Outside, Crockett Junior loomed at his elbow. “Where’s my brother?” Lucius demanded. The big man seized his arm and yanked him toward the street where a black car waited with its motor running. The front passenger door swung open. Crockett pushed him in and, careless of his ankles, slammed the door behind him.
“Your crazy brother tried to kill me,” Watson Dyer said, easing his car forward.
“That’s nonsense. All he did was shoot out your rear tires.”
“We’ll see,” Dyer said. He drove his black car to the oceanfront, stopping just short of the beach edge and leaving the motor running. Beyond the sparkle of small breakers, a moon-spun silver swath of sea extended westward to the lowest stars above the Gulf horizon. Gazing straight into the earth galaxy for minute after minute, Watt Dyer saw nothing but his windshield, Lucius guessed: he looked sealed off, impervious to wonder, his window rolled tight against the fresh sea air. “Brother Lucius knows all about my shot-out tires. Brother Lucius was a witness.” Dyer turned to look at him. In the bad light of an old-fashioned street lamp, his moon face was moon-colored. “Brother Lucius could go to federal prison as an aider and abettor because he knew Robert B. Watson was armed and dangerous and he did not stop him.”
“I hadn’t realized he was armed and I don’t believe he’s dangerous. Reckless, maybe. Otherwise quite harmless.”
“Escaped convict? Attemped murder? No court will ever call that ‘harmless.’ ” Dyer’s bloodless hands clenched the wheel tighter and his eyes closed in that slow tortoise blink. He said, “We have him. If he is delivered to the authorities, he’ll be returned to prison and resentenced with due consideration of his prior conviction and escape. He will die in federal custody. Whereas if his brother cooperates, the law might settle for that black lunatic with the carving knife. Teach that kind of smart-mouth nigger a good lesson. Nice tight case. Plenty of witnesses saw him storming out and can testify to his aggressive state of mind.” He watched Lucius’s face.
Lucius said, “But another eyewitness in the parking lot spotted a white man shooting at the victim’s car from a hotel window; saw him plenty well enough to testify that it wasn’t some big black man in a white cook’s outfit who got loose some way on the sixth floor.” He turned to meet Dyer’s eye. “Anyway, you don’t know Rob. He’ll never let that black man go to jail for him. He feels bad enough that we got him fired.”
“That your testimony?” Dyer glared in disbelief. “You’d let your long-lost brother get locked up for the rest of his life just to save some black maniac who assaulted a white man with a carving knife? Slit his stomach?” He drew his power-of-attorney form out of his briefcase. “We both know you’re not going to sacrifice Robert so why don’t you just sign this and shut up.”
“What’s missing here? Why is it suddenly so important to you to be E. J. Watson’s bastard? I’m talking about that affidavit you extracted from your former father.”
The attorney was disagreeably surprised and could not hide it. Lucius recalled Speck Daniels’s warning but he was on the scent now and it was too late to stop. “Do I smell big money, Wattie? Big land development? Maybe Papa’s old scheme to control all the high ground on the southwest coast? West coast Miami?”
Dyer rapped his document. “Sign it,” he said.
“You’re a real Watson now? Attorney Watson Watson?” But having no choice, he scribbled his signature. “Where’s Rob?” he said.
Watson Dyer did not bother to answer. Tucking away his paper, he yanked his car around and headed back toward the church hall. He said slyly as Lucius got out, “You ever find that nigger you’ve been looking for?”
Christ Almighty. Of course. “You’re the sonofabitch with the sniper rifle.”
Dyer actually laughed. “Why, Brother Lucius! I always thought that was you!” Abruptly he stopped laughing. He regarded Lucius for the length of a held breath. “ ‘Watson honor’?” he jeered softly as they neared the church hall. “Somebody had to take care of it, right? When none of you ‘real Watsons’ had the guts?” He drove away before Lucius remembered.
“How about Rob?” he yelled. “Where’s Rob?”