Life or Death (14 page)

Sandy unlatches the chain and escorts Desiree through the house to the sunroom. She’s a size ten, blonde hair, smooth skin. Pretty. The house is tastefully furnished with just a hint that the eye was trying too hard to be stylish, poring over interior design magazines without ever settling on a theme.

Refreshments are offered … declined. There is a brief moment when both women run out of small talk and Desiree looks around the room as though contemplating an offer.

Sandy notices Desiree’s shoes.

‘They must hurt your feet and your back.’

‘You get used to it.’

‘How tall are you?’

‘Tall enough.’ Desiree gets to the point. ‘What did you and Audie Palmer talk about?’

‘The neighbourhood,’ says Sandy. ‘He told me he’d just moved into a place around the corner. I said he should join the country club to make some friends. I felt sorry for him.’

‘Why?’

‘He said his wife had died.’

‘What else did he talk to you about?’

Sandy tries to think. ‘He said he was doing some audit for his company. I thought he’d moved into the old Whitaker place. You will catch him, won’t you?’

‘We’re doing everything we can.’

Sandy nods, but doesn’t look reassured.

‘Did anyone else see him?’

‘Max, our son.’

‘Where was he?’

‘Riding his skateboard out front of the garage. I came home from the store and Palmer was standing beside the driveway, stretching.’

‘Did Max talk to him?’

‘Not then.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He saw him later at the Mews – it’s not far away. Max was riding his skateboard and Palmer was sitting on a park bench. I told the other detectives all this.’ Sandy is wringing her hands in her lap. ‘Ryan wanted to keep Max home today, but he’ll be safe at school, won’t he? I mean, we’re doing the right thing by acting like nothing is wrong. I don’t want Max growing up thinking the world is full of monsters.’

‘I’m sure you made the right decision,’ says Desiree, who isn’t used to having such a sisterly conversation. ‘Had you ever met Audie Palmer before yesterday?’

‘No.’

‘Why do you think he came to your house?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’

‘Not to me.’

‘It was Ryan who shot him – everybody knows that. Audie Palmer got one in the head. He probably should have died and saved everyone a lot of trouble. Either that or gone to the chair – not that I believe in executing people willy-nilly, but four people died, for God’s sake!’

‘You think Audie Palmer wants revenge?’

‘I do.’

‘How would you describe his demeanour?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Did he seem agitated? Stressed? Angry?’

‘He was sweating a lot – but I figured he’d just been running.’

‘And apart from that?’

‘He looked relaxed … like he didn’t have a care in the world.’

Less than two miles away, Ryan Valdez pulls through the school gates and turns off the radio. It always amazes him, the people who call into talkback shows to spout their prejudices and publicise their ignorance. Don’t they have anything better to do than to bitch about the state of things, which were always better in ‘the good old days’, as though time had mellowed their memories, turning vinegar into wine?

‘So we’re clear. You wait to be picked up. You don’t leave the school. You don’t talk to any more strangers…’

Max takes out an ear-bud from his ear. ‘So what did this guy do?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘I think I should know.’

‘He stole a bunch of money.’

‘How much?’

‘A lot.’

‘And you arrested him?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Did you shoot him?’

‘He was shot.’

Max looks genuinely impressed. ‘And now he’s come back to get you?’

‘No.’

‘Why else would he come to our house?’

‘Let me worry about that. And don’t go upsetting your mom by asking her questions.’

‘Is this Audie Palmer scary?’

‘Yeah.’

‘He didn’t look very dangerous.’

‘Looks can be deceiving. He’s a killer. Remember that.’

‘Maybe you should let me carry a gun?’

‘You’re
not
taking a gun to school.’

Max sighs in disgust and opens the door. He joins the tide of students funnelling through the gates. Valdez watches him walk to the main doors, wondering if he’ll turn back or wave. The answer is no.

When the boy disappears, he takes out his cell and puts in a call into the Dreyfus County Sheriff’s Office. He talks to his most senior deputy, Hank Poljak, and tells him to contact every dispatcher in Houston and the surrounding counties.

‘If Audie Palmer is sighted I want to know first.’

‘Anything else?’ asks Hank.

‘Yeah, I won’t be in the office today.’

19

The cab surfs the freeway traffic under the sun’s red stare. Audie gazes out of the tinted windows at the ocean of soulless strip malls, red-tiled houses and cheap prefab warehouses with razor wire along the rooftops and bars on the windows. When did Houston start dragging its knuckles? It had always been a strange city – a collection of neighbourhoods, like Los Angeles, where people commuted from home to work, barely interacting with one another. The only difference is that Houston is a destination while LA is merely a stop-off on a journey to somewhere better.

The cab driver is foreign, but Audie has no idea where he’s from. One of those tragic countries, he supposes, a land beset by dictators or fanatics or famine. He has dark skin, more olive than brown, and receding hair that seems to be slipping backward off his head. Opening the sliding window between the front and back, he tries to start a conversation, but Audie isn’t interested. Instead his mind wanders back to when he left Carl on the banks of the Trinity River.

There are moments in life when important choices have to be made. If we’re lucky we get to make them, but more often they’re made for us. Carl wasn’t at the river when Audie got back with the police and paramedics. There were no bloody bandages, no messages or apologies. Audie knew what had happened, but didn’t tell anyone. It was more out of respect for his parents than for Carl. The police wanted Audie charged with wasting their time and kept him in custody for another twelve hours before they allowed him to go home.

Weeks went by and Carl’s name disappeared from the headlines. In January Audie returned to college and was summoned to the Dean’s office. His scholarship was being withdrawn because he was a ‘person of interest’ in a cop killing.

‘I didn’t do anything wrong,’ said Audie.

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said the Dean. ‘And when this is all sorted out and your brother is found, you can reapply and the admissions officer will assess your eligibility and character.’

Audie packed up his things and withdrew his savings and bought a cheap car and headed west, putting miles between the past and whatever was coming. The Caddie rattled and banged across fifteen hundred miles, always threatening to perish, but displaying a will to survive that people normally attribute to sentient beings. Audie had never seen the sun set over the ocean. He’d never seen anyone surf in real life. In southern California he saw both. Bel-Air, Malibu, Venice Beach – famous names, images from films and TV shows.

It was different being on the west coast. The women smelled of sun oil and moisturiser instead of lavender and talcum. They talked about themselves and were obsessed with materialism, spiritualism, therapy and style. The men were tanned, with thick shiny hair or oiled skulls, wearing hundred-dollar shirts and three-hundred-dollar shoes. They were fixers, hustlers, stoners, dreamers, actors, writers, movers and shakers.

Driving as far north as Seattle, Audie worked as a barman, a bouncer, a packer, a fruit picker and a delivery guy. He stayed in cheap motels and doss houses, or occasionally with women who took him home. After travelling for six months he walked into Urban Covic’s skin joint, twenty miles north of San Diego. It was darker than a cave except for the spotlighted stage where a pale girl with flesh climbing over the rim of her panties was polishing a silver pole with her thighs. A dozen men in suits gave her encouragement or pretended not to notice. Most of them were college boys or working stiffs trying to impress their Japanese business partners.

These southern Californian girls seemed to enjoy their work, torqueing and thrusting in the time-honoured fashion, earning every note that found its way into their G-strings and bra straps.

The manager had a comb sticking out of his shirt pocket and hair slicked back in wet-looking ridges like a freshly ploughed field.

‘Got any work?’ asked Audie.

‘We don’t need any musicians.’

‘I’m not a musician. I can work the bar.’

The manager took out his comb and ran it over his scalp, front to back. ‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-one.’

‘Experience?’

‘Some.’

He gave Audie a form to fill out and said he could work a shift unpaid as a trial. Audie proved himself to be a hard worker. He didn’t drink. He didn’t smoke. He didn’t sniff. He didn’t gamble. He didn’t try to screw the girls.

Apart from the bar and the rooms, Urban Covic also owned the Mexican restaurant next door and the gas station opposite. These attracted families and helped him launder some of the money he earned from his other less lawful activities. Audie started work at eight most nights and went through until four in the morning. They let him eat at the restaurant first. It had a rear courtyard with a grapevine trellis and stucco walls banked with wine bottles.

Two weeks into his new job, he noticed a vehicle with blacked-out number plates, three up, waiting in the parking lot. He called the police and cleared the tills, hiding the money under the spillage pans. The men came in with sawn-off shotguns and balaclavas. Audie recognised one of their tattoos. It belonged to a guy who was dating one of the dancers and would hang around to make sure that none of the punters got too touchy-feely with her.

Audie put his hands in the air. People were crouching under tables. The girl on the pole had covered her breasts and crossed her legs.

The armed men broke open the registers and grew angry at the slim pickings. The guy with the tattoo waved a gun at Audie, who held his nerve. The sirens were coming. Shots were fired. One bullet shattered the mirror above the bar. Nobody got hurt.

Urban Covic arrived in the early hours, his face still creased from the pillow. The manager told him what had happened. He summoned Audie into his office.

‘Where you from, kid?’

‘Texas.’

‘Where you going?’

‘Haven’t worked that out.’

Urban scratched his chin. ‘Kid your age has got to decide if he’s running away from something, or running toward it.’

‘I guess so.’

‘You got a driver’s licence?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘From now on you’re my driver.’ He tossed Audie a set of keys to a black Jeep Cherokee. ‘You pick me up every morning at ten unless I tell you otherwise. You run errands if I need ’em doing. You drop me home when I say. I’ll double your salary, but you’re on call twenty-four hours a day. If that means sleeping in the car, you sleep in the car.’

Audie nodded.

‘Right now, I want you to drive me home.’

And that is how his new career began. He was given a room above the bar. Squashed under the apex of the roof, it was barely wider than a corridor, but it came rent-free with the job. There was a skylight and a bed of rough pine. Piled in the corner were his books and a rucksack. He had kept his engineering textbooks because of some vague notion that he might finish his degree one day.

Audie ferried Urban to meetings or collected people from the airport or picked up dry-cleaning or delivered packages. That’s how he met Belita – when he went to pick up an envelope from Urban’s house. He didn’t know that she was Urban’s mistress – he didn’t care – but from the moment he set eyes upon her he had the strangest feeling that his blood was running backwards, pulsing through the valves of his heart in reverse, cascading instead of climbing, reaching his extremities and rushing inward.

Sometimes you can sense when you meet the person who is destined to change your life.

20

Moss becomes conscious of birds chirping and the ringing of a bicycle bell that sounds whimsical and cheerful. For the past fifteen years he has woken to a dawn chorus of banging, burping, coughing and farting, with each new day offering no more promise of light than a small square window above his head. Waking up this way is nicer, he decides, even if the bed next to him is empty. Crystal left early, driving back to San Antonio. He can still recall the weight of her as she straddled his thighs and kissed him goodbye, telling him to be careful.

Swinging his feet to the floor, he opens the curtain a chink and studies the parking lot. The gleaming towers of Dallas are in the distance, catching the sunshine on their mirrored edges. Moss wonders if the rich aren’t trying to build stairways to Heaven because it’s easier than squeezing a camel through the eye of a needle.

Showered, shaved and dressed, Moss drives north into Westmoreland Heights, where most of the streets are lined with wooden cottages that are worth less than the vehicles parked out front and some of these cars are jacked up on breeze blocks or gutted by fire. There are small pockets of promise in the blighted streets – a new building or prefabricated warehouse – but every unmarked wall is an invitation to a spray-can and each unbroken window an inducement to a thrown rock.

Moss parks outside a convenience store in Singleton Boulevard. The upper-floor windows are boarded up and the lower ones are covered in metal bars that are so thick you can’t read the posters stuck to the inside of the glass.

A bell sounds as he enters. There are boxes stacked from floor to ceiling, and cardboard pallets wrapped in plastic, holding cans of beans and corn and baby carrots. Some of the labels are in foreign languages. The woman behind the cash register is sitting in a large armchair covered in a tartan rug. She’s watching a TV infomercial with a smiling couple feeding vegetables into a blender.