The Comedy is Finished (38 page)

Various wires led from the back of the television set into the darkness of the closet. Mark traced the power-lead, treating that with respect and carefully unplugging it from the wall outlet, but the other wires—aerial, external speakers—he simply ripped loose, then carried the heavy set over to place it on top of the hamper, leaning back against the shattered mirror. Then he turned to look around the room for more barricade material, ignoring Koo’s questioning gaze.

He had always thought of himself as separate from other human beings, isolated and alone, but he’d been wrong.
Now
he was estranged; in this current situation, he was the only person on the face of the Earth that both sides wanted to shoot at.

There was nothing else to pile against the door. Either what was already there was heavy enough to do the job, or it wasn’t. Since for Mark all potential endings were bad ones, it hardly mattered whether the barricade held or not; to some extent he was doing all this merely because it was the most appropriate action under the circumstances.

So long as he remained in this room, so long as the stalemate continued outside between Peter and the authorities, then Mark still had one lifeline, one thread tying him to the human race; this complex, absurd, contradictory, useless, incomprehensible relationship with Koo Davis. Last night, suicide had seemed the only possible choice, because that moment had been unbearable. Now, the present instant had its nourishing qualities—if he didn’t know better, he’d almost think he’d become happy—so he had lost the thirst for destruction, self or otherwise; still, when the black wave did eventually get here, as it would, he would close his eyes uncaring.

Should he take his father with him?

“Mark! Mark!” It was Peter’s muffled voice, followed by a knocking at the door. “Mark, can you hear me?”

Koo sat up straighter, sending Mark a frightened look. Turning casually to the door, Mark rested his hands on the waist-level television set, smiling with easy familiarity at his fractured images in the broken mirror. He wasn’t particularly worried about Peter shooting through the door at him; those last bullets had penetrated the wood and cracked the glass, but they hadn’t entered the room with any force. Mark called, “Yes, I can hear you.”

“We made a deal with them, Mark.”

Mark waited, but apparently Peter expected him to comment, and the silence lengthened. Mark
had
no comment, he didn’t live on the same level of reality as Peter, so he merely waited, mildly, for Peter to speak again.

“
Mark!
Did you hear me?”

“Yes, I heard you.”

“They’ll give us a plane. They’ll give us a clear route to the airport.”

Mark smiled at the silliness of it. In his mind’s eye he saw the sharpshooters on the rooftops, the curve or corner where the car would of necessity briefly slow to a crawl, the side windows starring and splintering all together, and suddenly everybody in the car dead but Koo. Turning to Koo, Mark grinned and pantomimed a sniper with a rifle shooting down from a rooftop. Koo looked blank, then suddenly nodded in comprehension. “Right,” he said. “But with my luck, the guy’d sneeze.”

“With my luck, so would I.”

“One bullet,” Koo said. “Right through the both of us.”

“You’re an incurable romantic, Koo.”

“Oh, I can be cured. I can be cured.”

Peter’s ragged voice sounded again: “
Mark!
There isn’t
time
for this!”

Mark shook his head at Koo, and turned back to the door. “Go away, Peter,” he called. “There’s nothing going to happen here.”

“We have to let them speak to Davis on the phone. They have to know he’s alive before they’ll deal.”

Mark made no response. To Koo he said, “Come over here. Lean your weight against this stuff.”

Getting to his feet, Koo said, “We expect visitors?”

“They’ll shoot the lock off in a minute.”

“What an exciting life you lead.”

Peter again: “Forget what happened before! Everything has changed now! We need him alive, he’s our passport!”

“It’s nice to be needed,” Koo commented, leaning his back against the hamper and the TV set.

“
Mark!
” came Peter’s hysterical voice. “
For the last time!
”

“Promises, promises,” Koo said.

The sound of the shot wasn’t terribly loud, but the vibration of its impact pulsed through the jumbled pieces of the barricade like a preliminary earthquake tremor, and Koo’s side twinged painfully. “That’s a bigger gun,” Mark said.

“You suppose they got nukes?”

The second shot thrummed into the door; bottles tinkled together inside the hamper.

Seated at the small desk in the crowded trailer, Mike looked up when the radio operator called, “Mr. Wiskiel!”

“Yes?”

“Report of shooting from the house.”

“No,” Lynsey said; too low for anyone to hear but Mike. The color drained from her face, as though she might faint, and he noticed how clawlike her hands became when she clutched at the edge of the desk for support.

Mike concentrated on the radio operator, saying, “Anybody hit?”

“No, sir. They want to know what’s their response.”

“We don’t shoot first,” Mike said. “But we return fire.”

“Mike, please!” Lynsey’s whisper was shrill with urgency.

For her benefit, Mike added, “And nobody fires at sounds. We only respond to direct attack.”

“Yes, sir.”

The radio operator turned back to his seat, and Mike held a hand up to stop Lynsey’s protests before they could start. “Listen,” he said. “The guy hasn’t called back. You know what that probably means.”

“You can’t be sure what’s going on in that house,” she said. “They might be arguing among themselves.”

“Fine. If they are, and if Koo Davis is alive, then he’s still where Merville said he was—in an interior room without windows. Firing from outside the house won’t endanger him.”

“You can’t be
sure
where he is!”

“I can’t be sure of anything till it’s over,” Mike said. “But I’m not prepared to order my people not to respond when attacked.” Picking up the phone, he added, “I’ll talk to them again.”

“Good.”

But they weren’t answering. He let it ring eighteen times, then all at once the line went dead. When he dialed again, he got a busy signal.

“More shooting at the house,” the radio operator said.

Mike slammed the phone into its cradle; pushing back from the desk, he said, “I’m going down there and see what’s what.”

“I want to come with you.”

He looked at her wryly. “What choice do I have?”

“None,” she said.

After Larry shot the telephone, he felt foolish but defiant. He stood there with the revolver in his hand, the shattered phone on the living room floor, and Peter came blundering down the stairs, his voice high-pitched with a new querulousness, crying, “What’s the
matter
with you? What’s the matter with
everybody
?”

“We can’t take anymore,” Larry told him. “It has to end.”

Peter stared at the phone. “You utter
fool!
Now how can we
deal
with them?”

“Oh, Peter, do you still believe in it all?”

Larry no longer believed. His long morning of thought had led him at last to the understanding that it had all been a mistake, a stupid tragic mistake. He was remembering now something he hadn’t thought of in years; a motto on the wall of his parents’ bedroom back home, cut from some old magazine by his mother and put in a frame from Woolworth’s:
Things done in violence have to be done over again
. Why had he never read that, or remembered it, or understood it? Why had he always behaved as though meaningful change in the world must be instantaneous, violent, and total?

Hell
is
paved with good intentions, and Hell was where Larry now found himself. Good intentions had led at last to mere absurdity; himself pushing on a barricaded door, armed with a revolver, trying to get at a terrified old man. Shame and self-disgust had grown in him while he and Peter pressed uselessly at that door. The endless insistent ringing of the telephone had finally been the last straw, and this emptying of the revolver Larry’s last violence. “I’m giving myself up,” he said. “You do what you want. I’m giving myself up.”

“Oh, no, you’re not! No, you’re not! If we’re going to get out of this, we have to show a united front.”

Larry stared. “Get out of this? Peter, we’re going to
die
here today!”

“
I’m
not!” Peter’s eyes were open wide and glaring, and pink spittle flew with the agitation of his speech. “I’m going to
live
, I’m going to come
back
, I’m going to go
on
.” Then he blinked down at the destroyed telephone. “Extensions,” he muttered. “We can still make a deal.” And he hurried away to the kitchen.

Weary, Larry sagged onto the sofa and sat there leaning forward,
head drooping, the empty revolver held slackly between his knees. He didn’t care what happened now.

Peter came back from the kitchen, calmer and colder. “Well, you’ve done it,” he said. “The phone’s out of order.”

“It doesn’t matter, Peter.”

“It does matter! Larry, I’m not going to finish here. I’m getting out, and you’re going to help. You’re
going
to.”

Apathetic, Larry looked up. “What do you want?”

“Convince Mark to come out. You can do it. We can’t force our way in there. Convince him we just need Davis as a hostage, so we can get away. Convince him nobody’s going to get hurt.”

“Mark knows you mean to kill him.”

“Not anymore,” Peter said. He came across the living room, closer to Larry. “It’s true, I swear it. You know what the circumstances were, but now they’ve changed. I won’t hurt Mark. He can just let Davis out if he wants, he can stay in there by himself. Or he can come along, and he’ll be perfectly safe. But we
need
Davis.”

“You don’t have the phone anymore.”

“We’ll show Davis out on the deck. We’ll have a white flag of truce, and we’ll let them see Davis on the upstairs deck.” Peter abruptly dropped onto the sofa next to Larry, his gaunt-cheeked face anguished and intent. “
Please
, Larry,” he said. “Please! I can’t end here!”

Larry had to look away, embarrassed by this nakedness; that Peter should beg, and particularly that he should beg
him.
“Peter, it won’t do any good. Mark won’t listen to me, he never has.”

“You can try. Just
try
.”

Larry closed his eyes. Would it never be possible to stop? “I’ll try,” he said.

*

The highway side of the house was windowless, avocado in color, and contained only the door leading in from the carport. Mike and Lynsey drove past this featureless wall, and Lynsey said, “It looks like a fortress.”

“Fortunately, appearances are deceiving.”

All normal traffic had been diverted from this part of the road. Nearly three hundred police officers were here, representing half a dozen commands, including the State Police, the FBI, the County Sheriff’s Department, and even a few men from Jock Cayzer’s Burbank force. Several police cars were parked across the highway from the house, with uniformed men carrying rifles and shotguns as they waited on the far side of the cars.

More men, more uniforms, more guns, more official cars, were down on the beach itself, at the nearer barricade. The civilian spectators had been moved farther back, behind a second line of sawhorses, but here there was still a crowd; grim-faced, well-armed and obviously becoming impatient. Mike and Lynsey left the Buick, walked to the barrier, and stood next to one of the Sheriff’s Department sharpshooters, who was watching the house through the scope of his rifle. Mike said, “Anything happening?”

“There’s a woman in that upstairs room. I get an occasional glimpse of her. That’s about it.” Then he offered the rifle, saying, “Want to see?”

“Thanks.” Mike peered one-eyed through the scope, found the house, the upper deck, the glass doors. There were curtains; was that movement behind them? He couldn’t be sure. Lowering the rifle, he said to Lynsey, “Want to look?”

She shook her head, gazing at the rife in distaste. “I can see well enough. Thank you.”

“Sure,” he said, and raised the rifle to look again.

*

Liz stopped looking out the window at the police. Letting the curtain fall back into place, she walked from the bedroom to the hall, where Larry was leaning against that other door, talking in his stodgy well-meaning manner at Mark, who was not answering; probably not even listening. Liz said, “You’re wasting your breath.”

Larry turned away from the door. He looked haggard. “I know. Peter insisted.” Shaking his head, he said, “I wish it would end. I wish it was over.”

Liz spent her last smile. “You want it to end? It can end right now.”

He frowned at her. “What do you mean?”

“Come along and watch,” she said, and went back into the bedroom.

“There she is!” Mike said. He was still watching through the rifle scope.

“I see her,” Lynsey said. “She’s coming out.”

The woman was pushing open the sliding door, stepping out to the sunlight, a slender blonde girl, raising her arm and pointing in this direction. Startled, Mike said, “She has a gun! She’s—” he saw the gun jerk up in her hand “—going to—” he heard the shot, he heard the sudden grunting sound, he looked around to see the sharpshooter, the man who’d loaned him his rifle, falling backward with astonishment on his face, his hands reaching for his chest. “My God!”

From the bedroom doorway, Larry yelled, “Liz! For God’s sake, don’t!”

Out on the deck, in plain view, Liz turned about and shot once at the police line in the opposite direction along the beach to her left. Then she turned back to shoot again to the right.

*

Half a dozen men fired. Staring through the scope, Mike saw glass shatter beside the girl, but saw that no one had hit her; all firing too hastily, too unexpectedly. The gun in her hand, pointing this way, jumped again.

No. Mike’s finger found the trigger, his cheek nestled against the wood stock, the butt formed comfortably against his shoulder, he squeezed, and the rifle
kicked
against him. He blinked, brought the barrel down, saw the girl staggering back against the glass doors, and knew she had been hit solidly in the body. There was more and more firing all around him now, a growing fusillade, but he knew it was his bullet that had struck home.