Koko brt-1

by Peter Straub

  Maggie also told Michael and Tim Underhill, who had become slightly groggy from the effects of painkillers, that Koko had escaped the police in Chinatown, but that Murphy was certain he would be captured before nightfall.

  Maggie stayed on after Conor and Ellen left to go to Grand Central for a Metro North train. Ellen kissed both men, and nearly had to pull Conor through the door. Poole thought that Conor almost wished he had been injured himself, so that he could stay with them.

  “Where did they put Beevers?” he asked Maggie.

  “He’s three floors up. Do you want to see him?”

  “I don’t think I ever really want to see Harry Beevers,” Poole said.

  “He lost an ear,” Maggie said.

  “He has another one.”

  The light in the hospital room grew hazy, and Michael thought of the beautiful grey nimbus of light at the top of the stairs as he had emerged from Koko’s cell.

  A nurse came and gave him another shot although he said he did not want or need it. “I’m a doctor, you know,” he said.

  “Not now, you’re not,” she said, and slammed the needle into his left buttock.

  After that he and Tim Underhill had a long conversation about Henry James. Later all that Poole could remember of this woozy conversation was that Tim had described a dream James had had as an old man—something about a terrifying figure trying to break into the writer’s room, and the writer eventually attacking his own attacker and driving him away.

  That day or the next, for Murphy had ordered them held over for at least another twenty-four hours, Judy Poole appeared on the threshold of the room just before the end of visiting hours. Michael could see Pat Caldwell standing behind his wife. He had always liked Pat Caldwell. Now he could not remember if he had always liked his wife.

  “I’m not coming in unless that person comes out,” Judy said. That person was Maggie Lah, who immediately began picking up her things.

  Michael motioned her to stay. “In that case, you’re not coming in,” he said. “But I think it’s a pity.”

  “Won’t you see Harry?” Pat called to him. “He says he has a lot of things to talk about with the two of you.”

  “I’m not interested in talking to Harry right now,” Poole said. “Are you, Tim?”

  “Maybe later,” Underhill said.

  “Michael, aren’t you going to get rid of that girl?” Judy asked.

  “No, I don’t think I am going to do that. Come in here so we can talk in normal voices, Judy.”

  Judy turned around and marched away down the hospital corridor.

  “Lot of fun, being in a hospital,” Michael said. “Your whole life appears before you.”

  Late the next evening, when Poole was lucid enough to feel the pain of the wound, Lieutenant Murphy came to the room. He was smiling and seemed calm and self-possessed, like the man Beevers had admired at Tina Pumo’s funeral.

  “Well, you’re in no danger now, so I’m sending LeDonne home to get some rest. You’ll be able to check out of here in the morning.” He shifted on the balls of his feet, apparently uncertain of how to give them the next bit of information. In the end he decided on a mixture of optimism and aggression. “He’s ours now. Thanks to you two people and Mr. Beevers, we didn’t get him in Chinatown, but I told you we’d get him in the end, and we will.”

  “You know where Dengler is?” Tim asked.

  Murphy nodded.

  “Well, where is he?” Poole asked.

  “You don’t need to know that.”

  “But you can’t apprehend him now?”

  Murphy shook his head. “He’s as good as apprehended. You don’t have to worry about him.”

  “I’m not worried,” Poole said. “Is he on an airplane?”

  Murphy glowered at him, then nodded.

  “Didn’t you have people at the airport?”

  Now Murphy began to seem irritated. “Of course we did. I had men at every subway station he might have used, we had people at the bus terminals, and at both Kennedy and La Guardia.” He cleared his throat. “But he managed to get to New Orleans before we identified him. By the time we worked out what name he was using and where he was going, he had already boarded his connecting flight in New Orleans. But he’s on that flight now. It’s all over for him.”

  “Where is he going?”

  At length Murphy decided to tell them. “Tegucigalpa.”

  “Honduras,” Poole said. “Why Honduras? Oh. Roberto Ortiz. You checked the passenger lists and found the name. Dengler still has Roberto Ortiz’s passport.”

  “I don’t have to tell you anything, do I?” Murphy asked.

  “Tell me you’re going to get him this time.”

  “You can’t walk out of an airplane. I don’t think he’s going to do a D.B. Cooper. And when the plane lands at the Tegucigalpa airport in four hours, we have a small army waiting for him. Those people down there, they want to be our friends. Those people, when we snap our fingers, they jump. He’s going to be picked up so fast his feet won’t even touch the ground.” Murphy actually smiled. “We can’t miss him. This guy might be the running grunt, according to you gentlemen, but this time he’s running into a trap.” Murphy nodded good-bye and went to the door; when he had gone out he had another thought, and leaned back in. “In the morning, I’ll tell you how it went. By then your boy will be on the way back here.” A grin. “In chains. And probably with a few bruises, and minus a couple of teeth.”

  After he left, Underhill said, “There goes Harry Beevers’ idol.”

  A nurse came in and gave them another shot.

  Poole fell asleep worrying about his car, which he had left parked at a meter on Division Street.

  As soon as he woke up the next morning, Poole called the Tenth Precinct. On his bedside table was a vase of irises and calla lilies, and beside the vase was his copy of The Ambassadors and the two Babar books. During the night, Maggie had managed to rescue his car. Poole asked the officer who answered his call if Lieutenant Murphy was planning to visit St. Vincent’s Hospital that morning.

  “As far as I know he has no plans to do so,” said the officer. “But I’m the wrong guy to ask.”

  “Is the lieutenant in now?”

  “The lieutenant is in a meeting.”

  “Did the Hondurans arrest Dengler? Can you tell me that much?”

  “I’m sorry, I cannot give you that information,” the officer said. “You will have to speak to the lieutenant.” He hung up.

  A few minutes later a doctor came around to discharge them, and said that a young woman had come by that morning with a change of clothing for each of them. After the doctor left, a nurse brought in two brown shopping bags, each containing fresh underwear, socks, a shirt, a sweater, and jeans. Underhill’s clothes were from those he had left at Saigon, but Poole’s were new. Maggie had guessed at his sizes, and the shirt collar was a size too small and the waistband of the jeans was thirty-six instead of thirty-four, but he could wear it all. He found a note at the bottom of the bag: I couldn’t buy you coats because I ran out of money. The doctor says you’ll be able to leave around nine-thirty. Will you come to Saigon before you go wherever it is you’ll be going? Your car is in the garage across the street. Love, Maggie. Clipped to the note was a tag from a garage.

  “No coats,” Poole said. “Mine was ruined, and yours is probably evidence. But don’t worry—we can get something to wear. People are always leaving things in hospitals.”

  They signed form after form in the billing office. A young orderly, St. Vincent’s own Wilson Manly, outfitted them, as Poole had foreseen, with overcoats that had been the property of two elderly gentlemen without family who had died during the week. “These are pretty shabby,” the orderly said. “If you could wait a day or two, there’ll probably be something better coming in.”

  Underhill resembled a middle-aged poacher in his long filthy coat; Poole’s was an ancient Chesterfield with a threadbare velvet collar, and in it he looked like a run-d
own man about town.

  When they had reclaimed the Audi, Poole sat behind the wheel for a time before pulling out onto Seventh Avenue. His side hurt, and the Chesterfield smelled of wine and cigarette smoke. He realized that he had no idea of where he was going. Perhaps he was just going to drive forever. He stopped at the first light, and realized that he could go anywhere. For a moment he was not a doctor, not a husband, or anything at all to Maggie Lah: his greatest responsibility was to the car he sat in.

  “Are you going to take me back to Saigon?” Underhill asked.

  “I am,” he said. “But first we’re going to pay a call on our favorite policeman.”

  6

  Lieutenant Murphy could not see them immediately. Lieutenant Murphy sent word that they could wait if they liked, but matters related to other cases were keeping him very busy; no, there was no information about the fate of the fugitive M.O. Dengler.

  The young officer on the other side of the bulletproof Plexiglas refused to let them into the precinct house, and after a while avoided their eyes and kept his back turned while pretending to be occupied with something at a nearby desk.

  “Did they get him when he left the plane?” Poole asked. “Is he coming back all wrapped up in chains and carrying a lot of fresh bruises?”

  The officer said nothing.

  “He didn’t get clean away, did he?” Poole was speaking so loudly he was almost shouting.

  “I think they might have had some trouble on the flight,” the young officer said in a barely audible voice.

  After they had waited half an hour, Detective Dalton finally took pity on them and allowed them into the station. He took them up the stairs and opened the door to room B. “I’ll get him to come in here,” he said, and grinned at Poole. “I like that coat.”

  “I’ll swap you for yours,” Poole said.

  Dalton disappeared. Only a minute or two later, the door opened and Lieutenant Murphy came in. His skin had lost some of its angry healthy flush and his shoulders were slumped. Even the arrogant Keith Hernandez moustache looked tired. Murphy nodded at the two men, dropped a file on the table, and then dropped into the nearest chair.

  “Okay,” he said. “I don’t want you to think I was avoiding you. I didn’t want to call you until I had some definite word.”

  He spread out his hands as if he had said all there was to say.

  “Hasn’t the plane landed?” Poole asked. “What did he do, hijack it?”

  Murphy sat slumped in the chair. “No, the plane landed. More than once, in fact. I suppose that’s the problem.”

  “It made an unscheduled stop?”

  “Not quite.” Now Murphy was speaking very slowly and reluctantly, and his face had begun to show the first signs of spring. “Apparently the Tegucigalpa flights from this country always stop in Belize. We had men waiting there just in case Dengler tried something funny. Or so the forces in Belize tell us.” Poole leaned forward to speak, and Murphy held up a hand like a stop sign. “It also regularly stops at a place called San Pedro de Sula, which is in Honduras, and where the Hondurans had people check everybody who left the plane. Now hold on, Doctor, I’m going to tell you what happened. What I think happened. Between San Pedro de Sula and Tegucigalpa there is only one more regularly scheduled stop.” He tried to smile. “A place called Goloson Airport in a jerkwater town called La Cieba. The plane’s only on the ground about ten minutes. Only domestic passengers ever get off there—they have different colored boarding passes from the international passengers, so everybody can see who they are. Domestic passengers don’t have to pass through Customs, Immigration, any of that stuff. A couple Honduran soldiers were posted out at Goloson, but they didn’t see anybody except domestic passengers.”

  “But he wasn’t on the plane when it landed at Tegucigalpa,” Poole said.

  “That’s right. At this distance, it’s a little hard to tell, but it looks like he never landed there.” He sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?”

  “The policeman at the desk downstairs said there was some trouble on the flight,” Underhill said. “I can’t help remembering what happened at Kennedy.”

  Murphy gave him a flat glare. “There was a little trouble, you could call it that, I suppose. When the crew checked out the plane they found one passenger who hadn’t left his seat. He was asleep with a magazine over his chest. Only when they picked up the magazine and shook him they found out that he was dead. Broken neck.” He shook his head. “We’re still waiting for identification.”

  “So he could be anywhere,” Poole said. “That’s what you’re saying. He could have booked another flight as soon as he got off the plane.”

  “Well, now we have men at Goloson Airport,” Murphy said. “I mean, they have men there.” He pushed himself away from the table and stood up. “I think that’s all I have to tell you, gentlemen. We’ll be in touch.” He began to move toward the door.

  “But in other words, nobody’s found him yet. We don’t even know what name he’s using.”

  Murphy made it to the door. “I’ll call you when I have some positive word.” He fled.

  Dalton entered a second later, as if he had been waiting outside the door. “You have the story now? I’ll take you back downstairs, you guys don’t have any worries, you know, police all over Honduras are looking out for this guy. Hondurans will bend over backwards to do us favors, believe me, and our man will turn up in custody in a day or two. I’m glad your injuries weren’t too serious. Say, Doctor, tell that good-looking girlfriend of yours if she ever gets sick of—”

  They were out on the sidewalk in their dead men’s coats.

  “What’s Honduras like?” Poole asked.

  “Haven’t you heard?” said Underhill. “They love us down there.”

  PART

  EIGHT

  TIM

  UNDERHILL

  And then what happened?

  Nothing.

  Nothing happened.

  It has been two years since Michael Poole and I left the police station and drove back to Saigon, Tina Pumo’s old restaurant, and nothing more has been heard of Koko, or M.O. Dengler, or whatever he is calling himself now. There are times—times when everything is going smoothly in my life—when I know that he is dead.

  It is true that Koko must have yearned for death—I think he thought of himself as giving his victims the gift of freedom from the fearful eternity he perceived all about him. “I am Esterhaz,” he wrote in the note he left for Michael, and in part he meant that what happened on the frozen banks of the Milwaukee River never stopped happening for him, no matter how many times he killed in order to make it stop. Backwards and forwards describes an eternity which has become intolerable to the man caged within it.

  Lieutenant Murphy finally sent Michael Poole copies of some photographs that had been taken from the room at the YMCA. These were photographs of convicted or accused serial murderers Dengler had clipped from newspapers and magazines. Ted Bundy, Juan Corona, John Wayne Gacy, Wayne Williams, David Berkowitz—over each head Dengler had drawn a flat round golden ring: a halo. They were eternity’s agents, and in my worst moments I think that Koko saw us, the members of Harry Beevers’ platoon, in that way too, as dirty angels, agents of release from one kind of eternity into another. I have work to do, Koko said in the basement room on Elizabeth Street, and that we have not heard of him or from him does not mean that his work is done or that he has stopped doing it.

  A year after Koko lost himself in Honduras, I finished the book I had been writing. My old publisher, Gladstone House, published it under the title The Secret Fire; the reviews were excellent, and the sales something less than that but at least good enough to make me self-sufficient long enough to write what I thought would be my next book, a “nonfiction novel” about M.O. Dengler and Koko. Now I know that I cannot write that book—I don’t really know what a “nonfiction novel” is; you can’t tie an eagle to a plough horse without making both of them suffer.

  But as soo
n as I could afford to do it I took the same flight to Tegucigalpa from which Koko escaped while Michael Poole and I were being sewn up and sedated in St. Luke’s Hospital. And with the novelist’s provisional doubt I saw, as I saw the girl he had tried to murder in Bangkok, what happened on that flight. I saw how it could have happened, and then I saw it happen.

  This is one version of how Koko came to Honduras.

  The jet is small and so old it rattles, and few North Americans are on board. The Central American passengers have black hair and brick-colored skin, they are talkative and exotic, and I think Koko would have felt immediately at home among them. He too came out of the basement, he too left the children of Ia Thuc and the Patpong girl behind him in the basement, and now another language echoes about him. I think he closes his eyes and sees a wide plaza in a small sunstruck city, then sees the plaza littered with dead and dying bodies. On the steps of the Cathedral, bodies lie sprawled and twisted, their arms outflung, the fingers curled in toward the palms, the eyes still open, staring. The sun is very near, a large white hazy disc like a halo. Abundant flies. Koko is sweating—he imagines himself sweating, standing in the center of the plaza, his skin prickling with the heat.

  When the little plane lands at Belize two people get off into a shredding dazzle of light that instantly devours them. At the back of the plane, visible to the passengers, two men in brown uniforms pitch a few suitcases out through an open bay. White cement, hard bouncing light.

  In fifteen minutes they are back in that world above the world, above clouds and rainfall, where Koko feels himself freed from gravity and near to—what? God, immortality, eternity? Perhaps all of these. When he closes his eyes he sees a broad sidewalk lined with cafés. Rows of empty white chairs fan out from white tables with colorful sun umbrellas, and waiters in black waistcoats and black trousers stand in the open doorways of the cafés. Then the music of eternity swells in his mind, and he sees bloodied corpses sprawling in the chairs, the waiters slumped dead in the doorways, blood running into the gutters and moving slowly down the pitched street.…