Читать книгу No Way Out - David Kessler - Страница 13

‘Well, check out the ass on that!’

Alex shot an angry look at the leering redneck in torn jeans who was nursing a near-empty can of Bud. The man looked back as if to say, ‘Wanna make an issue of it, buddy?’

The truth of the matter was that Alex didn’t want to. But he was ready to. He was more afraid of the legal and professional consequences to himself as a lawyer than the possibility of getting beaten up. The guy was bigger than Alex. But Alex had trained in Krav Maga – an Israeli martial art – and reckoned the odds at about 50-50.

Not wanting to feed the redneck’s desire for attention, Alex returned his attention to the snooker table that the lithe, thirty-four-year-old, dark-haired, Chinese-American woman was bending over.

They were in the Embassy billiards club in San Gabriel. The place had been packed for the men’s event – the fourth in the six-venue US tour. But the hall seemed half empty as the woman in black pants and matching vest lined up her most crucial shot of the frame – if not the entire semi-final match.

After a few seconds, the chattering settled down to a respectful silence as the crowd held its breath with eager anticipation, wondering if Martine Yin could pull it off.

She took the shot with cool ease, not tentatively but with the firm confidence of someone who knew that there were no prizes for second best. And when the red ball dropped into the right corner pocket and the cue ball rolled slowly to a halt a foot away from the left cushion, the small crowd of appreciative aficionados who were there to watch the game and Martine, let out a whooping cheer. And Alex was amongst those applauding wildly – although he had to admit that he was one of those who was there to see Martine more than the game.

They had been going out together, on and off, for over a year now – if you could call it going out together. It had started after the Clayton Burrow case, when Martine had spent several months pursuing Alex for an interview. She was a TV reporter and she had covered what had become Alex’s most famous case. She had been one of the reporters in the observation room adjacent to the death chamber when they got the fateful call to abort the execution.

And she had witnessed, albeit from a distance, Alex’s intense conversation with his legal intern followed by the intern’s arrest. This whole surreal episode had culminated in a high-speed car chase in the dead of night, ending in a fatal crash that unfortunately evaded the cameras of the news helicopters.

After the case, Alex had offered some considerable resistance to Martine’s interview request, and when they did finally talk about it, she got the impression that he was holding something back. At first, she had been determined to break his resolve and get in under his guard. But somewhere along the line, she sensed that what Alex was holding back had more to do with his personal feelings than any hard facts about the case itself. She realized that Alex was all too human – nothwithstanding the predatory reputation of his profession – and thus realized also that there were limits to how predatory she could be in her own chosen vocation.

It was only after that, and because of this softening in Martine’s character, that the relationship between them really started to develop. And even then it was a relationship at a distance, which tended to stunt its growth. She was based in Los Angeles; he in San Francisco.

‘I’d like to put one in your pot, babe,’ the redneck called out, as he swaggered to the bar for a refill.

‘Why don’t you can it?’ said Alex turning round again.

‘Wanna step outside and settle it like a man?’ the redneck challenged.

‘Why don’t you both can it!’ Martine snapped. ‘I’m trying to concentrate.’

By this stage, the referee could no longer hope that the situation would play itself out without his intervention. He called a couple of bouncers to escort the redneck off the premises.

Martine turned back to the table and, taking a deep breath to regain her composure, potted the black and then another red. She had come to the table with four points and eight frames on the board against her opponent’s sixty-one points and eight frames, after a nail-biting battle of safety shots. Her opponent, a petite blonde, had missed a two-cushion escape from a tricky snooker and this gave Martine a final chance to save the match on this final frame.

But only if she made every shot.

Keeping her cool, she made another black and then a red. But this time, the cue ball drifted towards the baulk end of the table and she had to settle for a pink instead of a black. She knew that there were no more chances. After the pink she had to pot the last red and get on the black. She sank the pink and came a little too far on the final red. Not that she couldn’t pot the red. It was an easy shot in itself. But if she just rolled it in she would be on the wrong side of the black. She had to play it with pace and come off three cushions in order to get back down the table to the black. But if she played it with pace, she also had to play it with deadly accuracy.

She took the shot with pace…a lot of pace.

Alex held his breath and prayed.

The ball dropped into the pocket to shrieks of delight from the crowd. And to top it all off, the ball came to rest with perfect position to pot the black one final time.

From there Martine cleared up: yellow, green, brown, blue pink and black. But when the frame ended, there was thunderous applause. She had made a break of fifty-eight and a frame-winning score of sixty-two.

The crowd loved it when a match came down to the wire, however nerve-racking it might be for the players, and Martine found herself having to sign many autographs before she finally got to talk to Alex.

‘You were great,’ he said.

‘Do me a favor,’ she replied. ‘Don’t ever do that again.’

‘What’d I d—’

‘You know what I’m talking about. I don’t need you to get into fights for me. You don’t have to prove anything.’

‘But he was—’

She held up her hand.

‘Let’s go grab a bite,’ she said, taking his hand.