The Cat, The Devil, The Last Escape

23

IN THE NIGHT-DIM cellblock, rain beat down on the high clerestory windows, sloughing across their steel mesh. Lightning flashed, bleaching the cells below as pale as bone. Lee paced his own small cubicle fighting the ache in his side. It had eased off some, until a bout of coughing brought the pain stabbing sharp again. Pain and the cold had kept him up most of the night. He thought Georgia was supposed to be hot and humid. He’d asked the guard twice for another blanket. At last, on his third round, the man had brought it, grumbling as he shoved it through the bars.

Back in his bunk, rolled up in the extra warmth, Lee tried to sleep, the thick scratchy wool pulled tight around him. He badly wanted a hot cup of coffee. He tossed restlessly until daylight crept gray and tentative across the high glass, until he heard the guard’s footsteps again, then the harsh clang of the lever as the overhead bars were withdrawn and the cells unlocked. Lee stood for the count, washed and dressed, pulled on his coat, and moved out to the catwalk. Men crowded him, hurrying him along, surging down the metal stairs and outside into the rain, double-timing to the mess hall hungering for coffee.

In the mess hall he poured two cups from the coffeepot and headed for a small, empty table. He sat with his back to the wall shivering. Rain poured against the glass, its cold breath biting to the bone. Not until the hot brew had warmed him did he get in line, pick up a tray of scrambled eggs, potatoes, toast, and two more coffees, and return to the table. By the time he finished eating, the worst of the storm had passed. He was on second shift for the kitchen, hours away yet; leaving the mess hall, he headed back for his cell. There were advantages to his illness, that he could rest when he pleased. The rain had stopped but wind whipped water from the eaves down across the walk, wetting Lee’s pant legs. A lone slit of sun slanted down between the heavy clouds, reflecting up from the puddles. Ahead on the walk a flock of cowbirds was splashing, drinking, screeching to wake the dead. They went quiet at his approach, then exploded into the sky and were gone; and a figure was walking beside him. Appearing out of nowhere, a tall man in prison blues, an inmate he had never seen. When Lee looked square at him his bony face seemed to shift and change, Lee couldn’t look for long into those hollow eyes.

Where the man stepped through deep puddles the water didn’t move, no ripple stirred. A flock of sparrows soared in on a gust of wind, paused in the sky hovering, then fell dead on the rain-slick walk. When Lee didn’t alter his stride or look at the wraith again the dark presence grabbed his hand, its fingers cold as death, making Lee jerk away. “Leave me alone. Back off and leave me alone.”

“I can offer you one more opportunity, Fontana. One you’d be a fool to refuse.”

“I haven’t done what you wanted yet. And I’m not doing it now.” He headed for the cellblock, shivering. The dark one kept pace with him.

“If the authorities find the post office money, Lee, find any track leading to where it’s buried—perhaps with a little help—they’ll have all the evidence they need. They’ll lift fingerprints you only thought you destroyed. You’ll be in prison until you die. Unless,” he said, “you are willing to strike this one bargain.” The wraith looked at him so intently that Lee had to look back. One instant and he turned away again, colder than before.

“One small favor, Fontana, and it is not a difficult task. You will gain much, when your dream of Mexico is fulfilled.”

Lee kept walking.

“You are seventy-two years old. You are sick. If I choose, I can cure the emphysema. I can make your lungs whole again, make you strong again. You will breathe as easily as a young man. I can give you new life, Lee, many more years of healthy, vigorous life, a whole new beginning.”

“I’d pay hard for anything you offered.”

“You would pay nothing, you would acquire the ultimate prize. Not only renewed health in this life, but a new life when this one ends, a new and unblemished future designed to your own choosing. A new life where you’ll be anything you want to be. Meantime, you finish out this life in perfect health and comfort. All you need to do is help Morgan Blake.”

The tall figure warped and shifted so darkness drifted through him, then he was whole again. “If you agree to help Blake, I will see that you escape from here undetected, free and unharmed.”

Lee was silent as they passed other prisoners, though none took any notice, he didn’t think they saw or heard his companion.

“Without my help, your lungs will quickly grow worse. The short time you have left will be even more miserable. When you can hardly breathe at all, panic will entrap you. You will slowly strangle to death, choked by the emphysema. Wouldn’t you prefer perfect health and a long life? Wouldn’t you prefer to escape this concrete trap and enjoy the benefits I promise?”

Coughing hard, Lee clutched at the wound in his side. “There’s no way out of this cage. Even if there were, why would you want to help Blake?”

“I will help get Blake out of here, help him find Brad Falon, help him force Falon to confess. That is exactly what you are planning, so, you see, I simply want to assist in your venture.”

Morgan’s escape was what he’d planned, ever since Becky came to visiting day so excited she could hardly get it out fast enough, that there was a warrant for Falon. That as soon as Falon was found he’d be shipped off to L.A. for arraignment and trial, with a good chance he’d go to prison out there.

IN THE VISITING room, Becky had spoken in heated whispers, sitting in the far corner on an isolated couch close between Morgan and Lee. She hadn’t brought Sammie; she said Anne had taken the child to a movie. This was a different kind of visit, she was all business, was strung tight with her news and seemed to want no distraction.

But still she’d left a lot unsaid, questions to which Lee still wanted answers. Who had shot Falon? She said she didn’t know but Lee thought she did know. Maybe, if Becky had shot him herself, she didn’t want to upset Morgan? Maybe that was why she hadn’t brought Sammie, because Sammie would say too much?

But Lee sensed, as well, something more left unrevealed. The way Becky looked at him puzzled and embarrassed him; she was holding something back. Yet how could it affect him, when he hardly knew her? Whatever it was, it left him with questions that, he thought, he might not want to ask.

Morgan had sat stone-faced, saying nothing. Lee hadn’t been able to tell what either one was thinking. But questions or not, with a warrant out for Falon, Lee’s plan had begun to take shape. If Falon was arrested, was out on the West Coast—if Lee and Morgan could get to him, could break out of prison, hightail it out there, get themselves arrested and locked in the same institution, they’d have Falon where he couldn’t escape. Could force a confession from him, make him reveal where the bank money was hidden. Once the money was found, and maybe the murder weapon, Morgan should have more than enough to clear him.

A lot of ifs and maybes, Lee thought. But that was what life was made of.

But it was not the devil’s plan that they force information from Falon. Now, standing there on the wet walkway, the wraith kept pressing at Lee. “Once you’ve broken out of here, Fontana, and Blake thinks you’re helping him, you will be in a position to crush him. You will raise his hopes high. Then you will destroy him.”

Lee glanced along the walks again, and now they were alone.

“With my help,” Lucifer said, “you will arrange that Blake kills Falon. That a number of reliable witnesses are present, and that Blake is arrested. The prosecuting attorney will easily prove that Blake broke out of prison with the intention of killing Falon. This,” Satan said, smiling, “will put an end to Morgan’s bid for an appeal. When he attacks Falon, he destroys whatever chance he might have had.”

“Why would you want him to kill Falon? Falon’s one of yours.”

“Falon has been useful. Now, when all is finished, he will join my ranks. He will work the game from the other side, and that should please him.”

“And when Blake goes down, I would be arrested as his accomplice.”

“Oh, no,” the devil said. “I will see that you conveniently vanish, into any kind of life you choose. Healthy again, with wealth, with bawdy women, the finest horses, gold, whatever is your pleasure.”

“If Morgan and I got out of here, if that was even possible—and if I didn’t double-cross him, if I continued to help him and kept him out of trouble, what would you do then?”

“I would destroy you both.”

“You haven’t destroyed me so far. What makes you think you can take down Blake, either? The truth is,” Lee said, “you’re more bluff than substance.”

Though, in fact, he knew better. He knew too well how Lucifer could twist human thought. If he and Morgan did escape, it might be more than they could do to fight off whatever influence Satan brought to bear. It might be more than they could handle, not to follow the dark’s lead.

“Once I’ve helped you escape, if you are capable of that feat, and if then you tried to double-cross me and save Blake, tried to make Falon reveal the evidence, it will be easy enough to twist your plan to my own design.”

“If you’re that powerful, you don’t need my help to destroy Blake.”

“I need you to encourage Blake. He is—not an easy subject,” said the dark spirit. “Too religious, for one thing, and what a waste that is. It is you who must show him the broader way, who must lay out the plan. But first, you must inflame his desire to break out. Blake would never have the courage on his own.”

Lee looked hard at him. “Why Blake? What the hell do you have against Blake?”

The devil didn’t answer. The tall inmate grew indistinct, blending into the building behind him, and he vanished on the rain-sodden wind. It was in that moment that Lee thought about Becky, about her secrecy in the visiting room and her shuttered looks, and he wondered what had made him think of that.