Life or Death (17 page)

‘I’m just playing cards,’ said Urban. ‘You’re the ones who want to fuck her.’

Audie couldn’t look at Belita. She pulled back her shoulders and tried to maintain some dignity, turning away from the table, but her legs were shaking as she walked to the kitchen.

‘I want her to watch,’ said the mobster.

Urban summoned her back. Dealt the cards. Audie drew a seven and a king as his face cards. The flop brought nine, a queen and another seven. He was looking at a pair of sevens. The ‘turn’ and ‘river’ cards were flipped. Audie closed his eyes and opened them: an ace and another seven.

Urban didn’t keep them waiting. He had two pair. They looked at Audie. Three sevens. The mobster crowed. ‘Don’t these ladies look pretty – especially when they come in threes?’

Audie stared at the queens on the table and felt his stomach spasm and clench. It wasn’t losing the money that bothered him, it was the look on Belita’s face – not shock or surprise or anger, but resignation, as though this was just another degradation in a long series.

Urban stood and stretched. His belly poked out of his unbuttoned shirt. He was philosophical about his loss. There would be other nights. Better hands.

‘I hope you’re not hung like a horse,’ he said, slipping on his jacket. ‘And I don’t want her bruised or otherwise mistreated. Am I clear?’

The mobster nodded. ‘I’m staying at the Park Hyatt.’

‘Have her back here at noon.’

‘I’m too drunk to drive.’

Urban glanced at Audie. ‘You drive them. Make sure you bring her home.’

On the journey down the mountain, Belita sat close to the window as though trying to make herself smaller or to disappear completely. The mobster tried to make conversation, but she didn’t answer.

‘I know you speak English,’ he said, slurring.

She kept her head down. Perhaps she was praying or crying. When Audie pulled up outside the hotel, he hopped out and opened the rear door like a proper chauffeur.

‘I need a minute with Belita,’ he said.

‘What for?’ asked the mobster.

‘So I can arrange to pick her up.’

Audie took her to the far side of the car. She looked at him uncertainly. The lights from the hotel lobby reflected in her eyes.

‘Make him a drink. Put these in it,’ he whispered, pressing four sleeping pills into her hand and closing her fingers. ‘Pretend you slept with him. Leave a note. Tell him he was good. I’ll be waiting.’

An hour later Belita emerged from the hotel, ignoring the entreaties of cab drivers. Audie opened the back door for her but she chose to sit next to him in the front. They drove into the mountains and she didn’t speak for ten miles, cradling herself in her folded arms. She spoke to him in Spanish.

‘What would you have done if you had won me?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Why then?’

‘It didn’t seem right.’

‘How much money did you lose?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’m not worth it.’

‘Why would you say that?’

Her eyes were brimming and she shook her head, unable to speak.

25

Houston Public Library on McKinney Street is the architectural equivalent of a love child conceived by a cement mixer and a cubist painter. Even with a newly cleaned façade and trees planted in the open spaces, the building has no warmth or charm.

A middle-aged woman behind the desk doesn’t look up until Moss has finished speaking. She stamps a form and puts it in a tray and then shows him her blue eyes and bluer eye shadow. ‘What for?’

‘Pardon?’

‘I heard what you wanted, I asked you what for.’

‘I’m interested.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s a private matter and this is a public library.’

Moss and the librarian stare at each other for a moment and she directs him upstairs to the eighth floor, where another librarian, who seems in a better mood, shows him how to read the index cards and fill out a request form for the
Houston Chronicle
from January 2004.

The microfilms are delivered from the basement archive. Moss looks at the boxes. ‘What do I do with them?’

The male librarian points to a row of machines.

‘How do I use them?’ asks Moss.

The librarian sighs and takes the boxes from him, showing him how to fix the red spool and thread the film through the viewing window. ‘This moves it forward. This moves it back. This is the focus.’

‘Could I trouble you for some paper and a pen?’ asks Moss, embarrassed by his lack of preparedness.

‘We’re not a stationery service.’

‘I understand that.’

The librarian thinks the matter is settled, but Moss is still standing over his desk, waiting, which is something he’s very good at. The paper is found, along with a cheap yellow pen.

‘I want that back,’ says the librarian.

‘Yes, suh.’

Settled in front of a machine, Moss searches the editions of the
Chronicle
, concentrating on the front pages until he finds the first mention of the robbery. It’s a headline:

ARMORED TRUCK HIJACKING

Gunmen posing as a road construction crew hijacked an armored truck carrying US currency in a daring daylight raid on the outskirts of Conroe, TX, late yesterday.

Two security guards were beaten and a third is missing after the Armaguard truck was ambushed while leaving a truck stop on the I-45, shortly after 3.00 p.m.

A gang of armed men dressed as highway crew forced two guards out of the vehicle, taking their weapons before hijacking the truck. A third guard was still inside when the gunmen drove off.

‘Roadblocks were put in place within fifteen minutes, but we haven’t had any sightings,’ said Detective Peter Yeomans of Dreyfus County. ‘Obviously our first concern is the whereabouts and welfare of the missing guard.’

Witness Denise Peters said the robbers were wearing reflective vests and hardhats. ‘I thought they were carrying shovels, but it was shotguns,’ she said. ‘They were using a concrete cutter and were holding up a STOP sign.’

Waitress Gail Malakhova said the guards had earlier been eating at the diner. ‘They were laughing and joking, but soon after they left all hell broke loose. It was scary.’

Moss spools forward to the next day. January 28, 2004.

FOUR DEAD IN ARMORED TRUCK HEIST

Four people are dead and another is fighting for his life after a bloody police shoot-out in Dreyfus County late yesterday. The dead include a female motorist, a security guard and two of the gang members who had earlier hijacked an armored truck carrying US currency. A further suspect in the robbery was shot by police and is listed in a critical condition.

The drama began just after 3.00 p.m. yesterday when the Armaguard truck was halted by fake road works just north of Conroe. Two guards were overpowered and a third was trapped in the back of the truck when it was hijacked and driven away.

Five hours later, two deputies from the Dreyfus County Sheriff’s Office sighted the stolen truck in a rest area off Farm to Market 830, northwest of Conroe. When confronted by police, the gunmen fired shots and drove off at high speed. The police pursuit lasted more than twenty minutes and reached speeds of up to ninety mph along Old Montgomery Road before the armored truck lost control on the crest of a hill and crashed into an oncoming vehicle. The woman motorist was killed along with the guard trapped inside the overturned truck.

In the gun battle that followed, two gang members were shot dead and a third critically injured. A fourth suspect is believed to have escaped driving a dark-colored SUV, which was later found abandoned and burnt out near Lake Conroe.

For the next few days, the robbery remained front-page news, particularly when the size of the haul was confirmed on January 30. The
Houston Chronicle
reported:

$7 MILLION STILL MISSING

Armed Robber on Life Support

The armored truck hijacked near Conroe, TX, on Tuesday was carrying more than $7 million, making it one of the biggest heists in US history, according to the FBI, who are still trying to recover the money.

Four people died in the robbery, including a security guard and two armed robbers, while another of the gang is in a critical condition and may not regain consciousness according to doctors. The suspect, who has not been named, suffered massive head injuries and has been placed in a medically induced coma.

‘He is on life support and his condition deteriorated further overnight,’ a hospital spokesman said. ‘Surgeons have operated to relieve pressure on his brain, but his injuries are extensive.’

The heist ended in a dramatic high speed chase and accident. Two gang members were shot dead by police and a security guard and woman motorist died at the scene. A fourth gang member is believed to have fled in a stolen dark-colored Land Cruiser that was later found abandoned and torched near Lake Conroe.

Forensic officers spent yesterday collecting evidence at the crash site and the road is expected to remain closed for another twenty-four hours.

Moss searches for more accounts of the robbery, but the reports thinned out over the following days. Janet Jackson’s nipple-slip at Superbowl XXXVIII seemed to suck oxygen from the story, because nudity is more newsworthy than gun crime or theft. Police released the names of the dead gang members: Vernon Caine and his younger brother Billy, who came from Louisiana. They also named Audie Palmer and said that his brother Carl, a known fugitive and notorious cop killer, was a ‘person of interest’ in the robbery. Eight weeks after the shooting, Audie was taken off life support, but he didn’t regain consciousness for another month.

Moss has been making notes as he reads, ruling lines between people’s names and drawing diagrams. He’s enjoying using his brain. He wonders what he might have achieved if he hadn’t grown up on the projects and started boosting cars aged eleven. Back then he thought his choices would always be in front of him. Now most of them lay behind.

He leaves the library with the pages folded in his shirt pocket. Following his hand-drawn map, he drives north along the I-45, before taking the south loop around Conroe and heading west, where he hooks up with Old Montgomery Road, a double-lane blacktop through dense strands of pine and oak.

He pulls over to the shoulder, resting his palms on the steering wheel. A solitary leaf spins out of the canopy above him. Ahead is a straight stretch of road, with a crest and a hard right-hander at the bottom of the dip. Moss gets out and walks, looking at a culvert full of muddy water and waist-high weeds with dense forest on either side. A power-line is strung between the trees and Moss notices a small cabin put together with scrap timber and sheet iron and frayed tar shingles. A natural creek runs along one side of the yard, which is overgrown and shaded by old oak trees and stumps of others that have fallen or been culled.

Moss jumps the ditch and follows a muddy track through the weeds until he reaches the front porch. He knocks. Nobody answers. As he steps back, he’s sure that he’s being watched, but he can’t see any tyre tracks or footprints or signs of life. He walks around the house and finds a doorbell with a plastic button.

Pressing it with his thumb, he hears the unmistakable sound of a rifle being primed, the bullet sliding into the chamber. The door opens and a man is staring at him through the screen. He’s wearing a pair of pants, belt hanging loose, and a potbelly poking out of an unbuttoned shirt like a pregnancy.

‘You’re one brave nigger,’ says the man.

‘Why’s that?’

‘Coming onto a man’s property uninvited.’

‘It’s implied.’

‘What?’

‘You see your doorbell?’

‘It don’t work.’

‘That don’t matter. When a man has a doorbell it suggests that he gets visitors from time to time, so it’s an implied invitation.’

‘The fuck you talking about?’

‘In a legal sense I had an implied invitation to ring your doorbell because otherwise you wouldn’t have one.’

‘I just told you, it don’t work. Are you deaf?’

Moss isn’t getting anywhere.

‘How long you lived here, old-timer?’

‘Thirty years.’

‘You remember an incident about eleven years ago – an accident over yonder, behind the trees? The police were chasing an armoured truck. It crashed.’

‘Not likely to forget.’

‘You must have heard the shooting from here.’

‘Heard and saw.’

‘What did you see?’

The old man hesitates. ‘I saw it all and I saw nothing.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means I mind my own business and I suggest you do the same.’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t get me started.’

The two men seem to match stares, as though waiting for the other to blink.

‘A friend of mine was involved,’ says Moss. ‘He said you could help me.’

‘You’re a liar.’

‘What are you afraid of?’

The old man shakes his head. ‘I know when to keep my mouth shut. You tell that to your friend. You tell him that Theo McAllister can be trusted.’

The door slams shut.

26

No mention was made of the poker game in the days that followed. Audie drove Urban to his various appointments and listened to his opinions and prejudices. He was less enamoured with his boss than before, but managed to pretend that nothing had changed between them. One morning they were driving to the largest of the farms. Urban sat in the middle of the back seat and Audie could see him in the rear-view mirror.

‘I heard what you did for Belita the other night.’ Urban said. ‘That was very noble of you.’

‘Did your friend say anything?’

‘He said Belita was the best fuck he ever had.’

‘The man has an ego.’

‘He’s not Robinson Crusoe.’