No Way Out (39 page)

Elias Claymore was watching the 42 inch plasma TV in his Balcony Suite at the Hyatt Regency, San Francisco. He had decided not to travel back home right after the trial, especially as he knew he would be hounded by reporters. So he had phoned Alex and caught up with him when Alex had finished with the reporters. Alex had invited him back to the office, but Claymore had been reluctant to go there, anxious to avoid Andi’s disapproving gave. So, at Alex’s suggestion, he had booked this huge luxury suite at the Hyatt Regency in Building Five of the Embarcadero Center, with a private 30-foot balcony and a magnificent view of the Bay Bridge through dramatic floor-to-ceiling windows.

He was sitting in the suite’s lounge, drinking a cup of coffee as he watched the TV report on the evening news about the outcome of his case. Alex had told him about Martine having to step aside from reporting the case for ethical reasons and he had been curious as to how her replacement was covering it. But what he really wanted to know was how he was being portrayed: as the aggrieved party or the lucky villain?

The reality was, that the reporting was quite neutral and objective. The reports made it clear that he was innocent, but there was no hint of any emotion in the coverage, let alone sympathy. And as it was rolling news, it was becoming somewhat repetitious.

But something else was troubling him.

He went to the phone and called Alex. Juanita answered.

“Alex Sedaka’s office.”

“Oh hi Juanita. Listen I was wondering if I could have a word with Andi.”

“She’s not here.”

“Has she been there today? Or has she gone back to LA?”

“No, she hasn’t. Weren’t you with her when your case was dismissed?”

There was only the mildest note of suspicion in her tone.

“Yes but I haven’t seen her since then. Do you know if Alex has seen her? Or spoken to her?”

“Just a minute. I’ll ask.”

She put him on hold and he heard music.

“Hallo Elias.”

It was Alex.

“Yes, hi Alex. I was wondering if you’d seen Andi. We split up after the hearing and…”

He trailed off.

“No I haven’t seen her,” said Alex. “Is it anything I could help with?”

“Well no not really. Have you… have you spoken to her… since the hearing.”

There was a pause.

“Look, Elias… is there something wrong?”

Claymore sighed and tried to focus on how to explain it.

“Well it’s just that we… that is, she… she seemed a little bit upset when we parted.”

Again the silence from Alex’s end of the line.

“Did anything happen?”

“It depends what you mean by happen.”

“I mean did you have an argument?”

Alex sounded irritated when he said this, as if he resented that Claymore was being so coy. Or maybe she
had
said something to Alex.

“No not really. I mean not exactly an argument. But she said something that
–
”

“What?”

“No I mean it’s not like it was one thing in particular. It was like… it was like she blamed me for what she had to put Gene through.

Another pause.

“Yes, I can see why that might have upset her. I guess it’s possible that she’s gone back to LA to be with Gene.”

Claymore didn’t buy this.

“I think after what happened in court…”

There was no need to finish.

“No you’re right,” said Alex. “But I don’t know where she is. Maybe she’s gone somewhere to work off her anger.”

“Do you know how she’d go about working off
–
”

“I really don’t know Elias. Look she may be jogging, she may be drinking, she may even be sitting in her hotel room sulking.”

“Do you have the number of her hotel? Or her cell phone?”

“Yes I do. Actually she’s
also
staying at the Hyatt Regency. But if you exchanged rough words, it might not be too good an idea for you to call her. I’ll call her now and if I get through I’ll let you know.”

It was the best Claymore could hope for.

“Okay thank you.”

Eleven stories down from Claymore, Andi was in her room swigging vodka and popping pills. She was supposed to check out today and return to LA. But there was no way she could go back to that house – not now. She wasn’t afraid of Gene. It’s just that the atmosphere would be too cold.

So instead she took comfort in the bottle, and when that wasn’t enough she resorted to tranquilizers. The last time she had been on such a self-destructive spiral was after that time that she mentioned – all too briefly – in her parting words to Claymore: the time she had been raped.

Then it was Gene who had got her through the crisis. But this time she couldn’t call on Gene for support. Gene
was
the crisis.

Is it what Gene did to me or what I did to her?

It was all too fuzzy and unclear. Gene hadn’t set out to do anything to her. Gene had merely set out for revenge against Claymore, having finally spotted the chance years later. But it was a reckless kind of revenge that hurt the innocent as well as the guilty. Bethel Newton was now robbed of her chance to see the real rapist brought to justice. Despite the mitochondrial DNA, they’d have a hell of a job proving Louis Manning guilty after Bethel had clearly identified Claymore in court. The DNA might prove sexual activity, but the defense could still attack Bethel personally, claiming that it was consensual and that she couldn’t tell fantasy from reality.`

They might have done this even without Gene’s interference, citing the previous incident with Luke Orlando – as Andi herself had done, to her eternal shame. But the false accusations against Claymore and the ridiculous change in the rapist’s age from twenties to fifties and then back again, would undermine her case completely.

But there was something even more troubling to Andi. She realized that even now she wasn’t thinking about Bethel or even Gene as much as herself. She had been with Gene for so many years and now the fortress that they had built together – them against the world – had been destroyed.

But the hardest part to bear was that it was not Gene who had destroyed it. Gene could have had no way of knowing, when she embarked upon this crazy venture, that Andi would end up defending Claymore. That was why Gene had been so upset when Andi took on the case. Not because of what Claymore had done per se, but because it clashed with her plan for revenge. But by then it was too late to back out of it. By that stage there was no way she could stop it. She could hardly tell Bethel to withdraw the accusation against Claymore – not after she herself had urged Bethel to make that accusation in the first place.

But Andi had taken a conscious decision to go after Gene and force her to confess
in public
to suborning a witness. Yes, everyone would tell her that she had done her duty, that she had been right to put her emotions aside and act in strict accordance with the law and professional ethics.

Yet it feels so wrong!

She had done the “right” thing and in the process destroyed the woman she loved and thus also destroyed her relationship with her lover.

The phone rang. She couldn’t bear to communicate with a fellow human being, but instinctively she reached for the handset.

“Yes.”

“Andi… it’s Gene.”

“What do you want?”

Her voice was hardened by the edge of bitterness and guilt.

“Are you… are you coming home.”

Was it a cry for help or an offer of forgiveness?

Andi wasn’t ready for either.

“I don’t have a home,” she said, her eyes flooding with tears of regret, the moment the words were out of her mouth.

“Andi... baby… don’t let Don’t let that bastard Claymore destroy everything we had.”

“You don’t get it do you? The future belongs to the Claymore’s of this world. Everyone loves a repentant sinner. That’s why he lives in a beachfront property in Santa Barbara. That’s why he’s in a fancy suite in this hotel while I’m in a basic Business Plan.”

For a second Andi almost mellowed. But then she realized that Gene had said “had” rather than “have”. They were too far gone for things to be as they were. Gene knew it too.

You can’t bring a relationship back from the dead.

Andi put the phone down and took another swig of the vodka… and popped another pill.

“Hallo could I speak to Martine Yin please.”

Louis Manning was in a payphone and he felt uncomfortable. He didn’t like the feeling of not being mobile. He had lost his car – or rather Claymore’s car – and he didn’t have as much money on him as he would have liked. There was a bit on money in the cop’s wallet, which he had augmented by a couple of quick muggings across town.

But now he felt exposed. The cops would surely be looking for him and he had to lie low. He’d been living out of Claymore’s car when he first drove up to Oakland. But back in LA he had his own pad, albeit rented. His common sense told him that she should get on a bus and hightail it back to LA, where he could lie low for a while. But the BART station would be crawling with cops and they’d certainly be on the lookout for him. He had just about enough in his pocket for an old set of wheels and some gas. But like he had told the nurse, he had some unfinished business to attend to.

“She’s not yet back in LA. As far as we know she’s still in Oakland. May I ask who’s calling?”

“But I thought she stopped covering the Claymore case and was replaced by some one else? Besides, the Claymore case is over.”

“Yes but she stayed on in Oakland. That’s all the information we have at the moment. Could you tell me what this is about? There may be some one else here who could help you.”

“No I can’t do that. I only deal with Martine.”

He put the phone down, confident that he had not set off any alarms. They would assume that he was one of her sources of information and that he didn’t trust anyone else. He wasn’t surprised by what they had told him. Martine Yin had a thing going with Alex Sedaka and so it made sense that she’d stick around.

The question was, had she gone back to San Francisco with Sedaka or was she still in Oakland? On the phone they’d said the latter. But then again they probably didn’t know about Sedaka – or at least not the whole story. If she was staying with Sedaka, then she might be hard to get at. But he had try.

The first stage was finding out for certain. That meant he had a few phone calls.

“You want the light on Your Honor?”

Justice Ellen Wagner had been sitting alone in the dark in her chambers when her clerk entered. It was light outside, but the judge had closed the curtains against the early afternoon sun to sit there quietly, contemplating in peace.

“No that’s all right. I prefer the dark right now.”

The clerk was a girl of 23, full of the enthusiasm of youth and the excitement that a young person feels at the beginning of an adventure. In this case, the adventure was the start of her career. Ellen Wagner saw so much of herself in this girl. That bright-eyed look of wonderment at all that was possible, with all the hope and dreams for the future spread out before her. And this girl would grow up in a world made all the better by what Ellen Wagner’s own generation had done – by the battles they had fought and won.

But how much had they won? And how much had the world changed? Was it a case of
plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
? Was it true that
what goes around, comes around
? Had they replaced one stereotype with another? Had they traded in rights for some with rights for others, yet still not achieved that elusive nirvana of rights for all?

Claymore had walked out of court a free man, legally innocent. But one of his victims was now facing the prospect of many years imprisonment for obstructing justice. Was that right?

Claymore might even be able to resume his life as a celebrity. It would be hard, but everyone loves a repentant sinner, especially in America. He had proved that before and he’d probably prove it again.

“Do you want to talk?” asked the clerk.

“No… no that’s all right. You can go home for the day.”

Smoke hung in the air and the sound of gansta rap filled the room, punctuated occasionally by the staccato sound of the cue ball ricocheting off its target.

Gene ignored the wolf-whistles and vulgar jibes as she stood a few feet into the bar looking around. It had taken her a few phone calls and a few face to face encounters in some seedy back alleys and side streets, but she knew how to talk “street” and it was only a matter of time before she finally found out where she needed to go. And here she was.

She took a deep breath as she thought about what she was planning to do.

Yes. It is right. It is fair… it is just.

The only thing she couldn’t tell herself was that it would do any good in the broader scheme of things.

Steeling herself to face up to it, and trying very hard to stay focused, she walked up to the barman. Before he could ask her what she wanted to drink, she whispered a few words into his ear and pressed a ten dollar bill into his hand.

He whispered a word back in hers and nodded in the direction of a corner table. She turned casually and walked towards it. At the table, sat a solitary young man, smoking what may have been a joint and trying to look like he didn’t have a care in the world.

“Are you Joe?”

He looked up at her without smiling.

“Who wants to know?”

“Jane.”

“Cute name,” he said, this time giving in to the urge to smile, imperceptibly. “I know a lot of Janes. Most of ‘em work the streets.”

“I don’t work the streets.”

“No, I didn’t think so. Are you the Jane that’s looking to buy a piece?”

“Hallo can I speak to Martine Yin please… I’m not sure what room she’s in.”

At the other end of the phone, some one was looking up the name in a perfunctory fashion, with no recognition of the name.