The Comedy is Finished (3 page)

All right. All right. Peter became calm, his shoulders sagging, his jaw muscles relaxing, the blood oozing into his mouth, his foot easing on the accelerator. The Impala dropped back and tucked in once more behind the blue van. Everything was going to be all right.

The house was in Tarzana, up in the hills south of the Ventura Freeway. Peter waited behind the van as Joyce stopped at the gate and her hand reached out to ring the bell in the metal pole beside the driveway. There was a pause—up above, Liz must walk to the kitchen, ask for identification through the speaker, receive reassurance from Joyce, then press the button—and then the wide chain-link gate slowly opened and the van jolted up the hill. Peter followed, seeing in the rearview mirror the gate automatically swing shut.

At the top, the blacktop driveway leveled off into a flat area in front of the wide garage. Next to it, the house was a broad ranch-style in brick and wood; as the two vehicles came to a stop, Liz came out its front door. She was naked, her long lean body hard-looking, her eyes hidden behind large dark sunglasses. It was Liz’ style to be aggressive and challenging; neither Peter nor any of the others would remark upon her nakedness.

Getting out of the Impala, Peter opened the rear doors of the van and there they were. Koo Davis, head still enclosed in the burlap sack, lay face down on an old double-bed mattress. Mark, bearded and stolid, sat at this end of the van, his feet stretched out over
Davis’ legs, while worried-looking Larry perched uncomfortably up front by Davis’ head. “Very good,” Peter said. “Get him out of there.”

Davis didn’t speak as they helped him out to the blacktop; Peter, taking his arm to assist, felt the man trembling. “Just walk,” he said.

Liz led the way into the house. When she turned her back the scars were visible; twisted rough-grained white lines that would never take a tan, criss-crossing down the middle of her back.

The interior of the house was cool with central air-conditioning. Pale green carpet on all the floors muffled sound. While Joyce and Mark stayed behind, Peter and Larry guided Davis through the house, following Liz. In the kitchen, she opened a narrow door and they went down a narrow staircase to the left. Here, beneath the house, were the utilities, in a small square concrete block room without frills. Cardboard wine cartons were messily piled in one corner, behind the pool heater. On a side where it wouldn’t be expected was a door, which Liz opened, revealing a fairly long narrow room which extended out from the house underneath the sun deck as far as the swimming pool. At the far end of the room was a thick glass picture window, with the green-blue water at the deep end of the pool restlessly moving against its other side. Daylight filtering through that water made a cool gray dimness in here, until Liz touched a switch beside the door which brought up warm amber indirect lighting.

The first owner of this house had been a movie director, who had added several ideas of his own to the architects’ plans, including this room, in which it was possible to sit and have a drink and get a fish-eye view of one’s guests swimming in the pool. The director had enjoyed this idea so much he’d had the setting written into one of his movies, and shot the scene in this room.

The room was plain but comfortable, with maroon cloth on the walls, low overstuffed swivel chairs, dark carpeting, soundproofed ceiling, built-in bar sink and refrigerator, several small low tables, and in one corner a door leading to a small lavatory, with shower, sink and toilet. In readiness for Koo Davis, the refrigerator had been stocked with simple foods, more ready-to-eat food was stacked on the shelf above it, some plastic plates and cups and spoons had been placed on a table, and even a plastic decanter filled with inexpensive Scotch had been provided.

Once they were all in the room, Larry pulled off the burlap bag, and Peter looked at the familiar face of Koo Davis. His sense of accomplishment was so strong that this time he had to bite his cheeks not to ease tension but to keep himself from smiling.

Davis had had a nosebleed, which had stopped, leaving smudges of brown under his nose and along his left cheek. He looked frightened but cocky, as though he’d decided his game plan was to tough it out.

Larry, of course, reacted big to the nosebleed, saying, “Oh, we’re sorry about that! Your nose!”

Davis looked at him in mock astonishment. “You’re sorry about my
nose
? If you’ll notice, you took the whole body.”

Peter said, “If
you’ll
notice, you’re in a room with one door, which we’ll keep locked. You have food there, drink there, and a toilet over there.”

Glancing around, Davis said, “Okay if I open the window?”

“This isn’t a joke,” Liz told him. She had removed her sunglasses, and her eyes and voice were as hard as her nude body.

Davis grinned at her. “I’ll be able to identify
you
later on,” he said. “Anyway, I’m looking forward to the lineup.”

“That fine, Koo,” Peter said, permitting himself a small grin. “You keep your spirits up.” To Liz and Larry he said, “Come on.”

Davis, suddenly less jocular, said, “Do I get a question?”

Amused, Peter said, “Which question? Why? Who? What?”

“I thought kidnappers didn’t want to be recognized. Unless they figured to kill the customer.”

Jumping in, looking very intense, Larry said, “We’re not going to kill you, Mr. Davis.”

“Assuming things go well,” Peter said. “Assuming everybody is sensible, Koo, including you.”

“That’s a big relief,” Davis said. Terror was pulsing just beneath his cocky surface, like a kitten under a blanket. “As long as I go on being sensible, I’m okay, right? I mean, sensible like you people.”

“That’s right,” Peter said.

“So here I am on the bricks,” Mike Wiskiel said. He felt goddamn sorry for himself. “Lemme tell ya, Jerry, the worst word in the English language is the word ‘retroactive.’ You can forget all about ‘it might have been’ and ‘nevermore’ and all that crap, the word is ‘retroactive.’ It’ll fuck ya every time.” And he swallowed another mouthful of vodka and tonic, while Jerry chuckled his friendly, agreeable, meaningless realtor’s chuckle.

Mike Wiskiel was a little drunk, at four in the afternoon; not for the first time. He’d spent the morning talking to women who’d sent in eleven bucks for a scalp-invigorator that when they’d tried it made their hair fall out, and by lunchtime he’d seen enough bald women to last him the rest of his life. So he’d come here to the club for a quick game of tennis and the Daily Special lunch—today it was avocado followed by abalone, washed down with a Napa Riesling—and then he’d run into Jerry Lawson in the bar and here he still was, sitting at a table by the tinted-glass windows, having another little drink, at four on the clock in the pee em. And at this moment he and Jerry were the only members present in the bar.

Jerry Lawson was a real estate agent, and probably Mike’s closest friend out here, apart from the people at the Bureau. Mike had met him—Jesus, almost a year ago—when he’d been transferred to the L.A. office and had made the exploratory trip to find a new house for Jan and the kids. He’d walked into the real estate office
on Ventura Boulevard, and the first thing he’d ever said to Jerry was, “I know you from someplace,” and he remembered thinking,
Jesus, maybe this guy is on the hot list.
But Jerry had gripped and said, “I’m the guy shot June Havoc in
The Sound of Distant Drums
,” and wasn’t that L.A. for you? Your real estate man turns out to be a one-time actor.

And a good friend. Jerry had found them a perfect house, up in the hills in Sherman Oaks, and had even put up Mike’s name for his country club, El Sueno de Suerte, here in Encino. Of course, it’s true that in Los Angeles realtors keep in closer touch with their former clients than elsewhere, since the average turnover of a middle-level-and-up house in that city is two and a half years, but Mike was convinced in this case it was more than the usual business friendship. He and Jerry enjoyed tennis together, drinks together, poker and barbecue and a good laugh together, and the wives got along, and even the kids from both families didn’t seem to hate each other one hundred percent of the time. Jerry’s friendship had helped a lot to soften the blow of having been transferred out here through no fault of his own. After all those years, back on the bricks.

He repeated it aloud. “Back on the bricks. I tell ya, Jerry, I had it made at the Head Office, it didn’t matter who the Director was. They knew I was a reliable man, they knew I was loyal, they knew I delivered. ‘I don’t want excuses, I want results,’ that’s what the Director used to say, and nobody
ever
heard an excuse from me.”

“I know,” Jerry said sympathetically, though he could only know what Mike told him. “You got your nuts in the wringer, that’s all. That’s all that happened.”

“Retroactive,” Mike said, dealing with the word as though it were a pebble he was moving around in his mouth. “ ‘Do this,’
they said, ‘it’s your patriotic duty.’ ‘Oh, yessir,’ I said, and salute the son of a bitch, and I go
do
it, and when I come back there’s some
other
son of a bitch in there and he says, ‘Oh, no, that wasn’t patriotic, it was
illegal
and you shouldn’t of done it.’ And I say, ‘Why I got my orders right here, I’m covered, I got everything in black and white,
this
is the guy told me what to do,’ and they say, ‘Oh, yeah, we know about him, he’s out on his ear, he’s in worse trouble than you are.’ So that guy’s ass is in a sling and my nuts are in a wringer and Al Capone is up there at San Clemente in a golf cart. And who’s loyal now, huh? Who do you trust now, the shitter or the shit-upon?”

“It’s a tough racket,” Jerry said. He was a terrific sounding board, he never confused the conversation with a lot of dumb suggestions.

“You’re fuckin A,” Mike told him, and turned to point at Rodney the barman. “Twice again,” he called, and the beeper in his jacket pocket went EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. “Shit,” Mike said, under the noise of the machine, and reached to shut it off.

Jerry looked interested. “The office?”

“More fuckin bald women,” Mike said, and twisted around the other way to holler over at Ricci the waiter, “Bring me a phone, will ya, Rick?”

The phone came first. Ricci plugged it into the jack under the window, then went off to get the drinks while Mike phoned the office.

“Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“Extension twelve.”

A few burrs, and then: “Agent Dodd.”

“Mike Wiskiel here. I was just buzzed.”

“Hold on, Redburn wants you.”

The drinks arrived while Mike was holding on, and he signed
for them with the receiver tucked in against his shoulder. Jerry said, “What’s up?”

“Dunno yet.”

Ricci took the tab away, Mike slugged down about a third of the new drink, and the voice of Chief of Station Webster Redburn came on the line: “Mike? Where are you?”

“At the club, Wes. I spent all day on that mail fraud case, I just came in for a little late lunch.”

“Forget the mail fraud
and
lunch,” Redburn said, and went on to tell him what had happened. Mike’s eyes widened as he listened, and he knew there’d be no more paperwork, no more routine slog, no more bald women and low-IQ bank robbers and stolen cars, no more day-by-day boring bullshit, not for hours, not for days, maybe even not for weeks. “So get there fast,” Redburn finished.

“I just left,” Mike told him, and cradled the phone.

Jerry looked as inquisitive as a cat who’s just heard a noise under the refrigerator. “What’s up?”

“A james dandy,” Mike told him. “Somebody put the snatch on Koo Davis! Would you believe it?” And, getting to his feet, he downed the rest of his drink and trotted from the room.

I need this, Mike told himself. I gotta do good on this one. Fuzzy from that last vodka, he sped east on the Ventura Freeway while a golden future opened up before his bleary eyes; if he did good on this Koo Davis thing. Yes, sir. They’d
have
to transfer him back to Washington then, they’d have no choice. Back where he belonged.

Yes, sir. Old Mike Wiskiel, fucked over because of Watergate, kicked out of D.C., rescues
Koo Davis
from the kidnappers! Talk about your media blitz! Mike could see his own fucking face on the fucking cover of
Time
magazine. “Tough but tender, FBI man Mike
Wiskiel counts persistence among his primary virtues.” Writing the
Time
article in his head, pushing the speed limit, not quite grazing the cars to left and right, Mike Wiskiel raced to the rescue.

The gate guard at Screen Service Studios gave Mike’s ID a very careful belligerent screening. Mike didn’t need this shit; he was more sober now, but the buzz of vodka was steadily souring toward a headache. He said, “Locking the door now the horse is gone, huh?”

The guard glared but made no remark, simply handing back the ID and saying, “Soundstage Four. Past the pile of lumber up there and around to your left.”

Mike grunted, and drove cautiously forward. The speed bumps weren’t that good for his head.

Following the guard’s directions, Mike soon saw a large black number 4 painted on an otherwise featureless gray wall, above a gray metal door. Several cars, most of them official-looking, were parked in a cluster along the wall, and two Burbank cops were standing together outside the door, chatting in a bored way and looking around for stars.

There weren’t any stars, not right now. Except for the two Burbank cops there was nobody in sight. Mike didn’t know those two—his acquaintanceship among the bewildering multiplicity of police forces in the Greater Los Angeles area was very low—but he waved to them anyway as he drove by, looking for a place to park. They responded with flat looks, and when he left the car and walked back these Burbank cops also gave his ID a tight aggressive inspection. Mike said, “I understand the snatch took place about three-thirty, am I right?”

“That’s right.”

“Then
that
was the time to check ID. One thing you’re not
gonna get right now is the kidnappers sneaking back in here disguised as FBI men.”