The Comedy is Finished

“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.

At the sound of the first shot, Peter leaped to his feet from the living room sofa, staring around in terror and disbelief. This wasn’t the right way! He started instinctively toward the glass doors leading to the cantilevered deck, wanting to see what had gone wrong, but then the firing started in earnest, and two of the glass panels ahead of him shattered as they were hit. “No no no!” Peter cried, backing away, making patting motions at the outer world with both hands. Not like this! Not like this!

Mike wanted more. Hurrying to stay ahead of everybody else, but at the same time striving to be meticulous, accurate, correct, he squeezed again. Yes! High on the right side of her chest, puffing a ragged red-black hole, straightening her against the glass door when she might have fallen forward. And again, the cartridge leaping from him to her, embedding in her body, thumping in, holding her in place, not letting her fall.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Like spikes into rotten wood, like stakes into soft clay, he pounded the wads of metal into her flesh, watching each bloody crater blossom. Forty or fifty guns were rattling now, light-reflecting glass shards were spraying, the bedroom curtains were whipping and snapping as though in a high wind, other men’s bullets were biting into that body, but it was still first and foremost his. Thump. He spaced them, timed them, placed them to keep her upright, prevent her from falling. Blood and meat obscured the details of her now, someone else’s magnum cartridge swept the top of her head away as though with a scythe, but Mike kept punching, punching, punching into the torso, seven, eight, nine, ten—and the rifle didn’t kick. That was when he knew it hadn’t fired, it was empty, and at last the ragged thing on the porch toppled forward, jerking as it was hit several more times on the way down.

The bedroom was full of buzzing. Angry metal bees swarmed everywhere, stinging and biting, knocking Larry down as he tried to run through the bedroom door into the hall. Eleven bullets struck him, leaving him broken, impaired, profusely bleeding, unconscious, but alive.

Peter, mad with fear, clawed at the carpet, trying to dig down through the living room floor. Blood and saliva ran from his open mouth, tears ran from his eyes, and all he could hear was everything in the world breaking, cracking, splitting, shattering as the bullets flashed through the rooms. He lay chest-down on the floor, gasping, staring wide-eyed at nothing, scrabbling with raw fingertips, shredding his nails, until something burned the back of his neck; a spent bullet, hot from its journey through the air. Screaming, Peter leaped up into the trajectory of half a dozen more.

*

Mike lowered the rifle. The shooting went on and on, like strings of firecrackers on Chinese New Year, the officers around on the roadside firing now as well, pumping hundreds of bullets into the featureless front wall. Mike, breathing heavily, as dazed as though he’d come out of a movie house to bright sunshine, turned and saw Lynsey staring at him in shock, comprehension and rejection.

37

“I want to warn you something,” Koo says. “I did too much USO; when I hear gunfire, I go into my act.” He and Mark are sitting side by side now on the floor at the foot of the bed. In here, the massed shooting outside the house has the lightweight mild quality of dried beans ratting in a coffee can.