Life or Death

by Michael Robotham

  ‘Are you expecting company?’

  ‘Nope.’

  She looks at the order again. ‘Are you sassing me?’

  He looks at her nametag. ‘No, Amber, I’m not.’

  ‘You’re gonna eat all that food?’

  ‘Yes I am. I’m gonna waddle out of here carrying my stomach.’

  Amber wrinkles her nose. ‘Y’all want sumpin’ to wash it down with?’

  ‘Coffee and orange juice.’ He pauses, thinking. ‘Got any grapefruit?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’ll start with that.’

  Amber goes to the kitchen and Moss picks up the cell phone. He marvels at how small it is. Cell phones used to be bricks carried around by spies and men in suits. Now they look like pieces of jewellery or cigarette lighters. He’s seen them in movies and on TV – wheedling like petulant children – and how people tap on the front like they’re sending messages in Morse code.

  Who should he call? Crystal for starters, but he doesn’t want to get her mixed up in this. It’s been fifteen years since he held her properly. Ordinarily, they spoke through a Perspex screen, not even holding hands, spending an hour together before Crystal drove back to San Antonio where she works as a dental nurse.

  What if they’re listening to his calls, he wonders. Can they do that? Are they going to keep their bargain if he finds Audie Palmer? Probably not. They’re going to grinfuck him either way – tell him one thing while doing the opposite, all the time smiling.

  There might be another way out if he can find the money. Seven million bucks can buy a man a kingdom or an island or a new identity or a new life. It can buy him a ticket out of Hell if he knows the devil’s travel agent.

  He and Audie have been friends for a long time, but what does that mean when your life is at stake? In prison friendship is about survival and mutual benefit, not respect or loyalty. Why didn’t Audie tell him he was going to escape? Moss had kept him alive. He had watched his back. He had got him a job in the prison library and arranged for them to have adjoining cells so they could play chess at night, writing each move on scraps of paper and casting them along the concrete floor. Audie should have told him. He was owed that much.

  The cook emerges from the kitchen. He’s a squat dark-skinned Mexican whose cheeks are so scarred with acne he looks like a chewed pencil. The waitress points out Moss. The cook nods, seemingly satisfied, and Amber brings Moss his coffee and orange juice.

  ‘What was that about?’ he asks.

  ‘Boss wants you to pay up front.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He thinks you’ll skip out before the check arrives.’

  Moss takes the envelope out of his pocket, counting out three twenties.

  ‘Let’s see how far that gets me.’

  Amber is looking at the envelope, her eyes wide. Moss gives her another ten. ‘That’s for you.’

  She slips the money into her back pocket, her voice a little lower now, almost husky. Moss feels an ancient stirring. He’s old enough to be her father, but a feeling’s a feeling. There’s nothing bitter or rancorous about this girl, no life taint, no tattoos or piercings, nothing faded or worn-out or tired. He can imagine her breezing through high school, popular with the boys, waving pompoms on the football field, doing cartwheels and flashing her knickers and her brightest smile. Now she’s in college, working part-time, making her parents proud.

  ‘You got a payphone?’ he asks.

  Amber glances at his cell but doesn’t comment. ‘Out back, between the restrooms.’

  She gets him some loose change. Moss punches in the number. Listens to it ringing. Crystal picks up.

  ‘Hey, babe, it’s me,’ he says.

  ‘Moss?’

  ‘The one and only.’

  ‘You don’t normally call on a Sunday.’

  ‘You’ll never guess where I am.’

  ‘Is this a trick question?’

  ‘I’m sitting in a diner about to have a fine breakfast.’

  There are two beats of silence. ‘Have you been drinking the Kool Aid?’

  ‘No, baby, I’m stone cold.’

  ‘Did you escape?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They let me go.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s a long story – I’ll explain it when you get here.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Brazoria County.’

  ‘Are you coming home?’

  ‘Not until I finish a job.’

  ‘What job?’

  ‘I got to find a guy.’

  ‘Who?

  ‘Audie Palmer.’

  ‘He escaped! I seen it on the news.’

  ‘They think I know where he is.’

  ‘Do you?’

  Moss laughs. ‘Not a clue.’

  Crystal doesn’t see the funny side. ‘Who are these people who asked you to find him?’

  ‘My employers.’

  ‘Do you trust them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, Moss, what have you done?’

  ‘Chillax, babe, I got things under control. I need to see you real bad. I got a hard-on so big it would make Dumbo jealous, know what I’m saying?’

  ‘Now you’re just being crude,’ she scolds.

  ‘I mean it, babe, I got a hard-on so big I don’t have enough skin left to close my eyes.’

  ‘Hush now.’

  Moss gives her his cell phone number and tells her that he’ll meet her in Dallas.

  ‘Why Dallas?’ she asks.

  ‘It’s where Audie Palmer’s mama lives.’

  ‘I can’t just drop everything and drive to Dallas.’

  ‘Have you been listening? I got a hard-on so big…’

  ‘Okay, okay.’

  14

  On the day his brother Carl shot the off-duty police officer, Audie didn’t get home until past dinnertime. He’d been hitting balls in the cage at the high school before walking to a friend’s house to borrow a mower. He planned to make some extra money cutting lawns before he went back to college.

  Pushing the mower along the broken pavement, Audie turned the corner into his street and crossed the road to get away from the Hendersons’ dog, which bust a gut barking whenever anybody walked past the house. That’s when he noticed the police cruisers and the flashing lights. Audie’s battered Chevy was parked against the curb, the doors and trunk open.

  Neighbours were standing outside their houses – the Prescotts and the Walkers and the Mason twins – people Audie knew, who were watching a tow truck winch the Chevy onto its back wheels.

  Audie shouted at them to stop but saw a deputy crouch over the hood of the car, arms outstretched, holding his gun in a two-handed grip, one eye closed.

  ‘HANDS IN THE AIR! NOW!’

  Audie hesitated. A spotlight blinded him. He took his hands off the mower and grabbed two fistfuls of sky. More deputies scurried crablike from the shadows.

  ‘GET ON THE GROUND.’

  Audie knelt.

  ‘ALL THE WAY DOWN.’

  He lay on his stomach. Somebody sat on his back. Another braced their knee across his neck.

  ‘You have the right to remain silent and refuse to answer any questions. Do you understand?’

  Audie couldn’t nod because they were kneeling on his neck.

  ‘Anything you say may be used against you in court, do you understand?’

  Audie tried to speak.

  ‘If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you without cost.’

  His hands were cuffed. They turned him over and checked his pockets. Took his money. They put him in the back of a cruiser. A sheriff got in beside him.

  ‘Where’s your brother?’

  ‘Carl?’

  ‘Got any other brothers?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  They drove Audie to Jack Evans Police Headquarters in South Lamar Street a
nd kept him waiting for two hours in an interview room. He asked for a drink of water and to use the restroom and to make a phone call, but nobody would listen. Finally a detective arrived and introduced himself as Tom Visconte. He had curly hair like a cop from a 1970s TV show, with sunglasses perched on top. He sat opposite Audie and closed his eyes. Minutes ticked by. Audie thought the detective might have fallen asleep, but then his eyes fluttered open and he mumbled, ‘We want to take a sample of your DNA.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Are you refusing?’

  ‘No.’

  A second officer entered and took a swab from inside Audie’s cheek, putting the budded stick into a glass test tube with a stopper.

  ‘What am I being held for?’

  ‘Accessory to murder.’

  ‘What murder?’

  ‘The one at Wolfe’s liquor store this afternoon.’

  Audie blinked at him.

  ‘That’s a good look. Might play well with the jury. Your car was seen leaving the liquor store.’

  ‘I wasn’t driving my car.’

  ‘Who was?’

  Audie hesitates.

  ‘We know Carl was with you.’

  ‘I didn’t go to the liquor store. I was hitting balls at the cage.’

  ‘If you were hitting balls, where’s your bat?’

  ‘At my buddy’s house – I went to borrow his mower.’

  ‘And that’s your story?’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Visconte. ‘I don’t think you believe it either, so I’m gonna give you a minute to remember.’

  ‘Won’t change anything.’

  ‘Where’s Carl?’

  ‘You keep asking me that.’

  ‘Why did he shoot Officer Arroyo?’

  Audie shook his head. They kept going around in circles. The detective would tell Audie what happened as though they had the case sewn up tight with footage and eyewitnesses. Meanwhile, Audie would shake his head and say they were mistaken. Then he remembered bumping into a girl he went to school with. Ashleigh Knight. He helped her put air in her tyres at the gas station. She asked him about college. Ashleigh was working at Walmart and going to beauty school.

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘About six o’clock.’

  ‘I’ll check that out,’ said Visconte, not believing him. ‘But let me tell you it looks bad for you, Audie. People go the chair for killing a cop, even as an accomplice. Jury isn’t gonna differentiate between which one of you pulled the trigger – unless of course you’re the one who cooperates with the police and gives up the other.’

  Audie began feeling like a broken record. No matter how many times he told the same story, they twisted his words and tried to trip him up. They told him Carl had been shot. He was bleeding. He could die without medical help. Audie could save him.

  Thirty-six hours later, the questioning ended. By then Visconte had talked to Ashleigh and studied the footage from the gas station. Audie had no money. He walked home. His mother and father hadn’t left the house for two days. There were reporters outside, littering the lawn with coffee cups and shoving microphones in people’s faces.

  Nothing was said around the supper table. Food was passed. Knives and forks scraped on plates. A clock ticked on the wall. Audie’s father seemed to be diminished, like his skeleton was shrinking inside his skin. Bernadette drove from Houston when she heard the news. She had just finished her nurse’s training and found a job in a big city hospital. The ranks of reporters had thinned by the fourth day. Nobody had heard from Carl.

  That Sunday Audie arrived late for work at the bowling alley because he had to catch two buses and walk the last half a mile. The police hadn’t returned his Chevy, which was still Exhibit A in the homicide.

  Audie apologised for being late.

  ‘You can go home,’ said the owner.

  ‘But I got a shift today.’

  ‘I filled it.’

  He opened the cash register and gave Audie twenty-two dollars in back pay. ‘I’m gonna need that shirt back.’

  ‘I don’t have anything to change into.’

  ‘Not my problem.’

  The owner waited. Audie took off the shirt. He walked the seven miles home because the bus wouldn’t take him without a shirt. On Singleton Boulevard, opposite Gary’s Car Yard, a pickup truck pulled over. A girl was driving, Colleen Masters, one of Carl’s druggy friends. Pretty, with bleached hair and too much mascara, she was fidgety and nervous.

  ‘Get in.’

  ‘I’m not wearing a shirt.’

  ‘I’m not blind.’

  He slid onto the passenger seat, self-conscious about his bare chest, which was winter-pale and splotchy. Colleen pulled into the traffic, glancing in her mirrors.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To see Carl.’

  ‘Is he in the hospital?’

  ‘Will you stop asking questions?’

  They didn’t talk again. She drove the rattling truck to a junkyard in Bedford Street beside the railway tracks. Audie noticed a brown paper bag on the seat. Bandages. Painkillers. Whisky.

  ‘How bad is he?’

  ‘See for your own self.’

  She parked under a spreading oak and handed Audie the bag. ‘I’m not doing this any more. He’s your brother, not mine.’

  She threw Audie the truck keys and walked away. Audie found Carl in the office, curled up on a bunk bed, blood leaking through the bandages. The smell made his stomach heave.

  Carl opened a bloodshot eye. ‘Yo, little bro’, did you bring me sumpin’ to drink?’

  Audie put the bag down. He poured whisky into a cup and held it to Carl’s lips. His skin had a sickly yellow sheen that seemed to cling to Audie’s fingertips.

  ‘I’m going to call an ambulance.’

  ‘No,’ Carl sighed. ‘Don’t do that.’

  ‘You’re dying.’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  Audie looked around the shed. ‘What is this place?’

  ‘Used to be a junkyard. Now it’s a just a yard full of junk.’

  ‘How did you know about it?’

  ‘Buddy of mine used to work here. He always hid the keys in the same place.’

  Carl began coughing. His whole body heaved and collapsed. He grimaced and showed blood on his teeth.

  ‘You got to let me get help.’

  ‘I said, no.’

  ‘I’m not going to watch you bleed to death.’

  Carl pulled a pistol from beneath his pillow and pointed it at Audie’s head. ‘And I’m not going back to prison.’

  ‘You won’t shoot me.’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  Audie sat down again. His knees were touching the edge of the bunk. Carl reached for the bottle of whisky and looked in the brown paper bag.

  ‘Where’s my stuff?’

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘Traitorous bitch! She promised. Let me give you some advice, little bro, never trust a junkie.’

  Carl’s hands were shaking and sweat prickling on his forehead. He closed his eyes and tears squeezed from the delta-like wrinkles.

  ‘Please let me call an ambulance,’ said Audie.

  ‘You want to make the pain go away?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I can tell you what to buy.’

  ‘I’m not buying you drugs.’

  ‘Why? You got money. What about that cash you been saving? You could gimme that.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘My need is greater.’

  Audie shook his head. Carl sighed and took a rattling breath. For a long while nothing was said. Audie watched a fly crawling across the fetid bandage, feeding on the pus and dried blood.

  Carl spoke. ‘Remember when we used to go fishing at Lake Conroe?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘We stayed at that wood cabin near Wildwood Shores. It weren’t much to look at, but you could catch fish right from the dock. Remember that time you caug
ht that 15lb bass? Man, I thought that fish was gonna pull you right out of boat. I had to keep hold of your belt.’

  ‘You were yelling at me to keep the line tense.’

  ‘I didn’t want you to lose it.’

  ‘I thought you were angry with me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It should have been your fish. You gave me your rod to hold while you got Daddy a beer from the cooler. That’s when it bit.’

  ‘I wasn’t angry. I was proud of you. That was a state junior record. They wrote you up in the newspaper and everything.’ He smiles, or it could be a grimace. ‘Man, they were great days. The water was so clear. Not like the Trinity River, which is only fit for bodies and garfish.’ He took a rattling breath. ‘I want to go there.’

  ‘Lake Conroe?’

  ‘No, the river, I want to see it.’

  ‘I’m not taking you anywhere except a hospital.’

  ‘Take me to the river and I promise, after that, you can do whatever you like.’

  ‘How am I supposed to get you there?’

  ‘We got the truck.’

  Audie looked out the window at the railway yard and the rusting freight cars that hadn’t rolled in twenty years. The tattered curtains were billowing like apparitions. What was he supposed to do?

  ‘I’ll take you to the river but then we’re going to the hospital.’

  Audie’s mind drifts back to the present. He’s standing beneath the drooping branches of a willow tree, secretly watching the same house and wondering about the boy. She said his name was Max. He looked about fifteen, fine-boned with a wedge-shaped face and wide-set brown eyes. Eighth grade. What do fifteen-year-old boys like? Girls. Action movies. Popcorn. Heroes. Computer games.

  It’s midday Sunday and the shadows are bunched beneath the trees as if avoiding the hottest part of the day. Max leaves the house and kicks along the pavement riding his skateboard, jumping the cracks and weaving around a woman walking her dog. Crossing Woodlands Parkway, he heads north to Market Street and The Mews where he buys a can of soda and sits in bright sunshine on a bench in Central Park, rocking the skateboard beneath his sneakers.

  Looking over a shoulder, both ways, he puts a cigarette to his lips and cups his hands around a lit match before waving the matchstick in the smoky air. Audie follows his gaze to a girl working on the window display in one of the shops. She’s putting a dress on a mannequin, pulling it over the bald plastic head and shoulders and hourglass curves. The window dresser is about Max’s age, maybe a little older. When she bends her skirt rides up and he can see almost to her panties. Max picks up the skateboard and puts it on his lap.