The Comedy is Finished

by Donald E. Westlake

  There’s no way out of this room. The door is securely locked, and it opens outward so there’s no way to get at the hinges. Shortly after he was left alone in here Koo did some poking at the fabric covering the wall, working low on the corner nearest the door, and behind the cloth he found Sheetrock and behind that concrete block. “No way am I gonna dig through concrete block,” he told himself, and searched no further.

  The next question was the window. After the bitch with the scars vacated the pool, Koo spent a while studying that window, considering the possibility of maybe throwing a chair through it or something. Water would rush through the opening, but long before the room filled up the pool would have emptied below the window level. It would be like a James Bond flick; heave the chair, brace himself against the side wall until the water level in room and pool equalized, then swim to freedom!

  Yeah; carrying an American flag and shooting Roman candles out his ass. “When I was twenty I couldn’t pull a stunt like that.” Also even when he was twenty the noise and racket involved in wrecking a swimming pool would attract a certain amount of attention. Also also, this window happens to be two thicknesses of very heavy-grade plate glass, and if he did throw a chair at it probably the chair would bounce off and crack open the Koo Davis skull. “I got trouble enough,” Koo reluctantly decided, and since then he’s had no further thought of escape. He’s stuck here with these meatheads until they decide to do something else.

  Scrabble click. Koo looks over at the door, where the sound came from, the sound of a key in the lock, and he can’t help a little thrill of fear, that buzzing adrenalin surge like when you’ve just had a near miss on the freeway. “Company,” Koo says. “And me not dressed.”

  The door opens and two of them come in. One is the sarcastic-looking fellow who was in here the last time, and the other is the sullen-faced bearded character who showed him the gun at the studio. The bitch with the scars isn’t along, for which Koo is grateful, but on the other hand neither is the worried-looking guy who apologized for Koo’s nosebleed. Koo misses that one, he was the only touch of common humanity in the whole mob. And speaking of mobs, just how many of these people are there?

  The two young men come in, closing the door behind themselves. The bearded one puts a small cassette tape recorder on the nearest table, then stands silently with his back against the door and his arms folded over his chest, like a harem guard in a comedy, while the sarcastic-looking fellow says, “How you doing, Koo?”

  “I got nothing to say, warden,” Koo snarls. “To you or the D.A.”

  “That’s good,” the fellow says, then looks in mild surprise at the plastic container with the whiskey in it. “Not drinking? Wait a minute—not eating either?”

  “I’m on a diet.”

  The fellow frowns at Koo, apparently not understanding, then suddenly laughs and says, “You think we’re trying to poison you? Or drugs maybe, is that it?”

  Koo doesn’t have a comic answer, and there’s no point giving a straight answer, so he just stands there.

  The fellow shakes his head, amused but impatient. “What’s the percentage, Koo? We’ve already got you.” Then he goes to the counter beside the bar, lines up three plastic glasses, and pours a finger of whiskey in each. “Choose,” he says.

  “I won’t drink it.”

  “Just pick one, Koo.”

  “How come you call me by my first name? You’re no traffic cop.”

  “I’m sorry, Koo,” the fellow says, with his most sarcastic smile. “I’m just trying for a more relaxed atmosphere, that’s all. For instance, you can call me Peter, and this is Mark. Now we’re all friends, am I right?” He gestures at the three glasses. “So decide. Which one?”

  “My mother says I can’t play with you guys anymore. I got to go home now.”

  The bearded one—Mark—says, “Pick a glass.” There’s nothing comic in his manner at all. In fact, there’s the implication in his voice that if Koo doesn’t pick a glass, this guy is going to start using his fists again.

  Shrugging, Koo says, “Okay. I say the pea is under the one on the left.”

  “Fine,” says the sarcastic-looking fellow: Peter. He picks up the other two glasses and hands one to Mark. “Happy days,” he says, toasting Koo, and then they both drink the whiskey. “Not bad,” the leader says, and extends the third glass toward Koo, saying, “Sure you won’t join us?”

  Oh, the hell with it. “I’ll hate myself in the morning,” Koo says, taking the glass, and he sips a little. It tastes nothing at all like Jack Daniel’s, Koo’s favorite whiskey, but it does spread an immediate warm alcohol glow through his body.

  Peter has now taken some folded sheets of typewriter paper from his jacket pocket. “You’re going to make a recording for us now, Koo,” he says.

  Koo had guessed that from the cassette recorder. He gives Peter what’s supposed to be a defiant look. “I am?”

  Peter glances over his shoulder at the tough guy, Mark, then grins again at Koo. “Yes, you are,” he says. Holding out the sheets of paper toward Koo, he says, “You may want to look it over first. You’ll begin with some personal remarks of your own, some statement to convince your family and your close friends that it’s really you, and then you’ll follow up by reading this. Exactly as written, Koo.”

  Koo takes the papers. There are three sheets, messily typewritten, with many pen and pencil alterations in various handwritings. It isn’t easy to read, but very soon the thrust of the message makes itself clear, and Koo looks up at these bastards and says, “You’re out of your fucking minds.”

  “That’s okay, Koo,” Peter says, unruffled. “You don’t have to agree with it, you just read it. Like it was a movie script.”

  “They’ll say no,” Koo tells him. “And then what happens?”

  “Tough for you,” says Mark.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Oh, don’t be pessimistic,” Peter says. “You’re an important man, Koo, you’ve got a lot of important friends. I think they’ll come through for you, pal, I really do. That’s why I picked you.”

  “They won’t do it,” Koo says.

  Peter looks a bit troubled, a bit grim. “I hope you’re wrong, Koo. For your sake, I hope so.” Turning, he says, “Mark, get the machine ready.”

  Koo can’t believe this is happening to him. “Killed,” he mutters. “Murdered to death by assholes.”

  5

  Lynsey Rayne parked her Porsche Targa behind the Burbank Police Headquarters annex. A tall and fashionably dressed woman of forty-one, wearing many bracelets, she entered the building through the rear door, and asked directions to “the Koo Davis office.” That was what Inspector Cayzer had told her to ask for, on the phone, and it produced a uniformed policewoman to escort her down brightly lit bare corridors to a small crowded office with the hastily assembled air of a campaign headquarters, where she identified herself to another policewoman working as receptionist: “Lynsey Rayne. I’m Koo Davis’ agent, I spoke to Inspector Cayzer earlier.”

  “One minute, please.”

  Apparently this set-up was not yet organized enough to have intercoms; but the kidnapping and its investigation were still less than two hours old. Lynsey waited while the policewoman went to an inner office to report, then came back and said, “Yes, Miss Rayne, you can go in.”

  Entering the inner office, equally small and ramshackle but somewhat less crowded, Lynsey saw two men rising from their desks. The one on the right was Inspector Cayzer, an old man but, she had been assured by Mayor Pilocki, a good one. “So you found us,” he said, smiling, and extended his hand, which she took, saying, “Any news?”

  “Not yet, Ms. Rayne.”

  “Inspector,” she said, and echoed his own earlier words to her, “surely they’ve gone to ground by now.”

  “Kidnappers work at their own pace, Ms. Rayne,” Cayzer said. “I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do to hurry them along. May I introduce Agent Michael Wiskiel of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation? Agent Wiskiel, this is Ms. Lynsey Rayne, Koo Davis’ agent.”

  “How do you do,” Wiskiel said. He had come around from behind his desk in anticipation of the introduction, and as Lynsey shook his hand she studied him carefully, needing to understand him; he had suddenly become very important to Koo. The reports she’d gotten on Wiskiel from her calls to friends in Washington, after Cayzer had mentioned his name, had been ambivalent. He’d had something minor to do with Watergate, and had been demoted. He had a reputation as a hotshot, a right-winger, a tough man but not a subtle one. Nothing in his heavy good looks did anything to dispel this impression. Feeling the need to let him know at once that she was not easily dismissible, she said, “You haven’t been out here long, have you?”

  “About a year.” His grin was easy, loose, sensual. “What told you? Not enough tan?”

  “I’m an old friend of Webster’s,” she said, releasing his hand, referring to Wiskiel’s immediate boss, Webster Redburn. “I spoke with him on the phone about an hour ago.”

  A film seemed to settle over Wiskiel’s face, though his expression hardly changed at all; perhaps something faintly mocking entered his smile. “Is that right,” he said, and turned away to gesture at something on the side wall. “I don’t suppose that face means anything to you.”

  “Is she one of them?” Lynsey stepped closer to the drawing, holding her glasses at a tight angle to her face. The sketch showed an anonymous standard type; about thirty, long straight hair parted in the middle, and a plain half-formed slightly worried face, as though she’d been taken from the oven before ready. “She doesn’t look the part, does she?”

  “That’s why they had her out front. She was the one worked at the studio.”

  “More like a flower child,” Lynsey said. “In fact...” Struck by something, she leaned closer to the drawing, trying to capture the brief impression that had just flashed by. But it was no good; stepping back, releasing her glasses, shaking her head, she said, “No.”

  “Don’t tell me you thought you recognized her.”

  “Not from actually seeing her, no,” Lynsey said. “Not in the flesh. But I thought—For just a second she reminded me of a newspaper photo, or something on television. Was it the anti-war people? Or, you remember the period when they were attacking banks.”

  “Very well,” he said.

  “Could she have been involved in that?”

  He looked at the sketch, something moving behind his eyes, some old battle still not resolved. She turned to gaze again too at that characterless Identikit face, the smooth plain features untouched by experience, the flat expressionless eyes. A flower child, yes; but it’s been winter a long time.

  “She could have been involved in anything,” Wiskiel said.

  Lynsey waited in the office, even though there was nothing happening and Jock Cayzer several times promised to call her the instant they heard anything new. The phone number here had been announced over the radio and television as the place to call “if you have any information on the disappearance of Koo Davis,” so it was likeliest this was the way the kidnappers would make contact. “The minute they call, Ms. Rayne,” Cayzer said, “I’ll let you know.”

  But she wasn’t to be moved. “They’ll call tonight,” she answered, matter-of-fact but determined. “I want to be here, in case they let Koo say anything. I’ll know...how he is, from the way he sounds.”

  During the next two hours the phone did ring from time to time, and Lynsey on each occasion became once more tense, all concentrated eyes and ears, but it was only the usual cranks and clowns. Then, a little before eight-thirty, the next event came, not from the phone but from the workroom next door, where three police officers studying snapshots taken from Koo’s audience suddenly hit paydirt. Two faces had emerged that were not to be found anywhere in the main group photographs. In the darkened workroom they all stood looking at the blown-up slide on the wall, the two strangers clearly visible behind and to the right of the smiling ten-year-old boy who was the photographer’s primary focus.

  “They’re young,” Lynsey said. She felt both surprised and obscurely annoyed, as though their youth somehow made things worse.

  They were young, both about thirty, slouching and round-shouldered in an even more youthful manner. The one in profile had thick curly black hair, a full beard and sunglasses, and wore a yellow T-shirt with some unidentifiable saying or picture on it, plus a short blue denim jacket and jeans. His companion, facing the camera, also wore sunglasses, but his rather bony worried-looking face was clean-shaven. His hair, over a high rounded shiny brow, was a wispy thinning brown, blowing in the breeze. He was wearing a light plaid open-collar shirt, what looked to be a light brown suede zipper jacket, and chinos.

  “Those are just soldiers,” Jock Cayzer said. “We haven’t seen the general yet.”

  “When we do, Jock,” Wiskiel said, “he’ll look a lot like them.” And he switched on the workroom lights.

  The phone rang in the other room. “Not another one,” Lynsey said.

  “I’ll get it,” Wiskiel said, and went back to the other room.

  All phone calls were being taped, on equipment also in this workroom. A monitor was on, so Lynsey and the others in here could listen to both parts of the conversation, beginning with the click when Wiskiel picked up the receiver and said, “Seven seven hundred.”

  The voice on the other end was young, male and very uncertain. It struck Lynsey that either of those young men in the photograph could conceivably sound like this. “Excuse me,” it said. “Is this the number for, uh, if you know something, if you want to talk about Koo Davis?”

  “That’s right. This is FBI Agent Wiskiel here.”

  “Oh. Well, uh, I think I’ve got something for you.”

  “What would that be?”

  “Well—It’s a cassette recording, I guess it’s from the kidnappers. It’s got Koo Davis’ voice on it. It’s pretty weird.”

  The boy was twenty. A tall slender blond California youth, his name was Alan Lewis, he lived in Santa Monica with his parents, and he attended UCLA, where he was an assistant features editor on The Californian, the university’s daily newspaper. According to his story, he’d been watching television when a phone call had come from a woman who wouldn’t give her name but who said, approximately, “You can have a scoop for your paper. We have Koo Davis, we are holding him in the name of the people. Look in your car. On the front seat you’ll find a tape. It isn’t too late, the people still can win.”

  “At first I thought it was a joke,” the boy explained. “But I couldn’t figure out who she was. She didn’t sound like any of the girls I knew. She sounded—I don’t know—”

  Wiskiel suggested, “Older?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. No, not exactly. Well, maybe older, but mostly, well, sad. You know? She was saying these things, ‘The people still can win,’ and all that stuff, but there wasn’t any pep in it. That’s why I finally figured maybe it was on the level, and I went out and looked in the car.”

  Where he had found the cassette recording on the front seat, as promised. Having his own cassette player, he’d listened to part of the recording, but once he’d satisfied himself he was really hearing Koo Davis’ voice he’d immediately called the special number given on television. As to why he’d been chosen to receive the cassette, he could offer no explanation other than his job on the university paper: “She did say she was giving me a scoop.” Nor could he identify either the Identikit drawing of “Janet Grey” or the two men in the photograph.

  In the workroom again, Lynsey and the others waited while the technician inserted the cassette, arranged to simultaneously record it onto his own tape, and pushed the Play button. After a few seconds of rustling silence the familiar voice began, abruptly, loud and clear and unmistakable:

  “Hello, everybody, this is Koo Davis. To steal a line from John Chancellor, I’m somewhere in custody. To tell the truth I don’t know where I am, but it looked better in
the brochure.”

  There was a handy metal folding chair; weak-kneed, Lynsey dropped into it, trembling and astonished at her reaction to that voice, known in so many ways, personal and public. Until this instant, now, when the voice proclaimed so clearly that Koo was still alive and unharmed, she had been hiding from herself the fear, the terror, that he was dead, or that awful dreadful things were being done to him. Now, her sense of relief was almost as strong as if he were already home again and safe; she felt the blood rushing from her head, she felt the overpowering physical need to faint, and she fought against it, digging her nails into her palms. It wasn’t over; Koo wasn’t home; he wasn’t safe; she couldn’t relax, not yet.

  The easy, confident, astonishingly cheerful voice went on: “The crowd here is a lot like television people. Floor managers. Stand here, do that, talk into the mike, read this script. I don’t know about these hours, though. Did you guys check this out with AFTRA?”

  Lynsey felt Wiskiel frowning at her, and she elaborately and silently mouthed the explanation: “The union.” He nodded.

  “Anyway, folks,” Koo was saying, suddenly speaking more quickly, as though one of the “floor managers” had off-mike ordered him to get on with it, “I’m supposed to say something here to prove I’m really me and not Frank Gorshin, so check with my agent Lynsey Rayne—are you sure this is the right gig for me, honey?—about the writer I call ‘The Tragic Relief,’ with the initials dee-double-u.”