Life or Death (7 page)

‘I think so.’

‘That’s what happens when you spend two thousand years lawyering the Bible, trying to justify bombing the shit out of people when the Book says you’re supposed to be loving thy neighbour and turning the other cheek.’

‘Why did he escape, Moss?’

‘I honestly don’t know, ma’am.’

Moss rubs his hands over his face, feeling the bruises and swelling. ‘Places like this run on contraband and rumours. Every nigga will tell you a different story about Audie. They say he got shot fourteen times and lived.’

‘Fourteen?’

‘That’s what I heard. I seen the scars on his skull. It must have been like putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.’

‘What about the money?’

Moss smiles wryly. ‘Folks say he bribed the judge to escape the chair. Now they’ll be saying he bribed the guards to let him escape. Ask around – every nigga got a different story. Some say the money is long gone, or that Audie Palmer owns an island in the Caribbean; or he buried the cash in the East Texas oilfields, or his brother Carl is living the high life in California married to a movie star. Place like this is full of stories and nothing fires the blood like a fortune in untraceable bills.’ He leans forward. The ankle chains rattle against the metal legs of his chair. ‘You want to know what I think?’

Desiree nods.

‘Audie Palmer don’t care about the money. I don’t think he cared about being in here. Other men counted the hours and the days, but Audie could stare into the distance like he was looking across an ocean, or watching sparks floating above a campfire. He could make a cell seem like it had no walls.’ Moss hesitates. ‘If it weren’t for the dreams…’

‘What dreams?’

‘I used to lie on my rack listening, wondering if one night he might suddenly blurt out where he hid the money, but he never did. Instead I used to hear him sobbing. It sounded like a child lost in the corn, yelling for his mama. I used to wonder what made a grown man cry. I asked him, but he wouldn’t talk about it. He wasn’t ashamed of crying. He didn’t fear the weakness it bespoke.’

The Special Agent looks at her notebook. ‘The two of you worked in the library. What did Audie do there?’

‘Studied. Read. Stacked shelves. He educated himself. He wrote letters. He prepared appeals for other people, but never himself.’

‘Why?’

‘I asked him that.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said he was guilty.’

‘You know he was due to be released yesterday?’ she asks.

‘I heard.’

‘Why would he escape?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that.’

‘And?’

‘You’re asking the wrong question.’

‘What should I be asking?’

‘Most guys in here think they’re tough, but they get reminded every day that they’re not. Audie spent ten years trying to stay alive. Barely a week went by when guards didn’t visit his cell and beat him like a redheaded stepchild, asking the same questions that you’re asking. And during the day it was the Mexican Mafia, or the Texas Syndicate or the Aryan Brotherhood, or whatever stupid, craven punk wanted a piece of him.

‘There are also people in here with particular compulsions that have nothing to do with greed or power. Maybe they saw something in Audie they wanted to destroy – his look of optimism or sense of inner peace. Scum like that don’t just want to hurt other men, they want to consume them, they want to rip open their chests and eat their hearts until the blood runs down their faces and their teeth are stained red.

‘Whatever the motivation, there was a contract out on Audie from day one and it was doubled a month ago. That boy was stabbed, strangled, beaten, glassed and burned, but he never showed hatred or remorse or weakness.’

Moss looks up, holding her gaze.

‘You want to know why he escaped, but that’s the wrong question. You should be asking why didn’t he do it sooner.’

8

Audie doesn’t catch the first available bus. Instead he wanders the streets of San Antonio growing accustomed to the blur of movement and the noise. The high-rise buildings are taller than he remembers. Skirts shorter. People fatter. Phones smaller. Colours duller. People don’t make eye contact. They push past, hurrying somewhere: mothers with strollers, businessmen, office workers, shoppers, couriers, schoolchildren, delivery drivers, shop assistants and secretaries. Everybody seems to be trying to reach somewhere or to be running away from it.

He notices a billboard perched on top of an office block. Two images, side by side: the first shows a woman in a business suit, spectacles, hair tied up, working on a laptop computer. The second shows her in a bikini on a white sand beach, with water the colour of her eyes. Underneath are the words:
Lose Yourself in Antigua
.

Audie likes the look of the islands. He can picture himself on that beach, slowly going brown, rubbing suntan oil into some honey’s shoulders, letting it dribble down her back into the nooks and crannies. How long had it been? Eleven years without a woman. One woman.

Each time Audie resolves to catch a bus, something distracts him and another hour passes. He buys a cap and sunglasses, along with a change of clothes, a pair of running shoes, a cheap watch, shorts and a hair trimmer. At a phone shop an assistant tries to sell him a sleek, rectangular prism of glass and plastic, talking about apps, data bundles and 4G.

‘I just want one that calls people,’ Audie says.

Along with the cell phone he buys four pre-paid SIM cards and stows his new purchases in the pockets of a small rucksack. Afterwards he sits in a bar opposite the Greyhound depot, watching people come and go. There are soldiers in uniform carrying kitbags, transferring in or out of one of the military bases dotted around this part of Texas. Some of them are chatting up the pavement princesses, who are hooking out of nearby motel rooms.

Studying his cell phone, Audie contemplates calling his mama. She’ll know by now. The police will have visited. Maybe they’re bugging her phone or watching the house. After his daddy died, she moved in with her sister Ava in Houston. It’s where she grew up and couldn’t wait to escape, but now she’s right back where she started.

Audie’s mind wanders. He remembers squeezing through the window of Wolfe’s liquor store at age six to steal cigarettes and packets of gum. His brother Carl had lifted him up to the window and caught him when he jumped out. Carl was fourteen and Audie thought he was the coolest older brother a boy could have, even though he was rough sometimes and a lot of kids were scared of him. Carl had one of those rare smiles that you come across only a handful of times in life. In an instant it came across as reassuring and likeable, but the moment that smile vanished he became another person.

When Carl went to prison the first time, Audie wrote him letters every week. He didn’t get many replies, but he knew Carl wasn’t much of a reader or a writer. And later when people told stories about Carl, Audie tried not to believe them. He wanted to remember the brother he idolised, the one who took him to the state fair and bought him comic books.

They used to go fishing in the Trinity River, but they couldn’t eat anything they caught because of the PCBs and other pollutants. Mostly they snagged shopping trolleys and dumped tyres while Carl smoked dope and told Audie stories about the bodies that were sunk in the murky depths.

‘They weigh ’em down with concrete,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘They’re still down there, trapped in the mud.’

Carl also told stories about famous gangsters and murderers like Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, who grew up less than a mile away from where Audie was born. Bonnie went to the Cement City High School, which had been renamed by the time Audie sat in the classrooms, looking out on different factories but the same houses.

‘Bonnie and Clyde spent barely two years together,’ said Carl. ‘But they lived every damn minute like it was their last. It was a love story.’

‘I don’t want to hear about the kissing,’ said Audie.

‘One day you will,’ said Carl, laughing at him.

Leaning forward, talking softly, he recounted the final ambush as though telling a ghost story around a campfire. Audie could picture the misty predawn scene, the isolated road outside of Sailes, Louisiana, where police and Texas Rangers ambushed the couple on May 23, 1934, opening fire without warning. Bonnie Parker was only twenty-three. She was buried in Fishtrap Cemetery, not a hundred yards from where Audie and Carl grew up (although later they moved her body to Crown Hill Cemetery to be with her grandparents). Clyde was buried a mile away at Western Heights Cemetery, where people still visited his graveside.

Carl went to prison the first time for mail fraud and cash-machine scams, but drugs were his undoing. He developed a habit at the state penitentiary in Brownsville and never lost the taste. Audie was nineteen and at college when Carl got released. He drove to Brownsville to pick him up. Carl walked out wearing a green-striped shirt and a pair of polyester trousers and a leather overcoat that was too heavy for the weather.

‘Aren’t you hot in that?’

‘I’d rather wear it than carry it,’ he said.

Audie was still playing baseball and had been hitting the weight room.

‘You look good, little bro.’

‘So do you,’ said Audie, but it wasn’t true. Carl looked washed out, gaunt and angry; needing something that was out of reach. People said that Audie got the brains in the family – making it sound as though intelligence arrived by FedEx and you had to be home on the day or the package got returned. But it’s got nothing to do with intelligence. It’s about courage, experience, desire and a dozen other ingredients.

Audie drove Carl around the old neighbourhood, which was more prosperous than Carl remembered, but there were still strip malls, chain stores, derelict buildings, drug dens and girls hooking out of cars on Singleton Boulevard.

At a 7-Eleven, Carl stared at a couple of high-school girls who came in to get Slurpees. They were wearing cut-off denim shorts and tight T-shirts. They knew Audie. Smiled. Flirted. Carl made some comment and the girls stopped smiling. That’s the moment Audie studied his brother and recognised something new in him: a sharp, almost fearful streak of self-loathing.

They bought a six-pack and sat beside the Trinity River, under the railway bridge. Trains rumbled over their heads, on their way to Union Station. Audie wanted to ask him about prison. What was it like? Were half the stories true? Carl asked him if he had any weed.

‘You’re on parole.’

‘It helps me relax.’

They sat in silence, watching the brown currents swirl and eddy.

‘You really think there are bodies down there?’ asked Audie.

‘I’m sure of it,’ said Carl.

Audie told Carl about his scholarship to Rice University in Houston. They were paying his fees, but he had to cover his living expenses, which is why he was working double shifts at the bowling alley.

Carl liked to tease him about being ‘the brainiac in the family’, but Audie thought his brother was secretly proud.

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Audie.

Carl shrugged and crushed a beer can in his fist.

‘Daddy says he can get you a job labouring on a construction site.’

Carl didn’t reply.

When they finally drove home, the reunion was full of hugs and tears. Their mama kept grabbing Carl from behind like he was going to escape. Their daddy came home early from the garage, which he rarely did. He didn’t say much, but Audie could tell he was happy to have Carl home again.

A month later, Audie started his second year at college in Houston and didn’t get back to Dallas until Christmas. By then Carl was squatting at a house in the Heights and doing various unspecified jobs. He’d broken up with his girlfriend and was riding a motorbike that he was ‘minding for a friend’. He seemed on edge. Jumpy.

‘Let’s play poker,’ he suggested to Audie.

‘I’m trying to save money.’

‘You could win some.’

Carl talked him into it, but kept changing the rules, saying it was how they played in prison, but all the changes seemed to favour Carl and Audie lost half the money he’d been saving for college. Carl went out and came back with beer. He also had some crystal meth and speed. He wanted to get blasted and couldn’t understand why Audie chose to go home.

The following summer, Audie worked at the bowling alley and at the garage. Carl used to drop round, trying to borrow money. Their sister Bernadette had started dating a guy who worked for a bank downtown. He had a new car and nice clothes. Carl wasn’t impressed.

‘Who does he think he is?’

‘He’s not doing anything wrong,’ said Audie.

‘He thinks he’s better than we are.’

‘Why?’

‘You can see it. He acts all superior.’

Carl didn’t want to listen to anyone telling him that some people worked hard to live in a nice house, or drive a new car. He preferred to resent their success. It was like he was standing outside someone else’s party with his nose pressed to the window, watching the swirling skirts and pretty girls dancing to the music. He didn’t just watch with envy. His eyes were questioning. Indignant. Hungry.

Late in the summer Audie got a call about ten one evening. Carl was in a bar in East Dallas. His bike had broken down. He needed a ride home.

‘I’m not coming to get you.’

‘A guy mugged me. I don’t have any money.’

Audie drove across town. Parked out front. The bar had a glowing Dixie Beer sign and wood floors covered in cigarette burns that looked like crushed cockroaches. There were bikers playing pool, hitting the cue ball so hard it sounded like a whip cracking. The only woman was in her forties, dressed like a teenager, drunk dancing in front of the jukebox while a dozen men watched.

‘Stay for a drink,’ said Carl.

‘I thought you had no money.’

‘I won some.’ He pointed to the pool table. ‘What do you want to drink?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Have a 7Up.’

‘I’m going home.’

Audie started to leave. Carl followed him into the parking lot, angry at being shown up in front of his new friends. His pupils were dilated and he missed the door handle with his first two attempts. Audie drove home with the windows open in case Carl got sick. They travelled in silence and Audie thought Carl had fallen asleep. But then he spoke, sounding like a lost child.