Life or Death (9 page)

‘Scarlett’s father?’

‘Travis died in Afghanistan, but the army won’t pay me a pension or recognise Scarlett because Travis and me weren’t married. We was engaged, but that don’t count. He got killed by an IED – you know what that is?’

‘A roadside bomb.’

‘Yeah. I didn’t know when they told me. Amazing what you learn.’ She scratches her nose with her wrist. ‘His parents treat me like some sort of welfare witch who popped out a baby just to get a government handout.’

‘What about your parents?’

‘Don’t have no momma. She died when I was twelve. Daddy kicked me out when I got pregnant. Didn’t matter to him that me and Travis were gonna get married.’

She keeps talking, trying to overcome her nerves, telling Audie that she’s a qualified beautician with ‘a diploma and everything’. She holds up her nails. ‘Look at these.’ She’s painted them to look like ladybugs.

They take an exit onto the North Freeway. Cassie sits high in her seat with both hands on the wheel. Audie can picture the person she expected to be – going off to college, spring break in Florida, wearing bikinis and drinking mojitos and rollerblading along the beachfront; getting a job, a husband, a house … Instead she’s sleeping in a car and washing her kid’s hair in a restroom sink. That’s what happens to expectations, he thinks. One event or wrong decision can change everything. It could be the popping of a car tyre or stepping off a sidewalk at the wrong moment or driving past an IED. Audie doesn’t hold to the view that a person makes his own luck. Nor does he even consider the notion of fairness, unless you’re talking about a skin colour or someone’s hair.

After about six miles, they take an exit onto Airport Drive and pull into the Star City Inn, where palm trees are standing sentry by the main doors and the parking lot glistens with broken glass. A handful of black guys in baggy jeans and hoodies are loitering outside one of the ground-floor rooms. They study Cassie like lions looking at a wounded wildebeest.

‘I don’t like this place,’ she whispers to Audie.

‘They won’t bother you.’

‘How do
you
know?’ She makes a decision. ‘We get one room. Twin beds. I’m not sleeping with you.’

‘Understood.’

A single room on the first floor costs forty-five dollars. Audie puts Scarlett in one of the double beds, where she settles into sleep, sucking her thumb. Cassie carries a suitcase into the bathroom and fills the tub with hot water, sprinkling in washing powder.

‘You should get some rest,’ says Audie.

‘I want these to be dry by the morning.’

Audie closes his eyes and dozes, listening to the gentle sloshing of water and clothes being wrung out. At some point Cassie crawls into bed next to her daughter and stares across the gap at Audie.

‘Who are you?’ she whispers.

‘Nobody to fear, ma’am.’

10

The ballroom is crowded with a thousand guests – men in black tie and women in high heels and cocktail dresses with swooping necklines or exposed backs. These are professional couples, venture capitalists and bankers and accountants and businessmen and property developers and entrepreneurs and lobbyists, and they’re here to meet Senator Edward Dowling, newly elected, grateful for their support,
their
man in the Texas upper house.

The Senator is working the room like a seasoned professional, with a firm handshake, a touch of the arm, a personal word for each and every guest. People seem to hold their breath around him, basking in his reflected glory, yet despite his gloss and obvious charm there is still something of the used car salesman about Dowling’s interactions, as though his boundless self-confidence has been learned from self-help tapes and motivational books.

Ignoring the trays of champagne, Victor Pilkington has found himself an iced tea in a frosted glass. At six foot four, he can look over the sea of heads, making a note of which alliances are being formed or who’s not talking to whom.

His wife Mina is somewhere in the crowd, wearing a flowing silk gown that plunges in elegant folds down to the small of her back and between her breasts. She’s forty-eight but looks ten years younger, thanks to tennis three times a week and a plastic surgeon in California who refers to himself as the ‘body sculptor’. Mina grew up in Angleton and played varsity tennis for the local high school before going to college, getting married, divorcing, trying again. Twenty years on, she still looks good, on the court and off, whether playing mixed doubles or flirting with younger men in the Magnolia Ballroom.

Pilkington suspects she’s having an affair, but at least she’s discreet. He tries to be the same. They sleep in separate rooms. Lead separate lives. But keep up appearances because it would be too expensive to do otherwise.

A man brushes by him. Pilkington raises his hand and grips the passing shoulder.

‘How are things, Rolland?’ he says, to Senator Dowling’s chief of staff.

‘I’m a bit busy right now, Mr Pilkington.’

‘He knows I want to see him.’

‘He does.’

‘You said it was important?’

‘I did.’

Rolland disappears into the crowd. Pilkington gets himself another drink and makes small talk with several acquaintances – never taking his eyes off the Senator. He doesn’t much like politicians, although his family had produced a few. His great-grandfather, Augustus Pilkington, was a Congressman in the Coolidge administration. Back then the family owned half of Bellmore Parish, with interests in oil and shipping, until Pilkington’s father managed to lose it all in the seventies oil crisis. The family fortune had taken six generations to build and six months to trash – such are the vagaries of capitalism.

Since then Victor had done his best to restore the family’s name – buying back the farm, so to speak, acre by acre, block my block, brick by brick. But it hadn’t been without personal cost. Some people succeed
because
of their parents and others in spite of them. Pilkington’s father spent five years in prison and finished up cleaning hospital toilets. Victor despised the man’s weakness, but appreciated his fecundity. If he hadn’t impregnated a teenage shopgirl in 1955 when he raped her in the back of his vintage Daimler (specially shipped from England), Victor would never have been born.

It’s strange how one family can celebrate its greatness, tracing its genealogies back to the founding fathers of Texas, their political offices and companies and dynastic marriages, while another family’s principal achievement might simply be survival. It had taken bankruptcy and his father’s imprisonment for Victor to appreciate what an achievement it was to rise above the common people, but tonight, in this room, he still feels like a failure.

On the far side of the ballroom Senator Dowling is surrounded by well-wishers, sycophants and political fixers. Women like him, particularly the matriarchs. All the ‘old money’ families are here, including a young Bush who is telling college football stories. Everybody laughs. Anecdotes don’t have to be funny when you’re a junior Bush.

The doors to the kitchen open and four waiters emerge carrying a two-tier birthday cake with candles. The Dixieland band strikes up ‘Happy Birthday’ and the Senator presses his hand to his heart and bows to every corner of the ballroom. There are photographers waiting. Flashguns reflect from his polished teeth. His wife materialises beside him, dressed in a black diaphanous evening gown with a sapphire and diamond necklace. She kisses his cheek, leaving a lipstick imprint. That’s the shot that will make the social pages of the
Houston Chronicle
on Sunday.

Three cheers. Applause. Somebody jokes about the number of candles. The Senator wisecracks back at him. Pilkington has already turned away and gone to the bar. He needs something stronger. Bourbon. Ice.

‘How old is he?’ asks a man leaning next to him, his bowtie unfurled and dangling down his chest.

‘Forty-four. Youngest state senator in fifty years.’

‘You don’t seem that impressed.’

‘He’s a politician, he’s bound to disappoint eventually.’

‘Maybe he’s going to be different.’

‘I hope not.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘That’d be like finding out there was no Santa Claus.’

Pilkington has had enough waiting around. Moving through the crowd, he reaches the Senator, interrupting him mid-anecdote. ‘I’m sorry, Teddy, but you’re wanted elsewhere.’

Dowling’s face betrays his irritation. He excuses himself from the circle.

‘I think you should be calling me Senator,’ he tells Pilkington.

‘Why?’

‘It’s what I am.’

‘I’ve known you since you were jerking off over your momma’s JC Penney catalogue, so it might take me a while to get used to calling you Senator.’

The two men push through a door and ride the service elevator down to the kitchens. Stainless steel pots are being scrubbed in the sinks and dessert plates are lined up on benches. They step outside. The air smells of recent rain and yellow slicks of moonlight reflect from the puddles. Traffic is backed up in both directions on Main Street.

Senator Dowling undoes his bowtie. He has fine, feminine hands that match his cheekbones and small mouth. His dark hair is trimmed neatly and wet-combed to create a part on the left side of his scalp. Pilkington takes out a cigar and runs his tongue over the end, but doesn’t attempt to light it.

‘Audie Palmer escaped from prison the night before last.’

The Senator tries not to react, but Pilkington recognises the tension in the younger man’s shoulders.

‘You said this was under control.’

‘It is. Tracker dogs followed his trail to the Choke County Reservoir. It’s three miles across. Most likely he drowned.’

‘What about the media?’

‘Nobody has picked up on the story.’

‘What if they start asking questions?’

‘They won’t.’

‘What if they do?’

‘How many people did you prosecute as a district attorney? You did your job. That’s all you need to say.’

‘What if he’s not dead?’

‘He’ll be recaptured and sent back to prison.’

‘And until then?’

‘We sit tight. Every lowlife in the state is going to be searching for Palmer. They’re going to string him up and pull out his fingernails trying to find out what happened to the money.’

‘He could still hurt us.’

‘No, he’s brain-damaged, remember? And you keep telling people that. Tell ’em Audie Palmer is a dangerous escaped convict who should have gone to the chair but the Feds fucked it up.’ Pilkington clenches the cigar between his teeth, sucking on the chewed leaf. ‘In the meantime, I want you to pull a few strings.’

‘You said everything was under control.’

‘This is extra insurance.’

11

Three guards drag Moss from his rack and make him kneel, half-naked, on the cold concrete floor. One of them swings a baton across Moss’s back for no reason other than vindictiveness or spite or whatever sadistic streak seems to infect men who are put in charge of prisoners.

Dragged upright, Moss has a bundle of clothes thrust into his arms before being marched along the landing, through two doors and down the stairs. His cheap cotton boxer shorts are losing their elasticity and he has to hold them up with one hand. Why is he never wearing decent underwear when he gets invited out?

A guard tells him to get dressed. His wrists and ankles are cuffed and linked to a chain around his midriff. Without any explanation, he is taken down the ramp to where a prison bus is parked in the central courtyard. A handful of other inmates are already on board, segregated in cages. He’s being transferred. It always happens this way – in the dead of night when there’s less chance of trouble.

‘Where we heading?’ he asks another prisoner.

‘Somewhere else.’

‘I worked that much out.’

The door closes. Eight detainees are isolated in heavy-gauge metal cages, which have floor drains, security cameras and side seats. A US marshal is seated with his back to the driver’s cabin, nursing a shotgun on his lap.

Moss calls out, ‘Where we heading?’

No answer.

‘I got my rights. You got to let my wife know.’

Silence.

The bus pulls out of the gates and heads south. The other detainees are dozing. Moss watches the road signs and tries to work out where he’s being taken. Night transfers are usually interstate. Maybe that’s his punishment. They’re going to send him to some shithole prison in Montana, fifteen hundred miles from home. An hour later the bus pulls into the West Gaza Transfer Unit near Beeville. Everybody else is taken out except for Moss.

The bus leaves again. Moss is the only detainee. The US marshal has gone and the only other person on board is the driver, silhouetted behind a dirty plastic screen. They head northeast on US 59 for a couple of hours before reaching the outskirts of Houston and turning southeast. If they were transporting him out of state they’d have driven him to an airport. This doesn’t smell right.

Just before dawn, the bus pulls off the four-lane and takes a number of turns before stopping in a deserted rest area. Peering through the steel mesh, Moss can make out the shadows of trees. There are no prison lights or guard towers or barbed-wire fences.

The uniformed driver walks down the centre aisle of the bus and stops outside the cage.

‘On your feet.’

Moss turns and faces the window. He listens as the padlock is keyed and the bolt slides open. A hessian sack is pulled over his head. It smells of onions. Moss is pushed forward, nudged with a baton or the barrel of a gun. He tumbles down the stairs, landing on his hands and knees. Gravel digs into his palms. The air smells fresh and cool like a new day is about to begin.

‘Stay here. Don’t move.’

‘What’s gonna happen?’

‘Shut up!’

He hears the footsteps fade, insect sounds, his own blood pumping in his ears. Hours seem to pass in the following minutes. Moss can make out vague shapes through the loose weave of the bag. Headlights swing across him. Two vehicles. They circle the bus and pull up at a distance.

Doors open and close. Two men walk on gravel. They are standing in front of him. Moss can make out their shapes. One of them is wearing a pair of polished black shoes. Formal wear. He’s overweight but when he stands erect he gives the impression of a trimmer man. The guy with him is fitter, possibly younger, dressed in cowboy boots and brown trousers. Nobody seems in a hurry to talk.