rolled it into tight little rolls and put it back in the bags and wrapped the bags firmly with some tape she had and put the spoils in the two best canisters.
'That's a lot less than a million,' Howard said.
Though it looked as if my dream was going to be a smaller one than I had hoped for, I was glad to have anything. In fact, I felt a little giddy. I looked at Leonard. He nodded. I said, 'Seems to me this is a good tax-free haul. Might be another canister or two in the water, but personally I've had it. This could be all there ever was. Talk about money is like talk about fish. Both grow in the telling.'
'Me and Hap,' Leonard said, 'we'll take our share now. I want to get back to my dogs and Hap wants to get on down to Mexico.'
Howard looked at Paco, then Chub and Trudy. 'Now, huh?'
'That's right,' I said.
'Well,' Howard said, 'just a minute.' He stepped back and opened his coat and reached inside and pulled out something and pointed it at us. Even with his back to the headlights and there being only an occasional snatch of moonlight through the trees, I could see well enough to make a fairly accurate guess at what he was holding.
A flat little automatic.
Chapter 19
Turned out they all had guns. When Howard pulled his, they produced theirs. It was pretty disconcerting, all those people standing there holding cheap automatics.
Howard drove the wrecker. Trudy drove the mini-van. Chub drove Leonard's car and Paco hung over the front seat and pointed a .32 automatic at us. The bottoms raced by us in black bands and twists of oak fingers and pines shaped like dunce hats. The moon crept through it all and faded in and out with the rolling of the clouds.
I didn't look at Leonard. I could sense he wanted me to, but I didn't want to see that well-deserved I-told-you- so look.
'You guys are some kidders,' I said to Paco. 'I thought they wanted the money for a cause and you just wanted the money. Turns out you're really in this together, and you all just want the money.'
'No,' Chub said. 'Not true. We have a purpose. Thing is, we require it all. We thought there would be more and we could give you some. But little as there is, we can't afford it.
We made a pact that if there wasn't enough for our needs, we'd have to appropriate your share.'
'It's needed for a buy,' Paco said.
'Drugs?' I said.
'Guns,' Chub said.
'Guess you're going to give them to some South American revolutionaries to fight their capitalistic oppressors,' I said. 'Something like that.'
'Something like that,' Chub said. 'Only we're not giving them to anyone. We're the revolutionaries.'
'Oh shit,' I said.
'Great,' Leonard said. 'Bozo the clown and his clown buddies with guns. Probably gonna have live ammunition too.'
'We need all the money,' Chub said, 'because the weapons we're buying are state of the art. Right, Paco?'
'Sure,' Paco said.
'Paco said if we found this money, he had connections and he could get to them right away. People he's worked with before. Right, Paco?'
'Right.'
'He's been checking with them all along, in case we got the money. He's got them to quote us some prices. We theorized that we'd need quite a lot of them and plenty of ammunition, and we'd need money for when we went underground, so we could make payoffs, buy food, supplies, that sort of thing. Enough for us to get established before we started robbing banks.'
'Banks?' Leonard said. 'You're going to rob banks?'
'Not for the money. Of course, we'd have to have some of it to finance things. But we'll give a lot of it to supporters of politically correct causes.'
'Politically correct,' Leonard said. 'I love that.'
'We didn't really intend to cheat you, but with so little money there, and our plans being as ambitious as they are, we had to. It's nothing malicious or personal, it's a matter of priorities.'
'Ah,' Leonard said. 'I see. For a moment there, I just thought we were getting fucked.'
'We're going to have to keep you awhile,' Chub said. 'Until we make the buy and go underground. Let you loose now, you might spill the beans. We don't want anyone knowing about us just yet. Soon everyone will be aware of us, and we'll be glad for it.'
'I wouldn't tell a soul,' Leonard said. 'Think I want the world to know I got snookered by you goofs? Some revolutionaries you're gonna make. You couldn't find your shifters with both hands.'
'Paco's done this sort of thing before,' Chub said.
'Yeah,' Leonard said, 'and all he got out of it was a burned-up head.'
