King Death

by Nik Cohn

  When they brought him back to Bakersfield headquarters, the lawmen placed him in a white room without windows and tried to make him suffer. They tied him to a hard-backed chair, took away his hat and gloves and coat, exploded flashbulbs in his face. Then they asked him hundreds and thousands of questions. ‘No comment,’ said the stranger.

  Attorney General Flaherty arrived from Washington, exultant, and with a single sweep of his arm, he flung aside the all-concealing shades. Underneath, he found a face without distinction of any kind. The flesh was pallid, the lips unfirm, the eyes dull and asexual. Clearly, removed from the magic of the cameras, King Death looked just like anyone else.

  For a moment, Flaherty felt the clammiest touch on the back of his neck. Somehow, he had assumed that the King must be special, full of strangeness and mystique, and this absolute normality upset him worse than any deformity. Still, he was too professional to let his disappointment show. Without a word or sign, he rescued the broken shades from underneath a desk and dusted them, and the prisoner was led away to a cell.

  When the news of his capture was released, the first reaction was simply one of shock. King Death had performed so many times without being caught, had displayed such uncanny gifts for escaping, that the public had come to think of him as intangible, like some kind of comic-strip Superman, who could appear and vanish at will, ride the wind, transmogrify himself into any shape that he desired. Yet here he was, for no good reason, with no appropriate drama, trapped like any other mortal: ‘Say what you like,’ said Jerry McGhee. ‘It’s a bit of a letdown.’

  ‘I guess he got tired,’ said Mildred Potterson.

  ‘And who could blame him?’ said big Jim Haggard. ‘All alone on the highway, no place to call his home, not a friend in the world, not even a change of clothes, and a hundred thousand lawmen on his trail, like hounds out of hell – no wonder he grew discouraged.’

  ‘Just the same,’ said Jerry McGhee. ‘It isn’t much of an ending.’

  This sense of anticlimax was increased by the trial itself. Televised live, it opened to ratings of 79.83 per cent and the expectation of most stupendous dramas. As things turned out, however, there were no thrills or treats of any kind.

  Two hundred witnesses came forward in turn, each naming the prisoner as King Death. The prosecution thundered, the cameras rolled, the judge banged away with his gavel. But the man in black made not the slightest response. From first to last, he only said No Comment, even when he was found guilty and sentenced to nine hundred and ninety-nine years in prison. Unguessable behind his cracked and cellophaned shades, he simply reached in his overcoat pocket and brought out his dice, flicking them lightly across the top of the dock.

  For his final close-up, he appeared in iron handcuffs. Guards gripped him by the elbows and flung him into the back of an armoured van. Steel doors slammed in his face, the key was turned in the lock. For a split second, the blank eye was visible beyond the bars, signifying nothing. Then the wagon turned the corner, and King Death was gone for ever.

  ‘Nine hundred and ninety-nine years,’ said Jerry McGhee. ‘By the time he gets paroled, we’ll all be dead and buried.’

  For the first time, the families began to grasp what the situation really meant. So far, they had viewed the capture and trial as a spectacle, one more performance, though sadly substandard. But now that the show was over, and King Death was buried in San Quentin, they were left with the cold realities – no more completions, no more eyes at the window.

  They had been hopelessly spoiled. Under the King’s regime, sensation had become a habit, and they felt lost without it. However hard HBLF and the other networks might try to fill the vacuum, swamping them with new and gleaming images, they would accept no substitutes, and they refused to be consoled.

  Three months passed, and they turned mean and sour. They drank too much, they bickered and sulked. There was continuous quarrelling and a succession of brawls. Deprived of any other outlet, they spent their energies in smashing mirrors, shooting songbirds, scrawling obscenities on the mansion walls.

  At Thanksgiving, in an orgy of vengeance, they attacked the screens with brickbats and hammers, flung them bodily from the balconies, burned them on bonfires. But the following morning, when they awoke, they found that the mangled images had all been restored to their places, as bright and inescapable as ever.

  It was Jerry McGhee who finally broke the spell.

  On a golden evening, rising from his couch, where he had yawned and festered all through the afternoon, he went to his window and, for the first time in sixty-three days, he raised the blinds. Immediately, the room was flooded with dazzling sunlight. ‘It isn’t fair,’ he said.

  ‘What isn’t?’ said Martha, half-asleep.

  ‘To lock him away like this. To chain him in a dungeon for all time,’ said Jerry. ‘And what in hell’s name for? Truthfully, when you get right down to cases, what was his crime?’

  ‘Twelve networked killings,’ said Barney Brannigan.

  ‘But who were his victims? Only Commies and creeps, and traitors, and alien perverts, who deserved everything that they got.’

  ‘True enough,’ said Charley Mitchell. ‘They was scum.’

  ‘Un-Americans,’ said Jerry, simply. ‘They should have been swept up years ago and flushed away like vermin, back into the sewers, where they rightfully belonged.’

  ‘But they weren’t,’ said Mildred Potterson.

  ‘Of course they weren’t – they were pampered and spoonfed, coddled like pet poodles, and they spread their poison everywhere, while the law stood by and picked its nose.’

  Far away on the second balcony, Seaton sat in company with Mort Mossbacher and J Jones Dickerson. Together they watched and listened, and the Englishman dipped his fingers deep inside a jar of homemade curds: ‘And then came King Death,’ said Jerry McGhee. ‘And it turned him sick to his stomach.’

  ‘What did?’ asked his wife.

  ‘The treachery,’ said Jerry. ‘He saw his country betrayed and degraded, everything that he loved being dragged in the gutters, and in the end he exploded.’

  ‘A man sees red; it’s only natural,’ said big Jim Haggard.

  ‘He was driven to desperate measures,’ said Jerry. ‘Maddened with rage and shame, he tackled the whole evil bunch single-handed and vowed not to quit until the land was freed from snakes. Maybe he went too far, maybe he stepped a mite out of line. But good God almighty, even if he did, that’s no cause to destroy him.’

  ‘Because he meant it for the best,’ said Sarah Carter.

  ‘He did it for America,’ said Billy Mace.

  ‘And that means us,’ said Jerry McGhee.

  Up in the balcony, Seaton withdrew his fingers from the jar of curds and, one by one, he licked them clean. The Director and Commander went back to their offices, and Seaton curled up like a cat in his hammock, snug and invisible. When morning came, he clapped his hands, and James Link Foley appeared in medium close-up, seated in a small sordid room, eating grits from a rolled-up newspaper.

  The floor was covered with magazines and dirty pictures, there were unwashed socks in the sink, plates and empty bottles lay piled on every available surface. As for Foley himself, a hairy man in a sweatshirt and decomposing shorts, he had grease on his hands, grease on his chin, grease smeared on his belly and, when his rest was disturbed by a gentle tapping on his door, his instant response was to belch.

  Three years before, when his name was Ronnie Cisco, this man had been convicted of the murder and sexual mutilation of five small children in Santa Monica. After only seven months in captivity, however, he had broken out and run away, and ever since, try as they might, the police had found no trace of him.

  In actual fact, he had taken refuge in Guadalajara, moved onward to Caracas and Montevideo, undergone a series of comprehensive plastic surgeries and hidden for many months down a coal hole. Finall
y, when the heat had died down, he ventured back to Pittsburgh and there he fashioned a whole new life, in which he was perfectly clean and godly.

  The only place where his former self survived was in this room, where no one else ever entered. Here he wallowed in filth like a hippo. Pornography, slime and half-eaten food enclosed him in a womb, and he felt free.

  Because of this, when the knocking began at his door, it seemed like a blasphemous intrusion and he ignored it. But the tapping, though gentle, proved relentless, and in the end he could not resist it.

  Mumbling obscenities, Foley waded to the door and opened up three inches. Immediately, he was startled by a blaze of machine-gun fire, which drove him irresistibly backward, ploughing through the mire like a tank, until he reached the opposite wall. For a few seconds he remained semi-standing, jouncing and jiggling like a demented jellybean. Then the firing ceased, and he lay down on the floor, with his face in a tub of ketchup.

  When the smoke had cleared and the last echo died away, King Death was standing in the doorway, almost smiling.

  ‘He’s back,’ said Jerry McGhee.

  ‘He can’t be,’ said Billy Mace.

  ‘But he is,’ said Charley Mitchell.

  High above Times Square, to celebrate the miracle, there appeared an all-seeing neon eye and a giant monogrammed trademark, KD, etched in golden glitterdust. Within a few minutes, a crowd of several thousands had gathered underneath and were gazing upward, silent and awed, as if at a flying saucer.

  Attorney General Flaherty flew west to San Quentin and peeked through the peephole at the prisoner, who was playing solitaire and smiling. His big black shades had been confiscated, his uniform exchanged for a suit of arrowed denims and, without these props, all resemblance to King Death ended. Shorn of image, he might have passed for almost any American.

  Flaherty bit his hands, the captive was set free; at the same time, Eddie was released from his attic, where he had been locked up for one hundred and twenty-seven days, with only his suitcase and mirror for company.

  He had suffered considerably. Indeed, he would gladly have swapped places with his other self in San Quentin, for Tierra de Ensueños had come to oppress him far worse than chains or bars could ever do. Cut off from America, he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, could hardly bear to watch his own reflection and, the moment he shut his eyes, in search of repose, he was stricken by visions of hubcaps, cottonfields and skin-tight sequinned dresses, water-melon stands and glowlights, craps, pigs’ knuckles and Wednesday nights at the Assembly of God – all those things that had made him and were now lost.

  He was too proud to complain. No matter what his deprivations, dignity and professionalism demanded that he bear them in silence and bury the hurt within. Nonetheless, when at last he was unleashed and sent back to work, he felt as though he were surfacing from a bottomless black pit.

  As he stepped down from his bedroom, blinking in the unaccustomed light, all his frustration, constriction, pent-up resentment and yearning gathered together in a wild and most ferocious combustion of energies, in which he trained until he dropped, broke down doors with his skull, demolished brick walls with flying kung-fu feet; and doubtless this was one of the reasons why his rendering of James Link Foley proved so physical, so extreme in violence and vengeance.

  There was another reason, however, every bit as important, and that was his personal distaste for the subject, who was everything that had made Death feared and hated. ‘Vicious, animal, dirty, diseased,’ said Eddie gently. ‘It’s people like him, maniacs and misfits, who’ve caused all our troubles. If it weren’t for them, the industry would never have been degraded or made abhorrent, there would be no prejudice or misunderstanding, and professionals like me would not be branded as butchers.’

  ‘Amateurs,’ said Seaton.

  ‘They poison everything they touch.’

  ‘So you deny them true Death.’

  ‘Because they haven’t earned her; because they wouldn’t know how to savour her. Brute slaughter is all they know, the only language they can understand. So slaughter is what I give them.’

  Sick at heart, the professional went away to the gymnasium, where he burned himself into forgetfulness. But long after he was gone, Seaton continued to brood on his words and their implications and, as a result, King Death underwent a crucial shift of emphasis. Instead of hunting revolutionaries, freaks and Un-Americans in general, as in the past, he began to concentrate specifically on the enemies of Death. Child murderers, bomb throwers, mad axemen, sex maniacs – all those who offended against the industry, therefore against all mankind, and yet, for whatever reason, went unpunished.

  In terms of salesmanship, this change made everything much simpler. With subjects like Karl Rosen or Ahmed Abdul Fakir, there had been room for argument. However much they might be loathed by the masses, they had commanded a strong minority support, which naturally kicked up a fuss when they were completed. But who would weep for a Foley? Who could deny that he was better off defunct, or that America was a finer, cleaner place without him? In such a case as this, only a fool or fanatic would speak of murder.

  The last barriers collapsed; any reservations the audience might still have felt were swept aside in a flood tide of righteousness and rage: ‘Vengeance is ours,’ said Jerry McGhee.

  So Death was launched on her second phase. Apart from being a spectacle, a dazzling entertainment, she also became a crusade.

  Stern-faced, remorseless, Eddie set out once more in the black limousine and this time, instead of a gift, he brought retribution. The Mafioso Vito Pavese was splattered all over his penthouse carpet; Ulysses Grant Majeski, the dope peddler, had his arm pumped full of rat poison; the Satanist Joachim van Sallust was sacrificed at the foot of his own unclean altar; and with each new deliverance, support for the King increased.

  To the families, watching from the mansion, it seemed almost sacrilegious that such an artist could still be officially known as Public Enemy Number One. By any standards, he was performing a very great service; and yet the critics continued to revile him, the law pursued him as avidly as ever: ‘A man befriends his homeland,’ said Jerry McGhee, ‘and this is his reward.’

  ‘Vitriol,’ said big Jim Haggard.

  ‘When he ought to be draped with honours,’ said Jerry. ‘At the very least, he has earned a presidential pardon, though the Good Lord knows he’s worth a whole lot more.’

  ‘Like a congressional citation,’ said Barney Brannigan.

  ‘Or an Oscar,’ said Mildred Potterson.

  Still the law remained obstinate. Live on HBLF, Flaherty claimed that no man could be allowed to place himself above the rules, whatever the temptations or excuses, or else the nation must inevitably tumble into anarchy, chaos, apocalypse.

  Mr President agreed with him. So did 37 senators, 147 congressmen, 356 editors, and 622 priests. According to the pollsters, however, 62.55 per cent of the general public felt otherwise.

  So King Death arrived at his second anniversary, and it seemed that he had reached an impasse. Authority would not give way, neither would he, and it was obvious to his followers that if he was ever to receive his just deserts, the time had come for them to speak out: ‘If we don’t stand up for ourselves,’ said Jerry McGhee, ‘we might as well give in.’

  ‘No good relying on justice,’ said Tom Potterson.

  ‘Useless to put our faith in prayer,’ said Betsy Mitchell.

  ‘Our only hope is action,’ said Jerry McGhee.

  So a new and solemn movement took shape, a sort of underground resistance, starting in Orange County, then spreading right across the country, and its members called themselves the King Death Loyalists.

  One night, Eddie woke up sweating from the strangest dream, in which he had been standing by the open door of the conservatory, bathed in moonlight, when a shaggy golden lion came ambling towards him through the undergr
owth, its smiling mouth just visible above the orchids, and sat down at his feet.

  Though its hands and feet were animal, there was no fur on its face and it wore a silken leash around its throat. Eddie gave it a sugar lump and it licked his black glove in gratitude. After a moment, they embraced.

  Instantly, Eddie was filled with a sense of deepest contentment and, picking up the leash, he began to lead the lion through the gardens, pointing out the various beauties and curiosities as they went. Moonlight cleared their path and turned everything to silver. Then Eddie became aware that the lion was bleeding from many hidden wounds and was, in fact, dying. But its blood was also silver, and quite transparent, and he was not disturbed.

  Wherever they turned, their images were repeated in water, which dazzled and distracted them, and they escaped inside the mansion. A door slammed distantly behind them, the candles flickered and went out. Excited by the darkness, the lion chuckled, very, soft and low, and Eddie gave it another sugar lump. Alone, together, invisible, they went walking in the labyrinth.

  When he awakened, the performer felt oddly disturbed, almost as if he had befouled himself in his sleep. From earliest infancy, he had been self-contained, and any form of feeling or vulnerability offended him deeply. So imagine his embarrassment at such stuff as this – moonlight, silver blood, half-human lions and most peculiar kisses. Not only was it tasteless, undignified, girlish; what was much more important, it was unprofessional.

  When he came to breakfast, the performer’s eyes were dark with remorse; Seaton, on the other hand, was jubilant. Sunning himself on the patio, he kept reading and re-reading a telex from Arkansas, which he brandished triumphantly in Eddie’s sorrowing face.

  Apparently, the night before, just about the same time that the professional was being accosted by the lion, a group of fifty citizens in Helena had formed themselves into a torchlight procession and marched together to the steps of City Hall, where they bared their heads and displayed a hand-painted banner, simply saying king death, and there they had remained for almost an hour, motionless and hushed.