room again to the far end, to the window and all that heavy viscous weight of translucent water. With his back to the water, Koo stands with his hands in the pockets of the terrycloth robe, and waits.
One minute; two minutes; and the door swings open and Mark walks in.
Koo presses his back against the window glass, ashamed of his fear and hating his physical weakness, watching Mark push the door shut behind himself and advance into the room. And into Koo’s mind comes a scene from one of those early movies,
The ferocious beast paces to the middle of the room, his expression a deeply sullen glare. “All right,” he says. “Get it over with.”
Koo’s mouth and throat are dry. He has trouble breathing, making sounds, forming words. Hoarse, he finally says, “Is it true?”
“Is what true? Say the words.”
Koo nods. He knows the answer now, but he understands he does have to say the words: “Are you my son?”
“Yes.” There’s nothing in the word but Mark’s usual flat bluntness.
“You mean it—you meant physically, actually.”
“Flesh of your flesh.” Mark’s lips writhe in loathing over his teeth as he says the words. “Bone of your bone.”
“I—” Koo shakes his head. “I don’t understand.” Could Lily have had another child after they’d separated? But there wouldn’t have been any reason to keep it secret.
“You paid five hundred dollars to have me killed,” Marks says, without particular emotional force. “My mother spent the money to have me born instead.”
“Five hundred...an abortion.”
Mark’s smile is terrifying, and so is his low voice: “Did somebody call my name?’
“Jesus,” Koo says, barely above a whisper. “I don’t—I’m sorry, I don’t—” He gestures helplessly with both hands, his weight sagging back against the window.
“You don’t remember?” Anger, mockery, hatred; Mark leans toward Koo, but doesn’t step closer. “I was worth five hundred dollars to you not to exist, and now you don’t even remember?”
“It’s been—I don’t know how—”
“You don’t know
Ahhh, God, that’s true. There were three over the years, all of them decades ago; all, in fact, in the right era to be this fellow standing here. How old is he; thirty, thirty-two? Grown from a hasty error, all the way up to this. “I’m sorry,” Koo says, fighting down a sudden tidal wave compulsion to shed tears. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry.” Mark becomes calmer as Koo’s agitation increases. “Sorry for what?”
“For everything. Everything.”
“Sorry you don’t know which one I am. Sorry you didn’t get what you paid for.”
“No! Jesus, I’m not—” But of course he is. Five hundred dollars thirty years ago to not be in this room with this savage? There’s no way Koo can keep his reaction to that idea out of his mind.
And apparently no way he can keep it off his face; Mark emits an angry bark of laughter, saying, “That’s right. If only my mother had obeyed orders, you wouldn’t have
“Is that—is that why I’m here? Is that why you picked me?”
Rage flares in Mark at the question. His hand, clawlike, shoots out as though to clutch Koo’s throat, but then merely stays in the air, trembling. “
“You mean the others don’t know. Is that it? They don’t know?”
“If you tell them, I’ll kill you.”
“But if they don’t know, if that isn’t the reason, then why me? Why
“Because you were the hawks’ jester. You’re here because you are who you are.
“Who—who was—” But Koo can’t ask the question, even though he craves the answer. He stares at the boy’s face, trying to see some other face in it, some face he can recognize.
Mark understands the unasked question, and it makes him laugh, not pleasantly. “Who is my mother? That’s up to you.”
No familiar feature can show through that mask of rage. Koo stares and stares, but it’s impossible. And if he knew, would it make anything better? Cozier, more familiar? Familiar; family. He gestures helplessly: “I never knew.”
“You have cockroaches,” Mark whispers at him, gloating, intimate. “Cockroaches in the walls.
“Don’t. Please.”
But Mark is no longer under control. The break that Koo feared has occurred; suddenly everything is different: “
“Wait.”
“You shouldn’t have asked, Koo. You really shouldn’t have asked.”
Mark’s face is closer, larger, filling Koo’s vision; a stone face, not human. Mark’s hand reaches out again, this time rests on Koo’s shoulder, a neutral weight like a board or a hangman’s rope. Everything drains from Mark’s stone face, and Koo closes his eyes.
The other hand touches Koo’s trembling throat at the same instant that Peter’s voice says, “Well, now what?”
The hands lift from Koo’s body. He opens his eyes, seeing the expressionless face receding, Peter in the open doorway at the other end of the room. Koo droops against the window and Peter comes deeper into the room, saying, “Mark? What are you doing?”
“A discussion,” Mark says, and gives Koo a flat look. “Isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” Koo says.
“Discussion?” Peter looks from face to face. “About what?”
“A private discussion.” Mark looks again at Koo, again says, “Isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” Koo says.
Peter continues to frown at them both, then shrugs, giving it up. “Get dressed, Koo,” he says. “There’s been a change of plan.”
At ten past four, Mike Wiskiel was in the Butler Aviation waiting room at Los Angeles International Airport, awkwardly shaking hands with Lily Davis, wife of the kidnapped man, who had flown with her two sons out from New York in a private plane owned by one of the companies that sponsored her husband’s TV specials. Mike was awkward because he knew Lily Davis had a lot of friends back in Washington, and he didn’t know how severely the fuck-up with the transmitter had hurt his chances for getting back there himself. It could be he smelled too bad now for
Meeting the problem head-on, Mike said, “Mrs. Davis, I’m the man who did it wrong last night. I hope very soon to be able to apologize to your husband; in the meantime, let me assure you just how sorry I am for what
