‘That’s why I gave you this job – you’re named after the bravest man I ever met. You know what he did?’
‘No,’ said Audie.
‘He stood on top of a burning tank firing a machine gun while flames were licking at his feet. He was shot to shit but he refused medical attention, not stopping until his men were safe. Guess how many Krauts he killed.’
Audie shrugged.
‘Go on, guess.’
‘A hundred.’
‘Don’t be stupid!’
‘Fifty?’
‘Damn right! He killed fifty Germans.’
Audie promised Mr Lamont that he’d watch the movie one day, but had never got around to it. It was something else to regret.
Skirting the side of the theatre, he now climbs a fire escape and kicks at a padlocked door that bangs open on rotten hinges, knocking clumps of damp plaster from the wall. He searches the empty building, which smells of mildew and decay. The rows of seats have been ripped out and removed, leaving a sloping cavern strewn with scraps of carpet, twisted metal and broken light fittings. The walls, painted in dark greens and reds, still have decorative mouldings along the architraves and skirting boards.
This is where Audie tries to sleep, curled up in a fetal clutch, resting his head on his jacket. He has forgotten how old he is. He has to count back the years and comes to thirty-three. The night arrives, trembling and shimmering with lightning. It reminds Audie of all those nights in prison, curled on his rack, reliving tragedies against the brickwork.
‘You’re going to be scared,’ Moss told him. ‘So when you start getting scared, remember that the longest night is only eight hours and the longest hour is only sixty minutes. Dawn is always going to come – unless you don’t want it to – but you got to fight against that thought. Give it one more day.’
Audie didn’t think he would miss anything about prison – but he misses Moss. The big fella had been partly a bodyguard, partly a sponsor, mostly a friend.
They’ll have questioned him about the escape. Maybe he copped a beating or two. It pains Audie to think about, but it was safer not to tell anyone about his plans – not even Moss. One day he’ll write to him and explain.
Forcing his mind to move on, he thinks of Belita and remembers the first few months of their affair, marvelling at how vividly he can recreate particular moments. Love was an accident waiting to happen, he decided. It was like throwing a parachute out of a plane and jumping after it, convinced that you could catch it on the way down. He was falling but it didn’t feel like a death plummet.
During those early days he saw Belita four or five times a week, driving her between pickups and drop-offs. They made love in the car and in Audie’s room and at Urban’s house when he was at a farm or away on business. Never overnight. Never falling asleep in each other’s arms or waking up together in the morning. Instead they stole moments like thieves, staring at the ocean afterward, or the night sky or the ceiling of Audie’s room.
‘How many people have you ever loved?’ she asked one day.
‘Only you.’
‘You’re lying to me.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s all right. You can keep lying to me.’
‘How many men have you loved?’
‘Two.’
‘Does that include me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who was the other one?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
They were lying in the back of Urban’s SUV, parked above a beach where the surf curled and crashed on the sand, sucking to and fro like a mighty set of lungs. There were so many things that he wanted to know about Belita. Everything. He thought that if he gave up the details of his own life she might give up details of hers, but she had the ability to take part in long conversations while saying very little. At the same time her eyes, dark and unblinking, seemed to contain memories and knowledge that Audie couldn’t begin to fathom or should leave well alone.
What had he learned? Her Spanish father had owned a little store in Las Colinas and her mother sewed the wedding dresses that he sold. They lived above the shop on two floors where Belita shared a bedroom with her older sister, whom she wouldn’t speak of. She didn’t like dogs, ghost stories, earthquakes, thrush, mushrooms, candy floss, hospitals, leaking pens, tumble driers, infomercials, smoke alarms, electric ovens and offal.
Her room told him nothing. It was uncluttered by personal possessions and most of the drawers were empty except for her underwear. The wardrobe had a half-dozen dresses, along with the clothes they had bought on their shopping trip.
When he asked her more questions about her family and where she grew up and when she came to America, she would react angrily. It was the same when he professed his love for her. Sometimes she accepted it and other times she called him stupid, pushing him away. She made fun of his youth, or diminished what they shared. Perhaps she hoped to drive him away, but it had the opposite effect because her mockery meant that she cared.
Belita glanced at Audie’s wristwatch and said it was time to go. They had grown complacent, taking too many risks, riding their luck.
Audie hated dropping her at the house. He didn’t know if she went to Urban’s bed every night, but he feared as much and the thought of another man touching Belita made him groan into his pillow. Torn between jealousy and desire, he would lie in bed, his eyes closed, indulging in the cinema of his fantasies. He smelt Belita everywhere. She had scented his world.
‘Do you like living like this?’ he asked her, as they drove along the ocean road. It was one of the half-days they sometimes managed to steal. That was how he measured his life now – in the hours he spent with Belita.
She didn’t answer, her expression neutral.
He asked again. ‘Do you like living with Urban?’
‘He has been good to me.’
‘He doesn’t own you.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘Explain it to me.’
Audie saw the heat rise in her neck and cheeks.
‘You’re too young,’ she said.
‘No younger than you.’
‘I have seen more.’
Audie turned his gaze toward the ocean for a moment. Frustrated. Sad. Confused. He wanted to ask if hidden love was still love or if it was like a tree falling in a forest when nobody is around to hear it fall. These moments with Belita seemed so real to him and everything else was an illusion.
‘We could leave here,’ he said.
‘And go where?’
‘East. I got family in Texas.’
She smiled sadly, as though listening to a likeable idiot.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘You don’t want me.’
‘Yes I do.’
The window was open and the wind lifted her hair, blowing it into the corners of her mouth. She raised her knees to her chest and bowed her head.
‘What happened to you?’ he asked.
She didn’t answer. Then he realised she was crying. Audie pulled to the side of the road. It was almost dark. He leaned across and kissed her cheek, saying he was sorry. Her skin felt almost cool. He brushed his fingertips over her face, through the hollows and grooves, as though reading her beauty like a blind man. And he understood for the first time that love could bring misery and cruelty and obliteration as easily as it brought goodness and joy.
She pushed his hands away and told him to take her home. Later he showered and stood for a long time motionless at the mirror, holding his toothbrush, not focusing on himself. He was haunted by Belita’s face, which was so close yet so far away, looking through him and beyond him. Her eyebrows were so definite and strong, her lips slightly open, the smoothness of her skin, the brown of her eyes, the shallow panting of her breathing and cascade of sighs. He felt as though their passion could light up cities, yet she was already moving past him, using his body to make a journey to a distant place that he could never hope to reach.
Afterwards he went down the
hallway to the payphone and called his mother in Dallas. He hadn’t spoken to her in six months, but had sent postcards and a present for her birthday, a picture frame lined with seashells (which was bad luck according to Belita, who was full of superstitions).
He could hear the phone ringing and pictured his mother navigating the narrow corridor, avoiding the side table and the hat stand. There was an echo on the line. He wondered if the wires were actually carrying his words or turning them into signals.
‘Are you alright?’ she asked.
‘I’ve met someone.’
‘Where is she from?’
‘El Salvador. I want to marry her.’
‘You’re too young.’
‘She’s the one.’
‘Have you asked her?’
‘No.’
Having fallen asleep at dawn, it is almost midday when Audie wakes. He wants to be outside feeling the sun on his skin and breathing in freedom while it lasts. Leaving the theatre, he walks the streets trying to clear his head. When he left prison he had a plan, but now he’s starting to question if the price is too high. Two more innocents dead – how can any end justify those means?
He imagines that people are staring at him, pointing fingers, whispering behind their hands. He passes a man in a dressing gown and a young tattooed woman, brittle with fury, bawling beneath an upstairs window, telling someone to ‘open the damn door’. He passes a burnt-out car, an abandoned fridge, discount stores, showrooms and a convoy of motorcyclists.
At some point he looks up and notices a church with a sign out front: IF YOU REALLY LOVE GOD, SHOW HIM YOUR MONEY. On the opposite corner is a small liquor store with a bright neon sign bolted above the door. Bottle after bottle stand upright on the shelves; spirits and liqueurs and fermented fruits that he has never tasted or heard of, yet he contemplates how easy it would be to drink himself to oblivion.
A bell jangles above his head. The aisles are empty. The store has a camera filming the entrance. Audie can see himself on a screen. He nods to the man behind the counter.
There is a pay phone. Audie thinks about calling his mother but instead asks directory assistance for a phone number and listens to it ringing. A receptionist answers.
‘I need to talk to Special Agent Furness,’ he says.
‘Who’s calling?’
‘I’ve got information for her.’
‘You need to give me your name.’
‘Audie Palmer.’
The receiver is put down on a hard surface. Audie can hear muffled voices and people shouting down corridors. He looks at the cashier. Nods. Turns his back.
A woman answers.
‘Is that Special Agent Furness?’
‘It is.’
‘I’m Audie Palmer. We’ve met before.’
‘Yes, I remember.’
‘I read those books you recommended. It took a while for the library to get hold of them, but I enjoyed them very much.’
‘You didn’t call me for a book club meeting.’
‘No.’
‘You know we’re looking for you, Audie.’
‘I figured as much.’
‘Give yourself up.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Why?’
‘I still got some stuff I have to do, but you need to know that I didn’t shoot Cassie and Scarlett. You have my word of honour. On my mother’s life and my father’s grave, it wasn’t me.’
‘Why don’t you come in and explain it to me?’
Audie can feel perspiration dripping from his armpits. He holds the receiver away from his head and wipes his ear with his shoulder.
‘Are you still there?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Why did you escape, Audie? You only had one more day.’
‘I didn’t steal that money.’
‘You fessed up to the robbery.’
‘I had my reasons.’
‘Why?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
Special Agent Furness unpicks the silence. ‘I appreciate that you might have taken the fall for your brother or someone else, Audie, but in the eyes of the law everyone involved in a robbery is equally guilty whether they did the hijacking, drove the getaway car or just made the phone calls.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘Then explain it to me. Why did you escape from prison? You were going to be released.’
‘I was never going to be free.’
‘Why?’
He sighs. ‘I have spent the past eleven years being scared, Agent Furness. Frightened of things that might happen. Frightened of things that did. Sleeping with one eye open. Keeping my back to every wall. But you know something – I’ve been sleeping just fine since I got out. I think I’ve come to realise that fear is the real enemy.’
She inhales deeply. ‘Where are you?’
‘In a liquor store.’
‘Let me come and get you.’
‘I won’t be here.’
‘What about Carl?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘When?’
Audie holds the phone tighter to his ear and squeezes his eyes shut until a kaleidoscope of coloured lights begins to swirl across his pupils. The lights fade and he pictures his brother sitting beside the river, his face slick with sweat, cradling a gun on his lap. Blood oozed through the bandages on his chest and Carl peered into the black water as though the river held the answer to life’s most important question. Carl knew he wasn’t going to the hospital. He wasn’t going to escape to California and start a new life.
‘That man I killed had a wife and kiddie on the way,’ he said. ‘I wish I could do things over. I wish I’d never been born.’
‘I’m going to get a doctor,’ Audie said. ‘You’re going to be all right.’ But even as he spoke the words, Audie knew they weren’t true.
‘I don’t deserve forgiveness or prayers,’ said Carl. ‘That’s where I belong.’ He motioned to the river, where the current sucked and coiled, oily black and unforgiving.
‘Don’t say things like that,’ Audie said.
‘Tell Ma I love her.’
‘She knows.’
‘Don’t tell her what comes next.’
Audie wanted to argue, but Carl had stopped listening. He pointed the gun at Audie and told him to leave. He refused. Carl held the gun against Audie’s forehead and screamed at him, spraying his face with bloody spit.
Audie got in the truck and drove away, bouncing along the rutted track, tears blurring his vision. He looked in the rear-vision mirror, but couldn’t see anyone on the riverbank. For years he tried to convince himself that somehow Carl had escaped and was living out his life under a different name with a good job, a wife and a family, but deep down he knew what Carl had done. Special Agent Furness is still on the phone, wanting Audie to explain.
‘Carl died fourteen years ago in the Trinity River.’
‘How?’
‘He drowned.’
‘We didn’t find his body.’
‘He weighed it down with scrap metal and jumped into the river.’
‘How do I know you’re telling the truth?’
‘Dredge the river.’
‘Why didn’t you tell anyone?’
‘He made me promise.’
Audie is about to hang up.
‘Wait!’ says Desiree. ‘Why did you go to the sheriff’s house?’
‘I had to make sure.’
‘Make sure of what?’
The line goes dead.
35
Moss doesn’t find Rabbit Burroughs until late afternoon. The janitor is washing the floor of a school gymnasium, treating the mop like an anorexic dance partner. The place smells of sweat, Tiger Balm and something else that Moss recognises from his youth. Hormones, maybe. There’s a girl sitting in the stands, playing with a cell phone. She’s about thirteen. Overweight. Bored.
‘Don’t they have machines to do a job like that?’ asks Moss, talking to the janitor.
‘School’s finished. Everybody’s gone home.’
‘It’s you I wanted to see.’
Rabbit shifts the mop from his left to his right hand. It can be a weapon now. He is sizing Moss up, deciding whether to fight or flee.
‘I’m no threat to you,’ says Moss, holding up his hands. ‘How long you worked here?’
‘Not your business.’
‘Do they know you’re a convicted felon?’
Rabbit blinks at him. His face looks feverish, the skin moist, his eyelids stitched open.
‘I bet they have no idea.’
Rabbit has raised the mop in both hands.
‘Relax. You’re spilling water everywhere.’
Rabbit looks at the puddle.
‘Who’s the little girl?’ asks Moss.
‘She belongs here.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Her mother is working. I look after her.’
‘What does her mother do?’
‘She’s cleaning the restrooms.’
Moss wanders across the polished boards. He bounces an imaginary basketball and takes a shot, picturing it dropping into the basket. The place has an echo. He has done a little research on Rabbit and knows he’s done two stints in state pens, the longest six years. He also did some time as a juvie for postal fraud and drug possession. But a rap sheet can’t tell you anything about how a man was raised – if his father was a violent drunk or if he was ugly, poor or stupid.
Rabbit is an alcoholic. Moss can tell. Red blood vessels are etched against the whites of his eyes and dried mucus has crusted in the corners of his mouth. There are different styles of drunks. Some get bombed in the excitement of the moment, high spirits; others drink to escape. Alone. Soaking.
‘Tell me about the Dreyfus County truck robbery.’
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You were part of the gang.’
‘Not me.’
‘You got picked up for DUI before the robbery.’
Life or Death Page 19
