Alaysha’s eyebrows knitted. ‘But that suggestion I made the other day – I thought that was meant to have helped shift the deadlock?’
Jac nodded. ‘It would have, except that Durrant’s prison buddy, Rodriguez, can’t do it. Everything in and out of the communication room is strictly monitored – so there’d be no way of him getting away with it.’
‘Oh, I see.’
As Alaysha’s eyes settled back on him, Jac felt a stab of conscience. Still it felt wrong asking her to do it. Too early. ‘You’re meant to fuck ‘em before you let them too much into your private life.’ Maybe that was the trade-off: any chance of a relationship with Alaysha gone to save Larry Durrant’s life.
Jac swallowed, shook his head. ‘I can’t do it, either… it breaks every possible rule of lawyer-client trust.’ Jac repeated much the same he had to Rodriguez about being struck off the bar in a heartbeat if he was found out. ‘The only possibility I hit upon while with Rodriguez was that someone else do it. Someone not directly linked with Durrant…’
Jac was watching Alaysha’s expression closely throughout, but it took her a second to realize that he was asking her if she could do it. The faint jolt to her body and clouding in her eyes was late in registering. She looked down fleetingly before looking back at him directly.
‘That’s a pretty big favour to ask?’
‘I know. And I’d understand if you felt you couldn’t help.’
‘No… I didn’t mean it like that. Okay, yeah, it was my idea – but asking me to be hands-on and actually do it. That’s another level entirely. It means that… that you must trust me.’
In turn, it took Jac a second to realize that she felt strangely flattered rather than outraged. He smiled tightly and cast his eyes down, as if in coy acceptance. He didn’t want to dilute the sentiment by saying he couldn’t think of anyone else because in his few years in New Orleans he hadn’t made that many close friends; or, as Roddy had put it, ‘crooked lawyer buddies’.
‘And is this your last hope of getting Durrant to want to live, as you see it?’ she asked.
‘Pretty much. If this doesn’t work, I’d have to admit to being stuck for what next to do.’
She looked down briefly again, as if searching for invisible inspiration in her Jambalaya.
‘Okay, okay. I’ll do it,’ she said finally, exhaling as if she was easing a weight off her chest.
Jac eyed her cautiously. ‘Are you sure you’re okay with this?’
‘Yes, I’m sure.’ Her initially hesitant smile became fuller, more confident. ‘In fact I’m glad to be able to help.’
Jac nodded gently as he saw Alaysha’s last reservations slip away. He wondered whether to tell her about his mystery e-mailer – reciprocation for helping out with something so momentous, showing her even more trust – but in the end decided against it. There probably wasn’t much advice she could offer and, besides, he’d already over-stretched client confidentiality.
They were silent for a moment, only the clinking of their cutlery and a Clara Moreno album playing softly in the background.
Jac saw something in Alaysha’s eyes then, a warmth and soulfulness that went deeper, hit another level he hadn’t been aware of before, as if she’d purposely shielded it from him till that moment. Though he had no idea what it meant until almost an hour later, as she was clearing away and leant in towards him and started kissing him.
They were tentative at first, as if she was testing the water before diving fully in. But after that, it was almost two minutes before she pulled back for air again, looking at him thoughtfully as she traced the moistness she’d left on his top lip with one fingertip.
‘Now that I’ve agreed to do a big favour for you… well, looks like I might need one in return. It involves my boyfriend...’
Jac was quick to give his agreement to what she asked, probably far quicker than he’d have been without the heat of her closeness firing him on – because much of what she was suggesting helped close the door on the chapter with her boyfriend and left the way clear for himself.
And as he nodded and their bond of clandestine mutual favours was sealed with more rapid, fervent kisses and Alaysha started unbuttoning his shirt before leaning back to slide her own top over her head – that look returned again to her eyes, and Jac knew then what it was.
It signalled the moment that she’d first decided she was going to sleep with him, straight after she’d agreed to help him with his last-ditch duplicitous bid to try and save Larry Durrant’s life.
Their lovemaking felt like a dream, happening so quickly, fervently, breathlessly, that the images were little different when they replayed in Jac’s dream later that same night; tinged with the same hazy glow of the streetlight filtering into Alaysha’s bedroom.
Her coffee-cream skin, bathed in orange light, her hazel-brown eyes drawing him in like a welcoming blanket of autumn leaves, the beads of sweat massing on her top lip and, when he looked down, spread across her entire body like fine raindrops; and her breath, hot and urgent in his ear, urging him on.
‘Oh, fuck me… fuck me, Jac. Fuck me!’
But beyond her body heat and him frantically keeping rhythm with her, he started to hear the bed banging – though he could never remember that at the time. And he realized it was someone knocking at her apartment door, her boyfriend’s voice.
‘Who have you got with you? What are you doing in there?’
Then suddenly there was the banging of a door behind him, then another – the same banging he’d heard on that first night through the apartment wall – successive doors slamming like pistol shots as her boyfriend moved inexorably towards them.
But as the bedroom door burst open it was Larry Durrant standing there, gun in hand, as in his previous dream; yet this time, as the bullet hit and suddenly it was Jessica Roche beneath him, he didn’t pull back, repulsed, but clung on, eyes searching for clues he might have missed last time… something… something… her blood hot and clammy against his skin, mingling with his sweat.
‘No, no, no…. No!
Larry shouting from the doorway was little more than a silhouette, the stark light behind that of the corridor at Libreville, his desperate cries echoing through its cavernous grey depths. His face, fearful and beaded with sweat, became suddenly quizzical, pleading.
‘Don’t tell anyone what just happened here… please, Mr McElroy. Perhaps we can hide the body somewhere so that nobody will know. Maybe then I’ll get to hear from my little boy again… I haven’t heard from him in a while…’
Jac awoke with a jolt as the thunder crashed only a second after the lightning flash. His heart was beating wildly and his body was bathed in sweat, as if he had only seconds ago been making love to Alaysha.
Jac swallowed, trying to get his heartbeat settled again. He wondered if he was getting into a repetitive dream-cycle again, as in the year after his father died: the settings were usually familiar, their farmhouse, Isle de Rey beaches, but in many of them he was having fresh conversations with his father, as if he was still alive; and he’d start to panic that if he said the wrong thing, his father would then realize he was dead.
The storm outside growled and rumbled. It had been hot with the humidity sky-high before Jac went to sleep, pressure-cooking its way steadily upward through much of the day. The sort of weather that made you sweat just buttering toast, let alone making love. If it was uncomfortable here, it would be unbearable at Libreville, hot and foetid at the best of times. And for a second he had a mental snapshot of Durrant laying on his prison bed listening to the same storm, thinking about the days ahead until his execution and the many things he’d now never get to do… like holding his son in his arms again. Or maybe he was sleeping easy, like a baby. After all, he was finally going where he wanted. His Ascension Day.
He was still uneasy about misleading Durrant over his son’s e-mails; though at least he was able to console himself that the end – keeping Durrant alive – justified the means. But what wa
s starting to unsettle him more was misleading Durrant that his clemency would buy time to prove his innocence and finally gain him freedom. Jac hadn’t even given a second thought to that, because, from what he’d seen in the police and trial files, such a quest seemed hopeless, impossible.
So while he might hopefully get Durrant clemency now, at best it would be a commute to life imprisonment. In the end all he’d be doing was sentencing Larry Durrant to another ten to fifteen in that foetid, oppressive hell-hole. And, thinking about that now, maybe Durrant had been right all along. Given that choice, maybe death would be preferable.
14
Death. Everyone at Libreville thought about it. Those on Death Row perhaps more than they should: even if their execution might be five or ten years away, with any number of possible lifelines in-between – appeals and clemency pleas, State Governors offering across the board pardons upon retirement from office, as had happened once before – death was still there in some dark corner of their minds where they pushed everything they didn’t want to face, gnawing steadily away.
But with an impending execution among their number, only thirty-six days away, it was that much harder to push away and not think about. Larry Durrant’s approaching death hung over all of them. Sudden, stark reminder that it could be them next. And maybe not so long away as they thought.
Death reached out its icy hand to every corner of the prison, trickled down cell walls along with the ingrained grime and sweat, the smeared blood and faeces, brought a chill to the air and to inmates’ spines, even when it was touching 90◦. And if Death Row was the nucleus of that at Libreville, the queen bee’s hive, it didn’t lack for supporting drones.
Eighty-two per cent of inmates incarcerated at Libreville would die there; of pneumonia, heart failure, cancer, tumours, drugs overdoses, AIDS, murdered by fellow prisoners, or simply of old age. So there was a prison hospice, a chapel for prayers for the dead, and a graveyard. Libreville seemed reluctant to let go of its inmates, even in death. And while most prisoner’s families would choose to take the body home for burial – their only chance to get loved ones back – many had been so long forgotten by their families that burial at Libreville remained the only option.
Of that amount, the executioner would grim-reap less than two per cent. But that small number by far overshadowed all other deaths, because it underscored the reason they were all there. You commit murder, we kill you. When we’re good and ready.
And the passage of time, while helping inmates push the spectre of death away in their minds, also made it like a slow-drip torture; death might be trickling down their cell walls slowly, but that ensured its omnipresence. Paradoxically, of all of them Larry Durrant was probably the least worried, because he’d resigned himself to death long ago. But others on Death Row watched with foreboding that passage of approaching death as the days wound down to Larry Durrant’s execution, wondering when it might next reach out to claim them.
There were spaces though in the prison where you could escape: places that breathed life, transported you to the world outside in your mind, or simply numbed you, made you forget where you were.
For Rodriguez, it was the prison radio and communication room, all that contact with the outside world made it easy to transport himself, if only for a few moments here and there, to where that contact came from; or when he was playing songs, closing his eyes and imagining he was a DJ at some far-flung station – TKLM, Tahiti – or remembering where he’d been and what he’d been doing when he’d first heard that song. For Larry, it was the library and his books that would let him drift to other places in his mind.
And for other inmates it might be working the ranch, the annual rodeo or the muscle yard. Rodriguez had never been much for muscle training and category A prisoners weren’t allowed to work the open ranch, so the only common area where he found a quiet corner was the showers. Not for the reason they were favoured by many inmates – scoping for prison bitches – but because, with his head back, eyes closed and the water running down his body, he could escape.
He could be anywhere: under a waterfall on some South Pacific isle, waiting for one of his stable of fine women to join him under its spray, or maybe at home when he was younger and his mom calling out if he was going to be long because dinner was ready.
It washed away the sweat and grime, the invisible aura of stale and trapped humanity, of oppression and death, that seemed to cling to the skin like a sticky blanket within hours.
Wash it away. Wash it away.
Rodriguez scrubbed hard. Then, when he felt he’d washed the prison away, he tilted his head back and closed his eyes, letting himself drift with the spray hitting his face and running down his body. Pacific waterfalls, fine women soaping his body, at home and about to put on his best threads for a Saturday night out.
And he’d been more successful in his reverie this time, Rodriguez thought, because he’d even managed to tune out the clamour and echo of the other voices in the showers.
The hand clamping suddenly over his mouth snapped his eyes sharply open.
Two striplights his end of the showers had been switched off and the five guys showering in his section and the guard by the showers’ open entrance had suddenly gone.
Probably the other people showering and the guards further along out of sight were still there, but as Rodriguez writhed and tried to call out to get their attention, he made no more than a muted whimper. The hand across his mouth was clamped too firmly.
Rodriguez couldn’t see who was holding him – the arm too across his chest was clamped tight – only feel his breath against the back of his neck. The only person he could see, in that instant sliding into the side of his vision a few paces away, was Tally Shavell: a towel around his waist, upper body glistening, muscles tensed like steel chords, the veins in his neck taut as he grimaced malevolently.
‘Sorry. Didn’t bring no reading matter wi’ me this time.’
The open razor at towel level in Shavell’s right hand was flicked out silently, imperceptibly, as he stepped closer.
And Rodriguez knew in that moment that death had come for him sooner than he had thought.
‘Should be no problem handling two addresses. I got a friend, Mo, who does much the same as me. I’ve only got one Bell uniform, but I can head over to his place after I’ve finished and hand it to him.’
‘Are you sure it will fit?’ Nel-M quipped.
‘Very funny,’ Barry responded dryly. ‘But if it looks like there’s a problem, I can always stitch up the back for him.’
Barry Lassitter had become Barry-L, then simply ‘Barrel’, since he’d been three hundred pounds for more years than he cared to remember. But he was one of the best ex-Bell men that Nel-M knew and, from the name he’d given his company, ‘Warpspeed Communications’, he obviously didn’t mind the world knowing that he was an ardent ‘Trekkie’. Nel-M would have put in the bug himself if it wasn’t for the fact that Truelle would recognize him; also, he needed someone who could do it in one minute flat rather than five or six.
‘Nothing like a good stitch up,’ Nel-M commented. ‘Also, make sure there’s no tell-tale egg or ketchup stains down the front that might give the game away that it’s the same uniform.’
Barrel huffed and muttered a response that Nel-M didn’t hear.
‘And let me know as soon as they’re both in place and we’re live.’
Larry had just gone through the gate at the end of his cell block to head down to the showers when he was approached by one of the guards, Dan Warrell.
‘You’re wanted up in the library.’
‘Am I back on duty there, then?’
Warrell shrugged. ‘Don’t know about that. All I know is the guy up there, Perinni–’
‘Peretti.’
‘Yeah. Well, he’s apparently stuck with something. Needs a hand.’
‘Okay,’ Larry nodded. He wasn’t suspicious. Warrell didn’t have any allegiances with Bateson, was very much his own man. If you
had a grievance and wanted it dealt with fairly and evenly, Warrell or Torvald Engelson were the best to go to.
‘I’ll see your way up there.’ Warrell led the way up the two flights of steel steps, then along forty yards of corridor, half of it flanked by cells.
Warrell took out his security card as they approached the gate. Beyond lay store rooms, a guards’ watch room and canteen, and the library.
Peretti was at the far end of the library and looked surprised to see Larry, though pleasantly so.
‘Back to give me a hand then?’ He smiled crookedly. ‘Couldn’t trust me to be on my own too long in case I screwed everything up?’
‘But you said you wanted a help out with something?’ Larry pressed, one eyebrow arching.
‘Not me. Naah.’ Peretti shook his head.
Larry turned to Warrell, his eyes narrowing. ‘I thought you said I was wanted here?’
‘Yeah. That was what I was told.’
‘Who told you?’
With the intensity of Larry’s glare and his cutting tone, Warrell flinched slightly. ‘Uh… Bateson. Glenn Bateson.’
Jesus.
Larry ran ahead of Warrell, realizing he needed him as he came up to the gate.
‘Get me back through this. And quick.’
Under Larry’s icy glare, Warrell’s hand shook uncertainly as he slid in his card. He wasn’t about to argue or question.
Back along the corridor, down the two flights of stairs, leaping them three and four steps at a time, Larry was already breathless as he hit the passage by his cell block at full pelt. One more flight down to the shower stalls, and another thirty yards of passage before the security gate by the shower stalls.
Ascension Day Page 17
