The Comedy is Finished

by Donald E. Westlake

  She looked at him, momentarily surprised, but then realized Mark had been essentially alone through all this. He had needed her temporarily, as he had needed the scissors or the facecloths, but he was the only one who actually existed in this room. He and Koo Davis. What is there between them? she wondered, and was surprised that the question had never occurred to her before. There was something between them, some extra element none of the others knew about. It was that unsuspected weight which had thrown them all off-balance from the very beginning, creating an environment that drove the others crazy without ever knowing why. Liz said, “Did you cut him?”

  He was surprised at the question, but in a remote way. Shrugging, he said, “Of course not.”

  “You came out of the ocean. To help him?”

  Mark looked at her with his closed secret face. “Go away,” he said.

  She shook her head. “It’s too late anyway,” she said, glanced with fading interest once more at Koo Davis, and turned away.

  Downstairs, she found Peter and Ginger snarling together in the studio with all the electronic equipment. She had looked for them to find out the story, but the instant she walked in Ginger turned to her, half-whispering, “Did he see me? You were up there; did he see me?”

  It hadn’t taken Ginger long to win Liz’s contempt. “No one can see you,” she said.

  Peter said, “What’s going on up there?”

  “Mark bandaged him. What happened before?”

  “Joyce,” Peter said. “She went crazy.” Peter himself looked crazier than usual, his eyes staring, his cheeks gaunt. His jaw kept making chewing motions, as though he were gnawing on a rubber band.

  Liz said, “Joyce? What did Joyce do?”

  “She let him go. Davis.” Peter gestured wildly, to indicate that he understood nothing of motivation in all this. “Don’t ask me why. She let him out of the house and took him down to the beach and tried to kill him.”

  “With a knife,” Ginger said, smirking in Peter’s direction. “The very knife we’d been looking for ourselves, to do our own slicing.”

  “Mark stopped her,” Peter said. “He—he killed her. Larry’s out there now, he’s burying her in the sand.”

  Liz looked from face to face. “So it’s all over,” she said.

  Peter’s jaw clenched, his eyes glared. “It is not,” he said. “It isn’t over till I say it’s over. My way.”

  “Whatever you want,” Liz said, not caring, and left the room, crossing the living room to go out onto the deck. The moon was lower now, the night darker. She could barely make out the hunched figure way out there across the sand.

  Liz was back in the Eames chair when Larry came in. She was thinking about death, and didn’t hear him when he first spoke to her. Then he spoke again, and called her name, and she frowned at him in irritation, becoming doubly irritated when she saw he’d been crying. She said, “What is it?”

  Larry gestured toward the stairs. “What are they arguing about?”

  Now she became aware of it; intense voices, not extremely loud but nevertheless vibrating with rage. Mark and Peter, upstairs. “What does it matter?” she said.

  Ginger was also in the room, standing over by the window, and now he turned with his nasty smile, saying, “The Koo Davis ear.”

  Liz frowned, more irritable than interested. “His ear? What about it?”

  Ginger said, “Peter wants it, to send to the FBI, and Mark won’t let him have it.”

  At moments, it seemed to Liz she must still be tripping, that Ginger for instance could have no external reality at all but must be merely a floating atom inside her own brain. At other moments, it seemed her trip had merely served to remind her how unbelievable the real world is; it was Ginger and Peter and Mark who existed, while the white rats in the swimming pool had been imaginary.

  Larry was blustering, saying, “Peter’s gone mad! What does he hope to—? I’m going up there!”

  “Don’t,” Liz told him.

  He undoubtedly didn’t really want to; that Larry was afraid of both Mark and Peter had been common knowledge for years. With a show of barely checked determination, he said, “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Mark won’t want you on his side.”

  Ginger cackled, while Larry actually blushed. Liz deliberately twisted the knife: “And you wouldn’t do any good. Let them work it out for themselves.”

  Larry dropped onto the sofa, fretfully rubbing his hands together. “I don’t know what to do, this is all getting so—” His expression turned tragic, he looked over at Liz and said, “Just tonight, I finally told Joyce I loved her.”

  “Maybe that’s what drove her crazy.”

  Ginger cackled again. Liz swiveled the Eames chair around to face him, but said nothing. She watched Ginger wordlessly till he stopped and looked away, with an angry shrug, saying, “It’s my house.” Then he said, “And I believe I’ll drink in it,” and walked briskly away, pretending Liz hadn’t driven him from the room.

  The angry voices continued upstairs; Peter was doing most of the talking, but Mark’s short replies had not weakened. Larry said, nervously, “I wonder who’ll win.”

  “Win?” Liz looked at him with a surprise she didn’t feel.

  28

  There are many different kinds of bribe in this world. Money, actual cash, is the bluntest and often the least effective bribe of all, since each of the participants finishes with a sense of contempt for the other. At the other extreme, mutual back-scratching is the noblest and cleanest form of bribery, because the participants—if all goes well—finish by being grateful to one another.

  One of the policewomen manning the phones on the Koo Davis case was named Betty Austin, and her secret vice was songwriting; Dory Previn, with a touch of Bessie Smith. With no suggestion of return, Lynsey Rayne had offered to see to it that Marty Rubelman, musical director of Koo’s TV specials, was shown some of Policewoman Austin’s material. With no suggestion of return, Policewoman Austin had offered to let Lynsey know the instant there were any new development in the kidnapping case. Each was made happy by the offer of the other.

  Phone. Telephone. Clanging again and again. Lynsey opened her eyes in the dark bedroom of her small house in Westwood, and for the longest time she couldn’t understand what that noise was or why it was going on for so long. There was no sleep-over man in her life right now—hadn’t been for nearly a year—so the phone would continue until either she answered it or the caller gave up; but she’d had so little sleep the last two nights that she just couldn’t seem to break through this grogginess. Damn! Damn!

  Tossing her head, trying to clear it, she saw the illuminated numerals on the digital clock-radio, but without her glasses couldn’t read the numbers. The desire to know what time it was drove her up that extra little bit toward consciousness so that suddenly, on about the tenth ring, she cried out loud, “The phone!” and lunged to answer it.

  The caller, a woman, spoke quietly, as though afraid of being overheard: “You ought to come over now.”

  “What? What?”

  “You know who this is.”

  And then Lynsey did; it was Policewoman Austin. “What’s happened?”

  “Just come over.” Click.

  “Oh, my God,” Lynsey said. In the darkness she couldn’t hang up the phone, find her glasses, find the light-switch, read the clock—“Oh, my God, oh my God.” Glasses. Clock reading 4:07. “Oh, my God.”

  The receptionist in the outer office at ten minutes to five in the morning was male and uniformed and initially unresponsive. “Something’s happened,” Lynsey insisted, “and I want to know what it is. Who’s here? Inspector Cayzer? Is the FBI man here, Mr. Wiskiel?”

  “Ma’am, if there’s anything new, I’m sure they’ll get in touch with—”

  “Go in and tell them I’m here. Just tell them.”

  He didn’t want to, but finally he shrugged and said, “I’ll see if there’s anybody here.”

  There was somebody here; L
ynsey heard voices when the policeman opened the inner office door. He looked back at her, grudgingly, and closed the door behind himself.

  What was happening? What was going on? It wasn’t that Koo had been rescued; there’d be no secrecy about that. Had they found him dead? Terribly injured? Did they know where the kidnappers were keeping him? What was going on?

  The policeman returned, followed by Mike Wiskiel, looking irritated and upset. The irritation was because of her presence, but why was he upset? He seemed troubled, disturbed, unhappy. Afraid of what that might mean, needing to know the worst right now, she stepped forward before he had a chance to speak, saying, “What’s happened? Something bad, I can see it in your face.”

  He would try, of course, to deflect the conversation: “Ms. Rayne, how did you know to come here?”

  “Mr. Wiskiel, please. What’s happened?”

  He was closed away from her. “Davis isn’t dead, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he said, as though that crumb would satisfy her. “Believe me, I’d tell you.”

  “There’s something,” she insisted. “If I were family, would you tell me?”

  His laugh was surprisingly harsh: “You mean you’ll drag Mrs. Davis down here to ask the questions? You’re more family than she is.”

  Lynsey was surprised that Wiskiel had had the wit to make that assessment, but she wouldn’t be distracted. “Then tell me,” she said.

  He shook his head. “Ms. Rayne, you’re not accomplishing anything by coming here this way. When there’s something constructive, I’ll let you know.”

  “It has to be very bad,” she said. “All right, he isn’t dead, I accept that, but it has to be very bad for you to fight me like this.”

  He hesitated, indecision finally appearing in his eyes. Was he acting from the old macho idea that grimness should be kept as much as possible away from the sight of females? He was certainly capable of such an attitude. Should she reassure him, promise him she could deal with whatever he was keeping from her? No; it was best to let him work it through for himself. Her part would be to make it absolutely clear she wasn’t going away.

  And at last he sighed and shook his head and said, “Okay. I was sent out here to not tell you, but you’re right, if you were family I’d have no choice.”

  But at that point he ran out of words and stopped. She looked at him, waiting, and saw that he was helpless, trying in vain to find the right combination of words. After half a minute of silence, while the fear built in her, she gave him a sad smile and said, “There’s no soft way, is there? So just say it, whatever it is.”

  “They cut off his ear.”

  She stared at him, at first failing to understand the meaning of those words, and then she heard herself laugh, as though it was a joke: “They didn’t!”

  “I’m sorry. They want to show the world how tough they are.”

  “They—His ear?” It was still meaningless, incomprehensible. “That’s—That’s like savages, it’s primitive man, it’s...”

  “Once people lose the social thread,” he said, obviously telling her something he deeply believed, “they’re capable of anything.”

  “But his—” Floundering toward something recognizable, she said, “Is there another message?”

  “Not his voice. A new voice.”

  “I want to hear it.”

  “Ms. Rayne, I don’t—”

  “And I want to see the ear.”

  She wasn’t going to be stopped, and he must have seen that. With another sigh, he shrugged and said, “Come along, then.”

  In the workroom were three men: Jock Cayzer, the tape technician, and Maurice St. Clair, the FBI Deputy Director from Washington, whom Lynsey hadn’t yet met but had seen on that television program. As Lynsey and Mike Wiskiel walked in, the technician was saying, “—interesting about this tape.” But then he stopped, as the three men became aware of Lynsey’s presence.

  St. Clair, big and meaty and red-faced, lunged up from the folding chair he’d been sitting on, shouting, “For Christ’s sake! Mike, Mike—”

  “It’s all right, Murray,” Wiskiel said.

  She had already seen the box. That had to be it, sitting alone on a worktable, a small black box bearing the stylized white letters “i magnin.” As Wiskiel went through the stupid formalities of introducing Lynsey to St. Clair, she crossed directly to the box, opened the lid, and looked inside.

  How awful. How pitiable. It was small, wrinkled, pale, fleshy, stained with rust-colored dry blood, and utterly pathetic. Lynsey pressed her palms onto the table to both sides of the small box, clenched her jaw, stood unblinking, and gazed into the box.

  The men had become silent, and it was Jock Cayzer who came over to stand beside her, saying nothing, also looking into the box. Quietly, Lynsey said, “It’s so small.”

  “Well, it’s off a living man,” he said, “so it would have bled some; that’d shrink it.” His manner was calm, sympathetic but unemotional, reducing this horrible thing to something that could be looked at, discussed, absorbed into one’s mind and memory.

  She needed that. She needed something to make this ordinary, so she could go on from it. “I’ve never seen a thing like this before,” she said.

  “Oh, I have.” And still he was calm, judicious, merely reporting a fact.

  “Tell me about it.”

  She felt him glance at her, study her profile, make a decision about her. Then he said, “Some of the boys back from Nam, they brought Cong ears with them. Anyway, they said they were Cong ears, and they were sure ears. And what they mostly looked like was dried peaches.”

  “This one is fresher.”

  “Yes,” he said, and reached out as though casually to close the lid on the box.

  She looked at him, seeing a man who was truly strong without making a point of it. “Thank you,” she said.

  “My pleasure, Ms. Rayne.”

  “May I hear the tape?”

  “Of course.”

  The technician already had it cued up, and this new harsh voice snarled from the loudspeakers with its self-serving self-righteousness. Lynsey listened unmoving—she was deadened, at least for now, free from high emotional reactions—and at the end she said, quietly, “They are just beasts, aren’t they?”

  Cayzer said, “The television broadcast must have been a shock to them.”

  Obviously uncomfortable, St. Clair said, “Miss Rayne, there just wasn’t any way to soften that blow. I mean, telling these bastards what answers we got from their former friends. We simply had to tell them the truth.”

  “I realize that.” Then she sighed, and shook her head, and said, “What happens now?”

  “We’ll send this tape to Washington,” St. Clair told her, “for the next response.”

  “But there is no next response, is there?”

  St. Clair frowned unhappily at her—the third man in five minutes to wonder if she could survive the truth—and then he said, “Myself, Miss Rayne, I can’t think of any.”

  “What they ask is impossible.”

  Beneath his restraint St. Clair was very angry. “And they know it,” he said. “In the first place, we can’t just talk half a dozen people out of jail against their will and deport them out of the country. Maybe in Russia you can do that, but not here. There’s such a thing as due process, and if we tried any such stunt there wouldn’t be a lawyer in the nation out of work for the next two years. And in the second place, even if we could do such a thing we wouldn’t, because what this son of a bitch Rock really wants is other buddies of his in Algeria to take revenge on those people for standing him up.”

  “Showing him up,” Wiskiel said.

  “Both.”

  “So this is just propaganda,” Lynsey said. “They’re going to kill Koo and they’ll try to put the blame on the government.”

  Wiskiel said, “So we’ve got to find them before they do it.”

  Lynsey shook her head. “If the deadline isn’t real, if they’re going to kill
him anyway, why would they wait?”

  “One last propaganda blitz,” St. Clair suggested. “Another tape, or maybe even a phone call to a television station, something like that, just at the deadline. Davis will be useful to them right up until twelve noon.”

  “But how are you going to find them? They left that house in Woodland Hills, and this time there’s no message from Koo.”

  Wiskiel said, “We have one lead. There was something funny about the Woodland Hills house being so available, and we’re trying to find the owner.”

  “Trying to find him?”

  “He’s a rock musician named Ginger Merville,” Wiskiel said, “and he’s supposed to be in Paris on tour, but he and his tour manager both checked out of their hotel two days ago. The manager flew to Tokyo, where Merville is supposed to perform this weekend, but Merville himself flew to New York. So far, we haven’t been able to find out where he went after that.”

  “Ginger Merville.” Lynsey knew the name, knew something of the man’s career. She said, “Did you check with his agent?”

  “One of my men saw him this afternoon. Or yesterday afternoon, I guess, by now. He didn’t know where Merville was.”

  “Nonsense,” Lynsey said.

  Wiskiel looked surprised. “Beg pardon?”

  “The agent knows where Merville is,” Lynsey said. “People hide from their wives, their creditors, their employers and the police, but they don’t hide from their agents.”

  “Are you suggesting the agent is part of it?”

  “No, I’m not.” Lynsey paused, choosing her words carefully. She didn’t particularly want to antagonize Wiskiel and the others, but she wanted them to understand. “Back in the sixties,” she said, “when law enforcement was being used against the wrong people, many people lost the habit of cooperating with the authorities. A rock musician’s agent would undoubtedly have sour memories of the FBI.”

  Wiskiel obviously couldn’t believe it. “To the extent,” he said, “that a legitimate theatrical agent would refuse to help us save Koo Davis? We told him what we wanted Merville for.”