No Way Out
Again the audience burst into thunderous applause, except the small cadre of militants. Claymore looked around and saw the approval on the faces of most of the audience, black and white. The black militant had almost won them over, but Claymore knew that with a few well-chosen words he had won them back.
Then a man wearing a suit and a bow tie with a crescent on it spoke up. ‘If you think that joining the white establishment is a solution,’ said the besuited man, ‘then you’re as big a fool as he is.’
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Claymore.
‘I mean you’ve jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. You’ve betrayed your people twice over.’
He was a tall, slim, dapper figure and he was known to be Claymore’s arch enemy. The man was a leading member of the Nation of Islam. Claymore had once belonged to his sect, but had later become disillusioned with it.
‘Would you care to elaborate?’ Claymore challenged.
‘I’m talking about Islam, the religion of the black man, the religion you turned your back on when you became an apostate.’
‘An apostate to Islam or an apostate to the Nation of Islam? The two are not the same. Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam but never turned his back on Islam. Yet that didn’t save him from getting murdered.’
This was one of his favorite challenges to his former sect. Malcolm X had left the Nation of Islam in disillusion both at its policy of separatism and at the practices of its leader.
But the well-dressed man in the audience was not going to be drawn into a debate about who killed Malcolm X. The Nation of Islam had subsequently re-adopted their former enemy and tried to distance themselves from his assassination.
‘You’re not like Brother Malcolm, Claymore, and you never will be! Brother Malcolm never did what you did.’
There was wild applause at that one. Everyone knew that Elias Claymore was not quite as respectable as he had now become. But Claymore was prepared for this.
‘It’s precisely because of my own guilt that I must speak out,’ said Claymore, casting a professional eye at the studio clock. ‘As a sinner, I have a duty not to remain silent. In the meantime, let’s all say a loud “Thank God” that we’re living in a country where no one has to be a slave unless he chooses to be. Thank you all, good afternoon and God Bless America.’
There was thunderous applause. The show was over.
As one of the cameras pulled back to let him pass, Claymore walked away, talking to various eager members of the audience and shaking hands with some of them.
He left the set to be confronted by two uniformed policemen and a female detective who couldn’t have been more than thirty, if that. But what frightened him most was the implacable look on their faces. He didn’t know what was going on, but sensed that it was something serious. The faces of the TV staff hovering around them looked tense. The detective stepped forwards and flashed her shield at Claymore.
‘Elias Claymore?’
‘Yes?’ replied Claymore, slightly nervously.
‘Detective Riley. I have a warrant for your arrest.’
‘What for?’
‘Rape.’
Claymore shot a look of panic at the producer and swallowed. ‘Call Alex Sedaka. Now!’
Friday, 5 June 2009 – 15.30
‘This is the best Chinese food I’ve ever tasted,’ said Alex, expertly picking up a mouthful of chicken chow mein with a pair of wooden chopsticks.
‘Best at this price,’ said Martine, her voice still tense from the incident back at the snooker tournament. ‘Let’s not exaggerate.’
They were eating at the Embassy Kitchen, just across the parking lot from the billiards club. The area itself seemed like a bit of a dump. But Alex was used to slumming it, in his line of work. And he suspected that the same was true of Martine.
‘Look, about what happened earlier…’ He was nervous, sensing that Martine was still angry.
‘You don’t have to apologize. Just don’t do it again.’
Alex felt deflated. He hadn’t been going to apologize. But he wanted to clear the air. ‘You shouldn’t have to put up with that kind of crap.’
‘And you shouldn’t have to get into fights to prove your masculinity. Okay! You fathered two children. You paid your dues in life. You win battles in court – which is the battleground where thinking men fight and win battles. I don’t need you to beat up some redneck to prove yourself.’
He was flattered that she said ‘beat up’ not ‘get beaten up by.’
‘I wasn’t trying to prove anything. But the way he was going, I figured it was distracting to—’
‘Oh gimme a break! You think arguing with him made it less distracting? Come off it, Alex. You wanted to play the hero. You wanted to show me that you’re not the wimp lawyer in a suit but the tough guy who can take care of his lady – like I’m the sort who’s gonna be impressed by that macho bullshit. Like I haven’t seen it, done it and bought the t-shirt.’
‘All right, maybe I overreacted. And maybe I’m old-fashioned.’ He was leaning close to her now. ‘But then again, I think that it is a man’s duty to protect his lady.’
‘And maybe you’ve also got some unfinished issues.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means you’re still thinking about another lady you felt you should have been able to protect.’
She saw the hurt in his eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said softly. ‘I was out of line with that.’
‘No it’s true. You’re right. I wasn’t there for Melody.’
‘You couldn’t have been there for Melody. How were you to know that some loony-tunes with a Saturday night special was going to bushwhack her on the way home? Don’t beat yourself up about it.’
Alex’s wife Melody had been killed by a gangbanger in the parking structure of the hospital where she worked. Melody was a doctor who had been working in A & E when two gangbangers from opposite sides of town were brought in the same night. What she didn’t know was that the one she was treating had shot the other one. She saved the one on her operating table, but the other doctor lost his. And the dead man’s homeys couldn’t get at the guy who killed their brother, ‘cause he was in jail – in solitary. So they held a council of war and decided that Melody had to pay.
By that stage, she probably knew she was in danger, but she refused to take it seriously. She even rejected an escort to her car, saying she was too old for a nanny.
Call it arrogance, call it self-confidence – either way, she paid with her life.
And Alex still blamed himself in some way.
‘I just wish I could…’ He trailed off. But Martine knew what he was going to say. He wished he could turn the clock back. Just like everybody does. But as his son David, a physicist, had once told him: time doesn’t run backwards.
He tried to take his mind off it. ‘Tell me how you made that trick shot?’
‘You should get David to explain it. You see it’s all about Newtonian mechanics. If you hit the object ball at quarter ball with pace, the cue ball moves off at an oblique angle, while—’
Martine’s cell phone went off. She whipped it out and answered it with polished, professional speed. ‘Martine Yin.’ For the next half minute, she appeared to be listening intently. ‘Okay, I’ll be there in ten.’
She turned to Alex, looking acutely embarrassed.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Duty calls.’
She thanked him for his understanding and left briskly. Seconds later, the roar of a car engine outside brought a wry smile to his lips as he realized that the predator in her might lie dormant but was far from extinct. She was still a newswoman, poised to pursue a good story at a moment’s notice, just as he was a lawyer 24/7, even if he didn’t quite resort to ambulance chasing.
He managed one more mouthful of food before his own cell phone blared out the familiar musical phrase from the Allegro of Dvorak’s New World Symphony.
‘Mr Sedaka?’ said an almost desperate-sounding male voice at the other end of the line.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m the producer of the Elias Claymore show. We’ve got a situation here and I was wondering if there’s any possibility of you coming to LA—’
‘I’m in San Gabriel.’
‘Oh, thank God for that! Mr Claymore asked me to call you. He’s been arrested.’
‘Arrested? What’s the charge?’
‘It’s some kind of phony rape charge.’
Alex knew at that moment why Martine had left in such a hurry.
Friday, 5 June 2009 – 16.50
‘Okay, there we are,’ said the evidence technician, as she took the third buccal swab.
Like Bethel a few hours earlier, Claymore was giving a DNA sample from the lining of his mouth. They hadn’t told him that the rapist had worn a condom or that the victim had scratched the rapist’s arm. The less they told him, the better their chances of getting him to incriminate himself by revealing first-hand knowledge of the crime. But they did subject him to a full examination in which they looked for signs of scratches and found several.
Nevertheless, this was far from conclusive. The real test would be the DNA. They had several good samples from Bethel and now all they needed was a good match.
After the reference samples had been taken, Alex sat with Claymore for twenty minutes, going through where Claymore had been at the time of the alleged rape. Claymore had been very clear that he had nothing to hide and wanted to answer police questions. But Alex was wary of this; he knew that even guilty people sometimes think they can get away with the crime by talking to the police. And he also knew all about the naivety of the genuinely innocent man who thinks he has nothing to hide. Alex had known Elias for a few years now – ever since he had represented him at the plea bargain for unlawful escape, after he came back to the United States to face the music – and he had been impressed at the time by Claymore’s sincerity and genuine sense of shame at his past. But that meant little now. If a man could change once, he could change again. The only thing it did mean was that Alex had a certain amount of influence with Claymore.
But lawyers take their instructions from clients, not the other way round. So when Claymore made it clear that he was determined to answer police questions, all Alex could do was say his piece and then step aside while the interview took place. He would be present during the questioning and he’d step in if he had to.
Alex sat in silence while Lieutenant Kropf, the tall, thin man who headed up the investigation, used his aggressive rapid-fire technique to try and trip Claymore up.
‘Okay, so you admit that no one saw you at home at that time?’ barked Kropf.
Alex wanted to tell the lieutenant to stop wasting time; he’d had his answer and was just repeating himself ad nauseam. But Claymore held out a restraining hand to silence his lawyer.
‘It’s not a question of admitting,’ Claymore replied, trying to keep his voice level. ‘I was alone. That’s a fact. It’s not a crime to be alone.’
‘No, but it helps to have an alibi.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’ asked Claymore wryly.
In the tense silence that followed, Claymore looked around. The room was stark and bare. The furniture was limited to a table and three chairs, one for the lieutenant and one each for Claymore and Alex. Light entered the room from a high window located very close to the ceiling.
Another police officer, a detective, stood by the door but said nothing. He was there in case the suspect decided to get ‘physical.’ He was also there to be a witness to protect the lieutenant from false accusations. Although the interrogation was being videotaped, with Claymore’s consent, and there was a technician on the other side of the one-way glass, there were times – on the way in and the way out – when the people were out of the watchful eye of the camera.
‘Can you think of anything else that might prove you were at home?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like a phone call. Did anyone call you? Did you call anyone?’
Claymore shook his head. The monotonous drone of the air conditioning was beginning to take its toll. It was more irritating than the monotonous drone of Lieutenant Kropf’s voice as he kept up a steady stream of questions that carried with them more than a hint of quiet menace.
‘I don’t remember.’
‘If you called out from your phone then there’ll be a record on your phone bill. It’s all digital now so you should get an itemized bill.’
Alex sensed that the lieutenant was actually trying to be helpful, almost like he didn’t believe that Claymore was guilty.
‘Okay,’ Kropf continued, ‘if you’re confident on this one, we can get it now.’
The lieutenant was looking at Alex when he said this.
‘At this time?’ asked Alex skeptically, looking at his watch.
‘I know a friendly judge we can ask.’
‘And you think the phone company’s going to haul ass tonight just ‘cause we wave a subpoena in their faces? Get real!’
Alex knew well enough what the lieutenant was up to. He was testing to see how confident they were. It wasn’t a legally binding test of innocence. But it was a good way to know whether or not he was wasting his time on a sure-fire loser.
‘Okay,’ said Kropf, finally. ‘We’re not going to charge your client.’
Claymore breathed a sigh of relief.
‘At least not right now. We’ll wait for the DNA results to come in and we’ll take it from there.’
Alex smiled. It was beginning to look like the storm had blown itself out before it hit dry land. But he noticed that Kropf looked far from deflated – like he still had one more card up his sleeve.
‘Just one more question, Mr Claymore. What car do you drive?’
‘Well I’ve been using taxis for the past couple of days.’
‘Any particular reason?’
‘My car was stolen.’
‘Did you report it?’
‘Not yet. I haven’t had the time.’
‘What make of vehicle was it?’
‘A Mercedes.’
‘What color?’
‘Blue.’
‘A blue Mercedes?’
‘Aquamarine, if you want to get technical.’
Friday, 5 June 2009 – 19.30
‘I’m beginning to think that nothing’s changed,’ said Andi, bitterly.
They were sitting on the porch of their house, dining alfresco in the California evening sun.
‘How d’you mean?’ asked Gene, with measured sympathy. She wasn’t one to encourage self-pity, having seen in the course of her work what a self-destructive force it can be. Self-destructive and thoroughly seductive.
Andi attacked her food with such ferocity that Gene was forced to smile. It meant that Andi wasn’t succumbing to the demon of surrender. She was in fighting spirits and that was surely a good sign. She’d snap out of it completely in no time at all!
‘We uprooted ourselves from New York and relocated for what? It’s not a department. It’s just a meaningless title.’
‘Give ‘em a chance, honey. I mean it’s only your first day. Let’s see what they let you do.’
Gene was calmly reassuring. She knew that Andi expected no less of her. It was a game they played: Andi bitched about life and Gene pulled her back down to earth.
‘I can just feel the vibes from the start,’ Andi continued. ‘I’m supposed to be on the fast track for a partnership and yet I haven’t even got an office. They’ve stuck me in a glorified broom closet.’
Gene touched Andi’s forearm gently. ‘I’m sure that’s only temporary.’
They ate on in silence for a few seconds. Andi was still sulking. But Gene was content to leave her to it. If Andi preferred to sulk for a while longer, that was her business. I can’t be her mother all the time.
In the end, it was Andi who broke the silence, changing the subject.
‘So how was your first day?’
She couldn’t understand why Gene looked so upset.
‘My first day? What? At the Center? Pretty hectic. I guess I should be used to it.’
‘Are you understaffed?’ asked Andi.
She knew perfectly well that they were understaffed. Rape crisis centers always suffered from a chronic shortage of employees, exacerbated by the low pay.
‘Understaffed and underappreciated,’ Gene replied. ‘Everyone rails and rages against crime, but they’re more concerned with punishing the perpetrator than helping the victim recover from the trauma. Who needs to help the victim when you can get revenge? That’s the American way.’
This was unfair, and they both knew it. They both understood the desire for revenge all too well. But it was strange how guns always counted for more than bandages on the human balance sheet.
‘You’ve got something on your mind, haven’t you?’ The voice was gentle, sympathetic. It was one of those spontaneous mid-conversation role reversals that characterized their relationship.
‘I had a case this morning…’
She trailed off, but Andi could read the rest of the sentence in the silence.
‘They threw you in at the deep end?’ This was something that Andi had been hoping for in her own job. But it wasn’t to be. Instead it was Gene who had the dubious privilege.
‘Wha’d’you expect? Like I said, we’re understaffed.’
Andi put a gentle hand on her lover’s bare arm. ‘What’s bugging you? You’ve seen it all before. You know the score by now.’
A pained expression flipped briefly across Gene’s face. ‘I’ve seen this before all right,’ Gene muttered bitterly. ‘It’s the kind of case that sets off the talking heads on TV. Feminism versus race politics. A white girl raped by a black man.’
Andi, who had been taking a sip of her orange juice, gulped and put the glass down. ‘The press’ll have a field day. It’ll probably turn into another black rights versus women’s rights circus.’
‘And don’t I know it! The defense will raise the specter of the Scottsboro Boys and the prosecution will use everything they can throw at the defendant from Mike Tyson to O.J. Simpson.’
Andi nodded sympathetically.
‘And caught in the middle of it is one frightened little girl, not yet out of her teens.’
‘You think you can handle it?’
‘Oh, I can handle it all right. I’ve been there before, remember. The question is, can the victim?’
‘And can she?’
Gene shook her head, sadly. ‘She doesn’t know what she’s letting herself in for.’
‘Have they got a suspect?’
‘Yes.’
‘Has she ID-ed him?’
‘Yes. Only they released him pending DNA results.’
Andi sat forward, part eager, part concerned. She had known Gene long enough to pick up the nuances in her words as well as her tone.
‘Well if she ID-ed him then maybe she’s tougher than you think.’
‘She’s not tough. She’s just naïve. She doesn’t realize that she’s going to carry the can for two centuries of racial persecution.’
Saturday 6 June 2009 – 11.00
Albert Carter was an old man. Not a wise old man, not a crusty old man, not even really a frail old man, just an old man who had lived a full life and been around the block a few times. He wasn’t in the best of health, having done his share of smoking and drinking, before he gave it up when he noticed it slowing him down a bit. But he was a lonely old man, having lost his first wife to divorce and his second to the Grim Reaper.
Oh yes, the Reaper.
There were many weapons in the Reaper’s arsenal, and Albert Carter couldn’t even pronounce the name of the disease that had claimed Hildegard.
His children were still around, but he had lost them to professional migration. He saw them at Christmas and on his birthday, but that was pretty much it. One lived in Utah and one in Boston. The one in Utah was a store manager and the one in Boston some kind of academic. He understood the work of the former more than the latter, but, both had families and neither came out west very often.
So he spent his days watching TV, reading the newspaper and – with diminishing frequency – bowling with his old friends. It was a dull, repetitive chapter towards the latter part of his book of life, but he had his basic needs and he didn’t want more. All he yearned for was a bit less arthritic pain. Oh, and he wished that the cops would do more to round up those gangs who were turning the neighborhood into such an unpleasant place. He knew who they were…in a generic sort of way, at least.
It was while he was watching the TV alone one night, he saw a news report about the Bethel Newton rape case, saying how a famous local talk show host had been arrested and then released. They didn’t have any footage from the police station, but they showed a still photograph of the girl and stock footage from the man’s talk show. Apparently he’d been arrested after shooting the latest show, yet to be broadcast.
And that was when Carter got the feeling.
He didn’t remember the details too clearly – the whole thing had happened just too fast. But there was one thing that he remembered.
For a moment he hesitated, realizing that criminals could sometimes be vengeful towards people who snitched. But then he remembered his own, all-too-frequent words about the cowards who don’t speak out when criminals destroy their communities. He didn’t want to be like one of those people whom he routinely criticized. He knew now that it was his civic duty to speak out and he didn’t want to be like all the shirkers.
So he dragged his weary bones out of the comfort of his tattered, dust-ridden armchair and trudged over to the phone.
Friday 12 June – 9.40
Detective Bridget Riley was a victim chaperone, not a counselor. She was the principal point of contact between the investigating officers and the rape victim. The detectives investigating the case put most of their questions through Bridget. When they had to put questions directly or when others had to have contact with the victim, such as during the medical examination, the victim chaperone had to be there.
She had a sporty, athletic look about her, the tough look of a kick boxer. Male colleagues found her attractive and her face, highlighted against her raven-colored hair, was potential photographic model material. But what would be a blessing in the world of show biz, could be something of a curse in the locker room culture of the police.
Because of her looks, Bridget had been the target of sexual harassment by her colleagues. And it had made her tough. She could take the compliments with a smile and a shrug and when they became vulgar she hit back with a glib ‘in your dreams, buster.’
When one of the rookies was bold enough to try to pin her against a locker, showing off in front of three of his friends, she deterred him from further action with a well-placed fist to the groin. Then she added insult to injury by asking him if he wanted her to kiss it better. The rookies never bothered her again; nor had anyone else in the department during the four years since.
Bridget was sitting at her desk typing up a report on a domestic violence case for Sarah Jensen at the D.A.’s office, when a female officer dropped a fax on her desk. But Bridget did not look up.
Sarah Jensen, the Assistant District Attorney in charge of the domestic violence division at the Ventura County D.A.’s office, was no less determined than Bridget to nail these bastards who beat their wives or girlfriends. But Sarah Jensen was a realist. She was also very ambitious. She knew that unsuccessful prosecutions damaged the reputation of the department, and gave her a poor track record, personally. So Bridget knew that she had to word every sentence carefully to give Sarah the impression that this was a winnable case.
When she looked at the fax, her eyes lit up. She scooped it up and rushed out of the room.
Friday, 12 June 2009 – 10.30