The Comedy is Finished

as I am. Don’t you think I know what you had in mind?” He parodied Ginger’s former manner, more insultingly than accurately: “ ‘Oh, I have a headache, oh I’m going to bed.’ Right out the door, you mean, a quick stop for the anonymous phone tip to the police, and then off to Cold-water Canyon or some such place to work up your alibi—‘I was screwing this young thing, Officer, I never did go to that place in Malibu, it’s all some horrible coincidence.’”

“Horrible, at any rate.”

That Ginger neither denied the charge nor made fun of it was disturbing, but it confirmed Peter in his guess. “I didn’t want you in this, Ginger,” he said, “but now you’re in, and you have to ride it through with the rest of us.”

“Why am I in it? How did the police happen to poke around that house anyway? Some other misjudgment of yours?”

“I have no idea,” Peter said. Privately, he suspected that Mark might have done something, either deliberately or inadvertently, during the time he was gone from the house after the fight with Larry, but he was hesitant to say so, because the accusation might get back to Mark. Peter was not prepared to challenge Mark directly; it was better to keep that killer rage directed outward. With Ginger, on the other hand, the direct approach was best: “The point is, we had to move, and here we are, and now you’re no longer merely our backer, you’re part of the action.”

“And if I walk out? Or do you intend to stand guard over me twenty-four hours a day? Can you really keep an eye on two prisoners at once?”

“If I’m arrested,” Peter said, “the first name I speak will be yours.”

Ginger was still considering that threat, his expression calm but his lips thrust out, when the door opened and Larry entered, looking earnest and troubled and eager to be of help. “Can I join the conversation?” He left the door open.

Peter said, “Where’s Mark?”

“Joyce says she thinks he’s gone for good.” Larry sat to Peter’s right, saying, “Peter, do you have any idea what to do next?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” It had just come to him, while looking at Larry’s obtuse face. “Ginger, I want to make a tape.”

“For the police?”

“They’re my only audience.”

Ginger rose, turning toward the recording equipment, while Larry leaned closer to Peter, speaking in a low and confidential voice, saying, “I was thinking, Peter, maybe we ought to cut our losses.”

The sweet predictability of Larry cheered Peter enormously, after the intricacies of Ginger. Almost laughing, he said, “Larry, you want to turn Koo Davis loose. The answer is no.”

“I just thought—”

“I know what you thought, and what you always think.”

Ginger said, “Sit in this chair here. You want to make the tape yourself?”

“That’s right.” Peter switched chairs, and Ginger positioned a microphone on the white countertop in front of him, saying, “Don’t sit too close when you talk. Just the way you are now.”

“All right.”

“We should close that door. We’ll get outside noise.”

“Leave it.” Peter was irritable, impatient. “We’re not interested in high fidelity. They’ll understand the message.”

Ginger shrugged. “Let’s make sure we’re using blank tape.” He turned away, seating himself at the controls. He hit switches, and a faint hissing sound came from concealed loudspeakers.

Larry said, “Peter, are you sure you don’t want to discuss it first, get it down on paper?”

“I know exactly what I want to say.”

“All right,” Ginger said. “It’s clean. Give me a sentence for level.”

Peter looked at the microphone. “This is Rock,” he said, “Commander of the People’s Revolutionary Army.” ‘Rock,’ the original meaning in Greek for the name ‘Peter,’ was the code name he’d used ever since first going underground.

Ginger touched switches and dials, and from the speakers Peter’s voice sounded, repeating the sentence. Listening, with that sense of foreignness that people invariably feel when hearing their own recorded voices, Peter decided he approved; the voice sounded determined, cold, capable of backing up its words with action.

“All right,” Ginger said. “Start from the beginning.”

The beginning was to repeat that self-identification, and go on from there: “We are holding, as a prisoner of war, a collaborator named Koo Davis, and have demanded in exchange for his return the release of ten political prisoners in American jails. The official response has been a farcical television broadcast, in which seven of these ten have been obviously, blatantly forced to claim they do not want to be released.

“The American public will not be deceived, and the People’s Revolutionary Army is not deceived. Does the U.S. government think it can fool the world? Can seven out of ten people not want to leave prison? The staging of this mockery was as clever and professional as we might expect from an organization with all the resources of the United States government behind it, but the result can’t hold up. Simple reflection will show that it can’t be true.

“Therefore, our demand remains the same. The ten people on the list will be removed from their prisons and flown to Algeria, where they will be free to make any statements they choose. If any of them wish to return to prison, of course they may, but let’s hear them say it once they are free of the threatening power of the United States government.

“The speed with which the government’s comedy was assembled shows that our original deadline was not too tight. This is Thursday night. By noon tomorrow, California time, the government will announce its decision. If the answer is no, Koo Davis dies. If the answer is yes, the government will then have twenty-four hours, until noon on Saturday, to release the ten prisoners and place them on public view in Algeria. If the government fails, Koo Davis dies. There are two deadlines; noon tomorrow for the government response, noon Saturday for the release of the prisoners. Fail to meet either deadline and Koo Davis dies. There will be no more negotiation. A second television farce like the first will result in Koo Davis’ immediate death. As a demonstration that our patience is exhausted, and that the comedy is finished, we are enclosing one of Koo Davis’ ears.”

“Good God, Peter!” Larry cried.

Clapping his hand over the microphone, Peter said to Ginger, “Did that stupid exclamation get on the tape?”

“If it is, I can erase it.” Ginger was noncommittal. “You really mean to do this, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Even though you know none of those people on television were forced.”

“The laughing has to stop,” Peter said.

“So you do intend to kill Davis.”

“To strengthen our credibility in the future.”

“Credibility.” Ginger shrugged slightly, then said, “And the ear?”

“Peter won’t do that,” Larry abruptly said, angry and scornful. It wasn’t like Larry to show scorn and he was awkward at it, the result looking more like petulance. Turning to Peter, he said, “You’d have Mark do it, go cut the man’s ear off, but Mark isn’t here, he’s run away. Can you do it yourself?”

“I intend to.” Getting to his feet, Peter said, “You two come along, to hold him down.”

26

Koo opens his eyes from confused dreams of family and flight, to find Joyce looming over him, staring down at his face with great intensity. Orienting himself, seeing the mirrored ceiling with himself and Joyce reflected in it like a bad genre painting, Koo clears his husky throat and says, “The soup lady.”

She blinks, as though she’d been lost in thought, then turns to look over her shoulder at the door. “We don’t have much time,” she says.

“We don’t?”

“I’m getting you out of here.”