The Comedy is Finished (34 page)

“Cheek to cheek,” Mark insists, leaning ever closer to the mirror. “Come
on
.”

Thirty years ago, when Honeydew made her phone call, the thought did cross Koo’s mind that the child might just as readily
not be his, that Koo might simply be the handiest or the richest or the most vulnerable of the potential fathers, and now he remembers that thought and is made afraid by it. At the time, it was easier to pay the five hundred dollars, but now the question is more vital. When he puts his cheek next to Mark’s and studies their joined faces in the mirror, will it be an echo of himself that he sees, or an echo of some long-ago actor, producer, agent, or even Army officer, unidentifiable but ubiquitously there? Or Mel Wolfe, Koo’s most frequent gag writer in the old days, who was no mean hand with the blondes himself; if it’s Mel’s face he sees next to his own in that goddamn mirror, Koo won’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Hesitantly, like someone entering a too-hot tub, Koo stands with his shoulder touching Mark’s shoulder, his neck stretching as his face nears Mark’s face. But then Mark reaches a hand up behind Koo, grabs him by the neck and yanks him closer, strong fingers firm, pressing the side of his face to Mark’s cold cheek, and for a long moment of silence they study themselves, Mark with a kind of scientific intensity, Koo in hope and fear...and longing. To see himself renewed, even in the features of this lost crazy boy, would be wonderful.

Doubtfully, Mark says, “The eyebrows?”

“No,” Koo says. “Yours are more curved, like your mother’s.”

“Jawline.”

Koo squints. “Do you really think so?”

Mark slowly shakes his head, the smooth-shaven cheek sliding with a strange cold intimacy on Koo’s face. “No,” Mark says. “Nothing.”

Koo might disengage now, safely move away from Mark’s cheek and from the hand gripping the back of his neck, but he’s
reluctant to give up the search. Mel Wolfe is
not
in that face, nor is there anyone else Koo recognizes, except for the faint traces of Honeydew herself. “Goddamn it,” he says, peering at their two faces, “I must have the weakest genes in the history of the human race.”

“Why?”

“Neither of my other boys looks like me either.”

Mark chuckles, but it’s a warning sound, like a growl.

“Lucky man,” he says. “You said that just right.”

“Said what?”

“Your
other
boys.” Mark’s gripping hand clenches briefly, painfully, on Koo’s neck, and Mark says, “If you’d said it any other way, I’d have broken your neck right now.”

“You’re a tough audience,” Koo tells him, very shaky again, and this time he does disengage, easing slowly away. Mark’s hand drops, letting him go, and Koo moves awkwardly to the bed, feeling much weaker. Seating himself, he rests his forearms in his lap while watching Mark continue to study his own reflection.

This could be dangerous. Koo is convinced there’s still murder inside Mark, just waiting to be triggered. Is that what this is all about? This whole delay here, this strange new sequence in which Mark almost seems to have changed sides, to have joined the prisoner in an alliance against his jailers, could simply be the waiting period until Mark can find again the proper circumstances for murder. The boy has to get into the right frame of mind before he can kill his father; the search of their faces could simply have been the way to psych himself up.

Still in the mirror, Mark says, “Do I look like anybody
else
you used to know?”

“Wait a minute,” Koo says, in a fresh panic.
He
can harbor such
doubts about paternity, but does he dare permit Mark this further grievance? On the other hand, how can he quickly, immediately,
now
, drive the idea out of the boy’s head?

By direct attack; dangerous, but the only choice. “Believe me, Mark,” Koo says, “I only pay for my own mistakes.”

Mark turns slowly away from the mirror and gazes at Koo for a long time, a small crooked smile on his lips. Then, speaking very softly, he says, “And have you paid enough?”

“I don’t know,” Koo tells him. “You’re the one keeping the books.”

Mark considers that, nodding, still with the small smile. Then he says, “The FBI coming to the house—did you have something to do with that?”

“What house?”

“The first one. That’s why we moved. Somebody came through, saying he was from the gas company.”

“Oh.” Now it’s Koo’s turn to smile; it
did
work after all, and he’s pleased with himself, even though it ultimately doesn’t seem to have helped. “Yes,” he says. “I guess that was me.”

“I knew it,” Mark says, not threateningly but as though he too is pleased with Koo’s accomplishment. “The others didn’t think so, but I knew it was you. How’d you do it?”

“That room I was in. I saw it in the movies once, when a director named Gilbert Freeman owned the house.”

“Gilbert Freeman. You said that name, on one of the tapes.”

“I called him my favorite host in all the world.”

“Right.” Mark frowns, thinking about that. “How does that tell anybody anything?”

“I hardly knew Gilbert Freeman. He’s never been my host.”

Laughing,
very
pleased with Koo, Mark says, “Sly old man. I’m glad I met you.”

“Well,” Koo says. “Uhhh. I’m not sure the feeling’s mutual.”

“No, I suppose not,” Mark agrees, the laughter giving way again to the small almost absentminded smile. “Well, time will tell, won’t it?”

“If it does,” Koo says, “I’ll never tell time again.”

“Ugh. You can do better than that.”

“Not right now I can’t,” Koo says.

Peter walked with Ginger out to the car, a white reconditioned 1958 Ford Thunderbird; an early Thunderbird, from back when Ford had it in mind to build a sports car. Beside it, Peter’s Impala looked like a gross unpleasant animal; an alligator next to a swan. The two cars sat side by side in the carport, a doorless concrete-floored insert on the highway side of the house, directly beneath the room in which Koo Davis was being held. Beyond the cars, as Peter and Ginger emerged from the house, traffic flashed by on the Coast Highway in bright sunshine. Across the road, the scrub-covered hills rose steeply toward the north.

Peter said, “You’ll be back in an hour?”

“Depending on traffic.” Ginger was impatient to be gone.

“Don’t make us wait too long,” Peter said. “Remember, we also have to get out of the country today.”

“I’ll be as quick as I can. How many times do I have to say it?”

“That’s fine, Ginger.”

“Goodbye.” Reaching in his pocket for his keys, Ginger went around to the driver’s side of the Thunderbird.

Peter watched in silence while Ginger unlocked the door, but then said, “Ginger, one last thing.”

“What
now
, Peter?”

“A threat,” Peter told him. “You know what’s going to happen to Davis. If you don’t come back, I assure you the police will find Davis in a way that connects him to
you
.”

“You’re a very stupid person, Peter,” Ginger said. “You have
alienated me for no good reason at all. I’ll bring you your two thousand dollars, I’ll get myself out of this little swamp of yours, and that will be the end of it.”

Was Ginger right?
Had
Peter unnecessarily alienated him? But there had been nowhere else to go with Davis, once the first place became known. Chewing on his cheeks, keeping himself with difficulty from adding yet more verbal threats (which he knew full well could only make things worse), Peter watched Ginger insert himself behind the wheel of the Thunderbird, start the engine, and without another look in Peter’s direction back briskly out to the sunlight. Peter followed, walking slowly forward, wishing there were some way to reconstitute their former relationship, but knowing it had become hopelessly spoiled. If
only
they hadn’t had to move from the house in Woodland Hills. God
damn
the FBI! And God damn Mark or whoever was responsible for tipping them off.

The Thunderbird swung backwards in a tight quarter-turn, then slid forward like a fish, joining the flow of traffic. Peter, shielding his eyes, stepped out into the sunlight far enough to watch the Thunderbird out of sight around the next coastal curve to the east; then he shook his head and walked back into the house, hardly noticing the pain in his cheeks.

What a disaster this operation had been! It had seemed so clear and simple in the planning, such an unmistakable public statement, and it was ending in confusion, death, humiliation.

Peter had made mistakes, he fully acknowledged that, but on careful reflection he didn’t believe that
he
had made a fool of himself.
Time
had made a fool of him, time and accident and the frailty of human beings; none of which could be fully guarded against.

It had been so much easier a decade ago, when the Movement was a true and active force, when a leader was someone who sensed
where the crowd intended to go anyway and got out front to yell,
Follow me!
But where was the Movement today? Where was the crowd, the consensus; where were the willing masses for a leader to lead? There seemed to be no direction at all, no communal grievance or belief, no goal, hardly even any adversary. What was a leader to do in such muddled times? In a way, Peter could understand the defection of those seven in jail; it’s hard to be a revolutionary when revolution isn’t popular.

Peter was now regretting that he hadn’t spent more time and thought on the
theory
of the New American Revolution; but when things had been going well it hadn’t seemed to matter. Each person had his capabilities, his strengths, and the Movement could use everyone in his appropriate place. Larry, for instance, was wonderful at theory, Larry truly understood what the Revolution was all about, but Larry was no leader. Larry couldn’t lead a dysentery victim to the men’s room.

That was another of the problems. In the rich days, it had been almost inevitable that the leaders would feel a kind of paternal contempt toward the theorists, and old habits do die hard. Peter needed Larry now, to give him the dialectical underpinnings for their goals and their methods, but Peter could not bring himself to go to Larry humbly, as a student to a teacher, he simply could not reverse the leader-follower roles in that ignominious way. More and more, lacking both the tidal pressure of a mass movement and the magnetic pull of a clearly defined theoretical goal, Peter was reduced to improvisation and to patchwork solutions of immediate problems. The murder of Koo Davis, on which he was determined, had no revolutionary significance (as the death of an influential senator, say, or an undercover CIA agent, could be significant in that it would to some extent affect and alter history), but the death of Davis had become for Peter an absolute tactical
necessity, the only means he could think of to overcome the stigma of his failure.

There were three radios playing in the house, all tuned to the same news station, but to no effect. The noon deadline was almost here, and the authorities had not so much as acknowledged receipt of the latest message. That had been a frequent governmental tactic over the last several years—“toughing it out,” “stonewalling”—and if Peter had been interested in further negotiation he might very well have given in; presented new messages, offered new deadlines, broadened contact with officialdom. As it was, their tactic meshed perfectly with Peter’s own, and assured that
next
time they would be less cavalier.

Liz was in the living room, once again seated with legs curled beneath her in the Eames chair. Beyond her, through the glass doors to the deck, Peter could see Larry sunk in thought. Could he rely on Larry now, for
anything
? No; the simplest request would surely provoke weak and cowardly remonstrances, complaints, accusations. It would not be possible to convince Larry that Peter’s past errors of judgment—or other problems in the past—were not at the moment the point. The point at the moment was to make the best of a bad job, recoup as much as possible, and get out of here.

Which meant the death of Davis, a tactical action of which Larry would undoubtedly disapprove. Not wanting to place them all in a position where Larry would have disobeyed a direct order, Peter was forced to adjust his thinking to a plan with a cadre of one: Liz. He entered the living room, turned down the radio, sat near her, and said, “When Ginger gets back, we’ll leave.”

“All right,” she said, not looking in his direction.

She obviously didn’t care what happened next, but Peter had to explain his plans to
someone
, and she was all he had. “We’ll fly to Vancouver,” he said. “You still have that safe passport?”

“Of course.”

“Before then, before Ginger gets back, we have to take care of Davis.”

Now she did look at him, saying, “Shouldn’t we wait till tonight? How do we get him away from here?”

“We don’t. This is where they’ll find him.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “What does that do for your friend Ginger?”

“Ginger no longer wants to be a part of us,” Peter explained. “He’s made that very clear. So it’s no longer necessary for us to protect Ginger.”

“He’ll give your name to the police.”

“Good. I’ll
want
the authorities to know this was my operation, so they’ll be more circumspect with me next time.”

“Next time.” She said it without inflection.

“We have to act
now
, Liz,” Peter said, emphasizing his words in an attempt to capture her attention. “And it’s only the two of us. Larry is useless, and Mark has gone completely over the edge.”

“There’s something between him and Davis,” Liz said.

“I know that. I can’t figure out what it is.” Peter’s irritation was surfacing more and more. “When I wanted Davis alive, Mark was determined to kill him. Now when I want Davis dead, Mark stands over him like a faithful collie. We have to take him out, Liz, just you and I.”

“Take
Mark
out?”

“We can do it. There are two of us and he won’t expect—”

“No no,” she said, slapping the air to make him stop talking. “I know we can do it. I’m surprised you
want
to do it. There aren’t many of us left.”