she had gone to the phone and had gotten to work. The tears she would later shed while talking to her sister had then been a thousand years away. She had brushed past Michael as if he were a piece of furniture, and he had trailed uncertainly after her as he had done all of their married life.
She called Tom Sprague, their lawyer, who, hearing that their problem was criminal, hastily referred her to a colleague, Jim Warberg. She called Warberg and got an answering service that would not reveal Warberg’s home number. She sat by the phone for a moment, drumming her fingers lightly against her lips, and then called Sprague again. He hadn’t wanted to give her Warberg’s home telephone number, but in the end he gave in. When Regina finally let him go, Sprague sounded dazed, almost shell-shocked. Regina in full spate often caused such a reaction.
She called Warberg, who said he absolutely couldn’t take! the case. Regina had lowered her bulldozer blade again. Warberg ended up not only taking the case but agreeing to go immediately to Albany, where Arnie was being held, to see what could be done. Warberg, speaking in the weak, amazed voice of a man who has been filled full of Novocain and then run over by a tractor, protested that he knew a perfectly good man in Albany who could get the lay of the land. Regina was adamant. Warberg went by private plane and reported back four hours later.
Arnie, he said, was being held on an open charge. He would be extradited to Pennsylvania the following day. Pennsylvania and New York had coordinated the bust along with three Federal agencies: the Federal Drug Control Task Force, the IRS, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. The main target was not Arnie, who was small beans, but Will Darnell—Darnell, and whomever Darnell was doing business with. Those guys, Warberg said, with their suspected ties to organized crime and disorganized drug smuggling in the new South, were the big beans.
“Holding someone on an open charge is illegal,” Regina had snapped immediately, drawing on a deep backlog of TV crime-show fare.
Warberg, not exactly overjoyed to be where he was when he had planned on spending a quiet evening at home reading a book, rejoined crisply, “I’d be down on my knees thanking God that’s what they’re doing, They caught him with a trunkload of unstamped cigarettes, and if I push them on it, they’ll be more than happy to charge him, Mrs Cunningham. I advise you and your husband to get over here to Albany. Quickly.”
“I thought you said he was going to be extradited tomorrow—”
. “Oh, yes, that’s all been arranged. If we’ve got to play hardball with these guys, we ought to be glad the game’s going to be played on our home court. Extradition isn’t the problem here.”
“What is?”
“These people want to play knock-over-the-dominoes. They want to knock your son over onto Will Darnell. Arnold is not talking. I want you two to get over here and persuade him that it’s in his best interest to talk.”
“Is it?” she had asked hesitantly.
“Hell, yes!” Warberg’s voice crackled back. “These guys don’t want to put your son in jail. He’s a minor from a good family with no previous criminal record, not even a school record of disciplinary problems. He can get out of this without even facing a judge. But he’s got to talk.”
So they had gone to Albany, and Regina had been taken down a short, narrow hallway faced in white tile, lit with high-intensity bulbs sunken into small wells in the ceiling and covered with wire mesh. The place had smelled vaguely of Lysol and urine, and she kept trying to convince herself that her son was being held here, her son, but achieving that conviction was a hard go. It didn’t seem possible that it could be true. The possibility that it was all a hallucination seemed much more likely.
Seeing Arnie had stripped away that possibility in a hurry. The protective jacket of shock was likewise stripped away, and she felt a cold, consuming fear. It was at this moment that she had first seized on the idea of “Getting us over this”, the way a drowning person will seize a life preserver. It was Arnie, it was her son, not in a jail cell (that was the only thing she had been spared, but she was grateful for even small favours) but in a small square room whose only furnishings were two chairs and a table scarred with cigarette burns.
Arnie had looked at her steadily, and his face seemed horribly gaunt, skull-like. He had been to the barber only a week before, and had gotten a surprisingly short haircut (after years of wearing it long, in emulation of Dennis), and now the overhead light shone down cruelly through what was left, making him appear momentarily bald, as if they had shaved his head to loosen his lips.
“Arnie,” she said, and went to him—halfway to him. He turned his head away from her, his lips pressing together, and she stopped. A lesser woman might have burst into tears then, but Regina was not a lesser woman. She let the coldness come back and have its way with her. The coldness was all that would help now,
Instead of embracing him—something he obviously didn’t want—she sat down and told him what had to be done. He refused. She ordered him to talk to the police. He refused again. She reasoned with him. He refused. She harangued him. He refused. She pleaded with him. He refused. Finally she just sat there dully, a headache thudding at her temples, and asked him why. He refused to tell her.
“I thought you were smart!” she shouted finally. She was nearly mad with frustration—the thing she hated above all others was not getting her way when she absolutely wanted to have it, needed to have it; this had in fact ever happened to her since she left home. Until now. It was infuriating to be so smoothly and seamlessly baulked by this boy who had once drawn milk from her breasts. “I thought you were smart but you’re stupid! You’re… you’re an asshole! They’ll put you in jail! Do you want to go to jail for that man Darnell? Is that what you want? He’ll laugh at you! He’ll laugh at you!” Regina could imagine nothing worse, and her son’s apparent lack of interest in whether or not he was laughed at infuriated her all the more.
She rose from her chair and pushed her hair away from her brow and eyes, the unconscious gesture of a person who is ready to fight. She was breathing rapidly, and her face was flushed. To Arnie, she looked both younger and much, much older than he had ever seen her.
“I’m not doing it for Darnell,” he said quietly, “and I’m not going to jail.”
“What are you, Oliver Wendell Holmes?” she rejoined fiercely, but her anger was in some measure overmastered by relief. At least he could say something. “They caught you in his car with the boot loaded with cigarettes! Illegal cigarettes!”
Mildly, Arnie said, “They weren’t in the boot. They were in a compartment under the boot. A secret compartment. And it was Will’s car. Will told me to take his car.” She looked at him.
“Are you saying you didn’t know they were there?”
Arnie looked at her with an expression she simply couldn’t accept, it was so foreign to his face—it was contempt. Good as gold, my boy’s as good as gold, she thought crazily.
“I knew, and Will knew. But they have to prove it, don’t they?”
She could only look at him, amazed.
“If they do drop it on me somehow,” he said, “I’ll get a suspended sentence.”
“Arnie,” she said at last, “you’re not thinking straight. Maybe your father—”
“Yes,” he interrupted. “I’m thinking straight. I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’m thinking very straight.”
And he looked at her, his grey eyes so horribly blank that she could no longer stand it and had to leave.
In the small green reception room she walked blindly past her husband, who had been sitting on a bench with Warberg. “You go in,” she said. “You make him see reason.” She went on without waiting for his reply, not stopping until she was outside and the cold December air was painting her hot cheeks.
Michael went in and had no better luck; he came out with nothing more than a dry throat and a face that looked ten years older than it had going in.
At the motel, Regina told Warberg what Arnie had said and asked him if there was any chance he might be right.
Warberg looked thoughtful. “Yes, that’s a possible defence,” he said. “But it would be a helluva lot more possible if Arnie was the first domino in line. He’s not. There’s a used-car dealer here in Albany named Henry Buck. He was the catcher. He’s been arrested too.”
“What has he said?” Michael asked.
“I have no way of knowing. But when I tried to I speak to his lawyer, he declined to speak with me. I find that ominous. If Buck talks, he puts the onus on Arnie. I’ll bet you my house and lot that Buck can testify your son knew that secret compartment was there, and that’s bad.” Warberg looked at them closely.
