it’s wait.
I was almost three months behind bars before someone who had all the money I needed showed up. I hadn’t reached out for him. I wouldn’t have even known where to look. He just came.
He had the money, all right. But he was a man who was used to being accommodated. He said they—he meant the TV people he fronted for—they wanted to put me in front of a camera. Kind of like an acting job, he said. They’d call it an “interview.” I’d have to pretend some plastic-faced fool had broken me down, sliced me open with his scalpel-sharp questions, then pulled back the skin to show everyone the truth underneath.
Since I was planning to tell a pack of lies in court anyway, I couldn’t see any harm in repeating them on camera. And the money man didn’t care, either … just as long as I told
his
people first.
But even with clean money coming in, I would still need one thing only the Feds could give me. And I couldn’t let them know how bad I had to have that one thing, or they’d have me on a steel leash.
I worked it over and over again in my mind, trying to strengthen it, the same way you do with a muscle. And, sure enough, I came up with a perfect package. All the while the Feds were working so hard trying to find out what I wanted, what would make me talk, they were busy telling me what
they
wanted.
I don’t mean who paid me to do what, I mean that special piece. The one they wanted
bad
. All I had to do was listen.
Step Eight came when I realized I could give the Feds what Iknew they wanted more than anything else, and
still
keep faith with the people who had hired me for all the jobs I was never going to talk about.
A simple formula: if I could just get the right lies accepted by one side, that would prove my word was good to the other.
But that formula was easier to memorize than put into practice. For that, I had to move the TV man off his square—and he was standing his ground like a mother badger with cubs behind her.
“Esau, you don’t have to tell us a thing about the crime itself. If you just talk about your life, what happened when you were just a little kid, how you raised your younger brother all by yourself … well, that alone could be worth the kind of money you’ve been asking for.”
I didn’t like that word “could.” I wasn’t about to be giving
them
enough leverage to keep raising the bar, either. And they weren’t going for any kind of money-in-front deal.
So I had to sell them. And I knew that the only way that ever works is if the other man thinks he’s selling you.
Life Story: As Told from Death Row
, they wanted to call it. It kind of disgusted me, but the TV people outbid all comers, even one of those newspapers that have stuff like two-headed monkeys on their front page.
I thought I had milked it as dry as I could, but when they learned I was going to the same Death House that had once held the Beast, that started them slobbering like dogs watching a butcher cut up a side of beef. Everything changed, then.
Still, the TV people held their place, made sure they were the last bidder standing.
So I told them that I’d go along but I had one little extra condition. That must have scared them a bit—I could see the relief spread over their faces when I spelled it out. The one extra condition was that they had to pay all the money direct into a trust I had already set up for Tory-boy.
o I was going to do it. Sit in front of their cameras as long as they wanted, and spin out the same lies I was planning to tell in court.
I was already inside my own balance when I finally made the deal. That’s my lord and savior, balance. If that revelation hadn’t come to me long ago, I wouldn’t be waiting on my own execution as I write this down.
That’s why I cleared all those lies I was planning to tell the TV people with the Feds. They weren’t happy about it, but they went along … provided I didn’t change what I was going to say on the witness stand.
I