The Comedy is Finished

34

Ginger’s bank was in Woodland Hills, down in the flat part of the Valley, not far from his house. However, he was barely a quarter mile up Topanga Canyon Boulevard from the Coast Highway when he saw the flashing red light in his rearview mirror.

Was he speeding? No; but there were cops who liked to hassle expensive or unusual cars just for the hell of it. Irritated, thinking of this as simply more of the bad luck dogging him lately, Ginger pulled into a gravel turnout and rolled to a stop. The Sheriff’s Department car stopped behind him, its red warning lights still revolving, and the driver—deliberately intimidating in his crease-ironed khaki uniform and dark sunglasses—came striding forward in the unhurried fashion of traffic cops everywhere.

Ginger already had his window rolled down and his license and registration waiting in his hand; the object was to get this interruption over with as quickly as possible. The policeman arrived, Ginger wordlessly handed him the documents, and the policeman wordlessly took them. He studied both with glacial slowness until Ginger, hunching his neck so he could look out the window at a steep angle upward to see the policeman’s blank tanned face, finally said, “What’s the trouble, officer?”

“You’re Mr. Merville?”

“Yes, sir.” Ginger was always very polite when under the direct gaze of Authority.

“And this is your vehicle?”

“Yes, sir.” Ginger was faintly aware that another car, a maroon Buick Riviera, had also pulled off onto this turnout, and was stopping ahead of the Thunderbird; but his primary attention remained on the policeman.

“Just wait here a moment,” the policeman said, and crunched away across the gravel toward his own car. Ginger, annoyed and upset but not alarmed, watched him in the rearview mirror, and when next he looked out ahead of his car two men had emerged from the Riviera and were walking in this direction.

Now, belatedly, Ginger got worried. He still didn’t really believe the events in the beach house could have a serious effect upon his own life—for years Peter had only been amusing, a joke, Ginger’s private joke—but the first twinges of doubt, and even of dread, crossed his mind as he watched the two men approach his car. Both were big, tough-looking, middle-aged. One hung back near Ginger’s front fender while the other came forward to speak. Ginger waited for him, and in sudden terror recognized the man just as he spoke:

“Mr. Merville, I am Michael Wiskiel of the Los Angeles office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m afraid I must ask you to step out of the car for a moment.”

Wiskiel; the man on television. “FBI?” Ginger desperately tried for a smile. “For a traffic violation?”

Wiskiel, opening the Thunderbird’s door, said, “If you’d just step out of the car for a moment.”

Drive away. Shift into first, run the second man down (the second fantasy slaughter-by-automobile in fifteen minutes), accelerate over the hills and into the Valley and disappear. Except that it wasn’t possible; how many times had Ginger acknowledged to himself that the life of the fugitive was not for him? Whatever Peter did with his days and nights, however he survived from year to year, Ginger could not possibly live the same way. Whatever happened, Ginger was a creature of civilization, limited to a life within society. Feeling unutterably sorry for himself—the unfairness of it all!—Ginger struggled out of the Thunderbird. Hopelessly but automatically he maintained as much of the pretense as he could: “Is something wrong?”

“You just came from Kenny Heller’s beach house.”

They’ve been watching me! “Well—umm...” He couldn’t quite bring himself to admit it, though he already knew there was no point denying it.

Wiskiel didn’t wait for him to resolve the problem, but went on, asking, “Who did you leave there?”

“No one.” That lie was instinctive.

And not believed: “No one?”

And here, at the edge of doom, hope was born. Wasn’t he after all shrewder than this heavy-jawed cop? Ginger had first begun lying himself successfully out of scrapes when he was barely in kindergarten, and his tongue had never lost its skill. He was clever and devious and bright, and there would never be any reason to abandon hope. “The place was empty,” he said. “At least, no one answered when I rang.”

“You were in the house.”

“But I wasn’t.” Confidence was flowing again, Ginger was pulling himself back from the brink of despair. “Kenny loaned me the place,” he said smoothly, “but I couldn’t find the key. He always used to keep it atop the lintel, but it wasn’t there. I drove over this morning, tried to get in, rang the bell, then went for a walk on the beach. Leaving the car at the house, of course. When I got back I rang again, but still no answer, so I gave up.”

Wiskiel frowned; was uncertainty coming into his expression? He said, “So you saw no one.”

“Not a soul. Obviously, Kenny loaned the place to someone else recently who simply walked off with the key.”

“So if there’s anybody in the house, you wouldn’t be able to help us with information.”

“I’m terribly sorry, but no. And I do wish you’d tell me what this is all about.”

“An FBI matter,” Wiskiel said, being officially distant but not actually hostile. Then, surprisingly, he extended his hand toward Ginger, saying, “Sorry to have troubled you.”

“Not at all,” Ginger said, smiling broadly, in love with himself, reaching out to shake Wiskiel’s hand.

And Wiskiel clamped Ginger’s hand in an incredible grip, so astonishing that Ginger cried out and actually rose on tiptoe. Squeezing, crushing Ginger’s hand in his fist, Wiskiel rasped his thumb and fingers back and forth, grinding the bones of Ginger’s hand. Broken hand—can’t play the bass—extreme pain—these things flashed through Ginger’s mind as he reached in agony with his left hand, clutching at Wiskiel’s blunt hard fingers, crying out, “My God! Don’t!”

Wiskiel pressed forward, his grip hard and tight, his pressure forcing Ginger back against the side of the Thunderbird. “Put your left hand down at your side,” Wiskiel ordered, his voice low and mean, “or I’ll break every bone in your hand.”

“You are break—Ow!” But Ginger obeyed, unable not to obey; his left hand flew to his side and trembled there, clenching and unclenching, while he danced on the balls of his feet, imprisoned by this grip. “Oh, don’t! Oh, please!”

“How many are in the house?”

No, he couldn’t, he couldn’t give himself away like that. “Please!”

Now Wiskiel gripped his own right thumb with his left fist, and ground the knuckles of his left hand into the back of Ginger’s hand, over the small delicate bones. This was ten times the pain, so sharp and severe that the strength went out of his knees as swiftly as though someone had pulled a plug. He would have fallen except for the pressure with which Wiskiel held him against the side of the Thunderbird. “Now,” Wiskiel said, through clenched teeth, and what happened to Ginger’s hand made him scream aloud. But Wiskiel wouldn’t stop, and the blood was draining from Ginger’s head, and he thought: Let me faint, let me faint.

The grinding knuckles paused, but the gripping right hand remained. Wiskiel said, “How many in the house?”

“Oh, please, my hand.” Another police car had pulled up next to the Buick; to take Ginger away, he knew that now. Passing traffic slowed to watch, but no one would stop, no one would rescue him.

A brief excruciating grind: “How many are in the house?”

“Oh! Oh!”

“How many are in the house?”

“FIVE!”

The crushing grip eased, ever so slightly. “Good,” Wiskiel said. “Who’s the leader?”

“Peter—Peter Dinely.”

The second man had come up beside Wiskiel, with notepad and pencil. Ginger was aware of him writing down Peter’s name, as Wiskiel said, “Who else?”

“Somebody named Mark—Larry—I don’t know their last names. And a woman named Liz.”

“What about Joyce Griffith?”

“Joyce.” Although Wiskiel was now merely holding Ginger’s hand in an ordinarily tight grasp, the waves of pain still flowed up the length of his arm and spread through his body, shattering and distracting him. Joyce; he had trouble thinking, remembering the creature making all that food... “She’s dead.”

“How?”

“Mark—Mark killed her. She’s buried in the sand in front of the house.”

“And Koo Davis? Alive or dead?”

He had admitted everything else, but still he hesitated. Koo Davis. To acknowledge familiarity with that name was to slam the door forever.

But Wiskiel was implacable. Another reminiscent squeeze, dragging a groan from Ginger’s throat, and Wiskiel said, harshly, “Is Koo Davis alive or dead?”

“Alive! Alive!”

“Good. Where are they keeping him?”

“Upstairs bedroom. Enclosed, no windows.”

“An inner room,” Wiskiel said. “All right, good. What guns do they have?”

“I don’t know. I swear I don’t know.”

“All right.” And the punishing hand abruptly released its grip. “You can go with these two gentlemen,” Wiskiel said.

Ginger tucked his throbbing hand into his left armpit, hunching down over it. He would not tell them Peter was undoubtedly killing Davis this very second. Petulant, frightened, angry, spiteful, he glared at Wiskiel through tear-filled eyes: “You’re not supposed to treat me this way!”

Wiskiel looked at him without expression. “Tough shit,” he said.