The Comedy is Finished (25 page)

“Well, he’s stir crazy,” Peter said. “You can see that. Can’t you?” Needing a response, he reached out to pat Joyce’s head where she sat on the floor in front of him. “Can’t you?”

“Yes,” she said.

St. Clair was on the screen again, looking at his audience. He said, “It was two-thirteen Van Dyke.”

Joyce started, a sudden tremor through her entire body as though an electric charge had just thrummed through her. Peter, his hand still resting on her hair, frowned down at the top of her head, saying, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Ssshh, listen.”

St. Clair was reading his script, “The next person on the list,
Abby Lancaster, thirty-three, a leader of rent strikes and anti-landlord demonstrations in New York City, also leader of a movement for free subways in New York City, now in a New York State Correctional Facility, convicted of arson, assault, destruction of public property, and other crimes. Miss Lancaster also refused to be filmed, and refused as well to allow a recording of her voice. Following our agreement not to show
any
picture of her on this broadcast, she made the following signed statement, in the presence of two witnesses who have personal knowledge of her identity. This is the statement: ‘I, Abby Lancaster, no longer believe violence can ever produce lasting good. I will become eligible for parole in ten months’ time. It is my hope to receive parole, and to continue the career in social work I misguidedly deviated from several years ago. I have no desire for further notoriety.’ That’s Miss Lancaster’s statement.”

Peter closed his eyes. The hand that had patted Joyce’s head rubbed his cheeks. Ginger watched him, eyes glinting.

Another photo appeared on the screen, a serious-looking young black man with an exaggerated afro. This seemed to have been cropped from some larger group photo, a graduation or team picture or some such thing. St. Clair’s voice said, “This is William Brown, thirty-three, currently serving a life sentence in the New Jersey State Prison at Rahway for murder in the first degree. Brown, originally a Black Panther, later joined one of the more militant offshoots of the Panthers and was convicted of murdering two Black Panther leaders in 1969. Other black militants had tried him in absentia in their own kangaroo court, found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to death. He turned himself in to the authorities for his own protection. When informed this afternoon of the prospect of leaving prison and going to Algeria, Brown stated that he would be agreeable.”

“All right,” Peter whispered, but he went on rubbing his cheeks.

Liz gasped as the next photograph appeared on the screen: a dark-haired, recklessly grinning, handsome young man. St. Clair’s voice said, “This is Eric Mallock, thirty-three, serving an indeterminate sentence in the Federal Penitentiary at Lewisburg, Kentucky. He was captured in 1972 when his bomb factory in Chicago exploded. He has been convicted of second-degree murder, manslaughter, attempted murder, assault, arson and other crimes. He was interviewed this afternoon at Lewisburg.”

Liz covered her eyes with a rigid hand, but at the sound of Mallock’s voice she lowered the hand and gazed unblinking at the screen.

Another institutional setting, but this time the man was seated on a metal folding chair in front of a tan tile wall. He sat bent forward, elbows on knees, eyes looking at a presumed interviewer to the camera’s left, hands gesturing between his knees as he spoke. His was recognizably the same face as before, but blurred by a smoothness of flesh; he’d apparently put on thirty or forty pounds since that earlier picture had been taken. The recklessness was gone from his mouth and eyes, and his hair was neater, more controlled. He said, “It’s hard for me now to understand myself as of several years ago. I made mistakes, criminal mistakes. The cause I was working for was not wrong, I think most Americans realize that now, but my
methods
were wrong. The desperation I felt, some of my friends felt, I don’t know if we were right, if change would have come about no matter what we did. All I know is, we all claimed we were prepared to pay the consequences; as for me, when the time came I found I
wasn’t
prepared to pay the consequences. My first few years here were very difficult. Now I feel differently. I don’t know what the future holds, I’m just living day by day. I’ve been very active in forming various prisoner programs
here, I started a very successful bookkeeping course, I work on the prison newspaper. There’s still a lot to be done here, every-where—I suppose in Algeria, too. But not for me. If those are my friends out there—” and for the only time he glanced directly at the camera, his eyes and here-and-gone grin a quick faint echo of that former recklessness “—and I suppose they are—” he returned his gaze to the interviewer, the somber mask again firmly in place “—I appreciate their intentions, I wouldn’t presume to say whether they’re right or wrong, but I think they ought to go on without me.”

Liz closed her eyes and lowered her head, covering her face with her hand.

Mallock was followed by a black-and-white news photograph of an angry demonstration scene. The focus was on two uniformed policemen struggling with a stocky bushy-haired moustached man flailing about himself with a sign on a long stick. St. Clair’s voice said, “This is Howard Fenton, thirty-nine, convicted of tax evasion and related offenses. He is currently in the Federal Correctional Facility at Danbury Connecticut, where he was interviewed this afternoon.”

They were shown again the same room where the first prisoner, Cobberton, had been interviewed. The man sitting at the table this time was a somewhat older and thinner version of the man in the news photograph. His speech was rapid, the words jumbling together, his hands jittering in the air as he spoke: “I don’t know who these people are. They’re nothing to do with
me
. I’m nonviolent, that’s my whole
point
. The whole military establishment has to be dismantled. I will not pay taxes or obey any other federal law while this government continues to support a huge military machine. And I
certainly
won’t be tricked into
leaving
this country. I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole thing isn’t a scenario dreamed up by Army Intelligence. It would go right along with their paranoid view of life.”

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...”

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.

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.”