The Comedy is Finished (23 page)

“Good work.”

“But that isn’t the kicker,” Kerman said, as the door opened and Maurice St. Clair entered, followed by a tall slender neatly dressed young man carrying what looked to be a shipping case for reels of film.

Mike jumped to his feet. “Murray!” Maurice St. Clair was an old friend and a good one; in Mike’s campaign to get back to Washington, St. Clair was definitely on his side.

St. Clair came forward to give Mike a hard massive handshake, saying, “Good to see you, Mike.
Good
to see you.”

“You’re looking trim, Murray.” Which wasn’t at all true; St. Clair was a big heavy man who took too much pleasure from his food and drink. Still, Mike knew that St. Clair worried about his appearance and health, and it was only the act of a friend to reassure him.

“I felt for you this morning, Mike.” St. Clair continued to grip Mike’s hand. “I’m glad you got this second chance.”

Mike’s grin was rueful. “Apparently they don’t think I’m much of a threat.”

“They’ll learn better,” St. Clair said, and with one last squeeze finally released Mike’s hand.

At the desk, Kerman suddenly said, “Douglas? Tom Douglas? Dave Kerman here, from the L.A. station, working on the Koo Davis case.”

Mike said to St. Clair, “Hold it, Murray,” then turned to Kerman. “Finish your story.”

“Hold on, Tom, will you? Just ten seconds.” And Kerman, grinning with accomplishment, put his hand over the mouthpiece and said to Mike, “The kicker is, this Griffith girl is one of ours!”

“She’s what?”

“A double agent. From sixty-eight to seventy-three she was on
our
payroll, reported every place she went, everybody she met,
everything she did.” Gesturing to the phone, he said, “This fellow, Douglas, he was the one she reported to, in Chicago. He’s in the St. Louis station now.”

“Jesus Christ,” Mike said. “Can he still get in touch with her?”

“Let’s find out.” Kerman spoke into the phone again. “Tom? I want to talk with you about a one-time informer of yours named Joyce Griffith. Yes, that’s the one.”

St. Clair, speaking quietly, said, “What’s going on?”

While Kerman carried on his telephone conversation, Mike briefly explained the situation, including the belated discovery of the gang’s original hideout, and finishing, “Maybe this Griffith thing can help.”

“Let’s hope so.” St. Clair looked troubled. “I’m afraid we’re all going to
need
some help.”

“You mean—the answer’s no?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” St. Clair told him. “But not very good.” Gesturing at his assistant’s film case, he said, “Let’s just say we have here an unpleasant surprise for our friends on the other side.”

In this stupid room full of mirrors, Koo is trying to save his life. “Larry,” he says, holding tight to the young man’s wrist, “Larry, help me.”

“I want to,” Larry says. “But I can’t help if I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“Just get me out of here.”

“No, Koo.” And Larry sighs, as though
he’s
the one who can’t get the message across. “We’re talking at cross-purposes,” he says. “I’m not offering to help you get away, I want to help you comprehend the
reality
of the world.”

“The reality is,” Koo says, “if I stay here I’ll die.”

“I know you believe that, Koo,” Larry says, “but I promise it won’t happen. Now, I accept the fact that this television program is undoubtedly just a stall, just an attempt to string out the negotiations, but Koo, don’t you see? We already
know
that. We’re prepared for it, we’re prepared to wait them out. No matter what they say on that program, nothing bad will happen to you. I promise.”

“Listen, Larry,” Koo says, “that isn’t the point. Believe me, there are other things here, there’s—” He shakes his head, releasing Larry’s wrist to wave his arms vaguely as he says, “It isn’t as simple as that.”

“If you could explain it, Koo. What was it you thought Mark could tell you that I can’t? What’s the
subject
, Koo?”

“Ahhhh, Jesus.” That’s the crux of it; does he dare tell Larry about Mark’s paternity? Sinking back on the purple bedspread,
releasing pent-up breath, he says, “Comics are supposed to want to do Hamlet, not King Lear.”

“I don’t understand.”

Koo makes a negative hand-wave. “Lemme think a minute.”

“Sure, Koo. Take all the time you want.”

All the time he wants. But since the move—after his failed escape attempt he’d traveled the rest of the way re-blindfolded, on the floor in back, among their legs—Koo has felt time running out, the pressures closing in. He can’t forget that Mark was just about to kill him with his bare hands when Peter walked in to announce the move.

And this new room doesn’t help. It’s a bedroom, but it isn’t precisely restful. Small, windowless, its walls and low ceiling are covered in mirrors with a faint bluish tinge. A white deep-shag carpet covers the floor, on which most of the available space is filled by a large round purple bed. Two white fur armchairs and a pair of mirrored bedside tables complete the furnishings. Illumination is provided by pinlights in the ceiling corners, plus a pair of imitation Old West wall sconces above the bedside tables. Whenever Koo looks away from Larry, he sees instead a tableau of the two of them endlessly repeated in the mirrors, the younger man seated on the edge of the bed, looking uneasy but sincere, and the older man sprawled back on the heart-shaped purple pillows, shaking his head in weakness and despair.

The problem is, if he tells Larry the truth, that Mark wants to kill him because Mark is his son, will Larry make the right response? There are so many ways Larry can do the wrong thing with that information. For instance, he could disbelieve Koo, and out of his disbelief he could go tell Mark what Koo had said, and
immediately
Mark would come raging in here to finish the job; no question. Or, Larry being Larry, he could believe Koo and
still
go tell Mark; it
would fit right in with that unquenchable belief of his in the power of discussion to resolve all problems. The only reason Koo would tell Larry the truth is if it would encourage Larry to help him get away from here, and he’s just too afraid that isn’t what would happen.

Rousing himself, Koo says, “What time is it?”

“Twenty past.”

Ten minutes before showtime. “You’re sure there’s a TV in here?”

“That’s what I was told. Let’s see.”

Getting to his feet, Larry begins to open mirrored doors. Cupboards, closets, a small lavatory, a separate shower, all are behind the mirrors. “This is some place, isn’t it?” Larry says.

“A three-year-old’s idea of a whorehouse.”

“Here it is.” Larry has found the TV, behind a mirror facing the foot of the bed; he turns it on to Channel 11 but leaves the sound down. Jackie Gleason and Art Carney, in an old black-and-white
Honeymooners,
mouth disconsolately at one another and take long, slow, stagy steps.

Returning to the bed, Larry says, “With any luck, you won’t be here long.”

“With the wrong kind of luck I won’t be
anywhere
long.”

“Don’t talk that way, Koo. It won’t happen.”

“You don’t know what can happen, my friend.”

“Then tell me,” Larry says. “Koo, I swear to God I’m your friend.
Tell
me.”

Koo frowns at him, thinking it over. What’s the alternative? And what, after all, does he have to lose? He says, “Will you stay in this room?”

“Stay here? Do you want me to?”

“Yes. Until I’m set free.”

“I will.” Larry looks very solemn, as though he’s just been ordained.

“We’ll watch this special,” Koo tells him. “We’ll see what they have to say, and after that we’ll talk.”

The TV set was switched on half an hour early, by Joyce, but no one watched it, though it was one of those monsters with the huge six-foot screen, like a movie screen, dominating the living room. But they were all too involved with their own problems to watch non-essential television. Mark could be seen through the glass doors, prowling back and forth out there on the beach, brooding at the sand and ignoring the Pacific’s huge sunset. Liz did her brooding curled up in an Eames chair near the fireplace, her back to both the view and the TV. Larry had locked himself into the bedroom with Koo, Joyce was in the kitchen fretfully and compulsively preparing food no one wanted—cups of coffee, pots of soup, plates of sandwiches cut into triangles with the crusts meticulously removed—and Peter and Ginger were bickering together. “This is very bad of you,” Ginger kept saying. “Very bad. Very bad.” His monkey cheerfulness was gone, as though it had never been, replaced by a fidgety snapping, like a neurotic lapdog. Even his face was now the pinched countenance of a Lhasa Apso or Yorkie. “It’s just too bad of you, Peter.”

“There wasn’t any choice,” Peter said, for the hundredth time. He knew he had to placate Ginger somehow, but it was all so difficult. His cheeks burned and stabbed, he kept swallowing blood, and for the first time in years he was
blinking
. The very symptom he had so long ago conquered by gnawing his cheeks had now returned, completely out of his control. Following Ginger from room to room, prowling with him, trying to smooth things over, he
ground his cheeks while his eyelids blink-blink-blinked, and through it all he just kept talking: “I knew they’d be back, and I was right. We got Davis out of there just in time.”

“To bring him
here
. Oh, Peter, this is so bad of you. After all you said, about keeping me out.”

“What else could I do? We can’t drive the goddamn man around in the car forever. Did you want me to kill him?”

Ginger, walking down the hallway toward the kitchen with Peter in his wake, abruptly stopped and turned back, so that Peter nearly bumped into him. “Don’t talk to me about killing,” Ginger said. “Don’t talk to
me
about killing.”

“That’s what Mark wanted to do,” Peter said, bitterness in his voice. Things weren’t working out. If he’d only walked in on Mark and Davis a few minutes later the problem would have been solved, taken out of Peter’s hands. That Mark had been about to murder Davis Peter had no doubt, though he hadn’t talked about it with either of them, nor did he intend to. He could not himself have ordered Davis killed simply for the convenience of it, but he would have been very pleased—among other reactions—if the decision had been made for him. As to why Mark was so determined to murder Davis, or why Davis on his side was so determined to have conversations with the man thirsting for his death, Peter had no idea what either of them was about, and in truth he felt scant curiosity. His main interest was in himself, and his attention to the outside world waxed or waned as the world impinged on his own desires or needs.

Ginger, with his discontented lapdog face, turned away and continued on to the kitchen, Peter trailing. In the kitchen, Joyce turned from stirring a pot of soup to say, with a chipper kind of lunatic normalcy, “You ought to eat. Both of you.”

“Save
some
thing for tomorrow,” Ginger told her irritably, then
turned to Peter again, saying, “Or will you be
out
of here by tomorrow?”

“To go where? Ginger, where else is there?”

“Oh, it’ll all be over by tomorrow,” Joyce said brightly. “You wait and see.”

“We’ll wait,” Ginger said meaningfully, with a glance up at the kitchen clock: seven oh five. “And after we hear what the FBI has to say, then we
will
see. In the meantime, young woman, kindly stop treating
my
kitchen as your personal chuck wagon. No one wants all those ditzy little sandwiches. What’s in that pot?”

“Scotch broth.”

“No no, the one behind it, with the lid.”

“Pea soup,” Joyce said, with a first hint of defensiveness. She and the others—except Peter, of course—were all meeting Ginger for the first time. She added, “Not everybody likes Scotch broth.”

“Not everybody likes their larder wasted by a hysterical female,” Ginger told her. “Are you menstruating?”

“What? No, I—No.”

“Then you have no excuse.” Turning to Peter, Ginger said, “Have you control over no one? Nothing?” Then he shrugged with nervous anger and left the room.

Peter tarried long enough to grate at Joyce, in a harsh whisper, “No more food! Stop it now!” Then, ignoring her wide-eyed uncomprehending gaze, he hurried after Ginger, back toward the living room.

Mark had disintegrated, he was nothing and nobody. All his thoughts splintered into shards and disconnected fragments, like those waves out there breaking on the black rocks. He was the junked remains of himself, a disposable artifact used up and thrown away, a shell, drained and purposeless. Years and years ago the key had been
inserted, twisted and twisted, winding him tight and ever tighter, setting him to march forward through life, a robot patricide with but one function, one millisecond of true blazing purpose; when he would hold his father’s life between his hands, and end it.

The moment had come, he had activated himself, he had shone like the sun in his flash of life, and now he was burned out, his potential all in the past; he had nothing, he was nothing. He was as incapable of murdering the same victim a second time as if he had not been interrupted. He
was
a patricide, the decision had been all, the performance merely its outward effect. That Mark continued to breathe, to move through life, to experience time, was a frustrating anomaly. Certainly he could no longer react, not to events nor to other human beings. The makework of existence was finished; nothing touched him now.

“Maa-ark! Maa-ark!”

On the cantilevered deck of the house, silhouetted by the glowing stonewalled living room behind her, Joyce was waving, bobbing up on tiptoe. Mark saw her without curiosity, and continued his plodding walk through the sand.

“Mark! It’s about to begin! The show’s coming on!”

His left had made a full-armed broad down-sweeping gesture of rejection:
Go away
.
Leave me alone
. He did not look up again.

Someone swiveled the Eames chair to face the huge television screen. Liz frowned, grabbing the rudimentary chair-arms as it swung, but said nothing. From above and behind her, Peter’s voice said, “Watch the program, Liz. Take an interest.”