Life or Death (24 page)

‘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.

‘It’s broken,’ says Rabbit, turning slowly. He’s wearing a short-sleeve Hawaiian shirt, a size too small so that his forearms stick out like Christmas hams, and his long hair is pulled back into a greying ponytail.

‘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.’

‘You’re mistaken.’

Rabbit is mopping again, moving with far more energy than before, doing a foxtrot rather than a waltz. Moss steps closer. The mop swings towards his head. He ducks it easily and twists it out of Rabbit’s hands, snapping it across his knee. The girl looks up. The incident happened so quickly she missed it. She looks back at her phone.

Moss hands Rabbit the two broken pieces and the janitor holds them like cheerleading pompoms.

‘They’re going to make me pay for that.’

Moss reaches into his pocket and pulls out a twenty. He tucks it into the pocket of Rabbit’s Hawaiian shirt. Resigned to the situation, Rabbit takes a seat on one of the bleachers and pulls a flask from his pocket. Unscrewing the lid, he upends the metal container and swallows. His eyes go watery. He wipes his lips.

‘Y’all think you can frighten me. Y’all think I’m nothin’ but a broken-down wreck, but I won’t be intimidated. Do you know how many times people have come asking me about that robbery? I been threatened, beat up, burnt with cigarettes, harassed and victimised. The FBI still pulls me in for questioning every couple of years. I know they’re listening to my phone calls and checking my bank accounts.’

‘I know you don’t have the money, Rabbit. Just tell me about the robbery.’

‘I was sitting in a county jail.’

‘You were supposed to be driving the car.’

‘Supposed to be, but I weren’t there.’

‘Tell me about Vernon and Billy Caine.’

‘I knew ’em.’

‘You robbed banks with them.’

Rabbit takes another swig from the flask. ‘I met Billy in juvie and we stayed friends. I didn’t know Vernon until Billy called me one day, out of the blue, and said he had a job. I’d just got laid off work and had car payments due. Vernon was the boss. He had this modus operandi where he and Billy would go into a bank separately and wait in different queues. They let people slip ahead of them, so that each reached a window at roughly the same time, carrying a folded newspaper or a magazine with a gun tucked inside. Only the teller could see it. They didn’t shout, or yell at people to lie on the ground, or fire shots in the air. Instead, they spoke very softly, instructing the tellers to fill the bags with cash. Then they walked out, cool as you like, and I drove off. We must have done thirty or forty banks like that, starting in California, moving east.’

‘What about the job in Dreyfus County?’

‘That was a whole other kettle. Vernon knew a guy who worked at a security company that had a contract to collect cash from banks and brokerages.’

‘Scott Beauchamp?’

‘I never met the guy.’

‘He was the guard who died in the robbery.’

Rabbit shrugs. ‘Maybe he was the inside man, maybe he wasn’t. Vernon didn’t say. It was a perfect set-up. Twice a month the armoured truck visited the banks and collected the damaged bills – the ones that get torn or go through washing machines or get stuff spilt on ’em. The cash is taken to a data-destruction facility near Chicago. The Fed burns the money in a big fucking incinerator. Do you believe that? Vernon knew the timing and the route the truck took, so we planned to hijack the shipment, tie up the guards, blow the back doors and take off with the cash, which was unmarked and untraceable. Nobody even knew the serial numbers. It’s not like we were stealing from anyone. The money was gonna get burned anyway, right?’

‘How did Audie Palmer get in on the job?’

‘Vernon must have found him.’

‘You ever meet Palmer?’

‘Nope.’

‘What about his brother?’

Rabbit shakes his head. ‘I never heard of neither of ’em until the job went pear-shaped. I was cut up, I tell you, losing Vernon and Billy like that. Billy was a little spacey. He dropped some acid when he was a teenager and it made him paranoid, but he was a good kid. Dated my little sister for a while.’

‘What about since then – any word about Carl?’

‘I heard he was in South America.’

‘You think he took the cash?’

‘That’s what the cops said. I figure I must be owed at least half a mill.’

‘Why?’

‘Vernon promised me a cut even when I couldn’t do the job. Now look at me – I’m fucking cleaning floors and babysitting Princess Fiona.’

The girl raises her head and calls out in a whiny voice, ‘I’m hungry.’

‘Get sumpin’ from the machine.’

‘I got no money.’

Rabbit searches his pockets. There’s only the twenty. He looks at Moss. ‘Got anything smaller?’

Moss gives him a five-dollar bill. The girl takes it and tosses her hair. Rabbit watches her go, paying too much attention to her hips.

‘Where did you say her mother was?’

‘Workin’.’

‘You might want to keep your eyes on the floor.’