He didn’t say anything. He just pushed the throttle forward, heading down the river toward the locks.
“So the deal went sour,” he finally said. “Your little team fell apart?”
“What team are you talking about?”
“You said one of the robbers has Jackie. You must have had a disagreement on how to split up the money.”
“When this is all over,” I said, “I promise you, I’ll make sure you know everything there is to know. For right now, I’ll tell you two things. Jackie had no part in this, and neither did I. That’s the God’s honest truth, Vargas. I’ve got no reason to lie to you.”
“Okay, whatever you say.”
A light fog covered the river. The sun began to rise behind us.
“So how much did they really take?” I said.
“If you were in on it, you wouldn’t have to ask.”
“Yeah, no kidding.”
He thought about it. “They got just over seven hundred thousand.”
“That’s a lot of refrigerators.”
“I guess you could say that.”
“Was this all from payoffs to avoid the duty? Or was there more to it? Maybe a few stoves that fell off the back of a truck? That would be a hundred-percent profit, wouldn’t it? Or maybe there’s something else you’re moving, as long as you’re going around Customs?”
“You’re not giving me your whole story,” he said. “Why should I give you mine?”
“Fair enough.”
I could see the locks appearing in the fog.
“Who’s this man you’re gonna meet?” he said. “The one who has Jackie…”
“They call him Blondie.”
“I’ve heard that name. Blondie. Canadian guy, right?”
“What do you know about him?”
“I’m trying to think. Blondie. He was one of the men in my house?”
“Yes.”
“Son of a bitch. Blondie.”
“Anything you can tell me about him would help us.”
“I’ve never met him. I’ve just heard his name somewhere. From some of the, um…well, from some of the people I deal with.”
“Keep thinking,” I said.
“That guy they found, Cox, he was in the house, right? I assume Blondie killed him?”
“Apparently.”
“Blondie was in my house. He broke into my house with a gun.”
“Yes.”
“I want him, Alex.”
“I want him, too,” I said. “Believe me.”
The locks were getting closer.
“Who was the third man?” he said.
I hesitated. “Somebody from out of town,” I said. “You don’t know him.” It was half a lie. I didn’t want to get Vargas going on the O’Dell family yet. There’d be time for that later. “Like I said, I’ll make sure you know everything when we’re done.”
He picked up the radio handset and called the locksmaster. When we were in the lock, he cut the throttle down to an idle. We waited for the water to lift us twenty-one feet.
“I thought I was being pretty smart keeping that money in the safe,” he finally said. “No IRS, no first wife, no soon-to-be-second wife. I should have known something like that would happen. You can’t hide that much money for long. Some people can just smell it. You know what I mean?”
“Let me ask you one thing,” I said. “You remember that pewter mug you had in your collection? The one from the Royal Navy?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“I assume the police will give it back to you someday. You can put it back in that glass case of yours. If anybody ever asks you if they can have it, do me a favor, will ya?”
“What’s that?”
“Give it to him.”
It was just after six o’clock when we docked behind O’Dell’s place. There was another boat already there, a twenty-five-foot cruiser. It wasn’t half the boat Vargas had, but it looked like enough.
Bennett and Ham were both looking out separate windows when we walked in. Gill was sitting by himself in the corner. Margaret was nowhere to be seen, and apparently Leon was still out picking up supplies.
Bennett’s eyes got big when he saw Vargas walk in behind me. “What the hell’s he doing here?”
“He’s letting us borrow his boat,” I said. “He’s got a gun, and I bet he knows how to use it. We need all the help we can get.”
“He’s not going out there with us.”
“Bennett, whatever your problem is, just keep it in your pocket, all right? We’re gonna get Jackie, and then the two of you are gonna sit down and have a nice long talk. I’m sure you’ll have some interesting things to tell him.”
He swallowed hard, but didn’t say another word.
I pulled a chair out for Vargas. “Have a seat,” I said. “We all better eat something. We’re gonna need the energy.”
Bennett kept one uneasy eye on Vargas for the next couple of hours. “What the hell did you have to bring him here for?” he said when he finally had me alone in the corner. “And what’s this about me having a long talk with him?”
“I figured you’d want to tell him the truth about what happened,” I said. “One piece of advice, though. If you guys end up going at it, you better fight dirty.”
“That I know how to do, don’t worry.”
“Do you have a bag we can use? To hold the money in?”
“You mean what we’re gonna pass off as the money.”
“Unless you think your son will show up with it.”
“Alex, we’ve been through this, okay? What else do you want me to say?”
“Show me the bag,” I said.
He picked up a blue gym bag. “I put all the money I could dig up on the top,” he said, opening it. “There’s about two thousand dollars on top. The rest is torn-up newspaper.”
“That’ll have to do.”
“It’s Sunday morning, Alex. The banks are closed. This is all the money from the till, every dollar I could get my hands on.”
“Relax, Bennett. It’s not gonna matter. Blondie’s probably planning on shooting you as soon as he sees you. This will be your little joke on him.”
“Then what the hell are we doing, Alex? How’s this going to work?”
“Wait ’til Leon gets here. Then we’ll talk about it.”
Leon came in around seven o’clock, with Kmart bags in both arms. We had one hour to go until Blondie’s phone call. We spent that time wrapping all of the hunting rifles in black electrical tape. Leon took a black bicycle grip out of the bag and taped it to the bottom of one of the rifle barrels. “From a distance, what do you see?” he said, picking up the gun.
“An assault rifle,” Bennett said.
“A big assault rifle,” Ham said. “The kind that’ll blow your fucking head off.”
“Whoever goes in Vargas’s boat, they put on one of these windbreakers.” He pulled them out of another bag. They were all black. “One of the black baseball hats. These sunglasses. Alex says this guy has seen all of you
