Читать книгу No Way Out - David Kessler - Страница 20

Sitting on a lounging chair on the deck of his Mediterranean-style villa, looking out onto the ocean, Elias Claymore realized that crime and repentance had served him well. His present surroundings were a far cry from the ramshackle hut where he had been born and the rat-infested ‘hood where he had grown up.

The villa stood in landscaped grounds on the sands of Montecito’s most prestigious beach and had breathtaking views of the ocean from nearly every room. There was a huge living room with fireplace, bar and ocean view, a beachside kitchen, two beachside bedrooms each with a fireplace, and a third at the back. Even the office had an ocean view. There was also a separate guest apartment, a large beachfront deck, a sunset view seaside spa, majestic trees and flowering gardens and seventy-five feet of private beachfront.

But how far had he really come?

‘You can take the man out of the ghetto,’ the racists had taunted, ‘but you can’t take the ghetto out of the man.’ And much as it pained his troubled conscience, the racists were right on this one, albeit in the most literal sense. A ghetto is a place of retreat where one is surrounded by one’s own kind yet is constantly under threat from those outside. And right now Elias felt besieged.

His mind drifted back to what his life had once been like. He used to think that the pain was all over. He had never forgotten what he had done. But after all these years he thought it would no longer come back to haunt him. Yet the events of the past week had proved him wrong – and it was like a slow, drawn-out torture.

He tried to soften the pain by reminding himself what had driven him to do the things he had done and become the man he became, thinking back to the time he was nine when two white policemen raped his mother before his eyes. He had tried to stop them, but one of them had grabbed him and twisted his arm behind his back, forcing him to watch while the other had pinned his mother to the ground, ripped her clothes and forced himself into her as she screamed and begged for mercy.

She had brought up Elias alone, without the help of a man, and she had always been a strong figure in his early years, dishing out the punishment while protecting him from the bigger kids in the ‘hood. But she couldn’t protect herself from this. And Elias Claymore learned in those few minutes that his mother, who had been like a pillar of support for the entire world as he knew it, was powerless in the face of this invading force in their own home.

And through his childish eyes, little Elias knew why. She was a woman – and women were weaker than men. He couldn’t expect a woman to protect him. It was for men to be strong and to protect women…or violate them. That was how it was in other households. He had seen the local pimps slapping their girls around and he quickly learned that this was the natural order in the world. It was normal for men to dominate women.

But these men who had invaded his house and raped his mother were not their men. They were an alien presence. These were the pigs who beat up blacks just because they were black. These were the people who called him ‘Nigger’ and made him afraid whenever they walked by, knowing that he daren’t respond to their racist taunts. And now they were here in his home, doing…this thing…to his mother.

He couldn’t blame her for being weak. But it was her fault that they didn’t have a man to protect them. She had driven him away. That’s what one of his brothers had told him. She had called Elias’s father a no-good, drunken deadbeat and thrown him out of the house. But now he realized how much they needed a man in this household…and they didn’t have one because of her.

He realized in that moment that one day he would be a man. He would be big and strong and then there’d be hell to pay! Because then he’d be able to fight back…and he’d hit them where it hurt. He’d hit their weakness – their women.

He was shaken out of his unhappy daydream by a loud, aggressive knocking on the front door.

‘Who is it?’ he called out.

‘This is the police! We have a warrant for your arrest.’