The Comedy is Finished

by Donald E. Westlake

  Koo also is released; he turns away, staring at the furniture, the wall, the closed bathroom door, anything at all. That was the least sane thing anybody, man or woman, ever did in his presence, and his mind is a jumble of response; pity, outrage, embarrassment, humiliation, fear. Everything, in fact, but lust: You’re a great argument for monasteries, baby, he thinks, but he doesn’t say it out loud.

  Liz, in fact, is the first to speak, three or four minutes later, saying, “Well?”

  He looks at her, and she’s back to her old self, angry, hostile and scornful. She’s also sitting up straight now, the sunglasses hiding her face and the dashiki down over her legs. Koo has nothing to say, but he watches her, waiting for whatever will happen next.

  The drug or madness or whatever it was seems gone now. She’s merely a nasty woman; nastier than most. With more belligerence than challenge she says, “Do you think you could make me come like that? You couldn’t. Not even close.”

  Koo answers without the slightest overtone of comic manner: “For the first time in my life,” he says, “I know why they call it self-abuse.”

  “Funny man,” she says, as mirthlessly as he. Then she shakes her head, saying, “Do you really expect to live through this?”

  “I don’t think about it,” he says, while a lump of dread forms in his stomach.

  What a lot of different sneers she owns! Using a brand new one, she says, “Afraid?”

  “Very. Aren’t you?”

  “We having nothing to fear but fear itself,” she tells him. “And that big guy over there with the sword.”

  Koo gapes at her; does she realize she’s quoting an ancient line of his?

  Yes. With an ironic smile she explains, “They’re showing your old movies on television. Because of all this.”

  “Oh. Is that the silver lining, or the cloud?” And, astonishingly, he senses the beginning of human contact between them.

  But she won’t let it happen. Souring again, lips turning down, she says, “I’m not your fan. We’re not chums.”

  “That’s the silver lining.”

  “Shut up for a minute. You’re a boring person.”

  “Send me home.”

  She looks at him, stolidly. “You’ll never see home again. Now shut your face.”

  He says nothing. She wants the last word? Fine, she’s got the last word.

  And some last word it is. While the silence goes on and on in the small room—she’s brooding about something, over there behind her sunglasses—her last statement keeps circling in Koo’s head. “You’ll never see home again.” That’s the fear, tucked down into a capsule and neatly answered, the fear that there is no way out, that kidnapping isn’t really what’s happened to Koo Davis. Death is happening to him, that’s what, Death, in easy stages. He’s on the chute, the long slippery chute, sliding down into the black.

  It must be five minutes they sit there in jagged silence when the door behind Koo opens again and Joyce enters, looking hopeful and almost happy—and then surprised, when she sees Liz: “So there you are!”

  “Maybe,” Liz says, unmoving.

  “Did you hear the announcement?”

  Liz shrugs.

  “On the radio,” Joyce says, as though a piling on of detail will encourage Liz to respond.

  Koo says, “Something about me? Excuse me butting in, I take an interest in my well-being.”

  “Yes, of course,” Joyce says. “It was from the man Wiskiel. He said the kidnappers should watch a special program tonight at seven-thirty on Channel 11, we’ll have an answer from Washington then.”

  “A special? They can’t just say yes or no, they have to bring on the June Taylor Dancers?”

  “They apologized for not making the six o’clock deadline,” Joyce goes on, oblivious, “but they said seven-thirty was the absolute earliest they could have the answer ready. Doesn’t that sound hopeful to you?”

  She’s asking Koo, having obviously decided not to waste her high spirits on Liz, but Koo isn’t feeling particularly perky himself at the moment, and he says, “What’s so hopeful about it? It can still be yes or no.”

  “Oh, it’s much more likely to be yes. If it was no, they could just say so, but if it’s yes they have to get everybody ready, get them out of their jails and all, and that takes time.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Koo tells her. “In fact, I’m positive you’re right.”

  “I know I am.” Joyce takes everything literally. Now she actually smiles fondly at Koo, and says, “It really hasn’t been that bad, has it?”

  Can she be serious? Koo studies her earnest face, and decides she can. He says, “You know how, sometimes, there’s a thing that somebody doesn’t like, and he’ll say, ‘Well, it’s not as bad as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick’? You ever hear anybody use that remark?”

  “I think so,” she says, doubtfully.

  “Well, this,” Koo tells her, “is exactly as bad as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. In fact, worse. In fact, two pokes, two eyes, two sharp sticks.”

  “Oh, it isn’t that bad,” she says, with a laugh, as though he’s joking.

  Koo frowns. He will not do Burns and Allen with this nitwit. “Okay,” he says. “So it isn’t that bad.”

  Abruptly Liz yanks herself to her feet, saying to Joyce, “He’s an insect. He’ll be squashed, that’s all, sooner or later. Don’t smile at him, he’s dead already.” And she strides from the room, closing the door hard behind her.

  Joyce looks pained, like a punctilious hostess. “Don’t mind Liz. Really. She’s been...upset today.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  “I’ll have to—” Joyce is edging, in tentative muddled movements, toward the door, drawn by Liz’ wake. “Things will be all right now,” she says, but her smile is panicky.

  Will things be all right? One of these people is talking death, one is talking release, one is talking father-son, one is talking African tribes, and Count Dracula isn’t talking at all. And Koo is not at all as heartened as Joyce at the prospect of this seven-thirty television spectacular; it sounds more like a negotiating phase than a final step, and so far Koo doesn’t much like the way these people negotiate. Making a sudden decision, surprising himself, he says, “Wait.”

  “Yes?”

  Is this the right move? Who knows; it’s what he’s going to do. “I want you to take a message to Mark.”

  “Mark?” She frowns at him, her manner more keen than usual. “Is this the same thing that Larry talked to him about?”

  “That’s right. Why?”

  “They had a fight about it. Mark and Larry.”

  Koo can’t quite contain a sudden triumphant grin. So his instinct is right; Mark went too far with that father-son line, he scared himself. Mark is on the run now, Koo has the edge, and by God he’s determined to find some useful advantage in it. With all these crazy people on the loose around here negotiations with Washington are less useful to Koo than his own initiative; somehow, somehow, he has to get himself out of here. (Was his message received, in that last tape? Was it understood? Is the house being surrounded at this very moment? No, he can’t count on that either; wishing won’t make it so.) “You tell Mark,” he says, “that if he won’t answer my questions I’ll ask them of you.”

  “Well, what are they? Why not just ask me to begin with?”

  “Tell Mark,” Koo insists. “Then either he comes down or you do.”

  She hesitates, then slowly nods: “All right. But I don’t want him to fight with me. I’ll ask him once.”

  “That’s fine.”

  She leaves, and Koo lies back on the studio couch, staring at the ceiling. Now that it’s too late, he’s no longer so absolutely sure he has the upper hand with Mark. That’s a brutal boy, after all; swift violent action is his specialty.

  Although he’s still very weak, nervousness soon drives Koo up onto his feet. He treads slowly the length of the room, door to window, and then back, pausing at the
door; with all this traffic in and out, would somebody have forgotten to lock that?

  No. He tests it, and it’s still solidly sealed against him. And the next time it opens, will Mark be coming in? With balled fists and enraged eyes? The thought pushes Koo away from the door, and he moves shakily down the room again to the far end, to the window and all that heavy viscous weight of translucent water. With his back to the water, Koo stands with his hands in the pockets of the terrycloth robe, and waits.

  One minute; two minutes; and the door swings open and Mark walks in.

  Koo presses his back against the window glass, ashamed of his fear and hating his physical weakness, watching Mark push the door shut behind himself and advance into the room. And into Koo’s mind comes a scene from one of those early movies, Ghost to Ghost: Fleeing the villains, the character he played backs through a doorway, unaware it leads to a tiger’s cage containing a tiger. Shutting the door, inadvertently locking it, he turns, sees the tiger, and freezes. The emotions Koo portrayed in that long-ago scene he now feels, almost literally; he is locked in a cage with a tiger, with a ferocious beast.

  The ferocious beast paces to the middle of the room, his expression a deeply sullen glare. “All right,” he says. “Get it over with.”

  Koo’s mouth and throat are dry. He has trouble breathing, making sounds, forming words. Hoarse, he finally says, “Is it true?”

  “Is what true? Say the words.”

  Koo nods. He knows the answer now, but he understands he does have to say the words: “Are you my son?”

  “Yes.” There’s nothing in the word but Mark’s usual flat bluntness.

  “You mean it—you meant physically, actually.”

  “Flesh of your flesh.” Mark’s lips writhe in loathing over his teeth as he says the words. “Bone of your bone.”

  “I—” Koo shakes his head. “I don’t understand.” Could Lily have had another child after they’d separated? But there wouldn’t have been any reason to keep it secret.

  “You paid five hundred dollars to have me killed,” Marks says, without particular emotional force. “My mother spent the money to have me born instead.”

  “Five hundred...an abortion.”

  Mark’s smile is terrifying, and so is his low voice: “Did somebody call my name?’

  “Jesus,” Koo says, barely above a whisper. “I don’t—I’m sorry, I don’t—” He gestures helplessly with both hands, his weight sagging back against the window.

  “You don’t remember?” Anger, mockery, hatred; Mark leans toward Koo, but doesn’t step closer. “I was worth five hundred dollars to you not to exist, and now you don’t even remember?”

  “It’s been—I don’t know how—”

  “You don’t know which!” Mark stares at him in a kind of triumphal horror. “You filthy monster, you don’t even know which of your little murders I am!”

  Ahhh, God, that’s true. There were three over the years, all of them decades ago; all, in fact, in the right era to be this fellow standing here. How old is he; thirty, thirty-two? Grown from a hasty error, all the way up to this. “I’m sorry,” Koo says, fighting down a sudden tidal wave compulsion to shed tears. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry.” Mark becomes calmer as Koo’s agitation increases. “Sorry for what?”

  “For everything. Everything.”

  “Sorry you don’t know which one I am. Sorry you didn’t get what you paid for.”

  “No! Jesus, I’m not—” But of course he is. Five hundred dollars thirty years ago to not be in this room with this savage? There’s no way Koo can keep his reaction to that idea out of his mind.

  And apparently no way he can keep it off his face; Mark emits an angry bark of laughter, saying, “That’s right. If only my mother had obeyed orders, you wouldn’t have me to worry about, would you?”

  “Is that—is that why I’m here? Is that why you picked me?”

  Rage flares in Mark at the question. His hand, clawlike, shoots out as though to clutch Koo’s throat, but then merely stays in the air, trembling. “I didn’t pick you! They picked you.” With a hand-wave to indicate the others in the gang. “All I did was...” the enraged face permits again a suggestion of the terrifying smile, “hint a little.”

  “You mean the others don’t know. Is that it? They don’t know?”

  “If you tell them, I’ll kill you.”

  “But if they don’t know, if that isn’t the reason, then why me? Why me?”

  “Because you were the hawks’ jester. You’re here because you are who you are. I’m here because you are who you are. It all comes together.”

  “Who—who was—” But Koo can’t ask the question, even though he craves the answer. He stares at the boy’s face, trying to see some other face in it, some face he can recognize.

  Mark understands the unasked question, and it makes him laugh, not pleasantly. “Who is my mother? That’s up to you.”

  No familiar feature can show through that mask of rage. Koo stares and stares, but it’s impossible. And if he knew, would it make anything better? Cozier, more familiar? Familiar; family. He gestures helplessly: “I never knew.”

  “You have cockroaches,” Mark whispers at him, gloating, intimate. “Cockroaches in the walls. Me.”

  “Don’t. Please.”

  But Mark is no longer under control. The break that Koo feared has occurred; suddenly everything is different: “I’m the cockroach in the wall,” Mark says. His eyes are bright and lifeless, pieces of quartz. “Call the exterminator, Koo, call him back. I’m still here.”

  “Wait.”

  “You shouldn’t have asked, Koo. You really shouldn’t have asked.”

  Mark’s face is closer, larger, filling Koo’s vision; a stone face, not human. Mark’s hand reaches out again, this time rests on Koo’s shoulder, a neutral weight like a board or a hangman’s rope. Everything drains from Mark’s stone face, and Koo closes his eyes. He’s going to kill me now. There’s no evasion, no salvation.

  The other hand touches Koo’s trembling throat at the same instant that Peter’s voice says, “Well, now what?”

  The hands lift from Koo’s body. He opens his eyes, seeing the expressionless face receding, Peter in the open doorway at the other end of the room. Koo droops against the window and Peter comes deeper into the room, saying, “Mark? What are you doing?”

  “A discussion,” Mark says, and gives Koo a flat look. “Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” Koo says.

  “Discussion?” Peter looks from face to face. “About what?”

  “A private discussion.” Mark looks again at Koo, again says, “Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” Koo says.

  Peter continues to frown at them both, then shrugs, giving it up. “Get dressed, Koo,” he says. “There’s been a change of plan.”

  18

  At ten past four, Mike Wiskiel was in the Butler Aviation waiting room at Los Angeles International Airport, awkwardly shaking hands with Lily Davis, wife of the kidnapped man, who had flown with her two sons out from New York in a private plane owned by one of the companies that sponsored her husband’s TV specials. Mike was awkward because he knew Lily Davis had a lot of friends back in Washington, and he didn’t know how severely the fuck-up with the transmitter had hurt his chances for getting back there himself. It could be he smelled too bad now for any recovery, no matter how brilliantly he handled the Koo Davis case from this point forward, but if there was even the slightest chance he could recoup his losses he wanted to be sure he had no unnecessary enemies with D.C. strings to pull. Lily Davis, a powerful figure in her own right as well as Koo Davis’ wife, could help or hurt Mike’s comeback with a casual lift of the eyebrow.

  Meeting the problem head-on, Mike said, “Mrs. Davis, I’m the man who did it wrong last night. I hope very soon to be able to apologize to your husband; in the meantime, let me assure you just how sorry I am for what happened.”

  “Mr. Wiskiel,” Lily Davis said, her
manner calm and her handshake strong, “there’s no apology needed. You have an excellent reputation, and you did what you thought best under the circumstances.”

  The word for Lily Davis was magisterial. A stocky, compact woman of not quite sixty, she carried herself with a patrician grace; a matron of ancient Rome, shopping at the slave market. (There was in her no remnant of that timid hausfrau abandoned all those years ago by her husband.) A committeewoman, active in any number of worthy organizations, she possessed the rather forbidding calm of a person who has learned how to control people in groups. Her assurances to Mike seemed sincere but impersonal, as though at bottom she didn’t really give a damn, not about Mike and not about her husband. Mike said, “Thank you, Mrs. Davis. It was still a mistake, and a bad one. I hope to make up for it.”

  “I’m sure you will.” Calmly dismissing that subject, she said, “May I introduce my sons. Barry, and Frank.”

  Both men were probably under forty. Barry, fastidious in blue suit with vest, white shirt and narrow striped tie, was the one who lived in London as part-owner of an antique business; there were odd traces of English accent in his voice, and his manner seemed to Mike obviously homosexual. Frank, on the other hand, the television network executive from New York, less formal in tweed jacket and open-collared blue shirt and slacks, showed a hearty easygoing masculinity that mostly suggested some kind of salesman; anything from insurance to used cars. Both men had, in their very different ways, firm handshakes, and neither seemed particularly broken up by what had happened to their father.