The Comedy is Finished (36 page)

“Just wait here a moment,” the policeman said, and crunched away across the gravel toward his own car. Ginger, annoyed and upset but not alarmed, watched him in the rearview mirror, and when next he looked out ahead of his car two men had emerged from the Riviera and were walking in this direction.

Now, belatedly, Ginger got worried. He still didn’t really believe the events in the beach house could have a serious effect upon his own life—for years Peter had only been amusing, a joke, Ginger’s private joke—but the first twinges of doubt, and even of dread, crossed his mind as he watched the two men approach his car. Both were big, tough-looking, middle-aged. One hung back near Ginger’s front fender while the other came forward to speak. Ginger waited for him, and in sudden terror recognized the man just as he spoke:

“Mr. Merville, I am Michael Wiskiel of the Los Angeles office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m afraid I must ask you to step out of the car for a moment.”

Wiskiel; the man on television. “FBI?” Ginger desperately tried for a smile. “For a traffic violation?”

Wiskiel, opening the Thunderbird’s door, said, “If you’d just step out of the car for a moment.”

Drive away. Shift into first, run the second man down (the second fantasy slaughter-by-automobile in fifteen minutes), accelerate over the hills and into the Valley and disappear. Except that it wasn’t possible; how many times had Ginger acknowledged to himself that the life of the fugitive was not for him? Whatever Peter did with his days and nights, however he survived from year
to year, Ginger could not possibly live the same way. Whatever happened, Ginger was a creature of civilization, limited to a life within society. Feeling unutterably sorry for himself—the unfairness of it all!—Ginger struggled out of the Thunderbird. Hopelessly but automatically he maintained as much of the pretense as he could: “Is something wrong?”

“You just came from Kenny Heller’s beach house.”

They’ve been watching me! “Well—umm...” He couldn’t quite bring himself to admit it, though he already knew there was no point denying it.

Wiskiel didn’t wait for him to resolve the problem, but went on, asking, “Who did you leave there?”

“No one.” That lie was instinctive.

And not believed: “No one?”

And here, at the edge of doom, hope was born. Wasn’t he after all shrewder than this heavy-jawed cop? Ginger had first begun lying himself successfully out of scrapes when he was barely in kindergarten, and his tongue had never lost its skill. He was clever and devious and bright, and there would never be any reason to abandon hope. “The place was empty,” he said. “At least, no one answered when I rang.”

“You were
in
the house.”

“But I wasn’t.” Confidence was flowing again, Ginger was pulling himself back from the brink of despair. “Kenny loaned me the place,” he said smoothly, “but I couldn’t find the key. He always
used
to keep it atop the lintel, but it wasn’t there. I drove over this morning, tried to get in, rang the bell, then went for a walk on the beach. Leaving the car at the house, of course. When I got back I rang again, but still no answer, so I gave up.”

Wiskiel frowned; was uncertainty coming into his expression? He said, “So you saw no one.”

“Not a soul. Obviously, Kenny loaned the place to someone
else
recently who simply walked off with the key.”

“So if there’s anybody in the house, you wouldn’t be able to help us with information.”

“I’m terribly sorry, but no. And I do
wish
you’d tell me what this is all about.”

“An FBI matter,” Wiskiel said, being officially distant but not actually hostile. Then, surprisingly, he extended his hand toward Ginger, saying, “Sorry to have troubled you.”

“Not at all,” Ginger said, smiling broadly, in love with himself, reaching out to shake Wiskiel’s hand.

And Wiskiel clamped Ginger’s hand in an incredible grip, so astonishing that Ginger cried out and actually rose on tiptoe. Squeezing, crushing Ginger’s hand in his fist, Wiskiel rasped his thumb and fingers back and forth, grinding the bones of Ginger’s hand. Broken hand—can’t play the bass—extreme pain—these things flashed through Ginger’s mind as he reached in agony with his left hand, clutching at Wiskiel’s blunt hard fingers, crying out, “My God! Don’t!”

Wiskiel pressed forward, his grip hard and tight, his pressure forcing Ginger back against the side of the Thunderbird. “Put your left hand down at your side,” Wiskiel ordered, his voice low and mean, “or I’ll break every bone in your hand.”

“You
are
break—
Ow!
” But Ginger obeyed, unable not to obey; his left hand flew to his side and trembled there, clenching and unclenching, while he danced on the balls of his feet, imprisoned by this grip. “Oh, don’t! Oh, please!”

“How many are in the house?”

No, he couldn’t, he couldn’t give himself away like that. “
Please!
”

Now Wiskiel gripped his own right thumb with his left fist, and ground the knuckles of his left hand into the back of Ginger’s
hand, over the small delicate bones. This was
ten
times the pain, so sharp and severe that the strength went out of his knees as swiftly as though someone had pulled a plug. He would have fallen except for the pressure with which Wiskiel held him against the side of the Thunderbird. “
Now
,” Wiskiel said, through clenched teeth, and what happened to Ginger’s hand made him scream aloud. But Wiskiel wouldn’t stop, and the blood was draining from Ginger’s head, and he thought: Let me faint, let me faint.

The grinding knuckles paused, but the gripping right hand remained. Wiskiel said, “How many in the house?”

“Oh, please, my hand.” Another police car had pulled up next to the Buick; to take Ginger away, he knew that now. Passing traffic slowed to watch, but no one would stop, no one would rescue him.

A brief excruciating grind: “How many are in the house?”

“
Oh! Oh!”

“How many are in the
house
?”

“FIVE!”

The crushing grip eased, ever so slightly. “Good,” Wiskiel said. “Who’s the leader?”

“Peter—Peter Dinely.”

The second man had come up beside Wiskiel, with notepad and pencil. Ginger was aware of him writing down Peter’s name, as Wiskiel said, “Who else?”

“Somebody named Mark—Larry—I don’t know their last names. And a woman named Liz.”

“What about Joyce Griffith?”

“Joyce.” Although Wiskiel was now merely holding Ginger’s hand in an ordinarily tight grasp, the waves of pain still flowed up the length of his arm and spread through his body, shattering and distracting him. Joyce; he had trouble thinking, remembering the creature making all that food... “She’s dead.”

“How?”

“Mark—Mark killed her. She’s buried in the sand in front of the house.”

“And Koo Davis? Alive or dead?”

He had admitted everything else, but still he hesitated. Koo Davis. To acknowledge familiarity with
that
name was to slam the door forever.

But Wiskiel was implacable. Another reminiscent squeeze, dragging a groan from Ginger’s throat, and Wiskiel said, harshly, “
Is Koo Davis alive or dead?
”

“Alive! Alive!”

“Good. Where are they keeping him?”

“Upstairs bedroom. Enclosed, no windows.”

“An inner room,” Wiskiel said. “All right, good. What guns do they have?”

“I don’t know. I
swear
I don’t know.”

“All right.” And the punishing hand abruptly released its grip. “You can go with these two gentlemen,” Wiskiel said.

Ginger tucked his throbbing hand into his left armpit, hunching down over it. He would
not
tell them Peter was undoubtedly killing Davis this very second. Petulant, frightened, angry, spiteful, he glared at Wiskiel through tear-filled eyes: “You’re not supposed to
treat
me this way!”

Wiskiel looked at him without expression. “Tough shit,” he said.

Mike watched in grim satisfaction as Ginger Merville was led away to the other car. He felt no sympathy for such creatures. Five years ago, seven years ago, you could understand and almost forgive all those people who flirted with the kind of antisocial behavior they liked to mislabel ‘revolution’; you could understand it because most of them were merely dupes, sheep going along with the popular sport of bad-mouthing Authority. (And also, of course, he had to admit, because it was an unsettled time, a difficult time, and he was as glad as anybody that it was over.) But to continue now in such actions was no longer forgivable, no longer merely a fad or a sport. Ginger Merville had played with fire too long, and he was about to get very badly burned, and Mike was happy to be the one to strike the match.

Dave Kerman, putting away the notepad in which he’d copied down what Merville had had to say, said, “Nice work, Mike.”

Mike shrugged, pleased with himself but trying not to show it. “All I did was shake the little bastard’s hand.” To the Sheriff’s Department officer, who had just come over from his own vehicle, Mike said, “Have someone pick up this car, okay?”

“Will do, sir. He was what you wanted, was he?”

“Just what the doctor ordered.”

“I still have his license and registration.”

“He won’t need them for a while. Leave them with the car.”

“Yes, sir.”

The car containing Merville drove off as Mike and Dave Kerman walked back to the Buick. It was Mike’s private car, but Dave drove, freeing Mike to get on the radio. As Dave swung around in a U-turn, heading back toward the Coast Highway, Mike called Jock Cayzer down at the beach house site, telling him, “They’re there, Jock. We got confirmation from Merville.”

“Very nice,” came the pleased voice, crackling through the static.

“And our information is, Koo Davis is still alive.”

“Praise the Lord.”

Dave Kerman laughed at the phrase, and made the right turn onto the Coast Highway. Mike said, “Keep them bottled up, Jock. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

The problem was, the area was so thoroughly public. The Coast Highway itself was four lanes wide, being not only the scenic route along the coast but also the main road to Oxnard and Santa Barbara and beyond, filled with traffic all day long; rerouting all those vehicles up through the hills would be complicated and arduous. Besides that, the entire beachfront from Malibu State Beach just west of the house to Las Tunas State Beach several miles to the east swarmed with people, who would have to be safeguarded. All of which meant that a lot of preliminary work had to be done, and there was no way to do it without attracting the attention of the people inside the house. They could only hope the kidnappers wouldn’t panic, wouldn’t kill Koo Davis or do anything else stupid once they became aware of the tightening net.

A mobile command center had been set up in two trailers in a diner parking lot on the shoreward side of the road, just east of the target house. When Dave Kerman angled the Buick around the police-line sawhorses and into this parking lot, Mike saw there
were now six trailers, the other four all being connected with the media; three TV remote units and one documentary film unit. “The vultures are here,” he said.

Dave Kerman grinned. “Why not? When else are they gonna get Koo Davis on the program for free?”

At times like this, the final moments of the hunt, when the TV and newspaper people began to cluster and swarm hot-eyed for blood, Mike felt a certain disgust for the media and all its representatives. As far as he was concerned, though his own work might become messy and dirty in the heat of the struggle, both the motives and the result were clean; the media, on the other hand, was engaged in the unhealthy task of pandering to unhealthy desires. Now, striding from the car to the main trailer, he grimly ignored the two camera crews recording his progress and refused either to listen or respond to the questions of the microphone-waving reporters who trotted to his side. His earlier embarrassed pleasure at becoming in a small way a media celebrity was washed away by this repugnance. “Out of the way,” he said to a reporter who had become just a little too bold, and stepped into the trailer.

A dozen people were crowded into the long narrow cream-walled space inside the trailer, among them Jock Cayzer and Lynsey Rayne. Lynsey came forward at Mike’s entrance, looking frightened but elated, saying, “Is it true? He’s certainly alive?”

“According to Merville.” But then he quickly softened that, preferring to have her optimistic: “And he was telling the truth, no question about that. He opened up like a flower.”

Some toughness in his tone startled her, and she looked at him more closely. “What did you do to him?”

She’s still a liberal, Mike reminded himself; we get Koo Davis back by fair play only. “Believe it or not,” he said, “the only time I touched him was when I shook his hand.”

“Just so Koo’s all right,” she said. Meaning fair play was no longer an issue?

“He isn’t all right yet,” Mike told her. “We still have to get him away from those people.” And he stepped deeper into the trailer.

The furnishings were a grab-bag of bits and pieces; some folding chairs of various styles, a couple of folding-leg card tables, one sturdy wooden table and a couple of small battered gray-metal desks. At one of these sat Jock Cayzer; approaching him, Mike said, “Is our phone line in?”

“Let’s see.” Jock lifted the receiver of the phone which was the only thing on the surface of his desk, listened, and shook his head. “Not a thing.” Cradling the receiver again, he called toward the other end of the people-filled trailer, “How much longer on the phone?”

“One minute!” The person who answered was a big bearish young man with shoulder-length blond hair and shaggy blond beard. He was dressed in work pants, a yellow T-shirt and a large tool-filled workbelt around his waist, and he was kneeling on the floor at the far end of the trailer, a screwdriver in one hand and a telephone receiver in the other. “Just checking with the operator,” he called, waved the screwdriver, and went back to work.

Mike said, “I’m assuming that place has a phone and we know the number.”