The Cat, The Devil, The Last Escape

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  Or had she dreamed of the outcome of their venture? But if she’d done that, now she’d be either tearful and grieving for Morgan or wildly excited that they would soon be free. She wouldn’t be the quiet little girl sitting snuggled and uncertain in his lap, leaning against him, her small hand in his.

  There were only a few other visitors in the room. Lee watched a lean young prisoner and his pillow-shaped wife, their smear-faced toddler fussing and crying as they passed him back and forth between them. Neither they nor the other three couples seemed to be listening to Morgan’s soft, urgent voice.

  Lee knew Becky would try to stop them, try to tear their plan apart. He watched her scowl grow deeper until suddenly she lit into Morgan, her whisper, even from across the room, as virulent as a snake’s hiss.

  He didn’t like to see the two of them at odds but, more to the point, they needed Becky’s help, needed help on the outside to make this work. As the two battled it out, their angry whispers drowned by the fussy baby, Lee hoped no one could hear. If any rumor of a planned escape was passed on to a guard, he and Morgan would be separated, confined to their cells, maybe one of them sent to another prison, and that would end their plan.

  Now, though Sammie still sat quietly turning the pages of her book, her whole being was focused on her parents’ whispered battle. Soon she laid down her book, pressed closer against Lee, her body rigid and still. Across the room, Becky grabbed Morgan by the shoulders, her fingers digging in. Lee rose, setting Sammie back in the chair. “Stay there, stay quiet.” But before he could cross the room Becky was up, moving toward him, backing him away from the others into a corner. Her whisper was like a wasp sting.

  “What have you been telling him? What crazy ideas have you been feeding Morgan? No one can do what you’re planning.” Her dark eyes flashed, her anger a force that made Lee step back. “This will get him killed. Morgan was a patsy once. I won’t let him do this, this isn’t going to happen.”

  Lee was shocked by the degree of her rage. “You won’t let him do this?” he whispered. “What right have you to let him do anything! Morgan is the one who’s in prison, not you. He’s the one who was framed, not you. He wants a new trial. There’s no chance without new, solid evidence.” He wanted to shake her, he had drawn close, the others were looking now; without the bawling baby they’d hear every word. “This is the only way I know to get new evidence,” he breathed.

  He leaned over, racked by a fit of coughing, then faced her again. “Maybe Natalie Hooper will talk to your lawyer the way he thinks. And maybe she won’t.” He glanced across at Sammie, sitting rigid in the chair, her fists clenched.

  “The best way to get real evidence,” Lee said softly, “is from Falon himself. Find out where he hid the money. Tell the bureau so they can retrieve it.” He swallowed back another cough. “The best way is to make him talk. And you won’t let Morgan do this?”

  “He’ll get himself killed trying to escape. What good is that? You might not care if the guards shoot him, but I do. And even if you did get out,” she breathed, “even if you made it all the way to California without being picked up, which isn’t likely—even if you did turn yourselves in at Terminal Island and they kept you a few days, the minute you try to hustle Falon, he’ll kill Morgan. Don’t you understand how vicious Falon is?” Her jaw was clenched, her lips a thin line, her dark eyes huge with anger and pain. “What kind of scam is this, Fontana? What do you care if Morgan gets a new trial? Just because we’re related doesn’t mean I can trust you or that Morgan can. Leave him alone. Keep your nose out of our business.”

  “I can do that,” Lee said quietly. “I can tell him the plan’s no good, that we’ll have to scratch it, and he’ll back off. He knows he can’t get out of here alone without help, without a partner. We trash the plan, and you’ll go right on visiting him here until he’s an old man. You two can sit on the couch holding hands, you can watch him grow bitter, watch him turn into an empty shell with nothing inside but rage. And watch yourself do the same. And Sammie will grow up seeing her father for an hour at a time, a few days a week at best, right here in this visiting room with iron bars at the windows. If you stop him from trying,” Lee said, “you’ll never sleep well again. You’ll never sleep with Morgan again, never hold him close at night.”

  Beneath the anger, Becky’s look had gone naked and still.

  “This is a pretty visiting room, isn’t it, Becky? The nice furniture and clean walls, the expensive carpeting, the plants along the window. And the rest of the prison is just as pretty and clean, it smells just as nice, and is just as comfortable and safe. We’re all just loving brothers in here, behind these bars and walls.”

  She wiped at her eyes. “I know it’s hard, that it’s ugly, but—”

  “You don’t know anything, you don’t have a clue. You wouldn’t last five minutes behind those doors.” Lee looked at her coldly. “That world in there peels away all the layers, lady. Right down to the worst ugliness you can think of, and worse than you can think of.” He choked and swallowed. “You don’t know anything about what it’s like in there, about what Morgan’s life is like. But that doesn’t matter,” he whispered. “You want Morgan to stay locked in here, maybe until he dies. He’s only a young man, but you want him to stay here until he rots to nothing for a crime he didn’t commit.”

  She turned away, her head bowed. He put a hand on her shoulder. She was still for a long time. When she turned back, she faced him squarely, pale and quiet, her look so vulnerable that he wanted to hold her just as he had held Sammie. She stood silent looking at him until he started to turn away. Quietly she pulled him down on the nearest couch, sat facing him.

  “What about the second appeal?” she said softly. “Why would you do this before we know if it’s granted?”

  “There won’t be a second appeal without new evidence, no matter how hard Lowe works at it. The complaints you filed are supporting evidence, but not enough, not the kind of evidence you need for a sure win. Lowe knows that, that’s why he’s still digging.

  “So far he has nothing. Morgan doesn’t think he’ll get it from Natalie and neither do you. Not the solid, irrefutable evidence he needs. Maybe he’ll find flaws in her story, inconsistencies, but that’s far from solid.”

  She was silent again, looking down at her lap. As he rose to leave she looked up. “Tell me what to do,” she said. “Tell me how I can help.”

  He hugged her and then settled back, his shoulder against hers, his voice so low she had to lean close. “We’ll need clothes, old jeans. Old shirts, nothing fancy or new. Old, warm jackets. Good heavy boots, waterproof if you can find them.” He found a scrap of paper in his pocket and wrote down his shoe size. “And money,” he said, “all the money you can lay your hands on.” He read her alarm at that. “At some point,” Lee said, “once we’re out on the coast, we’ll need to hire a lawyer.”

  He watched Morgan rise to join them, sitting down close on Becky’s other side. “Get the clothes at some charity shop,” Morgan said. “Wash them in lye soap, we don’t want lice.”

  “The other thing,” Lee said, “we need to know what’s on the other side of the wall. The train track has to be close, the whistles damn near take your head off, but we need to know the layout, what’s on beyond.”

  “There’s a General Motors plant,” Morgan said, “a car distribution center. On behind that, unless things have changed, there’s an open field. But check it all out, see if it’s still the same, see how the field lies in relation to the wall and the track.”

  Lee told her where to leave the clothes and money. “We’ll let you know later when to drop it. Once we’re out of here, there’ll be no contact. Morgan won’t be making any calls from some pay phone, the bureau boys would pick it up in a minute.

  “Once we’re gone,” Lee said, “you won’t be finished with it, Becky. Make no mistake, the feds will be all over you, they’ll question you and question Sammie. Doesn’t matter that she’s just a child, they’ll
try to drag information out of her, try for anything they think they can use.”

  “Why do you want to go with Morgan?” Becky said. “If you stay here, you’ll be getting out soon.”

  “I don’t know why,” Lee snapped. “Because I’m crazy. Because he can’t do it alone, he doesn’t know anything about hopping the trains, about avoiding the law. He doesn’t know anything much that will help him.” He took her hand. “Don’t tell Sammie any more than she’s overheard or guessed. Whatever she knows will put her on the spot. If she dreams this you’ll have to make her understand, make her swear to keep silent.

  “You’d better start teaching her now,” Lee said. “Not to talk to anyone about this, not to your aunt, not to the maid, not to your mother. Sure as hell not to a bureau agent. Anything she says, even if it’s only a dream, an agent might run with it.” Lee glanced up past Becky toward the half-open door, at the shadow of the guard standing in the hall. “Morgan will let you know the rest, let you know the timing. We’ve been talking too long, I need to get out of here.” He rose and left them, and didn’t look back.

  Telling Becky about the plan scared him, that she wouldn’t keep their secret, but they needed her. The idea of Sammie’s dreams disturbed him all the more, the thought that she might innocently let a hint drop, meaning no harm. But Sammie was a wise child. He told himself that with Becky’s help she’d learn to be still, would learn to lie for her daddy.

  28

  THAT’S NOT A wall, it’s a mountain,” Morgan said. “There’s no way we can get over that baby.” They stood on the steps leaning against the rail where Lee had first seen the flaw in the concrete. It was two days after they’d told Becky their plan. Below them the big yard gleamed with puddles, bouts of rain had swept through all day.

  “People climb mountains,” Lee said dryly. “You’ve already made the rods. What’s the matter with you, what did Becky say?” Morgan had just come from visiting hour. Lee had skipped this one; it was the last time the two would be together. “She’s not angry again?” Lee said warily. “Did she get the clothes, the money? Or did she . . . ?”

  “She got everything we asked for,” Morgan said, pulling his coat tighter against the chill. “She’s not mad. She’s . . . quiet. Trying to hold it in. This is hard on her, Lee. What if . . . ?” Morgan shook his head. “I’m not sure I can do this to her.”

  “It’ll be harder on her if you don’t. If you never get out of here, never get an appeal.”

  Morgan stared up at the guard tower, his hands clutched white on the rail. “She drove the roads behind the wall, she’s done everything you asked. She’s just . . . She said there were still open fields back there, the weeds waist-high from the rain. She thought the distance from the wall to the train track was about five hundred yards. Said there’s a signal pole beside the track, she’ll leave the bundle of clothes in the weeds near its base. Said she’d stuff them in a greasy gunnysack the way you said, smear it with mud and lay some dead weeds over it.”

  Lee had to smile at Becky crouched in the weeds, messing around in the mud like a kid herself.

  “She went to the city library, found a map of the railway lines, drew a rough copy. She took half a day off from work to get everything together, buy the used clothes, draw out the money. That’s all the money we have, Lee. She has nothing to pay Quaker Lowe, she . . .” Morgan shook his head. “She said that from Atlanta the freight will go either to Birmingham or Chattanooga depending on the timing, she couldn’t find a schedule for that. Then on to Memphis, Little Rock, across Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle to Albuquerque.”

  “Then Arizona,” Lee said, “and into California.” He wanted to stop in Blythe, draw out the prison-earned money he’d deposited. Money he’d carried with him when he was paroled from McNeil, plus what he’d earned in Blythe; he thought they’d need every penny.

  Right. Stop in Blythe, and what if he were spotted approaching the bank or inside, when he tried to close his account? Who could say how much more the feds knew by now about the post office robbery? What other details might they have picked up? If they had anything more pointing to him, they’d have put an alert on his account. If they had and he showed up to draw his cash, the clerk would call the local cops. He and Morgan would end their journey right there, in the Blythe slammer.

  Don’t borrow trouble, Lee told himself. Quit worrying. Wait until we reach Blythe, then play it the way it falls.

  “Becky followed the track as best she could in the car,” Morgan said. “There’s a switching yard to the left about three miles. She couldn’t tell how much security they have, she saw only one guard moving among the workmen. But the cars were crowded close, so maybe we can keep out of sight. We’ll have to watch it, not ride out of town in the wrong direction.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Lee said. “Either way, Chattanooga or Birmingham, we’ll be all right, we’ll take whichever we draw.” They had already timed the sweep of the spotlight beams, where they crossed each other. There was some two hundred feet of open yard to cross to reach the flaw and the blind spot. They had ten seconds between sweeps, to cover the distance, and Lee was no track star. He didn’t know if he was fast enough or if he’d blow it right there.

  “I’ll work my regular supper shift,” he said. “Then we haul out. Hope to hell the storm passes.” He didn’t like to think about climbing those metal rods if they were slick with rain. But maybe it would clear by tomorrow. He was having trouble breathing. He told himself it was from the pain of the healing wound, but he knew it was from worry—worry over the moves to come, worry over Morgan’s sudden reluctance. He’d like to know what more Becky had said to make him pull back. When the rain came hard again, driving down at them, they hurried under the nearest overhang.

  Misto followed them floating close to Lee and reaching out a paw to softly touch Lee’s ear. Lee glanced his way, scowling, but then with a crooked smile. The ghost cat—his coat perfectly dry in the downpour—having listened to their plans and to Morgan’s hesitance, now shadowed them as they headed away to supper.

  But at the door to the crowded mess hall with its smell of overcooked vegetables and limp sauerkraut, he left them again, returning to his dance in the rain. Leaping through the pelting onslaught dry and untouched, he rolled and tumbled thirty feet above the exercise yard, landed atop the prison wall and crouched a few feet from the guard tower, looking in.

  The room atop the tower extended out over the wall on both sides, a round dome with windows circling it, the windows open, the glass angled up like awnings keeping out the rain and affording the guards a better view through the storm. Within, the two uniformed guards paced or paused to look out, their rifles slung over their shoulders. Both looked sour, as if they’d rather be anywhere else. Bored men, Misto thought, who might easily be distracted. Leaping in through the nearest window, he narrowly missed the taller man, brushing past his shoulder and rifle. The man shivered, looked around, and buttoned his jacket higher.

  Dropping onto the small table that stood in the center of the crowded space, the ghost cat patted idly at a plate of ham sandwiches and enjoyed a few bites from one. Invisible, he prowled between a thermos bottle, two empty cups reeking of stale coffee, a tall black telephone, a newspaper folded to the crossword puzzle, six clips for the rifles, and five boxes of ammunition marked Winchester .30-06. He listened to the short, barrel-chested guard grouse that his wife wanted to have another child and that three kids were all he wanted. When the man’s tall, half-bald partner started telling dirty jokes, Misto lost interest and left them.

  Drifting out a window and back along the wall listening to the thunder roll, the tomcat looked down at the fault in the wall and, for only an instant, he hoped Lee and Morgan would make it over. For that one instant the tomcat knew uncertainty.

  But his dismay, he thought, was most likely born of Morgan Blake’s own doubt, just as was Lee’s hesitation. The escape tomorrow night was destined for success, Misto told himself. It would come off just
fine. Among Misto’s earlier lives, and often between lives, he’d witnessed the escapes of other imprisoned men. Some escapees were good men, others were blood-hungry rebels bent on destruction. Once, in Africa, Misto was carried in the arms of a small slave boy, both of them hoping that somewhere there was a safe haven for them and knowing there was not. He had watched the terror of peasants fleeing from medieval slave makers, and once he had died in the confusion of battle as free men were snatched away on the bloody streets of Rome. This world of humans was not a kind place. Joy was a rare treasure; compassion and joy and a clear assessment of life were gifts too often lost beneath the hand of the dark spirit.

  Now, diving from the wall and spinning through the rain, Misto thought to join Lee and Morgan at supper despite the unappealing scents in the mess hall. Drifting into the crowded room, dropping down to the steam table, he padded along between the big pans sniffing, then delicately picking out morsels to his liking: a bit of hot dog, half a biscuit. He skipped whatever was disgusting, but lingered over the spaghetti.

  Quickly the pan’s contents disappeared, vanished behind men’s backs or while heads were turned. When the tomcat was replete he drifted away to join his friends, dropping unseen onto the table between Lee’s and Morgan’s trays. His tail twitching, he watched them wolf down sauerkraut, hot dogs, and biscuits as, in low voices, they went over again their moves of the next night. Misto thought they had honed the plan as well as they could, except for Morgan’s nerves; he only hoped the rain would move on away. But even a talented ghost can’t do much about weather; that was an act of power beyond the most stubborn spirit.