No Way Back (45 page)

VP Sales Lantek - Palo Alto 1999 - Met Libby Granville at The Goose (his waitress).

Jim Thane asks Libby to date him four times:

First time (1) ‘’she said: ‘Go to hell’ - her voice plain. Pointed finger to show him direction to find hell.

Second time (2) she laughed - idea was hilarious - ‘Very funny, Jimmy! Me and you on a date!’

Third time (3) handing him scotch over the bar. He speaks softly. Wisps of hair in Libby’s face. Indecision.

Fourth time (4) runs into her at grocery store at night - express checkout lane - spying each other’s dinners -

SHE SAYS YES.

Party at Bob Parker’s loft, Thane gets drunk, makes pass at Parker’s wife when she serves canapés; Libby escorts him home.

Gordon Kramer, St. Regis. Garage. Handcuffs. Parking Area 4C. Sobers Thane up. Avoids Parking Area 4C whenever he visits St. Regis.

The list goes on and on, a catalogue of facts and trivia and minutiae. For a moment I’m amazed at this level of detail – they know so much about me! – so much
about my life! How could they have gleaned it all? It’s practically impossible...

Then I feel horror, as understanding comes.

The details in front of me have not been culled
from
my life. They
are
my life.

I can recall nothing about myself
except
for the details on these pages. Yes, I
was
the VP of Sales for Lantek. That much is true. But
then
what? I try to think back
to those days... but can recall nothing about that company, other than its name, and other than my position there – Sales VP.

What did my office at Lantek look like? Who was my boss? I can’t remember his name, or what he looked like.

I try to think back to my courtship of Libby, but I can recall nothing specific about it... nothing except for that single entertaining fact – so often repeated – that I asked Libby
out four times, and that she refused me the first three times; and that it was only on the fourth attempt, when we met in the supermarket, that she agreed to have dinner with me.

‘I can’t make you believe things that you don’t want to believe,’ Liago is telling me, somewhere in the distance. ‘No one can do that. That’s not how hypnosis
works.’

‘Jim,’ Amanda says. She sounds anxious. ‘We have to leave here.’

I ignore her. To Liago, I say: ‘Tell me how hypnosis works, doctor. I’m fascinated.’

‘You have to
want
to believe things.’

‘This is what I
want
to believe?
This
?’ I shake the folder in his face.

‘That
this
is me? This pack of... lies? That I’m married to a whore? Who’s not even my wife? Did we ever get married? I mean... for real?’

‘No,’ Liago says, quietly. He pauses, considers his next words carefully. ‘The real Jim Thane married a woman named Libby. That part is true. Those
are
his stories...
’

‘The
real
Jim Thane?
I’m
the real Jim Thane!’

‘No,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘No.’ I shout: ‘Who the
fuck
am I?’

And I pull the trigger.

The gun goes off, and I hear a crack, and I am extremely interested to see where the bullet strikes.

About a foot to the left of Liago’s heart, it turns out, lodging itself into the wall next to him, although this fact is purely the result of happenstance, not aim. It could just as easily
have been twelve inches to the right.

‘Please,’ Liago says, cowering, ‘please. Don’t hurt me. I only did what I was told. I didn’t have a choice. He was going to ruin me. He was going to show those
pictures.’

‘What pictures?’

He shakes his head.

‘What pictures?’ I ask again, and I lift the gun to his forehead.

The words tumble from him in an incoherent rush. ‘I had patients... addicts... young girls... I didn’t mean to do it... just trying to help... he took pictures... I made bad
choices... bad choices... I wish I could take them back.’

‘Bad choices?’ I repeat.

‘He tempts you,’ Liago whispers. ‘You see? That’s what he does. He knows what you want, and he gives it to you. Exactly what you want. And when you accept his gifts, he
owns your soul.’

‘You fucked your teenage patients, doctor. Let’s not get metaphysical about it.’

Behind me, Amanda says, ‘Jim, we have to leave
now
.’

I lower the barrel of my gun and place it on Liago’s chest, pointing the muzzle at his heart. ‘Get it out,’ I say.

‘Get
what
out?’

‘All of it. Everything you put into my head. Take it all out. That party in the loft? That time Gordon chained me up in the parking garage? None of it was true, was it?’

‘It
was
true. But it happened to... ’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘I know. The real Jim Thane. Just get it out. Take it out of my brain. Right now.’

Liago shakes his head. He looks terrified. He whispers, ‘I
can’t
.’

‘Why not?’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘What don’t I understand?’

I push myself up from the chair. Pain fills my body. My nerves are on fire. For a moment, all the colour in the world fades – turns transparent – and I feel myself fainting –
falling. I grip the top of the chair. ‘Tell me,’ I say through gritted teeth, ‘what I don’t understand.’

‘He will kill me if I tell you.’

‘
Who
will kill you?’

‘You know who.’

‘
I
will kill you,’ I say. ‘I will kill you. If you don’t tell me what’s going on, I will kill you.’

He looks into my face. ‘You want the truth?’

‘Yes.’

‘The truth is... ’

His head explodes like a Chinese paper lantern with a cherry bomb inside. One moment it’s there; the next moment it’s gone.

I’m sprayed by a pink mist of brain and skull and gristle. My ears ring. I look down at my own gun, to see if I fired accidentally.

But it wasn’t my gun.

I turn. Amanda is behind me, holding the big pistol that I last saw brandished by Agent Mitchell.

‘Why did you do that?’ I ask her, even though I know the answer.

‘He was suffering,’ she says. ‘He was in terrible pain. I put him out of his misery.’

She steps towards me. A shaft of sunlight lands on her face, and I study her. The sun is brutal, and now I can see the lines around her eyes, the dark circles beneath them, expertly covered with
concealer. Her eyes are beautiful and blank and deep, hiding ancient mysteries.

‘That’s why you were always so interested in me,’ I say. ‘Why you were always keeping tabs on me.’

‘Jim... ’ she begins.

‘That’s why no one killed you in the meth lab. Because it was you. There was no man with long hair, dressed in black. There was just you. You did the killing.’ I realize
something. I whisper, in horror, ‘My God. You took out his eyes.’

She doesn’t react. She just looks at me blankly. She lowers her gun.

‘Should I even call you Amanda? Or Katerina?’ I ask. ‘Or should I call you Ghol Gedrosian?’

She is silent.

‘Because that’s your name, isn’t it? Ghol Gedrosian?’ I point to Agent Mitchell, crumpled on the floor. ‘That’s what he was trying to tell me.’

She steps forward. She kneels next to me. She looks into my eyes. She’s close, so close that I can smell her. Beneath the sweat and metallic tang of the crank we smoked hours ago, I detect
that sweet floral scent, the scent from that night in the church basement, and from her bedroom. The scent of flowers laid on a grave, the scent of a funeral home. She says: ‘I promise that I
will explain everything. But we have to leave here now. There’s a clean-up crew coming. They’re probably already here.’

‘A “clean-up crew”?’

She glances out of the window. I follow her gaze. Parked in Liago’s driveway is a black Lincoln Town Car. Four men get out, slamming their doors. Their faces are unfamiliar, but their
posture and demeanour is not. They are big and muscular and move with the brutal certainty of men following orders from someone more frightening than they. Two of them carry red gasoline cans. They
come towards the house.

‘They’re here,’ she says. ‘They won’t wait. They have orders.’

‘Orders from who?’

‘You know who.’

‘Tell me the truth. Is your name... ’

She stops my question, while it’s still in the back of my throat, by kissing me. I let her. Her lips are soft, her mouth warm, her tongue gentle.

When she breaks off the kiss she says, ‘We have for ever, you know. To get this right.’

The pain in my leg is just a dull presence now, like an old friend that won’t leave after a long dinner. ‘To get what right?’

‘I’ll explain everything,’ she says. ‘I promise. But you have to go.’

‘Go where?’

She takes an envelope from her pocket and hands it to me. On the outside is written, ‘For Jim Thane.’

I look at it without taking it. ‘What is it?’

‘Your last assignment.’

‘I don’t want an assignment,’ I say, and push back her hand.

She ignores me. ‘There’s an address inside. Go there, and they’ll fix your leg. There’s also a plane ticket. Use it. I’ll meet you when you get there. I promise
you.’

‘No.’

‘You can’t stay here. You know that, don’t you?’

I look around the room. There are six dead bodies. Blood is puddled on the floor, splattered against the leather chairs, across the wood walls.

Outside the window, the big men are splashing gasoline along the base of the house. Just beyond the office door, I hear heavy footsteps in the foyer, stomping on the wooden floor. I smell the
gasoline.

She’s right, of course. I can’t stay here. Not because of the dead bodies, or because of the gasoline being splashed through the house – but because Jimmy Thane is finished.
His life is over.

I think about the money missing from Tao Software. The dead Dom Vanderbeek. The house on Sanibel. The hooker named Libby Thane lying on a gurney with her throat cut. Everything points to a man
named Jimmy Thane. Everything points to me.

‘I know,’ I say.

‘You can’t be Jimmy Thane. Not any more. That’s over. But we’ll try again.’

‘Try
what
again?’

She prises my fingers from the gun, and takes it from me. She lifts my empty palm to her face. She rubs my fingertips on her skin and on her lips. She kisses them. I feel her wet tears on my
hand.

I say, with all the anger drained from my voice, all the emotion gone:

‘I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want from me.’

‘You will,’ she says. She wraps my fingers around the envelope and squeezes my hand. ‘It’s time to go now.’

I stare at her. ‘Ghol Gedrosian,’ I say, trying out the name, trying to match it to the face that I see in front of me. The face that looks so much older than I remember Amanda ever
being. So much wiser. So much stronger.

Yet still beautiful. I’ve loved her for ever, I realize now. The feeling comes back to me like a breeze on my face. Not memories, exactly. Just a soft feeling. A sense of comfort. The
simplest, deepest kind of love.

‘It’s time to go,’ she says again. ‘You have a very long trip ahead of you. A very long trip.’

It’s a small shack, on a remote island near Orcas.

There’s no road to it, no way to reach it from Orcas itself – no way to reach it from the place where the tourists stay – from the ferry, or the bed-and-breakfasts, or the
holistic spas, or the art galleries. I have to hire a boat to take me there. It’s a tiny skiff with a putt-putt on the back, and the captain is an old man with sunburnt skin and a melanoma
shaped like the State of California on his nose.

On the ride over, as we trace the edge of Orcas Island, he explains to me that he also runs fishing tours, and that if I’m interested, I should return to the dock where I found him.
He’s there every day. I tell him I might just do that. But not today. It’s been a long trip, across the country, and I haven’t slept in a long time.

He nods. He rambles on about fishing, and the best hour of the day to find halibut and snapper, and the best hour to find him on the dock, and how if I time it right, I might even have the boat
to myself without paying for a private tour.

We round a cove, and up ahead we see gigantic houses built against the water, with wide expanses of green lawn running down to the ocean and touching it. The captain grows quiet, and a cloud
darkens his face. He explains that a lot of software executives live on this side of the island. He takes them back and forth to town. Most don’t even know how to use a boat. Isn’t that
crazy – he asks – to own a house on an island, but not know how to use a boat?

It
is
crazy, I agree.

‘You in the software business?’ he asks.

‘I was once.’

He grunts in a way that suggests this doesn’t please him. But then we pull around the inlet, the motor putting, and we see the metal sign on a pebble-strewn beach, announcing the address
that I read to him when I got on the boat. On a bluff above the rocks, he sees the shack, and when he realizes how small and run-down it is, how dilapidated and close to collapse, he becomes
amiable again. I’m no different than he is. Not like those fancy software people.

‘Never been this far back,’ he admits. ‘Didn’t even know this house existed.’

‘Hardly come here myself,’ I tell him.

I pay him sixty bucks, twenty more than we agreed, and tell him to keep the change. ‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘You need any help getting up there?’

He glances at my crutches, and then at the rocky bank that I’ll have to climb to reach the shack.

‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Pumped up on crystal meth; can’t feel a thing.’

‘Ha!’ he laughs.

Minutes later, his boat pulls away, and I’m left standing on a rocky shore, in the middle of the Puget Sound. The air is cold, and smells like salt, and when drops condense on my cheek,
they sting like tears.