“How far are you from the Hollywood Freeway now?”
“With this traffic? At least twenty minutes.”
“I’ll meet you there,” she said. “Just after the change from the Pasadena to the Harbor. At the end of that ramp there. You know the place?”
“Far too well.”
“What’s your car?”
“A gray Bentley, license O CHUCK. But, Lynsey?”
“Yes?”
“If you’re not there, I can’t wait, you know.”
“I’ll be there,” she promised. Then she hung up and turned to Wiskiel, saying, “Can you get me there in twenty minutes?”
“The Harbor Freeway from here? We’d better take a car with a gumdrop.”
“Gumdrop?”
They were already walking out of the office. Making a circular motion over his head with one hand, Wiskiel said, “Flashing light.”
“Oh. Gumdrop.”
It was Lynsey’s first trip in a fast-moving police car, with siren wailing and gumdrop flashing, and she found the experience invigorating; as though the simple fact of such forceful forward motion was itself accomplishing something. A uniformed policeman drove, with Mike Wiskiel trailing in his own car. They ran down the Hollywood Freeway, mostly on the right shoulder, past the sluggish heavy southbound morning traffic, and reached the interchange with the Harbor Freeway with time to spare. They stopped at the appointed place, and Lynsey said, “Thank you.”
“My pleasure, ma’am.”
Lynsey got out of the police car, and it spurted away. Mike Wiskiel stopped his Buick beside her and leaned over to call out the open passenger window, “I’ll trail you.”
“Okay, fine. But don’t let him know it. I don’t think he’ll talk if he thinks the police are hanging around.”
“I’ll stay well back,” he promised. Then he waved and drove off.
Lynsey waited five minutes, while several passing drivers made comments or suggestions, all of which she ignored. Then at last the gray Bentley nosed out of the slow-moving lanes of traffic, yellow letters on the royal blue background of its license plate reading O CHUCK. A good-looking red-haired girl in a pale blue jacket was driving, with a large man indistinct in back. Lynsey opened the rear door and slid into a fusty closed compartment rich with the aromas of coffee and cigar. Chuck Hunningdale, a large stout man in a well-tailored pearl gray suit with white shirt, rose-pink tie and pink chrysanthemum in his buttonhole, was on the phone. He smiled and nodded at Lynsey, gesturing with the hand holding the cigar for her to take the fur-covered seat beside him, and went on with his call.
Lynsey settled herself as the Bentley moved forward. This rear seat was divided by a console, containing the telephone, an ashtray and other equipment; putting his cigar in the ashtray, continuing to talk on the phone, Hunningdale pointed at his own mug of coffee on the console and raised his eyebrows in question. Yes, coffee would be a good idea; she nodded, and he pointed at the dispenser built into the back of the front seat. (The glass partition was up between here and the chauffeur’s compartment.) Lynsey opened the small door, found more mugs, took one, turned the little chrome handle that produced coffee from the spigot, and followed Hunningdale’s gesturing hand to find powdered cream substitute and sugar.
Meantime, Hunningdale was explaining on the phone that “if you want my boy, you’ve gotta stretch a little. A best-of is nice, but that’s just gravy on the vest. What’s actually on the plate here?”
Lynsey and Hunningdale were both talent agents, but of very different types. She handled a total of six clients, all of them major figures, where the question of selling the client almost never came up; she made a very good living, but there was no pressure to flaunt it. Hunningdale, on the other hand, probably had fifty clients in the music business, was hustling them all the time, and his lavish façade was part of the hustle.
Finishing his phone conversation, inconclusively, Hunningdale smiled at Lynsey and said, “My dear, you look as though you haven’t slept for a week.”
“That’s almost true.”
“Nothing happens the way it should,” he said. “You have a client you have absolute affection for, and he’s kidnapped. I have clients I would gladly put in a sack and drown, and nobody kidnaps them.”
Lynsey gave that a thin smile, saying, “I’m terribly worried about him, Chuck.”
“Of course you are. But, Ginger...” He shook his head, frowning, pantomiming long and careful thought. “I just don’t see it.”
They drove past Mike Wiskiel’s maroon Buick Riviera, parked on the shoulder. Lynsey said, “Chuck, it really does look as though Ginger’s involved.”
“Because of the house. But wasn’t that just happenstantial, criminals stumbling into an empty house?”
“It couldn’t be,” Lynsey said. “They’d have to be sure they were safe, sure nobody would come to the house while they were there.”
“Lynsey, all they had to do was read the trades. Ginger’s tour was adequately reported.”
“But he always rents his house when he’s away. This time he gave it to the same realtor, but he insisted on double the regular rent.”
Hunningdale frowned, bothered by that. “Are you sure that’s true?”
“Absolutely.”
“And what do you take it to mean?”
“That Ginger wanted it to look as though the house was for rent the same as always, but he actually wanted to be sure it would stay empty.”
“Dear dear dear.” Hunningdale pursed his lips, staring away at the traffic. “I know Ginger used to be involved with some very iffy types,” he said. “Way back when, you know. But everybody was involved with iffy types in those days. I myself had people in my own house ten years ago that today I shudder at the thought.”
Lynsey forced herself to be patient, say nothing, let Hunningdale work it out for himself.
Hunningdale said, “When the FBI came around yesterday, I assumed it was merely the coincidence of the house, and they’d looked in their old files or dossiers or whatever, they saw Ginger’s old-time connection, and they jumped to a conclusion.”
“Of course.”
“I mean, that’s what the FBI does.”
“I know that,” Lynsey said. “Guilt by non sequitur. But this time, there’s more to it than that.”
Hunningdale lowered his head, brooding at his large stomach. “The situation could be awkward,” he said.
“You mean, because you told the FBI you didn’t know where Ginger was.”
“Well, in fact I don’t know where he is, not exactly. I do know he’s in Los Angeles.”
“He is!”
Hunningdale turned his troubled expression toward Lynsey: “You can see my difficulty. I tell you Ginger’s in town, you tell the FBI, they get upset because I didn’t cooperate.”
“You won’t come into it at all,” Lynsey promised him. “I’ll be the one who found him.”
“By talking to me.”
“By using my contacts.”
“Mm.” Hunningdale brooded some more.
Lynsey said, “We’ve never dealt directly with one another, Chuck, but you must know my reputation.”
“Of course.”
“We can deal.”
Hunningdale smiled slightly. “There is a certain appeal in being Deep Throat.” But then, shaking his head, he said, “But I truly don’t know where he is. Somewhere in town, that’s all. I could leave a call with his service, he’d undoubtedly get back to me.”
“You know his friends, Chuck. You could find out where he is.” Then, gambling, taking a leap, she said, “He might be in a beach house somewhere. A musician friend.”
“A beach house?” Hunningdale gave her a frankly curious look, saying, “There’s even more to this than you’re telling me, isn’t there?”
“Yes?”
“Mm.” Putting down his cigar, picking up the phone, he said, “And Ginger was always such a good client. Reliable, profitable, talented, and even interesting t
o chat with from time to time.”
Lynsey said, “We’d like to know where he is, but I don’t want to talk to him.”
“Of course, of course. Let me just make a few calls. Beach house, beach house.” And he pressed the number buttons on the phone.
It took four calls, with Hunningdale explaining each time that he needed Ginger Merville immediately for a new “project” with NBC television, and that an answer had to be given before noon today. The first three offered to help him look, but the fourth, someone called Kenny, knew exactly where Ginger Merville could be found. “Bless you, Kenny,” Hunningdale told him, broke the connection, and said to Lynsey, “That was Kenny Heller. Ginger’s staying at his beach house, in Malibu.”
“Thank you, Chuck. Thank you.”
“Poor Ginger,” Hunningdale said.
32
“You look like wet shit,” Koo tells his image in the mirror. “No reflection on you, of course.” Then he turns and walks some more around the room, slowly and carefully, bandaged arms folded across his chest. He’s testing his strength and capacity, struggling to get this battered body functioning again. Approaching another mirror he says, “Listen, guy. You gotta stop following me around.” Then he glances worried beyond his mirrored self at the deeper reflection of the half-open mirrored bathroom door; from inside there, the buzz of the electric razor continues.
Why is Mark shaving off his beard? Koo’s life depends on Mark now, even more than earlier, but Mark is remaining as erratic and unpredictable as ever. Back when they were actually talking together, when a relatively calm Mark was telling Koo about his mother, it seemed they could find an infinity of connectives, a seamless link of identity between them; but it wasn’t so. Mark has lived with pain and hatred too long, there are too many ways to tap into that underground river of rage. Watching the emotions cross Mark’s face like clouds on a windy day, Koo kept backing away from subject after subject, until it seemed there was nothing safe to say. The conversation didn’t so much run down as slowly strangle on its own constrictions. The silences grew longer, and increasingly uncomfortable.
It was during one of those silences that the knocking came at the door. Mark answered it, and spoke briefly in the doorway with the leader, Peter. Koo listened, needing to know what these people were saying to one another, but didn’t entirely understand what he heard:
Peter: “Our friend is going to the bank. I want you to go with him.”
Mark: “No.”
Peter: “No? Mark, you know that little weasel’s just looking for a chance to run out on us.”
Mark: “Let him run.”
Peter: “After we get his money. But you’ll have to go with him to the bank or he won’t come back.”
Mark: “You go with him.”
Peter: “That wouldn’t do any good, he isn’t afraid of me.”
Mark laughed at that, then said, “Nobody’s afraid of you, Peter.”
Peter was becoming more obviously irritated. “For God’s sake, Mark, why refuse this simple request? Go with Gin—our friend. Oh, what difference does it make? Ginger. Go with Ginger to the bank. I mean, why not?”
Mark: “Because I’m staying here.”
Peter: “Here? In this room?”
Mark: “That’s right.”
Peter: “We’re nearing our deadline, you know.”
Mark: “We’ll see.”
Peter: “There’s no question about that, Mark. Don’t get any ideas in your head.”
But Mark didn’t respond to that. Merely shaking his head, he moved back a step and shut the door.
Koo said, “What deadline?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Mark told him, his manner so flat and final that Koo didn’t dare question him again. Then Mark patted the black brush of beard on his face and said, “I think I’ll shave.”
So that’s what he’s doing now, in the bathroom, first having snipped and hacked away with a pair of scissors and now using an electric razor. While Koo paces—no, plods is more like it—while Koo plods back and forth out here surrounded by mirrors, plagued by more and more unanswerable questions. What deadline? Who is this new person, Ginger, of whom Koo has never heard before? Why is Mark shaving off his beard? What does Mark plan to do? What does Peter plan to do?
The razor buzz stops. Koo halts in the middle of the room, looking over at the bathroom doorway. From this angle, the mirror of the half-open door shows him the reflection of another mirror across the room, in which he can see himself from the back. It isn’t a pleasant view. He looks old, weak, tired, bent. He looks like a junk-wagon horse at the end of a long hard day.
Water splashes in the bathroom then stops. Koo moves obliquely to the left, till he can no longer see that depressing view of himself, but the door also moves, following him, and Mark comes out, stroking bare cheeks and looking awkward and a bit sheepish.
Koo essays a shaky grin and a shaky joke: “What are you gonna grow next year?”
“Corn,” Mark says. “It’s time for a money crop.”
“Corn always sells,” Koo agrees. “Believe me, I know.”
Mark turns to study himself in the nearest mirror, leaning forward, angling his head upward slightly, gazing over his cheekbones at the image of his face. “Come here,” he says.
Koo approaches, not sure what the boy has in mind. “What’s up?”
“Come here. Next to me. Put your face next to mine.”
“Listen,” Koo says, understanding now and feeling a sudden panic. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“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 Ko
o’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.”
The Comedy is Finished Page 26
