No Way Out (45 page)

Gene thought about this for a moment and realized that it was true, even in her own relationship with Andi. All those role-playing games they played. What were they if not ritualized exercises in power and control?

“Okay look… maybe you’re right. Maybe sex is just one big game about power. But it’s a game with
rules
. Society has
rules
. We call it the
social contract
. And people have
rights
. And we all have a duty to obey those rules and respect the rights of our fellow human beings.”

“Uh-uh! I never signed up for no social contract.” She noticed that as anger got the better of him, his grammar was slipping, like a façade that couldn’t stand up to the inclement weather. “The social contract never did a thing for me. I got jack-shit out of other people’s social contract! So why should I abide by it?
This
animal lives by the law of the jungle. And I’m proud of it.”

“Then go back to the jungle! Don’t bring your jungle into our cities.”

He looked at her with a wide-eyed smile.

“I prefer to do it this way… to take my jungle with me wherever I go. And that’s not a race thing either. Most kluckers would agree with me on this one.”

He turned to the terrified Martine on the bed and smiled not with delight, but with the vengeful anger that he had carried around with him.

Claymore was desperately looking around as the sun set over the Pacific. But there was no one there to help. On other days, there might have been, even at this time. But not today. Right now those people who weren’t on the road were sitting in front of their TVs glued to the final day of the baseball game.

With an almighty effort of his stomach muscles, he heaved Andi’s lifeless body up to the level of the rail and then rested his elbows on the rail, still clinging on with his hands. It gave him a breather, although her body was still held there only by the pressure of his legs and torso. But now he was able to plant his feet again on the girders of the bridge. This enabled him to free one hand.

Choosing to free his left hand, he leaned back, encircled Andi’s waist with his left arm and heaved her with all his might, so that he could deposit her onto the railing. From there it was a simple matter to turn her over onto her stomach, flopped across the railing and maneuver her down back onto the observation platform.

Climbing back himself was no problem after that. But then he realized that his problems were just beginning. For as he surveyed her crumpled, motionless body he saw that there was no sign of breathing or movement of any kind. And her body had almost turned blue.

He realized in that moment that she wasn’t merely unconscious. She had gone into cardiac arrest!

He scrambled frantically to his jacket, whipped out his cell phone and punched in 911.

“Listen I’m on the Golden Gate Bridge with a woman who
–
”

“Have you got a potential jumper?”

“No, I’ve pulled her back in. But she’s gone into cardiac arrest. She’s been drinking heavily – and maybe popping pills too. I need an ambulance right away.”

“Is she still breathing?”

“No and there’s no pulse either, I already checked!”

“Okay I’ll send an ambulance right away. Do you know how to do CPR?”

“I’ve seen it on TV, but I’m not really sure. I mean I never learned how to do it properly.”

“Okay, I’m sending an ambulance. In the meantime I’ll explain to you what to do. Lie her down on a flat, hard surface.”

“I did that already.”

“Okay now tilt her head slightly back to clear an air passage.”

“Okay,” he said, noting the instruction, but not yet acting on it.

“No with a pumping wrist action of both hands, do fifteen sharp compressions on the left side of her chest.”

“Fifteen?”

“Yes.”

“And then what?”

“Then you do two ventilations. That means you pinch her nose shut and breathe into her twice, gently. Don’t breathe too hard or it can burst her lungs.”

“OK I’ll try that.”

He put the phone down and crouched down next to Andi, engulfed in sorrow. He knew that he had lost – that he had killed her twenty five years ago. What he had before him now was merely the culmination of his wickedness. But he had to try to save her. He owed her that at least. He had hurt her in every way possible, including driving her to this. But he couldn’t fail her now.

He looked around in blind panic as if hoping to see some one there who could help him. But there was no one. And as misery and fear engulfed him, it finally dawned on him that he was well and truly alone.

 It hadn’t merely been idle talk when he said at the trial when he said: “Since I came back to America to serve out my sentence I haven’t been able to touch a woman.”

It had been the truth. But he remembered what Andi had told him at their conference before he testified.

“Sometimes the greatest test of courage is standing up to the enemy within.”

In his case the
immediate
enemy within was the fear of touching a woman, knowing what he had done to women in the past. But the
latent
enemy was the knowledge of how little his own life was worth.

Only
now
it was different. Now he
could
do something. If he could bring himself to overcome his own self-loathing.

But if he couldn’t overcome this terror in this moment, then he would do more harm by his
inaction
now than he had ever done by his actions in the past. It would be the ultimate guilt: the guilt of indifference.

One of his fellow revolutionaries had once said: “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” If this applied to problems that affected him, then it must surely also apply to the problems that afflicted others.

So now, he knew, it was time for the hands that had once violated to become the hands that heal… in a final act of redemption.

Alex had phoned the cops and tried to explain the situation, to no avail. The more he explained, the more convoluted it sounded. Up till the point when he got through to Gene and Manning had addressed him directly, he couldn’t really cite any reason why they should even bother to pay a visit to Martine’s room, because all he had was conjecture piled on top of paranoia.

When he finally told them about the phone call to Gene and Manning’s response, they sounded interested. But when he admitted that he couldn’t be sure that it
was
Manning – and also that he reached Gene on her cell phone rather than the landline in Martine’s room – they seemed to lose interest. The dispatcher even pointed out that Gene could have been anywhere and that “Manning” could have been anyone.

So all Alex could do was make his own way to Martine’s room and hope that he had the wherewithal to deal with the situation.

When he arrived at the parking lot of the Waterfront hotel, he leapt out of his car without even making sure to park it properly. He just tossed the keys to the valet and ran inside. He knew which room she was in, so it was just a case of racing up the stairs and getting there. He thought about the possibility of calling 911 again, so that they would hear what was going on when he got there. He knew that there was no way that he could take on Manning – especially as he almost certainly had the cop’s gun.

But Martine was in danger and he had to save her. He hadn’t been there for Melody when she was in danger. But he was here for Martine now. He had to justify his existence, even if it meant putting it on the line.

When he got to the door, his courage almost deserted him, but in his mind, the faces of Martine and Melody merged into one and he knew that he had to do.

He banged on the door even more aggressively than Gene had done fifty minutes earlier.

“Martine! Martine!”

There was movement inside, followed by the sound of the door handle. Slowly the door opened a crack… then a little more. Finally it opened enough for Martine’s frightened, huddled figure to become visible. But what surprised Alex was what happened next.

The door was flung open and Martine staggered out in her bathrobe. She collapsed into his arms.

Slowly, Claymore’s hands reached down and took their place over her heart
–
the same hands that had once fondled her breasts while she lay there on the grass, sobbing profusely and begging for him not to hurt her, in that secluded area of woodland where he had raped her. As the woman on the phone had instructed, he began the manual compressions, pumping her heart with a double-handed action, counting as he did do.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen fourteen, fifteen.”

He leaned over and opened his mouth. For a moment he hesitated, remembering how he had pinioned her to the ground, holding her thin, frail wrists together with one of his giant hands while he leaned over her and thrust his mouth onto hers, kissing her in a way that was so possessive that it made him feel as if he owned her for life, regardless of her wishes.

I have to do it
, he told himself.

He placed his mouth gingerly over hers and did the first ventilation, breathing into her and silently praying that it would be the breath of life. He paused and did it a second time. Then he straightened up into a kneeling position and did the next fifteen compressions.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen fourteen, fifteen.”

He did two ventilations and then went back to the compressions again, repeating the entire process three more times. He felt exhausted, and defeated. There was still no sign of life. He straightened up, remembering how he had grabbed the throat of fourteen year old Andi when she tried to scream. But this time, when he reached for her throat it was to check if there was a pulse. As he touched her, he saw a slight movement of Andi’s chest and felt the pulse that he had been praying for. The heart was beating and she had resumed breathing. Through his tears, Claymore smiled a bitter smile and sighed heavily with relief.

Then he staggered to his feet, turned away and wept into his open hands.

Martine stood there clinging onto Alex as he encircled her waist with his arms. But there were no tears in her eyes, just a kind of heavy gasping as if she were trying to recover her strength.

“Where’s Manning?” he asked, urgently. “And Gene.”

“Inside,” said Martine, her voice rasping from shortage of breath.

He looked over at the door nervously and tried to edge Martine away from it, to get her out of harms way. But she resisted his efforts.

“We have to help her,” she said, releasing her grip on Alex and half turning towards the door.

He nodded, unsure of what he meant, or what danger lay behind that door. She turned her back on him, opened the door and walked into the room. He followed and saw Gene in a kneeling position, cradling Louis Manning’s bleeding head in her arms, rocking backward and forward gently as if holding a baby and trying to soothe it gently to sleep.

There was no movement from Manning. His eyes were open but unblinking. And the only sound in the room was a feint murmur from Gene’s throat as she sang the lullaby from Robert Munch’s
Love You Forever
.

Martine turned to Alex, and this time a couple of tears were forming in her eyes.

“He was the salmon,” she said softly.

“The salmon.”

“Swimming up stream, to the waters where he was born. Only he never made it.”

For some reason, that he couldn’t fathom himself, Alex took out his wallet and looked at a picture of a young man. He had found the picture in the glove compartment of the car belonging to his former legal intern, Nat Anderson, after Nat had been killed in that fatal crash. He felt overwhelmed by the emotions it brought on – the same emotions he had felt when he first saw the picture and recognized the face.

It was later that night when Claymore stood dry-eyed on the Golden Gate Bridge looking out at the waters below. He had gone with Andi in the ambulance and was still with her at the hospital when Gene had arrived with Alex and Martine. Andi had been slipping in and out of consciousness, but she seemed to respond to Gene, at one point even squeezing her hand. Alex and Martine had left shortly after that, and Claymore realized that he too was in danger of outstaying his welcome.

So now, with no one else about, he stood here looking east towards the city where he had been judged not guilty by the system. But it was not so easy to escape the judgment of his own conscience.

It would be so much simpler to end it here. He had given Andi back her life, but he could not restore her youth joy of living that he had robbed her of forever. Neither could he banish her pain. Like all human beings he could do limited good but unlimited evil.

His moral account was overdrawn.

And yet… that didn’t make him morally bankrupt. The words “temporarily insolvent” came into his head, bringing a wry smile top his lips. He still had a few good years left, and if he chose to use them wisely he could repay at least part of his debt. But he could never give back to Andi what he had taken away from her.

To do away with himself now – as a means of paying for his sins – was as tempting as any temptation life had thrown at him. But it was tempting for all the wrong reasons. It would be like the trick that those smarmy, crooked business corporations sometimes play: filing for Chapter 11 to duck their obligations towards workers, creditors and shareholders.

He knew that he had a duty to pay back what he had taken away from his victims. If he couldn’t pay it back to Andi, he could pay it back to others
–
helping some future potential victim before it was too late. He had thought, for many years, that he had repaid the debt already by standing up for “American values.” But paying tribute to American values – whatever that meant – didn’t expiate his sins or purge him of the guilt that he still carried. Whatever those ill-defined values were, they weren’t a model of perfection any more than those other political and religious systems that he had experimented with and that had left him so thoroughly disillusioned.