I shouted at her, "Go down to Coso, tell the cops I've got the sniper!"
Without a word, she took off at a run.
The man under me struggled again. I brought my gun up, jammed it into the soft spot at the base of his skull. "Lie still, damn you!"
He went limp, acquiescent.
My rage was spent now. I felt only a letdown, as if I had run a hard race and then found that the other contestants had never left the starting line. That, and a dull curiosity…
I jammed the gun harder against the man's skull. Took my other hand off his arms and grasped his longish, thinning hair. Yanked his head up so I could see his face.
It was ordinary, as faces go. Fine-boned, with regular features and a bushy, untrimmed mustache. His blue eyes rolled in panic as they met mine; his mouth writhed in an unspoken plea. After staring at him for a moment I let go of his hair, and his forehead smacked onto the pavement. Shudders of pain and terror racked his body.
Then I noticed the people who had gathered around me. They were silent, watching me guardedly; in the eyes of some I saw accusation. It was as if I, not the sniper, were the person to be feared.
I turned my gaze toward the end of the street, where the pulsars of the squad cars stained the night red and blue. Let the people think what they might; I simply didn't care.
All that mattered to me now was whether or not Hank was still alive.
Twenty
Anne-Marie and I sat in the fluorescent glare of the nearly empty waiting room at San Francisco General's trauma center. Her face was pale and tense; her fingers twitched convulsively as they clutched at my hand. Hank was in surgery, had been for quite some time. The bullet had entered the right side of his chest; the doctor had told us there was no way of assessing the internal damage until they did an exploratory.
Greg had driven me here from All Souls, taking my statement on tape in the car. Ostensibly his purpose in coming was to interview the sniper, John Weldon-upon whom I had inflicted only a shoulder wound-but I knew that his major concern was for Hank. Reporters had arrived at the same time we did; Greg had given them a brief statement, but I'd refused to talk with them at all. Now they were gone, and Greg and Hank were both somewhere beyond a pair of swinging doors that gave admittance to the hospital proper. Anne-Marie and I waited alone.
By now I felt mostly numb. My guilt at failing to protect Hank had dulled; nobody-not the folks at All Souls, Greg, Anne-Marie herself-blamed me. Even my dread at what the outcome of his surgery might be was curiously deadened. In spite of the people around us and the occasional arrival of other victims of crime or accident, it was as if we were trapped in an emotional vacuum, deprived of all but the slightest of sensory stimuli.
At around three-fifteen Greg came through the swinging doors. He didn't look much better than Anne-Marie; his impassive cop's facade had cracked, leaving his face ashen, his eyes worried. He sat down next to me and took the hand Anne-Marie wasn't holding, then put his arm around me so he could pat her on the shoulder.
"Any word?"
I shook my head.
"Chest wounds-sometimes they look worse than they are."
"He's been in there a long time."
Anne-Marie's fingers tightened again, and I realized what I'd said wasn't helping her any. "I'm sure he's going to be okay, though," I added. "It's just that there was so much blood, and Hank-well, unconscious isn't a state you associate with him." Oh, God, I was only making it worse! Shut up! I told myself.
Anne-Marie said, "Stop worrying about me, Shar. I know it's bad, but I can handle it. You've got every right to be shaken up. You love Hank, too."
We fell silent then. Behind us a baby began to cry. Its screams rose to a crescendo that made me want to scream, too. Finally the mother took it outside.
I realized Greg hadn't mentioned the sniper. "Were you able to talk to him?"
He didn't have to ask who I meant. "Briefly. He was conscious and lucid; you shot him high up in the shoulder, no serious damage done. From what he admitted to me, it was pretty much as you theorized, and what he wouldn't tell me I'd already gotten from Letterman." Greg had received the information on John Weldon only minutes before he'd caught the call about Hank's shooting.
Odd that I felt so little curiosity about the man I'd pursued and wounded. It took an effort to say, "Tell me about him."
"He's a superpatriot. Was an army CID officer in 'Nam. Apparently he developed a James Bond complex, spied on people he considered subversive or disloyal. From what he admitted to me, he became obsessed-'justifiably concerned' is how he put it-with the 'peacenik' group that hung out at the Rouge et Noir. Followed them, documented what he considered their transgressions."
"But he wasn't doing that officially?"
"No. When he tried to pass the information along to his superior officers, he was told to stick to his job. That only made him more fanatical, and eventually they decided to transfer him stateside. He was discharged in seventy-two, and shortly afterward he suffered the first of several breakdowns. Since then he's spent most of his life in V.A. hospitals, but six months ago he seemed to be cured, and was released on the condition that he continue with outpatient counseling at Letterman. From there it happened just about the way you thought it might have."
For a while I didn't speak, staring down at the checkerboard pattern of the linoleum. Anne-Marie's hand was limp; for all I knew she might not have been listening to Greg's description of the man who had shot her husband.
Finally I said, "We're only now beginning to fully realize what that war did to us. It destroyed a lot more people than those who died in Asia. And it didn't discriminate-dove, hawk, civilian, military, American, Vietnamese. All of us were wounded one way or another-"
Suddenly Anne-Marie's fingers clenched mine. I looked at her and saw she was staring at a surgeon in blood-spattered scrubs who had come through the doors and was conferring with the nurse at the desk. She motioned toward us, and he started over, but Anne-Marie stood and hurried to him. They spoke briefly, then she turned to Greg and me, her face, if anything, more drawn.
"He's out of surgery," she said. "They're going to let me see him."
I asked, "Will he be-"
"They don't know yet. It could be hours. Why don't you and Greg go home, get some rest."
"No, we'll-"
"Please, Shar. After I see him, I think I want to be alone for a while."
I nodded, feeling unreasonably shut out and rejected. Anne-Marie followed the surgeon out of the waiting room.
She does blame me, I thought.
After a bit Greg asked, "You okay?"
I made a motion with my hand that was meant to indicate yes. What it said was "only marginally."
"Come on." He stood, tugging at my other hand. "I'll drive you home."
"No, to All Souls. My car's still there."
He pulled me from the chair, put both hands on my shoulders, and looked into my eyes for a long moment. Whatever he saw there seemed to satisfy him, because he nodded and led me out to his unmarked car.
Whenever I am very upset, I head for water. In fact, the one and only time I ran away from home, I packed a small wicker basket with my stuffed kangaroo, some Uncle Scrooge comic books, and three peanut-butter sandwiches and took the bus-transferring twice-to a beach my family frequented. My father found me there hours later and drove me home.
So at four-thirty that morning-driven by depression and a fear of finding reporters camped on my doorstep-I went to Point Lobos and sat in the foggy pre-dawn on the edge of the ruins of the old Sutro Baths, staring to sea at the hazy outlines of the Seal Rocks.
The area out there between Land's End and Ocean Beach is normally infested with tour buses and RVs-which in my opinion take up far more than their fair share of God's earth-but at that hour on a foggy, drizzly morning it was deserted except for a few early joggers, dog walkers, and me. I could smell the sea odors, hear the sea lions; foghorns up by the Gate answered their cries. Sitting on the wet foundations of what was once an aquatic playground on the edge of the Pacific, unheedful of the chill and dampness of the seat of my pants, I gave some thought to the way that things should be, and the way that they are.