Life or Death

by Michael Robotham

  11

  Three guards drag Moss from his rack and make him kneel, half-naked, on the cold concrete floor. One of them swings a baton across Moss’s back for no reason other than vindictiveness or spite or whatever sadistic streak seems to infect men who are put in charge of prisoners.

  Dragged upright, Moss has a bundle of clothes thrust into his arms before being marched along the landing, through two doors and down the stairs. His cheap cotton boxer shorts are losing their elasticity and he has to hold them up with one hand. Why is he never wearing decent underwear when he gets invited out?

  A guard tells him to get dressed. His wrists and ankles are cuffed and linked to a chain around his midriff. Without any explanation, he is taken down the ramp to where a prison bus is parked in the central courtyard. A handful of other inmates are already on board, segregated in cages. He’s being transferred. It always happens this way – in the dead of night when there’s less chance of trouble.

  ‘Where we heading?’ he asks another prisoner.

  ‘Somewhere else.’

  ‘I worked that much out.’

  The door closes. Eight detainees are isolated in heavy-gauge metal cages, which have floor drains, security cameras and side seats. A US marshal is seated with his back to the driver’s cabin, nursing a shotgun on his lap.

  Moss calls out, ‘Where we heading?’

  No answer.

  ‘I got my rights. You got to let my wife know.’

  Silence.

  The bus pulls out of the gates and heads south. The other detainees are dozing. Moss watches the road signs and tries to work out where he’s being taken. Night transfers are usually interstate. Maybe that’s his punishment. They’re going to send him to some shithole prison in Montana, fifteen hundred miles from home. An hour later the bus pulls into the West Gaza Transfer Unit near Beeville. Everybody else is taken out except for Moss.

  The bus leaves again. Moss is the only detainee. The US marshal has gone and the only other person on board is the driver, silhouetted behind a dirty plastic screen. They head northeast on US 59 for a couple of hours before reaching the outskirts of Houston and turning southeast. If they were transporting him out of state they’d have driven him to an airport. This doesn’t smell right.

  Just before dawn, the bus pulls off the four-lane and takes a number of turns before stopping in a deserted rest area. Peering through the steel mesh, Moss can make out the shadows of trees. There are no prison lights or guard towers or barbed-wire fences.

  The uniformed driver walks down the centre aisle of the bus and stops outside the cage.

  ‘On your feet.’

  Moss turns and faces the window. He listens as the padlock is keyed and the bolt slides open. A hessian sack is pulled over his head. It smells of onions. Moss is pushed forward, nudged with a baton or the barrel of a gun. He tumbles down the stairs, landing on his hands and knees. Gravel digs into his palms. The air smells fresh and cool like a new day is about to begin.

  ‘Stay here. Don’t move.’

  ‘What’s gonna happen?’

  ‘Shut up!’

  He hears the footsteps fade, insect sounds, his own blood pumping in his ears. Hours seem to pass in the following minutes. Moss can make out vague shapes through the loose weave of the bag. Headlights swing across him. Two vehicles. They circle the bus and pull up at a distance.

  Doors open and close. Two men walk on gravel. They are standing in front of him. Moss can make out their shapes. One of them is wearing a pair of polished black shoes. Formal wear. He’s overweight but when he stands erect he gives the impression of a trimmer man. The guy with him is fitter, possibly younger, dressed in cowboy boots and brown trousers. Nobody seems in a hurry to talk.

  ‘Are you gonna kill me?’ asks Moss.

  ‘I haven’t decided,’ says the older man.

  ‘Do I get a say?’

  ‘That depends.’

  Moss hears the sound of a handgun being unholstered and the safety removed.

  ‘You don’t say a word unless I ask a direct question, is that clear?’

  Moss doesn’t answer.

  ‘That was a direct question.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, I’m clear.’

  ‘Where’s Audie Palmer?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘That’s a shame. I was hoping you might be somebody I could do business with.’

  The pistol is placed at Moss’s head, digging into the depression below his right ear.

  ‘I can do business,’ says Moss.

  ‘Give up Audie Palmer.’

  Moss hears the trigger edge back.

  ‘I can’t tell you sumpin’ I don’t know.’

  ‘You’re not in prison any more. You got no reason to hold your mud.’

  ‘If I knew I’d tell you.’

  ‘Maybe you’re just being loyal.’

  Moss shakes his head. He can see colours dancing in front of his eyes. Maybe this is what people mean when they talk about seeing the light, or having their lives flash before their eyes when they’re about to die. Moss is disappointed. Where are the women, the parties and the good times? Why can’t he picture them instead?

  The younger man pivots and drives his fist into Moss’s stomach. Deep and unexpected, the blow reaches a soft place right under his sternum. His mouth opens. Air out. None in. He might never breathe again. A boot swings into his back, pitching him forward, pressing his face into the leaf litter. Spittle drips down his chin.

  ‘How long is your sentence?’

  ‘All day.’

  ‘Life, eh? How many years you done?’

  ‘Fifteen.’

  ‘Chances of parole?’

  ‘I live in hope.’

  The older man is squatting on his haunches beside Moss. His voice and diction are melodic and almost hypnotic. He’s a southern gentleman. Old school.

  ‘I am going to offer you a deal, Mr Webster. It’s a good one. You could call it a once-in-a-lifetime deal because the alternative is watching a bullet come out of your eye socket.’

  There is a long pause. The bag has bunched up and Moss can see a few inches of grass. A caterpillar is crawling towards his mouth.

  ‘What’s the deal?’ asks Moss.

  ‘I’m givin’ you time to think about it.’

  ‘But I don’t know what it is.’

  ‘Fifteen seconds.’

  ‘You haven’t told me…’

  ‘Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five—’

  ‘I’ll take it!’

  ‘Good man.’

  Moss is dragged to sitting. The smell of urine fills his nostrils and he can feel the sticky wetness soaking the crotch of his trousers.

  ‘When we leave here, you’re going count to a thousand before you take that sack off your head. You’ll find a pickup truck parked over yonder. Keys are in the ignition. In the jockey box you’ll find a thousand dollars, a cell phone and a driver’s licence. That cell phone has a GPS tracking device. If you turn it off, or lose it, or if someone else answers that phone when it rings, the local police will inform the FBI of your escape from Darrington Prison Farm in Brazoria County. I will also send six men to your wife’s home – yes, I know where she lives – and they will play house with her in a way that you have not been able to for the past fifteen years.’

  Moss doesn’t respond, but he can feel his fists clenching. The suited man has crouched down again. The cuffs of his trousers rise up to show pale hairless ankles above his black socks. Even without being able to see the man’s eyes, Moss knows that they are fixed on him with all the intensity of a baseball catcher ready for anything that comes in fast or kicks out of the dust.

  ‘In return for being granted your freedom, you are going to find Audie Palmer.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By using your connections in the criminal underworld.’

  Moss has to stop himself laughing. ‘I been fifteen years inside.’

  The comment draws a swift kick. Moss is growing tired of being
hit.

  ‘Is this about the money?’ he asks, riding the pain.

  ‘You can have it. We’re only interested in Audie Palmer.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He was responsible for people dying. The only reason he escaped being prosecuted for murder was because he took a bullet to the head.’

  ‘And if I find him, what happens?’

  ‘You contact us. The number is programmed into that phone.’

  ‘What happens to Audie?’

  ‘That’s not your concern, Mr Webster. You swung three times and struck out. Now you have a chance to step up to the plate and get back in the game. Find Audie Palmer and I will make sure your remaining sentence is commuted. You’ll be a free man.’

  ‘How do I know I can trust you?’

  ‘Son, I just got you transferred out of a federal prison to a state prison farm that doesn’t even know you’re coming. Think of what else I can do. You fail to find Palmer and you’ll serve the rest of your sorry life in the toughest, meanest penitentiary in Texas. Do you understand?’

  The man leans closer and tosses the soggy end of an unlit cigar near Moss’s face.

  ‘You have only one choice, Mr Webster, and the sooner you realise that the easier it’s going to be. Remember what I said about that cell phone. Lose it and you’re a wanted man.’

  12

  Every time Audie closes his eyes he falls in love again. For a dozen years it has been this way – from the moment he first set eyes on Belita Ciera Vega and she slapped him hard across the face.

  Belita had been carrying a jug of water from the kitchen along a baking cement path to fill the water trough in a birdcage that held two African grey parrots. The jug was heavy and water sloshed from side to side, spilling down the front of her thin cotton dress. She looked barely out of her teens, with long hair that was so dark it had a purple tint like satin under a black light; and it was plaited like a horse’s tail, reaching down to the small of her back, where her dress was tied with a bow.

  Audie hadn’t expected to meet anyone coming around the side of the house and neither had Belita. The cement was hot and she hadn’t worn her sandals. She danced from foot to foot, trying to stop her feet from burning. More water spilled until the front of her dress was plastered to her skin and her nipples stood out like dark acorns beneath the fabric.

  ‘Let me help you,’ said Audie.

  ‘No, señor.’

  ‘It looks heavy.’

  ‘I am strong.’

  She spoke Spanish and Audie knew enough to understand her. He pried the jug from her fingers and carried it to the birdcage. Belita folded her arms to cover her breasts. She stood in the shade, away from the hot cement. Waiting. Her eyes were brown with golden flecks like you sometimes see on a boy’s marble.

  Audie gazed across the gardens and the swimming pool to the dramatic cliffs. On a clearer day he could have seen the Pacific.

  ‘That’s some view,’ he said, whistling quietly.

  Belita looked up at the same moment that Audie turned. His eyes dropped from her face, to her throat and her breasts. She slapped him hard across the left cheek.

  ‘I didn’t mean those,’ he said.

  She gave him a pitying look and turned back to the house.

  He tried again in broken Spanish. ‘Lo siento, señorita. No quería mirar … um … ah … your …’ He didn’t know the word for breasts. Was it tetas or pechos?

  She did not answer. He did not exist. She walked away from him, her dark hair swinging aggressively from side to side. The screen door slammed shut. Audie waited outside, holding his trucker cap in his hands. He sensed that something had happened, some kind of revelation, but he couldn’t fathom the meaning. He glanced back along the concrete path where the damp patches had evaporated. There was nothing left to show of the incident beyond what survived in his memory.

  When she reappeared she was wearing another dress, even more threadbare than the first one. She stood behind the screen door and spoke this time in broken English.

  ‘Señor Urban he not home. You come back.’

  ‘I’m here to pick up a package, a yellow envelope. Sobre amarillo.’ Audie mimed the dimensions. ‘He said it was in the study on the side table.’

  She looked at him scornfully and disappeared again. Audie watched the fabric swaying as her hips moved. It was effortless, like water sliding down a sheet of glass.

  She returned. He took the envelope from her.

  ‘My name is Audie.’

  She locked the screen door and turned away, disappearing into the dark cool of the house. Audie stood there dumbly. There was nothing left to see but he kept looking anyway.

  According to the red numbers on the digital clock it is just after eight, but light has been leaking from the edges of the curtains for the past hour. Cassie and Scarlett are still asleep. Rising quietly, Audie goes to the bathroom. As he passes the small desk he notices the car keys on the veneered wood. The key chain has a pink rabbit’s foot.

  Pulling on his jeans and a sweatshirt, he lowers the lid of the toilet and sits to write a note on motel stationery.

  I’ve borrowed your car. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Please don’t call the police.

  Outside he slips behind the wheel and takes a ramp onto Interstate 45, heading north out of Houston. The freeway is quiet on a Sunday morning and within half an hour he’s clear of the city and taking exit 77 along Woodlands Parkway past golf courses, lakes and streets with rustic names like Timber Mill and Doe Run Drive and Glory Bower. He pictures the map in his mind – the one he committed to memory when he searched for the address using a computer at Three Rivers Prison.

  Pulling into the empty parking lot of the Lamar Elementary School, Audie gets changed into shorts and laces his new running shoes. He starts off slowly, jogging along bike paths beneath oak, maple and chestnut trees. There are stop signs at each intersection and the houses are set back from the road, with watered lawns and flowerbeds. A newspaper boy rides past him on a bicycle pulling a trailer. He tosses each paper like a tomahawk, spinning it end over end, until it slaps onto porches or front paths. Audie had a newspaper route when he was in his teens, but he never delivered to a neighbourhood like this one.

  Sunlight shines through the trees, creating dappled shade on the asphalt as he runs. He sees men on the golf course, fat as pharaohs, riding in gleaming white buggies. This is their enclave, white, clean, law-abiding – a semi-reclusive retreat full of trophy houses with flagpoles and porch swings and their backs permanently turned to their neighbours.

  Audie pauses and props his leg on a fire hydrant, stretching his hamstrings. He sneaks a look at a two-story house with a gabled roof and sashayed porch on three sides. There is a teenage boy riding a skateboard on a square of concrete outside the garage’s triple doors. Olive-skinned and dark-haired, the boy moves with an easy grace. He has made a ramp from a sheet of plywood and two breezeblocks. Kicking off on the skateboard, he puts in a couple of powerful strides before launching himself off the ramp, spinning the board with a flick of his feet and landing the jump.

  The boy looks up, shielding his eyes from the glare, and Audie feels a breath catch in his throat. He should keep running, but now he’s rooted to the spot. He bends until his forehead almost touches his shin. Behind him, a car pulls into the driveway, the tyres crunching over pecan husks. The boy flips the skateboard with his foot and catches it in his fist. He steps aside as the garage door opens and the car pulls inside. A woman emerges from the interior carrying a brown paper sack of groceries. She’s wearing blue jeans, flats and a white blouse. She hands the groceries to the boy and walks down the driveway toward Audie. For a moment he almost panics. She bends to pick up the newspaper and then spies him, noting the loops of sweat under his arms and the lock of hair stuck to his forehead.

  ‘Nice morning for a run.’

  ‘Yes it is.’

  She brushes a blonde ringlet aside, showing her green eyes. Diamond studs glint in her e
arlobes.

  ‘You live locally?’

  ‘Just moved in.’

  ‘I didn’t think I’d seen you round here before. Where are you staying?’

  ‘Riverbank Drive.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice. Do you have kin?’

  ‘My wife died a while back.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She runs her tongue over her small white teeth. Audie looks across the ample lawn. The boy is doing pirouettes on the skateboard. He loses his balance and almost falls. Tries again.

  ‘What made you move to the Woodlands?’ she asks.

  ‘I’m working on a company audit. Should only take a few months, but they found me a house. It’s too big, but they’re paying.’ He can feel the sweat drying on his back. He motions to the house. ‘Not as nice as this place.’

  ‘You should join the country club. Do you play golf?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tennis?’

  Audie shakes his head.

  She smiles. ‘That rather limits your choices.’

  The boy calls to her, yelling something about being hungry. She glances over her shoulder and sighs. ‘Max couldn’t find milk in the fridge if it mooed at him.’

  ‘Is that his name?’

  ‘Yes.’ She holds out her hand. ‘I’m Sandy. My husband is the local sheriff. Welcome to the neighbourhood.’

  13

  Moss pats the pocket of his shirt, checking on the envelope of cash. Satisfied, he studies the laminated menu, swallowing the saliva that is pooling in his cheeks. He looks at the prices. When did a burger cost six bucks?

  The waitress is dark-eyed and honey-skinned, wearing white shorts and a red blouse. She has the sort of preppy enthusiasm that must get her lots of tips.

  ‘What can I get you?’ she asks, holding a small black box instead of an order pad.

  Moss rattles off his selections. ‘Pancakes. Waffles. Bacon. Sausages. Eggs scrambled, poached, fried and what’s that creamy sauce?’

  ‘Hollandaise.’

  ‘Yeah, some of that, along with hash browns, beans, biscuits and gravy.’