Laugh Lines

by Ben Bova

  Pandemonium broke out. Alba ran to the powerful arms of her protective husband. The judge banged his gavel so hard the head broke off and fell over the edge of the banc, bopping the semiconscious lawyer on the top of his head. The audience was on its feet, pointing, laughing, roaring. The five defense attorneys were running around in circles. The news reporters stared in frozen amazement.

  And then a shot rang out.

  The Writer, standing on the wooden bench of the rearmost pew, his long topcoat flapping open to reveal a veritable arsenal of small arms, held a smoking automatic pistol over his head.

  “Nobody move!” he screamed, his scrawny face red, his eyes wild. “You’re all my hostages! First one to make a move gets a bullet!”

  The Five O’Clock News

  Bobbi Burnheart elbowed her way through a phalanx of carefully coiffed and jacketed news reporters to a spot where she could be seen dramatically posed against the besieged courthouse. Behind her trailed the highly trained team of dedicated specialists who made Ms. Burnheart the most popular TV anchorperson in New York: her hairdresser, her makeup man, her wardrobe manager, and her speech coach.

  Behind them came the camera crew: two disgruntled guys in greasy coveralls carrying twelve-ounce picocameras with integrated lasers that could light Ms. Burnheart beautifully even in the stygian darkness of a sewer during a power blackout at midnight in the middle of a snowstorm; and her ostensible producer, a young and slimly beautiful black woman recently graduated from the Sorbonne who was the only person at the station naive enough to take on powerhouse Bobbi.

  La Burnheart swept a practiced eye across the facade of the courthouse, its graffiti-covered concrete now glaring with police spotlights. Several battalions of New York police, SWAT teams, FBI agents, and National Guard troops had cordoned off the courthouse.

  Bobbi Burnheart, though, daintily hiked her miniskirt up over her hips (revealing nothing except support panty hose) and clambered over the blue sawhorses that the NYPD had set up as a barrier.

  “Hey, you can’t cross . . .”

  Bobbi flashed her dazzling shark’s smile at the policeman pointing his stun club at her. “It’s all right, Officer. Channel 50.”

  “My orders . . .”

  But Bobbi had already turned to her two cameramen. “Get him on tape. Be sure to get his badge and name tag in focus.”

  They grumbled but rolled twelve seconds worth of tape. The police officer, not certain if this was a chance at fame on TV or a warning not to infringe on the First Amendment, forced a smile for the cameras and then turned and ran to find his sergeant.

  “Which windows?” Bobbi asked, now that they were in a clear space. She noted, somewhat smugly, that none of the other TV crews had dared to cross the police barricade even though she had. It confirmed her opinion of her supposed competitors. Of course, none of them had doting fathers who owned a chain of TV stations and a couple of U.S. senators.

  The black producer consulted a smudged photocopy of the courthouse’s floor plan, then pointed to a row of windows on the fourth floor. “Up there—I think.”

  “Good enough,” said Bobbi. “Nobody will know the difference.”

  For the next several minutes her team of dresser, hair stylist, and makeup man fussed over her while the two cameramen and the producer talked over the best angles to shoot. Finally Bobbi was ready. She looked splendid in her toothpaste-tube rucked and pleated kelly green dress, her golden hair shining in the glow of the police spotlights like a goddess’s helmet. The cameramen knelt at her feet to make a dramatic picture of Bobbi against the courthouse facade.

  The producer put one hand to the nearly invisible communicator plugged into her left ear, cocking her head slightly to hear the voices from the control center at the station. She held up three fingers of her other hand, then two, one, and finally pointed straight at Bobbi—who instantly put on her dazzling shark’s smile.

  “Inside the windows you see behind me, a courtroom drama unlike any courtroom drama you’ve ever seen is being played out against the lives of dozens of men and women.”

  Staring earnestly into the nearer of the two picocams, she went on, “At approximately three-thirty this afternoon an unknown gunman seized courtroom number two, up there on the fourth floor, and has been holding several dozen people hostage, including the presiding judge, Justice Hanson H. Fish.”

  The producer was madly scribbling prompting words on a long roll of what looked like toilet paper and holding them up for Bobbi whenever Ms. Burnheart took a breath between lines.

  “The case being tried involved the publishing industry. It was not a criminal case. No one knows who the gunman is, or what his demands are. He has released two hostages, the guard and bailiff on duty in the courtroom, but has issued no statement as to his reasons for taking the hostages or what he intends to do with them.”

  Breath. New set of prompts.

  “Shortly after releasing the two men, a fusillade of shots was heard. But no one knows who has been killed, if anyone. The chances are that human bodies are bleeding inside that courtroom, while the police, the FBI, and the National Guard wait outside, trying to avoid further bloodshed, if possible.”

  Breath. New set of prompts.

  “For now, all we can do is wait. And pray.”

  Turning toward the courthouse, but making certain that her face was dramatically profiled against the spotlighted courthouse facade, Bobbi Burnheart ad-libbed: “Will justice be done in courtroom two?”

  Twenty-Six

  Carl Lewis thought of a line from the Statue of Liberty as he gazed around the courtroom. “The wretched refuse of your teeming shores.”

  The courtroom looked like the steerage class of an old banana boat. Thirty-eight men and women sat, stood, sprawled in various attitudes of fear, frustration, despair, or exasperation, waiting for some unknown fate at the hands of an obvious lunatic.

  The gunman had released the two uniformed men, the bailiff and the overweight guard who was supposed to stand duty at the courtroom’s entrance door. Then the news reporters, huddled along the wall opposite the empty jury box, demanded that at least one of them be released too. The gunman had lined them against the wall and then used one of his semiautomatic pistols to shoot each and every one of their laptop computers where they rested on the press table. The reporters cringed. Two of them fainted. When the smoke cleared, they gaped at the wreckage of their precious laptops. And stopped making demands.

  Shortly after the shooting, the New York Police Department, true to its standard operating procedure for hostage situations, had cut off the building’s lights, heat, and water. It was not cold in the courtroom, not this early in the evening. And the police spotlights outside threw slanting beams of glaring bright light that bounced off the high ceiling and scattered an eerie harsh illumination across the courtroom. The problem was water. The women were already complaining about toilet facilities. The only one that the gunman would allow them to use was in the judge’s chambers, where there was no exit except through the courtroom. At least a half dozen women were lined up there constantly.

  Carl sat on the same stiff bench he had been sitting on when the gunman had seized the courtroom. His back hurt and his buttocks were numb. Lori had stretched out on the bench, looking emotionally drained, and fallen into an exhausted sleep half an hour earlier. Carl had taken off his tweed jacket and bundled it into a rough pillow that now rested under Lori’s soft cheek.

  He gazed down at her, breathing the slow steady rhythm of deep sleep. She looked so beautiful, so desirable. He knew that he loved her, and he would do anything to keep her from harm, even face death itself if he had to.

  The gunman was up at the judge’s chair, peering out at the windows that glared with police spotlights. He had taken off his shabby topcoat and spread his arsenal of pistols and submachine guns across the top of the judge’s banc. Since he had taken over the courtroom nearly three hours earlier, he had spoken hardly a word.

  Ralph Malzone and
Scarlet Dean had moved toward the rear of the courtroom, where they sat with their arms wrapped protectively around one another. Mr. and Mrs. Bunker were at the defense table, holding hands and speaking in low, earnest whispers. P.T. Junior had moved from the back of the courtroom to sit with his parents. The five defense attorneys were under the table, cowering.

  “Well, son, I don’t know how long you intend to hold us here,” the cowboy lawyer called to the gunman, “but sooner or later you’re gonna need a good defense attorney.” He got up from his chair at the plaintiffs table and reached into the breast pocket of his suede jacket.

  The gunman jerked as if a spasm had struck him and grabbed the Uzi submachine gun from the collection spread out before him.

  “Sit down!” he screeched.

  The lawyer took a small white oblong from his pocket and held it above his head. “I just wanna give y’all my card. You’re gonna need a lawyer . . . .”

  “And you’re going to need a mortician if you don’t sit down!”

  The lawyer sat.

  “And shut up! Keep your lying goddamned mouth shut!”

  Far in the back of the courtroom, Lieutenant Moriarty sat in frustrated silence. He was unarmed, since the hospital personnel had routinely taken his gun, badge, and other possessions from him and stashed them in the hospital’s storage center. His unauthorized leavetaking had prevented him from claiming his stuff.

  Patience, he told himself. Patience, Jack old boy. This nutcake can’t stay awake forever. Sooner or later he’ll doze off, and that’s when you grab him.

  Provided you don’t fall asleep yourself, first.

  Moriarty studied the lean, lank, scruffy gunman. He can’t be the Retiree Murderer. This isn’t the same style at all, and therefore not the same man. But the murderer is in this courtroom, I know it. I can feel it. And so is his next intended victim.

  He easily identified P.T. Bunker, Jr., up front with his mother and father. But try as he might, he could not find anyone who looked like the man who had tried to kill him. The harsh glow from the reflected searchlights cast strange shadows across faces, making it difficult to see people’s eyes.

  The murderer sat across the courtroom from Moriarty. He had recognized the police lieutenant shortly after the gunman had taken over, and wondered why Moriarty had not simply shot the maniac between the eyes and gotten this whole ordeal over with. He trusted that his disguise would keep him safe enough; after all, Moriarty hardly got even a moment’s glance at him when he had attacked the lieutenant with the poisonous orchid’s thorn.

  But what was Moriarty doing here, in this courtroom? And why didn’t the poison kill him, as it should have? The murderer had taken off his trenchcoat and folded it into a neat little cushion that he now sat on, fairly comfortably. He fingered the slim plastic box in his right jacket pocket. Inside it was another poisonous thorn from the deadly Rita Hayworth orchid.

  Should I knock off young Bunker while that police detective is so close? he asked himself. Probably not. Although—if the cops try to break in and grab the idiot up there who’s taken us hostage, there’s bound to be a lot of shooting. Perhaps I could get to Bunker Junior then and do the job, in all the confusion.

  Wait and see, the murderer told himself. Wait and see.

  One other man was counseling himself to be patient: Justice Hanson Hapgood Fish. He sat slumped on the witness chair, unwilling to move any farther from his rightful seat of authority. He glowered up at the man who had taken over his chair. The blue veins in his forehead throbbed with unconcealed fury. This mangy bum, this crazed idiot, has taken over my courtroom. My courtroom! He’s allowing all sorts of people to use my private toilet. Who knows what kinds of sickies and perverts are pissing in my bowl?

  Judge Fish tried to force himself to be calm, without much success. He closed his eyes and imagined himself as the Grand Inquisitor of the good old days in Spain, with this filthy disgusting derelict stretched on the rack. “Boil the oil,” Justice Fish muttered to himself. “Heat the branding irons.”

  He smiled cruelly.

  “You people all think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

  All eyes shifted to the man up at the banc.

  “You think I’m just some wild-eyed fruitcake who’s gone berserk. I know what you’re thinking. I can see it in your faces. Well, I’m not crazy. And even if I am, it’s you people who drove me to it.” He waved a heavy Colt pistol at the staring audience.

  The Writer enjoyed the attention. “You think you’re so damned high and mighty. Well, I’m here to tell you that you ain’t. I’m here to show you that I’m just as good as you are. Maybe better.”

  He rambled on for hours, as the night grew colder but not darker, thanks to the spotlights flooding through the windows. People curled up on the hard wooden benches and tried to sleep. Eventually the Writer stopped speaking to them. But he dared not close his eyes.

  From time to time the telephone back in Judge Fish’s chambers rang, but the Writer would not let anyone answer it.

  “I’m not ready to talk to them yet. I still got plenty I want to tell you people.”

  But he lapsed into a grudging silence, and the thirty-eight hostages drifted into little knots of twos and threes.

  “Do you think we’ll get out of this alive?” Scarlet Dean asked in a small, frightened voice.

  “Sure we will,” said Ralph Malzone with a certainty that he did not feel. He put his arm around Scarlet protectively, and felt her trembling. “We’ll be okay, Red. We’ll be fine, you’ll see.”

  “As long as you’re with me,” Scarlet said, fighting back tears of terror. “I can stand anything if you’re with me, Ralph.”

  “I’m right beside you, baby. All the way.”

  Pandro T. Bunker was also comforting his wife as the chill of November began to seep into the unheated courtroom.

  “It’s all my fault,” Alba Bunker was saying softly. “If I hadn’t pushed you into this Cyberbooks project . . .”

  “No, no,” said P.T. “It’s my fault. I’ve hidden myself away from the world for too long, left all the burden of running the business on your shoulders.”

  Junior discreetly got up from his chair beside them and started wandering aimlessly down the central aisle of the courtroom. He knew his mother and father wanted to say things to each other that should be said only when they were alone. Briefly he thought about the five lawyers huddled beneath their table. So they hear Mom and Pop coo at each other; they won’t understand a word of it. They’re lawyers, not human beings.

  “That cruise we took this past summer,” P.T. was saying. “I’ve been thinking . . .”

  “It was a wonderful cruise,” she murmured.

  “Wouldn’t it be great if we could cruise the seas all the time? Live on a boat. A sailboat. Just sail to anyplace that strikes our fancy—Tahiti, New Zealand, Copenhagen, Greece, Buffalo.”

  “Buffalo?”

  “I’ve never been to Buffalo. I’ve never seen Niagara Falls. I’ve never been anyplace. I’ve always been too damned busy with the company.”

  “You’ve had all the responsibilities of business . . . .”

  ”We’ve had all the responsibilities. For too long a time, dearest. We’re not getting any younger.”

  Alba smiled up into his handsome face. “Oh, I don’t know. That cruise took ten years off your age, or more.”

  Smiling back at her tenderly, P.T. answered, “What I mean, darling, is that we’ve worked hard all our lives and now we should start to enjoy what we’ve made.”

  “Enjoy?”

  He nodded. Glancing up at the mumbling, half-drowsing gunman, P.T. said, “If . . . I mean, when we get out of this, you and I are going to buy a yacht and sail it around the world.”

  “But the business!”

  “Let somebody else worry about the business. Why should we kill ourselves over it? Let’s enjoy our lives while we can.”

  Alba blinked with surprise. Let someone else take over Bunker Books? Leave it
all and go sailing around the world? A voice in her head warned against it. But in less than a moment it was drowned out by a surge of joy and wonder and gratitude at the marvelous, wise insight that her loving husband had just shared with her.

  “Pandro, you’re right,” Alba heard herself say. “Leave the business to Woody or whoever wants to slave over it. We deserve to enjoy the rest of our lives!”

  Carl was half-stupefied with the need to sleep. But he refused to let his eyes close. Sooner or later that lunatic up there was going to nod off, and when he did Carl was determined to race up to the banc and disarm the madman.

  Beside him, Lori stirred and pulled herself up to a sitting position. “What time is it?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.

  Glancing at the glowing digits on his wristwatch/calculator, Carl replied, “Almost midnight.”

  “The police haven’t done anything?”

  “Guess they’re afraid of starting a bloodbath.”

  Lori shivered. “It’s cold!”

  Carl put his jacket over her shoulders and then wrapped his arm around her. She snuggled so close to him that he could feel her body warmth even through the jacket.

  “When will it end?” Lori asked.

  Carl shrugged, and kept his bleary eyes on the gunman.

  The Writer kept on talking because he knew that once he stopped, the temptation to sleep would overwhelm him. He was babbling about his life, spinning out his autobiography for his captive audience.

  “ . . . and I couldn’t afford to go to college. Couldn’t get a scholarship, even though I had good marks in high school. I wasn’t a member of any recognized minority. I thought about changing my religion, or dyeing my skin, or even a sex-change operation. I wondered how come a group of people who make up fifty-one percent of the population could be classified as a minority. But there wasn’t a college in the land that would let me in. Not one . . . .”

  I ought to ease on up toward the front of the courtroom, thought Lieutenant Moriarty. This boob can’t keep droning on like that forever. He’s putting everybody to sleep, and sooner or later he’s going to doze off himself.