The Comedy is Finished

by Donald E. Westlake

  Liz got between them, preventing Peter from hitting Larry, while Larry stumbled backward, as angry as Peter himself, crying, “I didn’t call anybody! I should have, I should have, but I never—”

  Liz turned on him, saying, “Shut up, Larry. Let’s find out about this.”

  “Look for yourself,” Larry told her.

  “I intend to.”

  Peter watched Liz enter the master bedroom, followed by Larry, saying something to her, justifying himself in some way. Was it Ginger, then, who’d turned them in? The strange thing was, it didn’t even matter. Peter wished he still had the pistol in his hand, wished the pistol were still full of bullets; he would shoot Larry now, in the back, shoot him down and then put another bullet in his worrying head; not for any specific crime but out of years of frustration; and because someone had to die.

  Liz slid open one of the glass doors on the far side of the bedroom, leading out to the upper deck. Cautiously she looked out, to left and right, while Larry nattered behind her. Peter moved forward, his eyes and attention on Liz, waiting for her to say the word, and after a minute she turned back into the room, looking at Peter in a closed and somber way, saying, “It’s them, all right.”

  “We haven’t run in luck this time, have we?” Peter felt cold, remote from himself, aloof from the consequences of the world around him. There was no fear or panic in him, no thought that he personally was in danger; whatever happened, he remained convinced he would end the day in Vancouver, he and Liz, prepared to await a more propitious moment, a more fortunate operation, a more successful plan. A miserable humiliating failure (which could be risen above) was the worst he visualized in his own personal future.

  Again Liz and Larry both spoke to him; again he didn’t listen. Stepping around Liz, he carelessly slid the glass door completely open and stepped out onto the upper deck, squinting against the bright sunlight as he moved unhesitatingly across the deck to the rail. The blinding pain in his cheeks seemed to belong to someone else.

  Directly below was the cantilevered main deck, empty but for the orange canvas butterfly chair in which Larry had been doing his brooding. The width of sand between here and the water was, as Larry had said, empty of people, as was the immediate vicinity of ocean. Joyce is buried, just about there, Peter thought, his eyes glancing off the spot, and then he turned to look to the right.

  A crowd of people, gaping this way. The sawhorses, perhaps a hundred fifty feet from here, stretched from house-line to water-line, damming up a flow of curious humanity. There were no obvious policemen visible, but they were undoubtedly close by. “If we had rifles,” Peter muttered aloud, staring from under his sun-shielding hand at the people beyond the sawhorses, “we could pot a few of those gawkers.” Then, with merely a quick establishing glance at the similar barrier-plus-spectators down the beach in the opposite direction, he went back into the house.

  The bedroom was empty, but Larry was vacillating in the hallway; when Peter emerged, Larry said, “Maybe we could still make a run for it. Malibu Canyon Road is just down that way, we could—”

  “Don’t be foolish,” Peter said. “We hold out till dark, then we slip away. Probably down the beach, swim around behind the police line. Where’s Liz?”

  “She went downstairs for guns, but I don’t—”

  “She’s right. Good girl.” Then Peter noticed Larry staring at him in a peculiar horrified way. “What’s the matter?”

  “There’s blood coming out of your mouth.”

  Peter swallowed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I cut myself.” Then he turned his attention to the bullet-pocked door protecting Davis and Mark. “We have to break that door down.”

  “What for? Before the police are set up, we still could—”

  “They’re already in place, get that through your head. Besides, whatever else does or does not happen, Davis dies.” Peter saw Liz coming up the stairs, pistols in her hands. Speaking over Larry’s objections, he said, “Good. We finish Davis now.”

  34

  Ginger’s bank was in Woodland Hills, down in the flat part of the Valley, not far from his house. However, he was barely a quarter mile up Topanga Canyon Boulevard from the Coast Highway when he saw the flashing red light in his rearview mirror.

  Was he speeding? No; but there were cops who liked to hassle expensive or unusual cars just for the hell of it. Irritated, thinking of this as simply more of the bad luck dogging him lately, Ginger pulled into a gravel turnout and rolled to a stop. The Sheriff’s Department car stopped behind him, its red warning lights still revolving, and the driver—deliberately intimidating in his crease-ironed khaki uniform and dark sunglasses—came striding forward in the unhurried fashion of traffic cops everywhere.

  Ginger already had his window rolled down and his license and registration waiting in his hand; the object was to get this interruption over with as quickly as possible. The policeman arrived, Ginger wordlessly handed him the documents, and the policeman wordlessly took them. He studied both with glacial slowness until Ginger, hunching his neck so he could look out the window at a steep angle upward to see the policeman’s blank tanned face, finally said, “What’s the trouble, officer?”

  “You’re Mr. Merville?”

  “Yes, sir.” Ginger was always very polite when under the direct gaze of Authority.

  “And this is your vehicle?”

  “Yes, sir.” Ginger was faintly aware that another car, a maroon Buick Riviera, had also pulled off onto this turnout, and was stopping ahead of the Thunderbird; but his primary attention remained on the policeman.

  “Just wait here a moment,” the policeman said, and crunched away across the gravel toward his own car. Ginger, annoyed and upset but not alarmed, watched him in the rearview mirror, and when next he looked out ahead of his car two men had emerged from the Riviera and were walking in this direction.

  Now, belatedly, Ginger got worried. He still didn’t really believe the events in the beach house could have a serious effect upon his own life—for years Peter had only been amusing, a joke, Ginger’s private joke—but the first twinges of doubt, and even of dread, crossed his mind as he watched the two men approach his car. Both were big, tough-looking, middle-aged. One hung back near Ginger’s front fender while the other came forward to speak. Ginger waited for him, and in sudden terror recognized the man just as he spoke:

  “Mr. Merville, I am Michael Wiskiel of the Los Angeles office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m afraid I must ask you to step out of the car for a moment.”

  Wiskiel; the man on television. “FBI?” Ginger desperately tried for a smile. “For a traffic violation?”

  Wiskiel, opening the Thunderbird’s door, said, “If you’d just step out of the car for a moment.”

  Drive away. Shift into first, run the second man down (the second fantasy slaughter-by-automobile in fifteen minutes), accelerate over the hills and into the Valley and disappear. Except that it wasn’t possible; how many times had Ginger acknowledged to himself that the life of the fugitive was not for him? Whatever Peter did with his days and nights, however he survived from year to year, Ginger could not possibly live the same way. Whatever happened, Ginger was a creature of civilization, limited to a life within society. Feeling unutterably sorry for himself—the unfairness of it all!—Ginger struggled out of the Thunderbird. Hopelessly but automatically he maintained as much of the pretense as he could: “Is something wrong?”

  “You just came from Kenny Heller’s beach house.”

  They’ve been watching me! “Well—umm...” He couldn’t quite bring himself to admit it, though he already knew there was no point denying it.

  Wiskiel didn’t wait for him to resolve the problem, but went on, asking, “Who did you leave there?”

  “No one.” That lie was instinctive.

  And not believed: “No one?”

  And here, at the edge of doom, hope was born. Wasn’t he after all shrewder than this heavy-jawed cop? Ginger had firs
t begun lying himself successfully out of scrapes when he was barely in kindergarten, and his tongue had never lost its skill. He was clever and devious and bright, and there would never be any reason to abandon hope. “The place was empty,” he said. “At least, no one answered when I rang.”

  “You were in the house.”

  “But I wasn’t.” Confidence was flowing again, Ginger was pulling himself back from the brink of despair. “Kenny loaned me the place,” he said smoothly, “but I couldn’t find the key. He always used to keep it atop the lintel, but it wasn’t there. I drove over this morning, tried to get in, rang the bell, then went for a walk on the beach. Leaving the car at the house, of course. When I got back I rang again, but still no answer, so I gave up.”

  Wiskiel frowned; was uncertainty coming into his expression? He said, “So you saw no one.”

  “Not a soul. Obviously, Kenny loaned the place to someone else recently who simply walked off with the key.”

  “So if there’s anybody in the house, you wouldn’t be able to help us with information.”

  “I’m terribly sorry, but no. And I do wish you’d tell me what this is all about.”

  “An FBI matter,” Wiskiel said, being officially distant but not actually hostile. Then, surprisingly, he extended his hand toward Ginger, saying, “Sorry to have troubled you.”

  “Not at all,” Ginger said, smiling broadly, in love with himself, reaching out to shake Wiskiel’s hand.

  And Wiskiel clamped Ginger’s hand in an incredible grip, so astonishing that Ginger cried out and actually rose on tiptoe. Squeezing, crushing Ginger’s hand in his fist, Wiskiel rasped his thumb and fingers back and forth, grinding the bones of Ginger’s hand. Broken hand—can’t play the bass—extreme pain—these things flashed through Ginger’s mind as he reached in agony with his left hand, clutching at Wiskiel’s blunt hard fingers, crying out, “My God! Don’t!”

  Wiskiel pressed forward, his grip hard and tight, his pressure forcing Ginger back against the side of the Thunderbird. “Put your left hand down at your side,” Wiskiel ordered, his voice low and mean, “or I’ll break every bone in your hand.”

  “You are break—Ow!” But Ginger obeyed, unable not to obey; his left hand flew to his side and trembled there, clenching and unclenching, while he danced on the balls of his feet, imprisoned by this grip. “Oh, don’t! Oh, please!”

  “How many are in the house?”

  No, he couldn’t, he couldn’t give himself away like that. “Please!”

  Now Wiskiel gripped his own right thumb with his left fist, and ground the knuckles of his left hand into the back of Ginger’s hand, over the small delicate bones. This was ten times the pain, so sharp and severe that the strength went out of his knees as swiftly as though someone had pulled a plug. He would have fallen except for the pressure with which Wiskiel held him against the side of the Thunderbird. “Now,” Wiskiel said, through clenched teeth, and what happened to Ginger’s hand made him scream aloud. But Wiskiel wouldn’t stop, and the blood was draining from Ginger’s head, and he thought: Let me faint, let me faint.

  The grinding knuckles paused, but the gripping right hand remained. Wiskiel said, “How many in the house?”

  “Oh, please, my hand.” Another police car had pulled up next to the Buick; to take Ginger away, he knew that now. Passing traffic slowed to watch, but no one would stop, no one would rescue him.

  A brief excruciating grind: “How many are in the house?”

  “Oh! Oh!”

  “How many are in the house?”

  “FIVE!”

  The crushing grip eased, ever so slightly. “Good,” Wiskiel said. “Who’s the leader?”

  “Peter—Peter Dinely.”

  The second man had come up beside Wiskiel, with notepad and pencil. Ginger was aware of him writing down Peter’s name, as Wiskiel said, “Who else?”

  “Somebody named Mark—Larry—I don’t know their last names. And a woman named Liz.”

  “What about Joyce Griffith?”

  “Joyce.” Although Wiskiel was now merely holding Ginger’s hand in an ordinarily tight grasp, the waves of pain still flowed up the length of his arm and spread through his body, shattering and distracting him. Joyce; he had trouble thinking, remembering the creature making all that food... “She’s dead.”

  “How?”

  “Mark—Mark killed her. She’s buried in the sand in front of the house.”

  “And Koo Davis? Alive or dead?”

  He had admitted everything else, but still he hesitated. Koo Davis. To acknowledge familiarity with that name was to slam the door forever.

  But Wiskiel was implacable. Another reminiscent squeeze, dragging a groan from Ginger’s throat, and Wiskiel said, harshly, “Is Koo Davis alive or dead?”

  “Alive! Alive!”

  “Good. Where are they keeping him?”

  “Upstairs bedroom. Enclosed, no windows.”

  “An inner room,” Wiskiel said. “All right, good. What guns do they have?”

  “I don’t know. I swear I don’t know.”

  “All right.” And the punishing hand abruptly released its grip. “You can go with these two gentlemen,” Wiskiel said.

  Ginger tucked his throbbing hand into his left armpit, hunching down over it. He would not tell them Peter was undoubtedly killing Davis this very second. Petulant, frightened, angry, spiteful, he glared at Wiskiel through tear-filled eyes: “You’re not supposed to treat me this way!”

  Wiskiel looked at him without expression. “Tough shit,” he said.

  35

  Mike watched in grim satisfaction as Ginger Merville was led away to the other car. He felt no sympathy for such creatures. Five years ago, seven years ago, you could understand and almost forgive all those people who flirted with the kind of antisocial behavior they liked to mislabel ‘revolution’; you could understand it because most of them were merely dupes, sheep going along with the popular sport of bad-mouthing Authority. (And also, of course, he had to admit, because it was an unsettled time, a difficult time, and he was as glad as anybody that it was over.) But to continue now in such actions was no longer forgivable, no longer merely a fad or a sport. Ginger Merville had played with fire too long, and he was about to get very badly burned, and Mike was happy to be the one to strike the match.

  Dave Kerman, putting away the notepad in which he’d copied down what Merville had had to say, said, “Nice work, Mike.”

  Mike shrugged, pleased with himself but trying not to show it. “All I did was shake the little bastard’s hand.” To the Sheriff’s Department officer, who had just come over from his own vehicle, Mike said, “Have someone pick up this car, okay?”

  “Will do, sir. He was what you wanted, was he?”

  “Just what the doctor ordered.”

  “I still have his license and registration.”

  “He won’t need them for a while. Leave them with the car.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The car containing Merville drove off as Mike and Dave Kerman walked back to the Buick. It was Mike’s private car, but Dave drove, freeing Mike to get on the radio. As Dave swung around in a U-turn, heading back toward the Coast Highway, Mike called Jock Cayzer down at the beach house site, telling him, “They’re there, Jock. We got confirmation from Merville.”

  “Very nice,” came the pleased voice, crackling through the static.

  “And our information is, Koo Davis is still alive.”

  “Praise the Lord.”

  Dave Kerman laughed at the phrase, and made the right turn onto the Coast Highway. Mike said, “Keep them bottled up, Jock. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

  The problem was, the area was so thoroughly public. The Coast Highway itself was four lanes wide, being not only the scenic route along the coast but also the main road to Oxnard and Santa Barbara and beyond, filled with traffic all day long; rerouting all those vehicles up through the hills would be complicated and arduous. Besides that, the entire beachfront f
rom Malibu State Beach just west of the house to Las Tunas State Beach several miles to the east swarmed with people, who would have to be safeguarded. All of which meant that a lot of preliminary work had to be done, and there was no way to do it without attracting the attention of the people inside the house. They could only hope the kidnappers wouldn’t panic, wouldn’t kill Koo Davis or do anything else stupid once they became aware of the tightening net.

  A mobile command center had been set up in two trailers in a diner parking lot on the shoreward side of the road, just east of the target house. When Dave Kerman angled the Buick around the police-line sawhorses and into this parking lot, Mike saw there were now six trailers, the other four all being connected with the media; three TV remote units and one documentary film unit. “The vultures are here,” he said.

  Dave Kerman grinned. “Why not? When else are they gonna get Koo Davis on the program for free?”

  At times like this, the final moments of the hunt, when the TV and newspaper people began to cluster and swarm hot-eyed for blood, Mike felt a certain disgust for the media and all its representatives. As far as he was concerned, though his own work might become messy and dirty in the heat of the struggle, both the motives and the result were clean; the media, on the other hand, was engaged in the unhealthy task of pandering to unhealthy desires. Now, striding from the car to the main trailer, he grimly ignored the two camera crews recording his progress and refused either to listen or respond to the questions of the microphone-waving reporters who trotted to his side. His earlier embarrassed pleasure at becoming in a small way a media celebrity was washed away by this repugnance. “Out of the way,” he said to a reporter who had become just a little too bold, and stepped into the trailer.

  A dozen people were crowded into the long narrow cream-walled space inside the trailer, among them Jock Cayzer and Lynsey Rayne. Lynsey came forward at Mike’s entrance, looking frightened but elated, saying, “Is it true? He’s certainly alive?”

  “According to Merville.” But then he quickly softened that, preferring to have her optimistic: “And he was telling the truth, no question about that. He opened up like a flower.”