‘Something besides a kid pulled that trigger.’ : Three Guys Talking About Death

Who killed Mark Miller?

Not I, says the kid with the gun. It was a mistake, an accident.

Not I, says the father. I warned him about drinking , I warned him about gangs.

Not us, say the teen discos. We watch them while they’re here.

Not us, say the police. Parents aren’t supervising their kids.

Not us, say the media. We only report the news .

Not I, says the rabbi. Teen-agers are losing respect for life.

Not I, says the city. It’s a violent age, we do the best we can.

Then who killed Mark Miller?

We are at Topanga’s Shemrun Cafe, having a few drinks, on an evening as sweet and warm as hot buttered rum. There is me and Scott and a guy I’ve never met before, a skinny kid from Jersey named Cobalt, who is a friend of Scotty’s. We are talking about Mark Miller.

I’ve known Scotty for a few years so I am aware that violence isn’t his favorite subject. He would rather talk about broads or politics or the Dodgers. Anything but mayhem.

They say he got that way after Vietnam, and I usually respect his wishes. But this time it’s different.

I can’t get Mark Miller out of my mind.

Here is a kid, just 15, who gets p.o.’d because another 15-year-old musses up the purple hair of his girlfriend at a teen-age disco. They fight about it, get thrown out of the club and you’d think that would be that. But it isn’t.

The kids meet again a few days later in the disco’s parking lot. The fight resumes, and, in a twinkling of the time it took him to be born, Mark Miller is dead. Within hours, the other kid, the one they call Chris, is an accused killer.

“How in the hell can a thing like that happen?” I ask. “Two boys in a lousy fight over some girl’s punk-style purple hair! A bullet in the head defending . . . nothing!”

No one says anything for a moment. The commute traffic has thinned on Topanga Canyon Boulevard and there aren’t many customers in Shemrun, so we sit in mostly silence.

Then Scotty finally says, “It’s the age. Purple hair, a disco for teen-agers, dope, gangs. All those things.”

“Purple hair,” I say, shaking my head. “I mean, it’s like a scene from ‘Clockwork Orange.’ I see a girl in whiteface with purple hair and brilliant green lipstick and then these two guys in black and white . . .”

“Look,” Scotty says, interrupting, “the girl didn’t do it. Purple hair’s a style. Fads don’t kill people.”

Cobalt is sitting there all this time staring at his Scotch and water, saying nothing. Lights from behind the bar reflect in his round, silver-rimmed glasses.

“Something besides a kid pulled that trigger,” I say. “Kids didn’t kill kids when I was a teen-ager. There are forces loose we don’t understand.”

We are on our second drink. I tend to get metaphysical after one. I see life in surrealistic terms, distorted and mysterious.

“People die,” Scotty says. He is growing uneasy with the subject. “It happens all the time. War, murder, traffic accidents. . . . I knew a guy in ‘Nam who lived a charmed life. Three different times he should be killed, but each time he barely misses death. So he comes home and you know what he does? He shoots himself in the head.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Who can figure it?” Scotty says. “Some people have the look of death. You can see it in their eyes.”

“Did your pal in Vietnam have the look?” I ask.

Scotty nods his head slowly. “He had it all right. I knew it the first day I saw him.”

Then suddenly he slams a fist so hard on the table that our glasses jump. “Why in the hell are we talking about this!”

“Because it exists.”

For a moment I think it is someone at another table talking, but then I realize it is Cobalt. He lifts his head from staring at his drink and looks to me and then to Scotty, who by now has had it with the whole evening.

“You guys solve the Cock Robin question,” Scotty says. “I’m splitting.”

He is out the door before I can calm him down. Cobalt is nodding thoughtfully.

“Who killed Cock Robin?” he says mostly to himself. Then he focuses on me. “You want to know who killed that kid in the Valley?”

I shrug noncommittally.

Cobalt leans in close. “Rambo did it,” he says.

I am staring at the guy, not quite knowing how to respond, when I notice he has yellow eyes. I have known only one other person with yellow eyes, and he was crazier than hell.

“Rambo?” I finally say, careful not to upset him.

“Our love of guns,” Cobalt says, “our glorification of violence, our rituals of blood, our fascination with death. They go by the name of Rambo! “ He arcs his hand through the air and almost whispers, “Up there, on the silver screen.”

Then he’s gone.

I sit there for a long time, thinking. Rambo in his camouflaged dungarees and combat boots, a dark sweatband around his forehead, armed to the teeth, stalking through the jungles, shooting, slashing . . . .

“You know,” I say to a guy passing, “maybe old Yellow Eyes is right. Maybe Rambo did it.”

“Whatever you say, pal.”

That’s what I say.