The Comedy is Finished

by Donald E. Westlake

  Koo sat up straighter, sending Mark a frightened look. Turning casually to the door, Mark rested his hands on the waist-level television set, smiling with easy familiarity at his fractured images in the broken mirror. He wasn’t particularly worried about Peter shooting through the door at him; those last bullets had penetrated the wood and cracked the glass, but they hadn’t entered the room with any force. Mark called, “Yes, I can hear you.”

  “We made a deal with them, Mark.”

  Mark waited, but apparently Peter expected him to comment, and the silence lengthened. Mark had no comment, he didn’t live on the same level of reality as Peter, so he merely waited, mildly, for Peter to speak again.

  “Mark! Did you hear me?”

  “Yes, I heard you.”

  “They’ll give us a plane. They’ll give us a clear route to the airport.”

  Mark smiled at the silliness of it. In his mind’s eye he saw the sharpshooters on the rooftops, the curve or corner where the car would of necessity briefly slow to a crawl, the side windows starring and splintering all together, and suddenly everybody in the car dead but Koo. Turning to Koo, Mark grinned and pantomimed a sniper with a rifle shooting down from a rooftop. Koo looked blank, then suddenly nodded in comprehension. “Right,” he said. “But with my luck, the guy’d sneeze.”

  “With my luck, so would I.”

  “One bullet,” Koo said. “Right through the both of us.”

  “You’re an incurable romantic, Koo.”

  “Oh, I can be cured. I can be cured.”

  Peter’s ragged voice sounded again: “Mark! There isn’t time for this!”

  Mark shook his head at Koo, and turned back to the door. “Go away, Peter,” he called. “There’s nothing going to happen here.”

  “We have to let them speak to Davis on the phone. They have to know he’s alive before they’ll deal.”

  Mark made no response. To Koo he said, “Come over here. Lean your weight against this stuff.”

  Getting to his feet, Koo said, “We expect visitors?”

  “They’ll shoot the lock off in a minute.”

  “What an exciting life you lead.”

  Peter again: “Forget what happened before! Everything has changed now! We need him alive, he’s our passport!”

  “It’s nice to be needed,” Koo commented, leaning his back against the hamper and the TV set.

  “Mark!” came Peter’s hysterical voice. “For the last time!”

  “Promises, promises,” Koo said.

  The sound of the shot wasn’t terribly loud, but the vibration of its impact pulsed through the jumbled pieces of the barricade like a preliminary earthquake tremor, and Koo’s side twinged painfully. “That’s a bigger gun,” Mark said.

  “You suppose they got nukes?”

  The second shot thrummed into the door; bottles tinkled together inside the hamper.

  Seated at the small desk in the crowded trailer, Mike looked up when the radio operator called, “Mr. Wiskiel!”

  “Yes?”

  “Report of shooting from the house.”

  “No,” Lynsey said; too low for anyone to hear but Mike. The color drained from her face, as though she might faint, and he noticed how clawlike her hands became when she clutched at the edge of the desk for support.

  Mike concentrated on the radio operator, saying, “Anybody hit?”

  “No, sir. They want to know what’s their response.”

  “We don’t shoot first,” Mike said. “But we return fire.”

  “Mike, please!” Lynsey’s whisper was shrill with urgency.

  For her benefit, Mike added, “And nobody fires at sounds. We only respond to direct attack.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The radio operator turned back to his seat, and Mike held a hand up to stop Lynsey’s protests before they could start. “Listen,” he said. “The guy hasn’t called back. You know what that probably means.”

  “You can’t be sure what’s going on in that house,” she said. “They might be arguing among themselves.”

  “Fine. If they are, and if Koo Davis is alive, then he’s still where Merville said he was—in an interior room without windows. Firing from outside the house won’t endanger him.”

  “You can’t be sure where he is!”

  “I can’t be sure of anything till it’s over,” Mike said. “But I’m not prepared to order my people not to respond when attacked.” Picking up the phone, he added, “I’ll talk to them again.”

  “Good.”

  But they weren’t answering. He let it ring eighteen times, then all at once the line went dead. When he dialed again, he got a busy signal.

  “More shooting at the house,” the radio operator said.

  Mike slammed the phone into its cradle; pushing back from the desk, he said, “I’m going down there and see what’s what.”

  “I want to come with you.”

  He looked at her wryly. “What choice do I have?”

  “None,” she said.

  After Larry shot the telephone, he felt foolish but defiant. He stood there with the revolver in his hand, the shattered phone on the living room floor, and Peter came blundering down the stairs, his voice high-pitched with a new querulousness, crying, “What’s the matter with you? What’s the matter with everybody?”

  “We can’t take anymore,” Larry told him. “It has to end.”

  Peter stared at the phone. “You utter fool! Now how can we deal with them?”

  “Oh, Peter, do you still believe in it all?”

  Larry no longer believed. His long morning of thought had led him at last to the understanding that it had all been a mistake, a stupid tragic mistake. He was remembering now something he hadn’t thought of in years; a motto on the wall of his parents’ bedroom back home, cut from some old magazine by his mother and put in a frame from Woolworth’s: Things done in violence have to be done over again. Why had he never read that, or remembered it, or understood it? Why had he always behaved as though meaningful change in the world must be instantaneous, violent, and total?

  Hell is paved with good intentions, and Hell was where Larry now found himself. Good intentions had led at last to mere absurdity; himself pushing on a barricaded door, armed with a revolver, trying to get at a terrified old man. Shame and self-disgust had grown in him while he and Peter pressed uselessly at that door. The endless insistent ringing of the telephone had finally been the last straw, and this emptying of the revolver Larry’s last violence. “I’m giving myself up,” he said. “You do what you want. I’m giving myself up.”

  “Oh, no, you’re not! No, you’re not! If we’re going to get out of this, we have to show a united front.”

  Larry stared. “Get out of this? Peter, we’re going to die here today!”

  “I’m not!” Peter’s eyes were open wide and glaring, and pink spittle flew with the agitation of his speech. “I’m going to live, I’m going to come back, I’m going to go on.” Then he blinked down at the destroyed telephone. “Extensions,” he muttered. “We can still make a deal.” And he hurried away to the kitchen.

  Weary, Larry sagged onto the sofa and sat there leaning forward, head drooping, the empty revolver held slackly between his knees. He didn’t care what happened now.

  Peter came back from the kitchen, calmer and colder. “Well, you’ve done it,” he said. “The phone’s out of order.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Peter.”

  “It does matter! Larry, I’m not going to finish here. I’m getting out, and you’re going to help. You’re going to.”

  Apathetic, Larry looked up. “What do you want?”

  “Convince Mark to come out. You can do it. We can’t force our way in there. Convince him we just need Davis as a hostage, so we can get away. Convince him nobody’s going to get hurt.”

  “Mark knows you mean to kill him.”

  “Not anymore,” Peter said. He came across the living room, closer to Larry. “It’s true, I swear it. You know wh
at the circumstances were, but now they’ve changed. I won’t hurt Mark. He can just let Davis out if he wants, he can stay in there by himself. Or he can come along, and he’ll be perfectly safe. But we need Davis.”

  “You don’t have the phone anymore.”

  “We’ll show Davis out on the deck. We’ll have a white flag of truce, and we’ll let them see Davis on the upstairs deck.” Peter abruptly dropped onto the sofa next to Larry, his gaunt-cheeked face anguished and intent. “Please, Larry,” he said. “Please! I can’t end here!”

  Larry had to look away, embarrassed by this nakedness; that Peter should beg, and particularly that he should beg him. “Peter, it won’t do any good. Mark won’t listen to me, he never has.”

  “You can try. Just try.”

  Larry closed his eyes. Would it never be possible to stop? “I’ll try,” he said.

  *

  The highway side of the house was windowless, avocado in color, and contained only the door leading in from the carport. Mike and Lynsey drove past this featureless wall, and Lynsey said, “It looks like a fortress.”

  “Fortunately, appearances are deceiving.”

  All normal traffic had been diverted from this part of the road. Nearly three hundred police officers were here, representing half a dozen commands, including the State Police, the FBI, the County Sheriff’s Department, and even a few men from Jock Cayzer’s Burbank force. Several police cars were parked across the highway from the house, with uniformed men carrying rifles and shotguns as they waited on the far side of the cars.

  More men, more uniforms, more guns, more official cars, were down on the beach itself, at the nearer barricade. The civilian spectators had been moved farther back, behind a second line of sawhorses, but here there was still a crowd; grim-faced, well-armed and obviously becoming impatient. Mike and Lynsey left the Buick, walked to the barrier, and stood next to one of the Sheriff’s Department sharpshooters, who was watching the house through the scope of his rifle. Mike said, “Anything happening?”

  “There’s a woman in that upstairs room. I get an occasional glimpse of her. That’s about it.” Then he offered the rifle, saying, “Want to see?”

  “Thanks.” Mike peered one-eyed through the scope, found the house, the upper deck, the glass doors. There were curtains; was that movement behind them? He couldn’t be sure. Lowering the rifle, he said to Lynsey, “Want to look?”

  She shook her head, gazing at the rife in distaste. “I can see well enough. Thank you.”

  “Sure,” he said, and raised the rifle to look again.

  *

  Liz stopped looking out the window at the police. Letting the curtain fall back into place, she walked from the bedroom to the hall, where Larry was leaning against that other door, talking in his stodgy well-meaning manner at Mark, who was not answering; probably not even listening. Liz said, “You’re wasting your breath.”

  Larry turned away from the door. He looked haggard. “I know. Peter insisted.” Shaking his head, he said, “I wish it would end. I wish it was over.”

  Liz spent her last smile. “You want it to end? It can end right now.”

  He frowned at her. “What do you mean?”

  “Come along and watch,” she said, and went back into the bedroom.

  “There she is!” Mike said. He was still watching through the rifle scope.

  “I see her,” Lynsey said. “She’s coming out.”

  The woman was pushing open the sliding door, stepping out to the sunlight, a slender blonde girl, raising her arm and pointing in this direction. Startled, Mike said, “She has a gun! She’s—” he saw the gun jerk up in her hand “—going to—” he heard the shot, he heard the sudden grunting sound, he looked around to see the sharpshooter, the man who’d loaned him his rifle, falling backward with astonishment on his face, his hands reaching for his chest. “My God!”

  From the bedroom doorway, Larry yelled, “Liz! For God’s sake, don’t!”

  Out on the deck, in plain view, Liz turned about and shot once at the police line in the opposite direction along the beach to her left. Then she turned back to shoot again to the right.

  *

  Half a dozen men fired. Staring through the scope, Mike saw glass shatter beside the girl, but saw that no one had hit her; all firing too hastily, too unexpectedly. The gun in her hand, pointing this way, jumped again.

  No. Mike’s finger found the trigger, his cheek nestled against the wood stock, the butt formed comfortably against his shoulder, he squeezed, and the rifle kicked against him. He blinked, brought the barrel down, saw the girl staggering back against the glass doors, and knew she had been hit solidly in the body. There was more and more firing all around him now, a growing fusillade, but he knew it was his bullet that had struck home.

  At the sound of the first shot, Peter leaped to his feet from the living room sofa, staring around in terror and disbelief. This wasn’t the right way! He started instinctively toward the glass doors leading to the cantilevered deck, wanting to see what had gone wrong, but then the firing started in earnest, and two of the glass panels ahead of him shattered as they were hit. “No no no!” Peter cried, backing away, making patting motions at the outer world with both hands. Not like this! Not like this!

  Mike wanted more. Hurrying to stay ahead of everybody else, but at the same time striving to be meticulous, accurate, correct, he squeezed again. Yes! High on the right side of her chest, puffing a ragged red-black hole, straightening her against the glass door when she might have fallen forward. And again, the cartridge leaping from him to her, embedding in her body, thumping in, holding her in place, not letting her fall.

  Thump. Thump. Thump. Like spikes into rotten wood, like stakes into soft clay, he pounded the wads of metal into her flesh, watching each bloody crater blossom. Forty or fifty guns were rattling now, light-reflecting glass shards were spraying, the bedroom curtains were whipping and snapping as though in a high wind, other men’s bullets were biting into that body, but it was still first and foremost his. Thump. He spaced them, timed them, placed them to keep her upright, prevent her from falling. Blood and meat obscured the details of her now, someone else’s magnum cartridge swept the top of her head away as though with a scythe, but Mike kept punching, punching, punching into the torso, seven, eight, nine, ten—and the rifle didn’t kick. That was when he knew it hadn’t fired, it was empty, and at last the ragged thing on the porch toppled forward, jerking as it was hit several more times on the way down.

  The bedroom was full of buzzing. Angry metal bees swarmed everywhere, stinging and biting, knocking Larry down as he tried to run through the bedroom door into the hall. Eleven bullets struck him, leaving him broken, impaired, profusely bleeding, unconscious, but alive.

  Peter, mad with fear, clawed at the carpet, trying to dig down through the living room floor. Blood and saliva ran from his open mouth, tears ran from his eyes, and all he could hear was everything in the world breaking, cracking, splitting, shattering as the bullets flashed through the rooms. He lay chest-down on the floor, gasping, staring wide-eyed at nothing, scrabbling with raw fingertips, shredding his nails, until something burned the back of his neck; a spent bullet, hot from its journey through the air. Screaming, Peter leaped up into the trajectory of half a dozen more.

  *

  Mike lowered the rifle. The shooting went on and on, like strings of firecrackers on Chinese New Year, the officers around on the roadside firing now as well, pumping hundreds of bullets into the featureless front wall. Mike, breathing heavily, as dazed as though he’d come out of a movie house to bright sunshine, turned and saw Lynsey staring at him in shock, comprehension and rejection.

  37

  “I want to warn you something,” Koo says. “I did too much USO; when I hear gunfire, I go into my act.” He and Mark are sitting side by side now on the floor at the foot of the bed. In here, the massed shooting outside the house has the lightweight mild quality of dried beans ratting in a coffee can.

 
“That isn’t the cops,” Mark says. “It sounds like the critics found you.”

  “Their aim never was any good.” To Koo’s right, another mirror cracks. “Jesus,” he says, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. “So far, that’s a hundred forty-seven years’ bad luck.”

  They’re safe in this room from all that heavy firing, but it doesn’t feel safe. The occasional bullet penetrates the house deeply enough to hit one of the surrounding mirrors from the back, and then that mirror cracks or splinters, so that by now over half the mirrors are broken, the reflections of the room becoming increasingly fragmented and crazy. With the room’s color scheme of black and white and purple and red, with the furniture piled up against the door and all the mirrors sharding and shattering so that wherever Koo turns he sees reflected the images of disjointed parts of himself and Mark, sometimes weirdly linked, the effect should be nightmarish; but it’s merely ugly and dangerous, and rather trite. Koo says, “I’d be ashamed to tell a dream like this to a psychiatrist.” Putting on the standard comic’s Viennese-psychiatrist accent, he says, “Vot’s dis mit de broken mirrors? Ged adda here, you’ll be coming in mit de freight trains next. Vot are you, some kind a normal or something?”

  “In my flying dreams I always go economy fare,” Mark says, “and my luggage winds up in Chicago. What does that mean, Doctor?”

  “It’s ein deep-zeeted neurotic re-action. Vot does dis inkblot look like to you?”

  “A four-dollar cleaning bill.”

  Koo laughs, in surprised pleasure. “Nice,” he says, in his own voice. “Very nice. I don’t think I heard that one before.”

  Mark seems highly amused by that: “You only like jokes you recognize?”

  “Old friends are best.”

  This patter started back during that ludicrous terrifying few minutes when Koo and Mark were braced side by side against the barricading furniture while Peter and the others struggled to push open the door. Much of comedy is a way of trying to deal with tension and fear, both of which Koo now possesses in abundance, so it was in a spirit of whistling-in-the-graveyard that he looked across the barricade at Mark and said, “Maybe we should just take the magazine subscriptions.”