The Comedy is Finished

19

Blindfolded, Koo stumbles up the stairs, urged on by nervous hands. Their nervousness is the only thing he finds reassuring about all this; it suggests circumstances aren’t quite as hopeless for Koo as they seem. On the other hand, maybe the nervousness simply means they’re taking him away now to kill him; after all, it’s easier to dispose of a body if you can keep it alive long enough to walk to the disposal site.

Koo wishes he could get his mind off such things, but death is in his thoughts at the moment, what with one thing and another. The “one thing” being the fact, the indubitable fact, that Peter’s arrival in the underground room interrupted a murder; Mark was going to strangle Koo at that moment, there’s no question. And “another” being the additional fact that he is still a kidnap victim in the hands—nervous or not—of crazies.

Head of the stairs. As well as being blindfolded, Koo has his hands tied behind his back, so that when his shoulder bumps painfully into a doorpost he very nearly falls backwards down the stairs; but impatient hands shove at him from behind, he brushes through the doorway, and now he’s marched for the second time through this house he’s never seen, and out to warm, somewhat moist air, and over a path that has the unevenness of brick. The hands stop him, and Peter’s voice says, close to his ear, “You’ll be traveling in the trunk of the car now, Koo. We’re going to lift you into it, so just relax.”

“Oh, I’m relaxed. It’s the suit that’s tense.”

“That’s right, Koo.”

Hands grasp him, shoulders and legs and waist, lifting him off the ground. His knee hits something metal, the top of his head grazes something else, and then he feels the rough hardness below him as they deposit him on his left side, knees bent. “Don’t move, Koo,” Peter’s voice says, from farther away, and the trunk lid slams, with a disagreeable implosion feeling in Koo’s ears and eyes. And in his nostrils there’s a rank oil-and-rubber odor. “I never was a rubber freak,” Koo mutters, and sings quietly to himself, “I was stuffed in a trunk, in Pocatello, I-daho.” But then he stops, and his mouth corners turn down, and he mumbles, “I may be losing my sense of humor.”

His clever message to the FBI; useless. Obviously nobody caught it, or they’d have been here by now, and if they ever do notice it’ll be too late.

The others are getting into the car; back here, the jounce as the weight of each body is added to the car is very pronounced. Bunk-bunk-bunk-bunk-bunk; all five of them coming along for the ride. And the slamming of four doors, and then the surprisingly loud sound of the engine starting up, followed by the heavy-seas motion as the car first backs in a half-circle and then moves forward.

Carbon monoxide? Death has so many threads tied to Koo, it’s positively discouraging. All roads lead to death.

God, but this trunk is uncomfortable! Doubled up in here like a shrimp, bouncing and bumping with every move of the car, Koo is beginning to feel like a potato in an automatic peeler, and when he starts picking at the cord holding his wrists it’s initially only in an effort to get into a more comfortable position.

It takes forever. The fingers of his right hand can just about reach the knot, or one of the knots, but the way the car flings him around he keeps losing the damn thing. Fortunately there are fairly frequent stops, apparently for traffic lights—with this cargo in the trunk, the gang has apparently decided to avoid the freeways, where police spot-checks are not an unknown occurrence—and at each stop Koo loosens the knot a bit more, until all at once it becomes easy, it unravels and unravels, and his hands are free!

Oh, thank God for that. Koo rolls onto his back, his bent knees still forced over to the left by the nearness of the trunk lid, and reaches up both hands to shove the blindfold away onto his forehead. Then he blinks, in total darkness, and for a few minutes simply lies there, resting from his exertions and enjoying the change of position.

The next time he moves, his right elbow smacks into something unyielding. “Ouch!” He reaches over with his left hand to massage the elbow, and his knuckles graze the same thing; he pats it, explores it with his fingers, and realizes it’s the latch for the trunk lid.

Oh ho. Is it possible that—? “Just let me do this, God,” Koo whispers, “and I’ll never say a fucking bad word again.”

The first thing is to roll over on his right side, so he’ll be facing the latch and can put both hands to work on it. The problem is, this trunk is both too narrow and too low; in order to get his legs from the left to the right he had to double them up like one of those exercise mavens on TV, bring them across his chest with knees and shoes both scraping the lid, and then discover that the lid slants down and he just can’t wedge his legs in there. He tries, gives up, tries to move the legs back to the left, and finds he can’t do that either. “Jesus Christ, I’m stuck. And what a position. Next thing, some crazed rapist will come along.”

This is ridiculous. The trunk lid presses down on his legs, his thighs press down on his stomach and chest, and he can feel the first twinges of cramp in both hip joints. “And that, children, is how the pretzel was invented.”

Got to—Got to get out of this fix! Koo’s flailing left hand finds the curving metal hinge piece and he clutches at it, pulling hard, at the same time pushing at the metal wall to his right. Slowly, very slowly, his body scrapes leftward across the rough pebbled surface of the trunk, gradually becoming easier, then all at once absolutely simple. He rolls to his right, his legs unfold as much as the narrow space will permit, and his hands reach out to touch that blessed latch.

If only there was some light in this goddamn place, but the rubber grommet around the lid makes a perfect seal. “I feel like I’m in a clam,” Koo mutters. If he still smoked, he’d have his old Zippo lighter with his profile-logo, and he could give himself some illumination with that. “Yeah, and if I was in Turkestan I wouldn’t be in this Christmas package here at all.”

His fingertips are working out the details of the latch; a metal piece shaped like a crook’d finger, chunked from below tight against two metal bars about an inch apart. What’s at the other end of the metal finger? A circular thing, some countersunk screw heads—Ow! Something sharp. This must be the lock mechanism, where the key is put in from outside. How does it work on the inside? Pushing at the metal finger doesn’t do any good. The circular thing won’t turn. In fact, none of the parts seem prepared to move.

While the car continues to jounce along Koo tugs and pokes, his fingers losing their sensitivity from hitting too hard too often against unyielding metal. And that sharp thing—What is that? The lip of something, he can’t quite figure it out—Goddamn it, the thing moves! It’s a lever or something, the only part of the whole gizmo that moves, and the only way to make it move is to push directly against the sharp cutting lip with the ball of the thumb—no, with the flat part of the thumbnail—and there’s no way to tell while he’s cutting himself to pieces here if he’s even doing any good, pushing this sharp lever bit by bit to the right. It won’t stay where he pushes it, but springs right back every time he lets go. Okay; goodbye, thumbnail. Gritting his teeth, pressing with the heel of his other hand against the ball of his braced thumb, Koo puuuuuuuusssssshhhhhheeeesss.

Snap!

Light, daylight, the trunklid lifts an inch, two inches—

It stops. Koo, now squinting against the unexpected daylight, sees the metal finger hooked against just one of the two metal bars. So that’s the way it works. He can see it now, a safety mechanism, it locks at one level and then at another level, it—

The car hits a bump. The lid snaps down. Darkness.

“Oh, shit!” The fucker’s locked itself again!

Koo pauses to regroup, his cut thumb in his mouth, sucking thoughtfully. The car stops briefly, then starts again. Jounce jounce.

Okay. It opened once, it’ll open again. This time, Koo can hold it up in the safety-lock position by wedging his knees against the lid, giving him light to examine the lock more closely. Then, the next time the car comes to a stop, he’ll spring the second lock and get the hell out of here.

Jesus, is it possible? Home again, I’m going home again. I’ll call Jill, she can spend the whole night. I don’t care if I get it up or not. Just to see a friendly face, sleep nestled on a soft tit, wake up safe and happy in a bed full of warm and willing woman. Oh, boy. Oh, boy.

Gingerly, he reaches out to the lock again, presses, moves the sharp-edged lever to the right, farther, farther, farther...

Snap. Light, the slit widening, narrowing, widening, the car jouncing on rough pavement, Koo pushing up with his knees, in a desperate hurry because the slit is closing again, the lid is slamming down, it whacks his right kneecap, he pushes up, digs his heel in against the bottom of the trunk—and the lid stays up.

Now. Just stop, fellas. Just a brief little halt for a traffic light or a pedestrian crossing or a red stop sign or any damn thing you want. Just pause, and old Koo will be out of this trunk like Venus out of the sea, like toothpaste out of the tube, like the human cannonball—

Slowing. The car is slowing. “Ohhhhhh, Jesus,” Koo whispers. “Oh, I’m scared.”

Nothing to be afraid of. When the car stops, he’ll be up and out, into the nearest house or store depending on neighborhood, or maybe into the next car back. Something like that. The point is, he has a known face, people will recognize him, they’ll know him and help him. All Koo has to do is get out of the car fast, and everything will be all right.

“Feet, don’t fail me now.” Oh, shit, what if he’s too scared to move? What if his legs give out?

Well, it won’t happen, that’s all.

Slowing, slowing. Will you stop?

Yes. The car stops.

“Oh, boy. Oh, boy.” Teeth chattering, gibbering words without knowing it, Koo claws at the lock, forces himself to lower his knees so the lid descends, descends, just enough so he can shove that metal finger back. Snap, it flips away, the trunk lid yawns upward and Koo, eyes staring, mouth strained wide open, lunges up onto his elbows, kicks his feet over the rim of the trunk, shoves himself up, slips, falls back, shoves up again, lunges, gasps, groans, grabs the rear bumper and pulls himself out of the trunk; losing his balance, toppling forward onto blacktop.

Up. Up. Koo rises, staring around for houses, cars, people, rescue, civilization, assistance, succor, aid, help—

Nothing. Where in holy hell is this?

It’s a fucking desert. Scrubland on all sides, no houses, no traffic, just this intersection with the stop sign. And the other sign: Mulholland Drive.

Oh, no. Mulholland Drive, that’s the road running east and west along the ridge line of the hills, with Los Angeles to the south and the Valley to the north. Some parts of Mulholland, particularly the eastern end near Hollywood, are as built up as any residential section anywhere, but much of the Drive is virtually unpopulated and parts of it are still dirt, not even paved.

What a fucking asshole way to build a major city, with a deserted mountaintop desert right smack in the middle of it! Peter and his pals, to be absolutely safe, have been taking back roads toward where their destination is, and that’s why there’s been so much jouncing. And here they come, boiling out of the car, all four doors flaring open. They have seen the trunk lid in the rearview mirror.

Terrified, Koo looks around in all directions. The road they’ve just come up angles away steeply downhill through pines and shrubbery back toward the Valley. To left and right Mulholland Drive meanders along the ridge-line; way to hell and gone that way, east, he can see a couple of houses, but he’d never get that far. He can’t outrun these people.

Hide; it’s the only chance. While the gang is still clambering out of the car, Koo makes his dash, across the road and out over dusty tan earth, low shrubbery, stunted low trees, then a steep stony slope, his feet scrabbling for purchase, dust rising, half the goddamn San Fernando Valley visible out there far below, and nobody to help. Voices shout behind him, he clutches at the rough trunks and branches of stunted pine trees, not quite falling, tottering, careening and blundering down the hill, directly into a tangled mass of prickly shrubs, knee-high, waist-high, covered with thorns, all too thick to force his way through, so that he wades at an angle to the left, stumbles into a tiny rain-formed gully making a deep narrow wedge-shaped cut into the shrubbery, drops to hands and knees, crawls down the gully under the thorny branches, deeper into the brush, finally turning, gasping, staring, peering out past branches and leaves and thorns, his mouth dry with dust and fear, the dust-stained sweat pouring down his face as he stops, and waits, and listens:

“He came this way!”

“He’s hiding someplace! In the bushes!”

“He can’t get far! He can’t get away!”

“Circle to the left!”

“Koo! Koo!” That’s Peter’s voice, uncomfortably close. “Don’t make it tougher on yourself, Koo, we’re going to find you anyway! Don’t waste our time, Koo!”

Screw you, Mac. Koo knows it’s no good, his luck is rotten, he isn’t going to get away, but he’s damned if he’ll make it easy for them. “Do your own work,” he mutters, and closes his eyes, and waits with his face turned away.

“Here he is!” Larry’s voice, the son of a bitch. “I see his legs.”

“Come out of there, you old bastard!” That’s Peter, sounding shrill and angry. “Larry, Mark, drag him out of there!”

Hands grab at his ankles, tugging at him, and he says, “All right, all right, I’ll come out.” But they won’t let him do it himself; they insist on dragging him out, back bumping on the stones, branches and thorns picking at the arms he holds protectively over his face.

They’re all clustered there, panting, on the steep slope. Larry and Mark pick Koo up, get him on his feet, and angry-faced Peter comes over, glares briefly, then deliberately punches Koo hard on the left cheek. Koo staggers, and would fall backward into the bushes if Larry weren’t still holding his arm. “Peter!” Larry cries, reproach in his voice. “You don’t have to do that!”

“I’m sick of this old man,” Peter says, and comes close to Koo again, glowering into Koo’s eyes, saying, “Don’t try anything else. I’m not feeling patient today.”

“You’re a nasty son of a bitch,” Koo tells him. His mouth is too dry with dust and fear, or he’d spit in the bastard’s lousy face.

And Peter knows it; look at him withdraw a pace, a fake superior smile on his lips. “That’s right, Koo,” he says. “I am a nasty son of a bitch. You remember that, and watch your step.” To the others he says, “Bring him back to the car,” and turns away.