“We can’t take anymore,” Larry told him. “It has to end.”
Peter stared at the phone. “You utter fool! Now how can we deal with them?”
“Oh, Peter, do you still believe in it all?”
Larry no longer believed. His long morning of thought had led him at last to the understanding that it had all been a mistake, a stupid tragic mistake. He was remembering now something he hadn’t thought of in years; a motto on the wall of his parents’ bedroom back home, cut from some old magazine by his mother and put in a frame from Woolworth’s: Things done in violence have to be done over again. Why had he never read that, or remembered it, or understood it? Why had he always behaved as though meaningful change in the world must be instantaneous, violent, and total?
Hell is paved with good intentions, and Hell was where Larry now found himself. Good intentions had led at last to mere absurdity; himself pushing on a barricaded door, armed with a revolver, trying to get at a terrified old man. Shame and self-disgust had grown in him while he and Peter pressed uselessly at that door. The endless insistent ringing of the telephone had finally been the last straw, and this emptying of the revolver Larry’s last violence. “I’m giving myself up,” he said. “You do what you want. I’m giving myself up.”
“Oh, no, you’re not! No, you’re not! If we’re going to get out of this, we have to show a united front.”
Larry stared. “Get out of this? Peter, we’re going to die here today!”
“I’m not!” Peter’s eyes were open wide and glaring, and pink spittle flew with the agitation of his speech. “I’m going to live, I’m going to come back, I’m going to go on.” Then he blinked down at the destroyed telephone. “Extensions,” he muttered. “We can still make a deal.” And he hurried away to the kitchen.
Weary, Larry sagged onto the sofa and sat there leaning forward, head drooping, the empty revolver held slackly between his knees. He didn’t care what happened now.
Peter came back from the kitchen, calmer and colder. “Well, you’ve done it,” he said. “The phone’s out of order.”
“It doesn’t matter, Peter.”
“It does matter! Larry, I’m not going to finish here. I’m getting out, and you’re going to help. You’re going to.”
Apathetic, Larry looked up. “What do you want?”
“Convince Mark to come out. You can do it. We can’t force our way in there. Convince him we just need Davis as a hostage, so we can get away. Convince him nobody’s going to get hurt.”
“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.