Koko

by Peter Straub

  Tina interrupted him with a loud groan. “Don’t talk to me about wasps. Don’t talk to me about bugs—any kind of bugs!”

  “Is this related to the trouble you’re having?” Mike asked.

  “The Department of Health has strong feelings on the subject of six-legged creatures,” Pumo said. “I don’t even want to discuss it.”

  “Let’s get back to the subject, if you don’t mind,” Beevers said, giving Poole a mysteriously loaded glance.

  What the hell is the subject? Conor wondered.

  Pumo said, “How about we have another little blast up here and then go down, get something to eat, see some of the entertainment. Jimmy Stewart’s supposed to be here. I always liked Jimmy Stewart.”

  Beevers said, “Mike, are you the only one who knows what I was leading up to? Remind them why we’re here. Help me out.”

  “Lieutenant Beevers thinks it’s time to talk about Koko,” Poole said.

  1

  “Hand me my briefcase, Tina. It’s somewhere back there against the wall.” Beevers leaned forward from the side of the bed and extended his arm. Tina groped under the table for the case. “Take all day, there’s no rush.”

  “You pushed your chair over it when you got up,” Pumo said, now invisible beneath the table. He surfaced with the briefcase in both hands, and held it out.

  Beevers put the case on his lap and snapped it open.

  Poole leaned over and looked in at a stack of reprints of a familiar page from Stars and Stripes. Stapled to it were copies of other newspaper articles. Beevers took out the stack of papers and said, “There’s one for each of you. Michael is familiar with some of this material already, but I thought we should all have copies of everything. That way everybody’ll know exactly what we’re talking about.” He handed the first sheaf of stapled papers to Conor. “Settle down and pay attention to this.”

  “Sieg Heil,” Conor said, and took the chair beside Michael Poole.

  Beevers handed stapled pages to Poole and Pumo, placed the final set beside him on the bed, closed his case and set it on the floor.

  Pumo said, “Take all day, there’s no rush.”

  “Touchy, touchy.” Beevers put his papers on his lap, picked them up with both hands, squinted at them. He set them back in his lap and reached over to his suit jacket to remove his glasses case from the chest pocket. From the case he took a pair of oversized glasses with thin, oval tortoise-shell frames. Beevers put the empty case on top of his suit jacket, then put the glasses on his nose. Again he inspected the papers.

  Poole wondered how often during the day Beevers went through this little charade of lawyerly behavior.

  Beevers looked up from his papers. Bow tie, suspenders, big glasses. “First of all, mes amis, I want to say that we’ve all had some fun, and we’ll have a lot more before we leave, but”—a weighty glance at Conor—“we’re in this room together because we shared some important experiences. And … we survived these experiences because we could depend on each other.”

  Beevers glanced down at the papers in his lap, and Pumo said, “Get to the point, Harry.”

  “If you don’t understand how much teamwork is the point, you’re missing everything,” Beevers said. He looked up again. “Please read the articles. There are three of them, one from Stars and Stripes, one from the Straits Times of Singapore, and the third from the Bangkok Post. My brother George, who is a career soldier, knew a little bit about the Koko incidents, and when the name caught his eye in the Stars and Stripes piece, he sent it to me. Then he asked my other, older brother, Sonny—he’s a career sergeant too, over in Manila—to check out all the Asian papers he could locate. George did the same on Okinawa—together they could look at nearly all the English language papers published in the Far East.”

  “You have two brothers who’re lifer sergeants?” Conor asked. Sonny and George, lifers in Manila and Okinawa? From a Mount Avenue family?

  Beevers looked at him impatiently. “Eventually these other two pieces turned up in Singapore and Bangkok papers, and that’s it. I did some research on my own, but read this stuff first. As you’ll see, our boy’s been busy.”

  Michael Poole took a sip of his drink and scanned the topmost article. On January 28, 1981, the corpse of a forty-two-year-old English tourist in Singapore, a free-lance writer named Clive McKenna, had been found, his eyes and ears bloodily removed, by a gardener in an overgrown section of the grounds of the Goodwood Park Hotel. A playing card with the word Koko written on its face had been placed in Mr. McKenna’s mouth. On February 5, 1982, an appraiser had entered a supposedly empty bungalow just off Orchard Road in the same city to discover lying face-up and side by side on the living room floor the bodies of Mr. William Martinson of St. Louis, a sixty-one-year-old executive of a heavy equipment country active in Asia, and Mrs. Barbara Martinson, fifty-five, also of St. Louis, who had been accompanying her husband on a business trip. Mr. Martinson lacked his eyes and ears; in his mouth was a playing card with the word Koko scrawled across its face.

  The Straits Times piece, dated three days later, added the information that while the bodies of the Martinsons had been discovered less than forty-eight hours after their deaths, Clive McKenna’s body had gone undiscovered for perhaps as long as five days. Roughly ten days separated the two sets of murders. The Singapore police had many leads, and an arrest was considered imminent.

  The clipping from the Bangkok Post, dated July 7, 1982, was considerably more emotional than the others. FRENCH WRITERS SLAIN, the headline read. Outrage and dismay were shared by all decent citizens. The provinces of both tourism and literature had been savaged. Unwelcome events of a violent nature were particularly threatening to the hotel industry. The shock to morality—therefore to trade—had potential consequences far beyond the hotel industry, affecting taxicabs, hire-car firms, restaurants, jewelers, massage parlors, museums and temples, tattooists, airport staff and baggage handlers, etc. That the crime was almost certainly the work of undesirable aliens, committed by as well as upon foreigners, had to be not only remembered but reiterated. Police of all districts were engaged in a commendable effort of mutual cooperation designed to root out the whereabouts of the assassins within days. Political hostility to Thailand could not be discounted.

  Cocooned within this oddly formal hysteria was the information that Marc Guibert, 48, and Yves Danton, 49, both journalists living in Paris, had been found in their suite at the Sheraton Bangkok by a maid on her normal morning cleaning detail. They were tied to chairs with their throats cut and their eyes and ears removed. The two men had arrived in Thailand the previous afternoon and were not known to have received any messages or guests. Cards from an ordinary deck of Malaysian playing cards, the word, or name, Koko printed by hand on each, had been inserted into the dead men’s mouths.

  Tina and Conor continued to read, Tina with an expression of feigned detachment, Conor in deep concentration. Harry Beevers sat upright, tapping a pencil against his front teeth, his eyes out of focus.

  Printed by hand. Michael saw exactly how: the letters carved in so deeply you could read the raised grooves on the back of the card. Poole could remember the first time he had seen one of the cards protruding from the mouth of a tiny dead man in black pajamas—point for our side, he’d thought, okay.

  Pumo said, “The goddamned war still isn’t over, I guess.”

  Conor looked up from his copy of the Bangkok clipping. “Hey, it could be anybody, man. These guys here say it’s some political thing. To hell with this, anyhow.”

  Beevers said, “Do you seriously think it’s a coincidence that this murderer writes the name Koko on a playing card which he puts into his victims’ mouths?”

  “Yeah,” Conor said. “Sure it could be. Or it could be politics, like this guy says.”

  “But the fact is, it almost has to be our Koko,” Pumo said slowly. He spread the three clippings out beside him on the table, as if seeing them all at once made coincidence even more unlikely. “These
were the only articles your brothers could find? No follow-up?”

  Beevers shook his head. He then bent over, picked his glass up from the floor, and made a silent, mocking toast to them without drinking.

  “You’re pretty cheerful about this,” Pumo said.

  “Someday, my friends, this is going to be a hell of a story. I’m serious, I can definitely see book rights in this thing. Beyond that, I can see film rights. But to tell you the truth, I’d settle for a mini-series.”

  Conor covered his face with his hands, and Poole said, “Now I know you’re nuts.”

  Beevers turned to them with an unblinking gaze. “Some day I’ll want you to remember who first said that we could all see a lot of money out of this. If we handle it right. Mucho dinero.”

  “Hallelujah,” Conor said. “The Lost Boss is gonna make us rich.”

  “Consider the facts.” Beevers held up a palm like a stop sign while he sipped from his glass. “A law school student who does our data-gathering did some research on my instructions—on the firm’s time, so we don’t get billed for it. He went through a year’s worth of half a dozen major metropolitan papers and the wire services. Net result? Apart of course from St. Louis stories about the Martinsons, there has never been any news story in this country about Koko or these murders. And the stories in St. Louis papers didn’t mention the playing cards. They didn’t mention Koko.”

  “Is there any possible connection between the victims?” Michael asked.

  “Consider the facts. An English tourist in Singapore—our researcher looked up McKenna, and he wrote a travel book about Australia-New Zealand, a couple of thrillers, and a book called Your Dog Can Live Longer! With an exclamation point. Maybe he was doing research in Singapore. Who knows? The Martinsons were a straight Middle-American business couple. His firm sold a load of bulldozers and cranes throughout the Far East. Then we have two print journalists, Frenchmen who work for L’Express. Guibert and Danton went to Bangkok for the massage parlors. They were longtime friends who took a vacances together every couple of years. They weren’t on an assignment in Bangkok, they were just cutting up.”

  “An Englishmen, two Frenchmen, and two Americans,” Michael said.

  “A pretty clear example of random selection,” Beevers said. “I think these people were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were shopping or sitting at a bar, and they found themselves talking to a plausible American guy with a lot of stories who eventually took them off somewhere quiet and wasted them. The original Mr. Wrong. The All-American psychopath.”

  “He didn’t mutilate Martinson’s wife,” Michael said.

  “Yeah, he just killed her,” Beevers said. “You want mutilations every time? Maybe he just took men’s ears because he fought against men in Vietnam.”

  “Okay,” Conor said. “Say it’s our Koko. Then what?” He looked almost unwillingly toward Michael and shrugged. “I mean, I ain’t going to no cops or nothing. I got nothing to say to them.”

  Beevers leaned forward and fixed Conor with the stare of a man attempting to hypnotize a snake. “I agree with you absolutely.”

  “You agree with me?”

  “We have nothing to say to the police. At this point, we don’t even know with absolute certainty that Koko is Tim Underhill.” He straightened up and looked at Poole with the trace of a smile tugging at his mouth. “Celebrated or not-so-celebrated thriller writer and Singapore resident.”

  Every man in the room but Beevers all but closed his eyes.

  “Are his books really nuts?” Conor finally said. “You remember all that crazy stuff he used to talk about? That book?”

  “ ‘The Running Grunt,’ ” Pumo said. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard he published a couple novels—he talked about it so much I figured he’d never do it.”

  “He did it, though,” Poole said. Without wanting to be, he was surprised, even dismayed that Tina had not read any of Underhill’s novels. “It was called A Beast in View when it came out.”

  Beevers was watching Poole expectantly, his thumbs tucked behind his rosy suspenders.

  “So you really do think it’s Underhill?” Poole asked.

  “Consider the facts,” Beevers said. “Obviously the same person killed McKenna, the Martinsons, and the two French journalists. So we have a serial murderer who identifies himself by writing the name Koko on a playing card inserted into the mouths of his victims. What does that name mean?”

  Pumo said, “It’s the name of a volcano in Hawaii. Can we go see Jimmy Stewart now?”

  “Underhill told me ‘Koko’ was the name of a song,” Conor said.

  “ ‘Koko’ is the name of lots of things, among them one of the few pandas in captivity, a Hawaiian volcano, a princess of Thailand, and jazz songs by Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker. There was even a dog named Koko in the Dr. Sam Sheppard murder case. But none of that means a thing. Koko means us—it doesn’t mean anything else.” Beevers crossed his arms over his chest and looked around at all of them. “And I wasn’t in Singapore or Thailand last year. Were you, Michael? Consider the facts. McKenna was killed right after the Iranian hostages came back to parades and cover stories—came back as heroes. Did you see that a Vietnam vet in Indiana flipped out and killed some people around the same time? Hey, am I telling you something new? How did you feel?”

  The others said nothing.

  “Me too,” Beevers said. “I didn’t want to feel that, but I felt it. I resented what they got for just being hostages. That vet in Indiana had the same feelings, and they pushed him over the edge. What do you suppose happened to Underhill?”

  “Or whoever it was,” Poole said.

  Beevers grinned at him.

  “Look, I think this whole thing is nuts in the first place,” said Pumo, “but did you ever consider the possibility that Victor Spitalny might be Koko? Nobody’s seen him since he deserted Dengler in Bangkok fifteen years ago. He could still be living over there.”

  Conor surprised Poole by saying, “Spitalny’s gotta be dead. He drank that shit, man.”

  Poole kept quiet.

  “And there was one more Koko incident after Spitalny disappeared in Bangkok,” Beevers said. “Even if the original Koko had a copycat, I think good old Victor is in the clear. No matter where he is.”

  “I just wish I could talk to Underhill,” Pumo said, and Poole silently agreed. “I always liked Tim—I liked him a hell of a lot. You know, if I didn’t have to work out that mess in my kitchen, I’d be halfway tempted to get on a plane and see if I could find him. Maybe we could help him out, do something for him.”

  “That’s an amazingly interesting idea,” Beevers said.

  2

  “Request permission to move, sir,” Conor barked. Beevers glared at him. Conor stood up, clapped Michael on the shoulder, and said, “Do you know what time it is when darkness falls, bats fill the air, and wild dogs begin to howl?”

  Poole was looking up in friendly amusement, Harry Beevers—pencil frozen halfway to his mouth—with irritation and incredulity.

  Conor leaned toward Beevers and winked. “Time for another beer.” He took a dripping bottle from the ice bucket and twisted off the cap. Beevers was still glaring at him. “So the lieutenant thinks we ought to send a little search party after Underhill, check him out, see how crazy he is?”

  “Well, Conor, since you ask,” Beevers said very lightly and quietly, “something along those lines might be possible.”

  “Actually go there?” Pumo asked.

  “You said it first.”

  Conor poured nearly half of the beer down his throat in a continuous series of swallows. He smacked his lips. Conor returned to his chair and took another slug of the beer. Things had just gone totally out of control—now he could sit back and relax and wait for everybody else to see it.

  If the Lost Boss says that he still considers himself Underhill’s lieutenant, Conor thought, I am gonna puke.

  Beevers said, “I don’t know if you want
to call this a moral responsibility or not, but I think we should handle this situation ourselves. We knew the man, we were there.”

  Conor opened his mouth, swallowed air, and let the pressure build on his diaphragm. After a second or two he emitted a resounding burp.

  “I’m not asking you to share my sense of responsibility,” Beevers said, “but it would be nice if you could stop being childish.”

  “How can I go to Singapore, for Chrissakes?” Conor yelled. “I don’t have money in the bank to go around the block! I spent all my money on the fare here, man. I’m sleeping on Tina’s couch because I can’t even afford a room at my own reunion, man. Get serious, okay?”

  Conor felt immediately embarrassed at blowing up in front of Mike Poole. This was what happened when he went over his limit and got drunk—he got mad too fast. Without making himself sound like an even bigger fool, he wanted to explain things. “I mean—okay, I’m an asshole, I shouldn’t ought to of yelled. But I’m not like the rest of you guys, I’m not a doctor or a lawyer or an Indian chief, I’m broke, man, I used to be part of the old poor and now I’m part of the new poor. I’m down at sore heels.”

  “Well, I’m no millionaire,” Beevers said. “In fact, as of several weeks ago I resigned from Caldwell, Moran, Morrissey. There were a lot of complicated factors involved, but the fact is, I’m out of a job.”

  “Your wife’s own brother gave you a pink slip?” Conor asked.

  “I resigned,” Beevers said. “Pat is my ex-wife. Serious differences of opinion came up between myself and Charles Caldwell. Anyhow, I’m not made of money any more than you are, Conor. But I did negotiate a pretty decent golden handshake for myself, and I’d be more than willing to loan you a couple thousand dollars interest-free, to be repaid at your convenience. That ought to take care of you.”

  “I’d help out too,” Poole said. “I’m not agreeing to anything, Harry, but Underhill shouldn’t be hard to find. He must get advances and royalties from his publisher. Maybe they even forward fan mail to him. I bet we could learn Underhill’s address with one phone call.”