Revolution Number 9 Read online

  “Blake?”

  “What?”

  “How much have you got?”

  “Not much. It’s in the room too.”

  They returned to Cullen House, deserted and quiet now, to the room with the fairy-tale bed. Blake had nine dollars. He handed it over. Malik piled all the money on Rebecca’s desk and counted it.

  “Three hundred and fifteen dollars.” He began distributing it in three equal parts.

  “What’s going on?” Blake asked.

  “Preparation,” Malik replied, smoothing his mustache. “Preparation is everything.”

  Blake heard the words but made nothing of them. He began: “We—”

  They looked at him.

  “We just—” For a moment the rest wouldn’t come, and when it did it was incomplete. “We just—and now you’re counting little piles of money. What’s the matter with you?”

  Rebecca and Malik exchanged a glance. “Talk to him, Rebecca,” Malik said.

  Rebecca touched Blake on the arm. He backed away.

  “Blake,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You’re upset. Upset’s the wrong word—more than upset. So am I. We all are.”

  “We wouldn’t be human otherwise,” Malik interrupted.

  Rebecca continued: “It was a horrible accident.”

  Blake opened his mouth to argue.

  She cut him off. “Accident. Accident. Accident. We, none of us, not you, not me, not Andrew, none of us ever intended to harm a single person. We took careful plans to make sure nothing like … that nothing would happen.”

  “Besides,” said Malik.

  “Besides?”

  “Yeah. Compare it with what’s happening this very minute in Vietnam. They’re dying by the thousand, by the tens of thousands—it’ll be millions before it’s all done.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The Vietnamese, of course.”

  “What’ve the Vietnamese got to do with anything?” Blake said, his voice rising again.

  Malik’s voice rose with it. “Don’t be so obtuse. I’m talking about the murder of innocents, the slaughter of the oppressed.”

  “But we just murdered an innocent.”

  “It was an accident. Totally different from sending armed killers to a foreign land. Can’t you see that? Don’t you get it?”

  Blake started to get it, although not in the way Malik intended. He thought of the oppressed, the innocents; and armed killers in a foreign land, thousands, like his father, to be killed themselves. Somehow he had sided with his father’s killers, even done something shameful to his memory. In this moment of realization, Blake threw a punch at Malik’s face. Not well-aimed, it caught Malik on the shoulder, but with enough force to knock him back two or three steps before he recovered his balance. Blake regretted it at once: it was just more of the sickening same.

  Malik, rubbing his shoulder, spoke, quietly now, almost like a priest at some intimate ceremony. “You see, Rebecca? Violence is communication. The problem is to aim it in the right direction.”

  There was a silence. Sirens broke it, coming from the town. Blake and Malik were both watching Rebecca, waiting for her response to Malik’s latest pensée. Rebecca: her face pale after a sleepless night, her eyes reddened but not from tears, her hair a black and wild framework for her crazy beauty. In the end she said nothing, just nodded her assent.

  “Now, then,” Malik said, “if we can all keep our composure.” He moved to the desk, picked up the piles of money, pocketed one, handed the second to Rebecca, held out the third to Blake. “From each according to his abilities,” he said. “To each according to his needs.”

  Blake kept his hands at his sides. “What’s it for?”

  “The future,” Malik said, still offering the money. When Blake still refused to take it, he dropped it on the desk. “You’ve got to think faster, Blake. We don’t have much time.”

  “Time for what?” Blake said.

  “To get out of here, what else? Do you want to spend the rest of your life in jail for something you didn’t do?”

  “Didn’t mean to do,” Rebecca corrected.

  Blake knew he wasn’t thinking quickly, was barely thinking at all. His mind was back there with the woman in curlers at the rubble pile, assailed by images: navy jersey, white cleats, black trapper, Stretch McCovey model. He wasn’t ready to accept that life goes on, let alone to plot the manner of its progress.

  Rebecca reached out, touched him again. This time he didn’t back away. She came closer, till her face was right in front of his, her eyes the only sight in view, a sight familiar, foreign, fascinating. “Please, Blake.” She had a way of saying please. “This is …”

  “Awful,” Malik put in.

  “Awful,” Rebecca continued, “no one’s pretending it’s not awful. But we can talk about it later.”

  “If we get to later,” Malik said.

  Rebecca nodded. “We’ve got to go,” she said.

  “Go?” said Blake.

  “That’s not the question,” Malik said. “The question is where.”

  Blake thought at once of the baseball diamond behind the field house, in the shadow of the hills. That’s where he wanted to go, even if it made no sense. Meanwhile, Malik was finding the answer.

  “I’ve given this some thought.” He glanced at Blake to make sure he was following. Blake was, but in his own way. He wondered: When did you do all this thinking, Andy?

  “There’s only one viable course,” Malik continued. “We’re going underground.”

  Underground. Blake thought he heard enthusiasm in Malik’s voice then, the enthusiasm of a fly fisherman, say, on his way for the first time to a famous trout stream, gear all packed.

  Malik went on: “Mao talks about an ocean of support out there, an ocean in which the guerrilla swims.”

  Rebecca’s eyes narrowed. “But where?” she said impatiently. “Where are we going?”

  “Berkeley,” Malik replied.

  “Berkeley?” said Rebecca. “Isn’t that a little close to home, my home?”

  “Berkeley is our biggest, and therefore safest, ocean.”

  “But—”

  “Rebecca!”

  Rebecca and Malik eyed each other. She stopped arguing. “Have we got enough money to get there?”

  “We’re not flying, Rebecca,” Malik said. He started to laugh. Blake had never heard him laugh before. It was a strange sound, closer to barking than to anything musical. He quickly calmed himself, but a smile lingered on his face. “And we’re not writing checks, or using your American Express card. Going underground means there is no more Rebecca Klein, no more Andrew Malik, no more Blake Wrightman. They disappear this moment, leaving no trace.”

  He paused to let it all sink in. Blake watched Rebecca. She bit her lip and said nothing.

  “And disappear singly, by the way,” Malik added.

  “Singly?” said Blake.

  “They’ll be looking for three, not one,” Malik said. “We’ll meet in Berkeley.”

  “How?” said Rebecca. “Where?”

  “Sproul Plaza,” Malik said. “When you get to Berkeley, go to the plaza every day at noon and stay for fifteen minutes. We’ll find each other.”

  “What’s Sproul Plaza?” asked Blake.

  “The heart of Berkeley, man, where the Free Speech Movement started,” Malik replied. His smile faded. “You haven’t heard of Sproul Plaza?”

  Blake ignored the question. “Then what?” he said. “After this plaza.”

  “Then,” said Malik, his eyes focusing on something far away, “then we help make revolution. This country is going to be turned upside down in the next year or two. Three at most. And we’re going to be part of it. An important part.” His gaze retracted to the here and now, taking in Blake, Rebecca, the room. He smiled, as though everything were proceeding smoothly to some plan.

  Through the window came the sound of voices approaching Cullen House. A woman was crying
, and then a man. And more sirens, coming now from several directions.

  Malik’s smile vanished. “Any questions?”

  There were no questions. The one Blake should have asked did not occur to him until months later. If we don’t run, how will they connect us to the bombing? A logical question, but Blake wasn’t being governed by logic at that moment.

  “Then let’s go,” said Malik. “One at a time. Five minutes apart. Blake first.”

  Blake didn’t move.

  “For Christ’s sake, man,” Malik said. “Are you trying to get us all busted?” The sirens closed in.

  “Please, Blake.”

  Blake reached for the money on Rebecca’s desk, picked it up, put it in his pocket. Rebecca came to him, wrapped her arms around him, kissed him warm and soft on the mouth.

  “See you in Berkeley,” she said, her voice close to breaking, or at least he thought so at the time. Blake let her go, turned, walked out of the room with the fairy-tale bed and out of Cullen House.

  He fled. Good and bad both flee their crimes: the good run from the new-revealed self.

  · · ·

  Charlie thought about that punch, aimed at Malik’s face but striking his shoulder. A punch: a tiny dose, a child’s dose, of violence in the circumstances, like blowing in someone’s face during a hurricane. Then Alex Trebek’s announcer was saying: “And now a real estate developer from Toronto, Canada—welcome please—Merv Koharski!”

  Applause, covering a shot of Merv Koharski striding in from off-camera, followed by a tighter shot of Merv as he took his place behind the middle podium. Stuart Levine, at his claw-footed desk, pressed the Pause button on the remote. The image of Merv Koharski, real estate developer from Toronto, froze on the screen of Levine’s Sony Trinitron. The attached VCR was a good one: the freeze-frame was steady and unstreaked.

  Merv Koharski: a fat man with jowls, clean-shaven face, fringe of short gray hair, heavy-framed glasses with smoky lenses, greeny-blue checked sports jacket, brown shirt, beige tie. He was smiling in the direction of Alex Trebek, the smile of someone wanting to be liked.

  “Him?” asked Charlie.

  “I didn’t think so either, at first. That’s why I taped it when it came on channel nineteen an hour later.” Levine fast-forwarded through the first commercial break and paused again. “This is where they interview the contestants.”

  “You seem to know the format.”

  “ ‘Jeopardy!’?” said Levine. “I never miss it.”

  He ran the tape. Alex Trebek talked to the contestant on the right about a funny thing her parakeet did, then moved on to Merv Koharski. “Toronto,” said Alex Trebek. “Quite a town.”

  “It most certainly is, Alex,” responded Merv Koharski. And Charlie knew right away. You can shave off your Zapata mustache, you can put on fifty pounds, you can hide your eyes behind smoky gray lenses, you can turn a Jesuit into Friar Tuck, but you can’t change your voice.

  “Had a chance to visit that wonderful Skydome yet?” asked Alex Trebek.

  Merv nodded happily. “I’ve got season tickets. Awesome. That’s the only word for it.”

  “That’s what I hear,” said Alex Trebek, getting ready to turn to the defending champion on the left.

  “Buildings have an amazing influence on our lives,” Merv Koharski went on. “An architect is more powerful than a general.”

  “Very well put,” said Alex Trebek, his smile looking a little forced. “And now, our defending champion, Sylvia—”

  Levine hit the Pause button. “Well?”

  There was no question. It wasn’t just the sound of the voice, but its type as well: the voice of the guru and speaker of aphorisms, except now the aphorisms were about architects and ballparks instead of revolution and power. “When was this?” Charlie said.

  “Last November,” Levine replied. He hit Play.

  The category was Johns. Sylvia, the defending champion, got Pope John XXIII for one hundred dollars, Johnny Carson for two hundred, but was too slow on the clue “He died with a hammer in his hand,” and the parakeet woman—who, it seemed to Charlie, had quick, birdlike movements—pressed her button, said, “Who was John Henry?” winning three hundred and control of the board.

  “Johns for four hundred,” she said.

  The clue: “English poet who wrote ‘no man is an island.’ ”

  Parakeet woman paused. Sylvia hit her button and said: “John Suckling.”

  Alex Trebek said: “Form of a question.”

  Sylvia said: “Who was John Suckling?” going immediately to minus one hundred. She was having a rough night.

  Parakeet woman was still thinking. Merv Koharski pressed his button. “Who was John Donne?” he said, for four hundred and control of the board.

  “U. S. politics for one hundred,” said Merv. He proceeded to run the category. “Well, Merv,” said Alex Trebek when he was done, “for a Canadian you sure know what’s happening south of the border.”

  Merv Koharski smiled as they went to commercial.

  Parakeet woman rallied during Double Jeopardy!, running two categories and adding a thousand dollars on an audio daily double (“What is ‘Like a Virgin’?”). But Merv Koharski got three of the thousand-dollar answers and all of the eight hundreds and gambled and won five thousand on the other daily double (Category: “Footwear.” Answer: “Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned him from baseball.” Question: “Who was Shoeless Joe Jackson?”). Sylvia, losing her composure and eliciting tight-lipped expressions on Alex Trebek’s face—he expected a certain standard from defending champions—jumped in from time to time with a guess, sinking deeper and deeper into the negative. By Final Jeopardy! she was out, leaving parakeet woman with $7,600 and Merv Koharski with $12,800. All Merv had to do was bet $2,401 and get the right question, and it wouldn’t matter what parakeet woman did.

  Levine fast-forwarded through commercials for mufflers and adult diapers. The Final Jeopardy! category was “The Sixties.” The players wrote their secret wagers. Parakeet woman’s forehead was deeply furrowed now. Merv Koharski leaned on his podium, looking relaxed.

  “And now,” said Alex Trebek, “the Final Jeopardy! answer: ‘The leader of the Free Speech Movement at the University of California at Berkeley.’ You have thirty seconds to write your answer. Make sure it’s in the form of a question.”

  As Alex Trebek gave that warning, Charlie noticed that Levine’s lips were moving along with those of the TV figure, mouthing the formulaic words, and his eyes were rapt. There was always something insane about Stuart, and it hadn’t gone away. Charlie wondered about glitches in the $100 million worth of SDI software.

  The “Jeopardy!” theme played as the camera panned the contestants. Without a moment’s pause Merv Koharski wrote his answer. Parakeet woman screwed up her face as though she could somehow squeeze the right answer out of her brain. She tried one thing, then another.

  “Time’s up,” said Alex Trebek, calling first for parakeet woman’s answer. “Did I detect a little hesitation making up your mind?” he said with a smile that was not entirely pleasant.

  “So did twenty million others, asshole,” muttered Levine, talking to an electronic image.

  Parakeet woman smiled back at Alex Trebek nervously. Her answer appeared on the screen. Amid scratchings-out and false starts could be read “Who was Savio?”

  “ ‘Who was Savio?’ ” said Alex Trebek. Pause to build suspense, within the limitation of having to hit the next commercial break on the second. “Mario Savio, leader of the Free Speech Movement in 1964. That’s the right response.” Applause. Parakeet woman heaved a sigh.

  “Let’s see your wager,” said Alex Trebek.

  Parakeet-woman had bet it all, $7,600, giving her $15,200. Applause.

  “Now,” said Alex Trebek, “we go to Merv, with $12,800. First, Merv, did you get the correct Final Jeopardy! answer?” Merv looked confident. His answer, in tidy script, came up on the screen: “Who was Mario Savio?”

  “Right,�
�� said Alex Trebek. “First name too,” he added, in possible rebuke to parakeet woman. “Now, let’s see your wager. If you bet a minimum of twenty-four-oh-one, you’ll be our new ‘Jeopardy!’ champion.”

  Merv Koharski’s jaw started to drop at that point. His wager came up.

  $2,301.

  “Two-three-oh-one?” said Alex Trebek, looking puzzled. “That leaves you one hundred short.” He blinked, but recovered quickly. There was still that commercial to hit, and he was a pro. “So our new ‘Jeopardy!’ champion is—”

  “He blew the math,” said Levine; he laughed a crazy laugh.

  Parakeet woman reached out to shake the loser’s hand. He didn’t notice her. Applause. The camera cut to Alex Trebek, waving good-bye and looking out of sorts.

  “He likes a well-played game,” Levine explained, snapping off the set.

  There was silence in Levine’s library. The brandy snifters sat empty.

  “Why the hell would he go on ‘Jeopardy!’?” Charlie said.

  “I guess he thought he could win.”

  · · ·

  Levine led Charlie back toward the front door, through many square feet of marble and plush. There was no sign of Deirdre, but in the hall Charlie did see a small framed photograph of a spectacled boy flying a kite.

  “That’s Stu,” said Levine. “My son.”

  “Yeah?”

  “From Julie. My first wife.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Nothing. We got divorced.”

  Levine looked at the picture. “This was taken some time back. I don’t see him much these days.”

  “How come?”

  “He lives with Julie. Anyway, he’s in college now.” Levine shook his head. “He takes after her in every way.”

  “He does?”

  “Why do you say it like that?”

  “He looks a little like you, that’s all,” Charlie said, although it wasn’t what he’d meant.

  “I don’t think so. He’s just like her—except you’ll never guess the school he picked.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. And he doesn’t even know about my brief enrollment there. He just glommed onto the idea for some reason.”

  “Why doesn’t he know you went there? Is it a secret?”