No Beast So Fierce (37 page)

I needed an identity to borrow—a Canadian citizen unlikely to want a passport. From the city's records I copied several dozen names with birthdates near my own and checked these names in the telephone directory, for most persons spend their lives near where they were born, even in the age of mobility. I began making telephone calls, passing myself off as part of a survey team. Almost everyone answered readily about Vietnam, trade relations with Communist China, the United Nations—and background information.

To get a passport there was no need even to show a birth certificate. All I needed was someone to swear that they knew me. By the end of the first week in December, I cleaned up a wino, gave him strength with bourbon and benzedrine (slipped surreptitiously into his coffee), and he went with me to a notary. He swore that I was Ronald Lynn St Clair, born 12th April, 1934, in the city of Montreal. I swore to the same statement. It was all I needed for the passport office. When I finished with the forms and handed over the passport photos, the girl assured me with a smile that it would be in the mail by Christmas.

While concentrating on the passport, as while scheming on a robbery, other concerns were shouldered aside. Sometimes they swarmed up into awareness, a flash of horror—though never remorse—but subsided when I worked on here and now.

When the waiting began, especially in night's solitude, a galaxy of ugly memories spun through my mind—Jerry on the ground, the pistol jumping in my hand as the policeman fell, Carol's bitter warnings, Mary with the boys, Willy with his sons. He hadn't been much, but they'd adored him. I could imagine Aaron in the jail cell, and going to court draped in chains, a choke collar around his neck. I saw the twining thread of my responsibility in all of these things—and still I could feel no remorse.

The Los Angeles newspapers no longer mentioned the murders and hunt. Aaron's court appearances were recounted in short paragraphs on inside pages. It would still be months until the actual trial began.

Every morning I went downtown on a bus, maintaining the pretense of a job. I went to movies and sometimes wandered the docks in the gray days, watching the motionless ships at anchor, for during the winter the harbor was closed. Now and then I sat in the library, losing myself in a book.

The color of Christmas season blossomed. Suddenly the city was decked in cotton, tinsel, colored lights on silver trees in department store windows, and in the front windows of houses. Crowds grew, the mood of Christmas growing in them. When they bumped into each other, they smiled and excused themselves instead of staring angrily.

On Christmas Eve, the wife knocked on my door and invited me to Christmas dinner with them; their son and his wife and their grandchild would be there. She'd noticed, please excuse her, that I had no visitors or mail. I declined, told a lie that I was going to a friend's for Christmas dinner. I didn't want to be close to anyone, despite my loneliness—and I didn't want to see the death in her husband's eyes, for it would remind me of my predicament.

So on Christmas morning, to maintain the lie, I went downtown. On Christmas Eve the streets had been full of people. Now they were empty. Humanity had gathered into families. From a Salvation Army rescue mission came the voices of derelicts raised in song. They, too, had gathered together. I wanted to go in, merely to be among people, but my clothes were too nice, marking me as an outsider.

Knowing it was taking a foolish risk, I entered a hotel lobby, found a telephone booth, and called Allison. Her mother called her to the phone, not asking who was on the line. I could hear Allison approaching. “Who is it, mother?”

“I have no idea.”

The receiver was picked up. “Hello.” The familiar voice wrenched at me.

“Hi, baby!”

“Max!” A gasp; a pause. “Where are you?”

“Long ago and far away. Anybody been there?” I asked the question, though I knew from her mother's casual manner that nobody had.

“Not yet. I expect them every day. Every time a car pulls down the street. You didn't have to sneak away from me.”

“I thought I did … then, anyway. How've you been?”

“Fine … I feel … well, I always despised this place. Now I'm grateful for the peace. I don't miss the bright lights at all. And you gave me enough excitement for a lifetime.”

“I miss you.”

Another pause. “Do you, really? It's hard to think you'd really miss anyone.”

“I'm leaving the country in a few days. If I find a safe place and send for you, will you come?”

“I … I don't think so. Not now. What I was living wasn't really me.”

“Okay … but don't decide now … think about it.” I despised the plaintive twang that crept into my voice and stopped speaking.

“Max, I feel like I woke up from a dream. I'm not sure if it was wonderful or a nightmare. I have to sort out my life. I wanted to go anywhere with you, ‘one brief hour of madness and joy.' I read that line by Whitman the other day. He says that should be enough. It was all I wanted. Now …” She stopped for a moment, changed her thoughts. “I don't judge you, or condemn you—but I don't understand you, either.” Again she was silent, her thoughts going beyond her articulateness. Across the hundreds of miles of telephone line we both knew it was over between us. I'd already known it, but being alone in a strange city on Christmas day had made me reach out.

“How's your boy?” I asked.

“Wonderful. I feel guilty for having left him alone.”

“Do you need money?”

“No, I haven't even sold any of the diamonds. They're buried under the house. I'm working, too, in the only lawyer's office in town.”

“Okay. Look, I might call you in six months or a year. If …”

“Oh, Max! We could've been happy. I could've made you happy. If only …”

“If nothing … It comes down to if I was someone else.”

She had no answer.

“Don't forget me,” I said.

“Don't be ridiculous,” she laughed—but it was nearly tears.

“Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.”

“Goodbye, Baby.”

“Goodbye, Max.”

The passport arrived on the morning of New Year's Eve. Until that moment I really expected the police. My fingers trembled as I looked at it and carefully put it back in the envelope. My ticket to freedom.

Using the landlord's automobile, I drove off the island and found a lonely stretch of woods beyond the suburbs. The M16 was packed in grease, wrapped in many layers of rubber and plastic, and buried inside a steel box. The chances that I'd return for it were almost nil, but I neither wanted to destroy it nor discard it. I'd already sold a few diamonds, enough so I could send a thousand dollars to Aaron's mother and the same to Carol. Later I would send them several thousand apiece, but I'd taken a risk selling any of the diamonds in North America.

The travel agency rushed through my reservation to a flight to Lisbon, via London. On New Year's day I walked aboard a silver airliner, greeted by the warm smile of a young stewardess. It was really quite simple.

Epilogue

Four years have passed since the buzzards eating Willy's body raised outcry to frenzy. The newspapers long ago stopped the story, though it was resurrected for a few days when an outgoing governor of California commuted Aaron's death sentence to life without possibility of parole.

I remain free. One may intellectually accept the idea that a murderer might escape justice, but viscerally (down there where faith resides) it is hard. Even the murderer finds it difficult, though history shows a plethora of unpunished murderers.

Until the airliner was high over the Atlantic Ocean I believed that man's vengeance would get me, that I'd die in police gunfire, by cyanide gas or in prison. It was a deeper belief than realistic appraisal of the odds against me, awesome as they were. It was as if at the inner core I'd believed that something higher than man assured my capture. My highest hope was to finish the game without flinching at the ultimate moment.

But four years have assured me that there is no reason above man that will help him. And there is no vengeance except man's.

For a year I wandered Western Europe and the Middle East, seeing the falling-down edifices of history. Now I have a house I've leased on a ledge beside an ocean cove. By American standards the house is small and uncomfortable, though exquisite in setting. Four rooms and no toilet, so it's chamber pot or out-house, depending on the hour, the temperature, and the need. It's no inconvenience; too many prison cells have only a hole in the floor. I do have electricity and hot water, at least most of the time—provided by a generator left by the German Army two and a half decades ago. I have transoceanic radio, but there's no need for a television set, the nearest station is two hundred miles away. The floor is clay, hard as concrete. Thick, whitewashed walls sparkle in the sunlight, hold out summer heat and winter cold, though the seasons here are gentle. Twelve steps hewn into the ledge go down to the cove's protected beach of egg-sized rocks worn smooth by the water.

Overlooking the cove and the sea beyond are louvered windows. The view is panoramic. I frequently watch the sea's moods. Its depths are usually transparent as a fishbowl, and it lies motionless beyond any simile for stillness, as if the sea itself is sleeping in the sun. Sometimes a warm breeze stirs it awake and billowing waves roll over one another in a race to shore, white foam bursting like laughter as they pause on the beach before turning back. Occasionally the sea is angered by winter's nipping wind and it gnashes white teeth, writhes, becomes black in the face, and furiously backhands the shore.

When the infrequent storms are over, I walk the shoreline, for curious things are cast up; a strikingly formed piece of driftwood for the mantel, amethyst-colored shells torn from their beds, seaweed molded into arabesques of blackish-green, an injured seagull crying raucously to others overhead, who are frightened by the cry and circle endlessly without landing.

The surrounding country, except for a line that follows the jagged coast, is sparsely populated. Fresh water is short, the land mountainous and barren except for a scrub forest of pine. The sea gives life to the country.

My life is not that of a recluse. Boats are often in the cove, and children come to skip stones along the smooth water. Beyond the ridge a paved highway follows the coastline to towns and villages every few miles. In the nearest town, which I visit several times a week, several persons speak some English, and I've learned enough of the local language to be understood, albeit with smiles.

I'm as safe as I'll ever be anywhere in the world. When I arrived here with money and false credentials, it was the end of the rainbow, the faraway place in the sun that is one of the dreams of everyone. It was all I wanted for the rest of my life—simplicity, a seashore, peace.

Peace became boring and lonely. So I began this memoir, which became grinding labor, especially when it fell short of absolute truth. The lack is not through deceit, but because truth is difficult. Fools think truth is a simple thing, but I've found that it is hard. The facts I've written are real, but facts and truth are cousins, not brothers. I've imposed a rationality rather than exposed truth. Being alone, reading voraciously, writing this memoir, I've done a lot of thinking, and I believe the constant, underlying thought of all men who think must be of their own death, no matter what the surface thought might be. When they think of living, they are also thinking of death, for the two are mingled.

And thinking is a curse.

I'm leaving this idyllic place. After selling the diamonds and sending ten thousand dollars to both Aaron's mother and Carol, I had a hundred and seventy thousand left—and a tenth of that remains. I'm also tired of peace, but the shortage of funds gives me an excuse. My stomach is nervous with anticipation of playing the game again. I'll fly to Mexico City, cross the border at El Paso. They might get me this time.

Fuck it!

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

copyright © 1973 by Edward Bunker

cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

This edition published in 2011 by
MysteriousPress.com
/Open Road Integrated Media

180 Varick Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com