Ginger laughed aloud. “Oh, what a cadre! What a formidable regiment of revolution!”
Now on the screen was a police mugshot, front and side views of a very tough-looking man. “Finally,” St. Clair’s voice said, “this is George Toll, forty-one, currently serving twenty years to life in the Texas State Prison at Huntsville, convicted of armed robbery and associated crimes. This is his third prison term for felony convictions.”
The screen showed St. Clair again, doggedly reading his script, sliding pages away off the blotter as he finished them: “When Toll was arrested for the crimes for which he is now serving his sentence, he claimed to be a Black Panther and to have robbed banks and other places to obtain money for the Panthers’ legitimate activities, such as their free lunch program in some ghetto schools. The Panthers, however, have consistently denied that Toll has ever had any relationship with them or that Toll has ever donated money to them. His previous felony convictions, also for armed robbery, did not include any claims to have been politically motivated. When informed of the present situation, Toll at once stated that he would be desirous of leaving prison and going to Algeria. However, forty-five minutes before this program began, the Algerian mission in Washington announced that, of the ten names on the original list, Algeria would accept nine, excluding George Toll.”
St. Clair lifted his head to gaze briefly and expressionlessly at the camera, then looked down again at his script: “Of the ten names on the list, only three are willing to accept the arrangement, and of the three only two are acceptable to the Algerian government. Given these realities, we are at a loss to know how to negotiate with you. You can’t want us to force these individuals out of the country if they don’t want to go. You have my personal word for it that none of these individuals has been pressured in any way. What you have seen and heard is their own honest response to the offer that was made them. We ask you not to blame us for this situation, and not to blame Koo Davis. You have our phone number. We are available at any time, day or night, for further discussion. We do not consider this a closed issue. We want Koo Davis back, and we want to emphasize that we are at all times willing to discuss terms.”
St. Clair’s heavy, bleak, angry face remained a few seconds longer on the screen, gazing out at the audience; on the screen in this room it was a huge brooding ominous presence. Then the picture faded to black and the announcer’s voice was heard: “This has been...”
23
Koo stares at the TV screen. “That’s not funny,” he says. The screen is black, but then the Channel 11 identifying logo appears, with the ID jingle. It contains a repetition of the channel numeral, sung by a chorus with an echo effect: “E-lev-en, E-lev-en, E-lev-en.” The echo reverberates and reverberates in Koo’s head, as though the brain has been removed and it’s all empty space in there now. Space Available—Will Divide to Suit.
When a Pampers commercial comes on—“I don’t use Pampers anymore, I use new Pampers”—Larry at last gets up and goes across the room to switch off the set. When he turns back, his movement visually reverberating in all the mirrors, his face looks as agonized as Koo feels; and at least he has the sense not to make any Mickey Mouse hopeful statement. “I can’t understand that,” he says. “Koo, I’m as astonished as you are.”
“I’m done for,” Koo says.
“How could they have turned their backs that way? What’s happened to them in jail?” Larry seems to have latched on to a different aspect of the problem.
Koo’s aspect of the problem is that now he’s a dead man. Any minute now, somebody’s going to come through that door, and it’s going to be all over. If only there’d been a house, a store, even another automobile, when he’d gotten himself out of that goddamn trunk. That was his moment, and he blew it, and now it’s finished.
And it won’t even necessarily be Mark who does the job. Koo has known all along that these people are assholes—granted they’re dangerous assholes, they’re still assholes—but now the whole world knows it. Rage, humiliation, revenge for their defeat; Peter, for example, would kill for much less reason. Liz would kill out of general irritation, and surely there was enough general irritation in that program for anybody’s taste. Larry here might spend the aftermath in a moony post-mortem about whatever happened to the old bunch, but in this house there are killers. And a victim. “I’m done for now,” Koo says.
“No, Koo. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Koo points at the door. “They’ll be coming in.”
“No, they won’t. I promise. I’ll stay right here.” Eager, questing, Larry sits on the bed near Koo, gazing into his face. “Talk to me now, Koo. About you and Mark.”
“No.”
“You said, after the show, you said—”
“No.” Koo can’t talk about all that, his own distress. “There’s no point in it now,” he says. “I’m done for. I’m dead.”
“No, Koo.”
“I’m dead,” Koo says.
24
Lily Davis pushed the Off button in the controls built into her chair arm, and across the room the television image collapsed inward to a descending point, then snuffed out. “They’ll kill him now,” she said, and pushed another button, which caused the wall panel to descend, hiding the built-in TV set.
In this sitting room in the house in Beverly Glen were four people: Lily, her two sons, and Lynsey Rayne. When the drift of the program had become obvious, Lynsey had gotten to her feet and spent the rest of the time pacing up and down the long room, from its broad arched entranceway to the sliding glass doors closing out the flagstone patio and the floodlit lush jungle greenery on the slope beyond. Now she paused in lighting a new cigarette from the last, coming deeper into the room to exclaim, “Lily, how can you say that? How can you say such a thing?”
“Because it’s true.” Lily gave her a calm look.
Frank and Barry had been seated, not very close together, on the long gray sofa. Now Frank hopped to his feet, with that inanely cheerful smile he seemed unable to turn off, and as he rubbed his hands together like a fly grooming itself he beamed around at them all, saying, “I for one could use a drink. Barry?”
“I think not,” Barry said coolly, that evanescent trace of English accent clicking in his words. “It’s four in the morning, my time. Tomorrow morning. I’m afraid a drink would slaughter me.”
“The reason it’s true,” Lily went on, calm and indomitable, “is because they have been humiliated now. No one can bear to be humiliated; believe me, I know.”
The last phrase made no sense to Lynsey, who therefore first disbelieved and then forgot it, concentrating on Lily’s stated reason. “That isn’t necessarily true. When Patty—”
Frank called, “Mom? Drink?”
“A sherry might be nice, dear.”
“Lynsey?”
“No,” Lynsey said, irritably, annoyed at the distraction and enraged with them all for not being able to concentrate on what was happening to Koo. Then she said, “Wait, yes. Scotch, I suppose. And soda.”
“One Scotch and soda, one sherry.” Frank frisked up the two marble steps and through the archway.
Lynsey struggled back to her sentence: “Patty Hearst’s kidnappers were humiliated, too. That business with the free food program they demanded, it turned into a joke. They didn’t kill Patty Hearst.”
Lily shrugged. “She was one of them.”
“Oh, not really. Besides, this man said the government was still open to negotiation.”
“He could hardly say anything else.”
Yawning, Barry rose gracefully to his feet, saying, “I am exhausted. If there are further developments, do let me know.”
“Of course, dear,” Lily said. “Have a good rest.”
“I shall. Good night, Lynsey. Don’t fret; there’s nothing to be done anyway.”
“That’s the worst of it,” Lynsey told him. She found herself for some reason less irritated by Barry than the other two. “I keep needing to do something.”
“Thus, one frets. Yes, I see. Well, try not to overfret yourself, then,” Barry said, with a faint hint of grin which made him look for an absurd instant like Boris Karloff; then he nodded to his mother and Lynsey, no longer Karloff at all, and departed.
Lynsey had no choice; she had to fret too much. She said to Lily, “Even if what you say were true, and I don’t believe it for an instant, but even if it were, what’s the point saying such things?”
With another shrug, Lily said, “For that matter, what’s the point saying most things? Communication is almost always an option, Lynsey.”
Lynsey studied the older woman. “Are you suggesting I shut up, Lily?”
“Not at all. But you probably ought to give more consideration to the difference between us. I mean, the differences in our relationship with Koo.”
“You’re his wife and I’m his agent.”
“Oh, those words don’t mean anything, Lynsey, you know that. The difference is, you love him and I don’t.”
Lynsey found herself blushing to the roots of her hair. Displeased by such a reaction at her age—she was not, after all, some tremulous teenager—she said, angrily, “And did you never love him?
“I don’t remember,” Lily said, cool as ever. “Someone who once wore my name loved someone who once wore his. But it was unrequited and died, as such loves do. Except Dante, of course, but I’ve never been that sort of masochist. Or any sort of masochist. That was probably what went wrong with the marriage. But I shall not,” she went on, as Frank returned to the room with a tray containing three drinks, “give you the sordid details of my marriage in its active phase, even if I remembered them. You may merely assume that Koo and I had adequate reasons for living apart these last forty years.”
“Not quite that long, Mom,” Frank said, as though gallantly, giving her the flute glass of sherry.
“I can’t be bothered to keep trace of such an anniversary,” Lily said, with evident disgust.
“You came out here to see him die,” Lynsey accused, looking at Lily past Frank, who was offering her the Scotch and soda. “You hate him and you want him to die.” Distracted, she took the drink from Frank’s hand.
“I don’t want anything, where Koo is concerned,” Lily said. “Desire ceased a long long time ago.”
Frank having distributed the glasses raised his own, said, “Salud,” and drank. Then, smiling at Lynsey, he said, “Mom won’t defend herself, but believe me Lynsey, this thing was as much a shock to her as to anybody else.”
“Where Koo Davis is concerned,” Lily said, “I am one with the public. I would be distressed if he were killed. Surely you don’t expect from me anything more intimate than that? My relationship with the man is hardly as personal as yours.”
Which was the second reference to that subject; this time Lynsey answered it: “I’m not Koo’s mistress, if that’s what you mean. You know I’m not his type.”
“You mean those overblown blondes,” Lily said, with a faint smile. “Oddly enough, I was rather the type myself as a girl; without the cheapness, of course. But don’t tell me Koo never took you to bed; it’s not like him to pass up an opportunity.”
This time Lynsey managed to keep from reddening only by threatening her body with immediate self-destruction. Nevertheless, the three times—early in their business relationship, when she was still Max Berry’s assistant and Max was Koo’s agent—that she had spent the night with Koo still burned behind her eyes. Could Lily gaze at her with her own cool eyes and see the flames? Lynsey blinked, turning her face away, sipping in confusion at her Scotch and soda, only too late realizing that these gestures too admitted the truth.
Frank said, cheerfully, “Oh, there’s so much fuss all the time about who’s going to bed with whom. What does it matter? It plagues us in television, let me tell you, on and off the screen. After a while you just don’t care anymore.”
Lynsey understood that Frank was trying to ease her past this awkward moment, but though she was grateful she also knew that his assistance was really automatic; Frank went through life making the best of things, easing the rough spots for everybody else because he wanted no rough spots for himself. Television was the ideal arena for his talents, his capacity to take the blandest route to any goal. She said, looking at Frank but actually speaking to Lily, “The important thing now is that we care what happens to Koo. It doesn’t matter if we can do anything or not, it doesn’t even matter what Koo might have done wrong in the past. The point is that we care about him now.”
Lily, with a kind of amused wonder, said, “Lynsey, I’ve always admired you, I think you know that. If Koo can arouse such tremendous loyalty from a person like you, there must be more to the man than I’ve given him credit for. I suppose my vision is still colored, even after all these years.”
This combination of sincerity, condescension and naked self-analysis was too complex for Lynsey to encompass. She could only fall back to a safe position: “Whatever he’s done, Koo doesn’t deserve what’s happening to him now.”
With only the slightest hesitation Lily nodded, saying, “I agree.”
“The poor guy,” Frank said, and for once his smile seemed actually clouded. “It must be rough on him. All we can do is hope the FBI can get him out of there.”
Looking at Frank, Lynsey thought with some surprise, Koo never was his father, his or Barry’s. The marriage broke up too early. Naturally the boys aren’t responding the way I’d expect. How complicated and melancholy this must be for them, having to hope for the return of a father who had never been there in the first place. Turning her head to glance at Lily, she wondered who had taken the father’s role with these boys. Was there a father? Had this straitjacketed woman ever taken lovers?
Lily heaved herself out of the chair, saying, “We should dine. I come from a background where even at funerals one eats.” With a meaningful look at Lynsey she added, “And this isn’t a funeral.”
25
The knocking at the door woke Larry from a light doze; when he opened his eyes in the mirrored room he thought he was still asleep, in a dream, and that he had nothing to do but passively observe. But the knock was repeated, more insistently, and he sat up, groaning. He’d fallen asleep in one of the armchairs, in an awkward position, and was now stiff and sore.
He looked over at the bed, where Koo slept on, under the fur throw with which Larry had covered him. Poor man, he was still weak from his illness and kept nodding off. Larry pushed himself out of the chair and crossed the room to unlock the door, wanting to get it open before the knocking disturbed Koo’s rest. But then, remembering Koo’s terror, he hesitated with his hand on the knob, and when he did open the door, just a few inches, he kept both hands on it and his left foot braced against it, so he could slam it again if the person outside were Mark.
But it was Joyce’s worried face that peered at him through the crack. “Larry,” she said. “I have to talk to you. Come out of there. Why are you staying in there all the time?”
“Ssshhh. Koo’s asleep.”
“Come out.”
So he stepped through, closing the door behind himself, standing close with Joyce in the small areaway at the head of the stairs. The house was designed with most of the living quarters downstairs, at the rear for the ocean view, leaving the double garage and the utility room at the featureless windowless front, facing the Pacific Coast Highway. The bedroom in which they’d put Koo was over the garage, with another suite of rooms behind it, facing the ocean, opening onto a large deck built on the roof over the living room.
Her voice low and hurried, Joyce said, “Did you watch it?”
“I don’t understand,” Larry said. “How could they all...give up like that?”
“You should talk with Peter. He’s closed himself in downstairs with that man Ginger, I don’t know what’s going to happen.” Looking over her shoulder at the stairs extending downward, she said, “I don’t like Ginger. I don’t trust him.”
“He’s a
ll right. He just didn’t expect to be dragged into this, that’s all.”
“Go talk to Peter, Larry. Find out what he wants to do.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I promised Koo I’d stay with him.”
“For heaven’s sake, why?”
“He’s afraid of Mark, and I think he’s right.”
“Mark’s outside somewhere,” she said. “He didn’t even come in to watch the program.”
“He’s going crazy; Koo’s right. Also, I think there’s something else between them, some problem Koo won’t tell me about. He was going to tell me, but then that program came on and all he’d say was, ‘I’m done for now.’ ”
Joyce reached out to hold his forearm in both hands, looking up at him with an intensity he found disquieting. She said, “Larry, what’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s all gone wrong. Mark’s gone crazy, Liz just stays inside her shell down there—”
“The Eric Mallock thing; that must have been hard for her to take.”
“I’m afraid of what Peter and Ginger might decide together. That’s why I want you to go down there.”
“I can’t leave Koo.”
“Oh, it’s getting so hopeless. Maybe we should just let him go.”
“Peter wouldn’t agree, that’s one thing certain.”
She sagged forward against his chest, putting her arms around him, sighing, “Nothing’s going the way we thought.”
He stroked her hair, remembering this feel and smell of Joyce, surprised to realize how long it had been since they’d physically touched. “I know,” he said. “I know.”
The Comedy is Finished Page 20
