The Comedy is Finished

5

Lynsey Rayne parked her Porsche Targa behind the Burbank Police Headquarters annex. A tall and fashionably dressed woman of forty-one, wearing many bracelets, she entered the building through the rear door, and asked directions to “the Koo Davis office.” That was what Inspector Cayzer had told her to ask for, on the phone, and it produced a uniformed policewoman to escort her down brightly lit bare corridors to a small crowded office with the hastily assembled air of a campaign headquarters, where she identified herself to another policewoman working as receptionist: “Lynsey Rayne. I’m Koo Davis’ agent, I spoke to Inspector Cayzer earlier.”

“One minute, please.”

Apparently this set-up was not yet organized enough to have intercoms; but the kidnapping and its investigation were still less than two hours old. Lynsey waited while the policewoman went to an inner office to report, then came back and said, “Yes, Miss Rayne, you can go in.”

Entering the inner office, equally small and ramshackle but somewhat less crowded, Lynsey saw two men rising from their desks. The one on the right was Inspector Cayzer, an old man but, she had been assured by Mayor Pilocki, a good one. “So you found us,” he said, smiling, and extended his hand, which she took, saying, “Any news?”

“Not yet, Ms. Rayne.”

“Inspector,” she said, and echoed his own earlier words to her, “surely they’ve gone to ground by now.”

“Kidnappers work at their own pace, Ms. Rayne,” Cayzer said. “I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do to hurry them along. May I introduce Agent Michael Wiskiel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation? Agent Wiskiel, this is Ms. Lynsey Rayne, Koo Davis’ agent.”

“How do you do,” Wiskiel said. He had come around from behind his desk in anticipation of the introduction, and as Lynsey shook his hand she studied him carefully, needing to understand him; he had suddenly become very important to Koo. The reports she’d gotten on Wiskiel from her calls to friends in Washington, after Cayzer had mentioned his name, had been ambivalent. He’d had something minor to do with Watergate, and had been demoted. He had a reputation as a hotshot, a right-winger, a tough man but not a subtle one. Nothing in his heavy good looks did anything to dispel this impression. Feeling the need to let him know at once that she was not easily dismissible, she said, “You haven’t been out here long, have you?”

“About a year.” His grin was easy, loose, sensual. “What told you? Not enough tan?”

“I’m an old friend of Webster’s,” she said, releasing his hand, referring to Wiskiel’s immediate boss, Webster Redburn. “I spoke with him on the phone about an hour ago.”

A film seemed to settle over Wiskiel’s face, though his expression hardly changed at all; perhaps something faintly mocking entered his smile. “Is that right,” he said, and turned away to gesture at something on the side wall. “I don’t suppose that face means anything to you.”

“Is she one of them?” Lynsey stepped closer to the drawing, holding her glasses at a tight angle to her face. The sketch showed an anonymous standard type; about thirty, long straight hair parted in the middle, and a plain half-formed slightly worried face, as though she’d been taken from the oven before ready. “She doesn’t look the part, does she?”

“That’s why they had her out front. She was the one worked at the studio.”

“More like a flower child,” Lynsey said. “In fact...” Struck by something, she leaned closer to the drawing, trying to capture the brief impression that had just flashed by. But it was no good; stepping back, releasing her glasses, shaking her head, she said, “No.”

“Don’t tell me you thought you recognized her.”

“Not from actually seeing her, no,” Lynsey said. “Not in the flesh. But I thought—For just a second she reminded me of a newspaper photo, or something on television. Was it the anti-war people? Or, you remember the period when they were attacking banks.”

“Very well,” he said.

“Could she have been involved in that?”

He looked at the sketch, something moving behind his eyes, some old battle still not resolved. She turned to gaze again too at that characterless Identikit face, the smooth plain features untouched by experience, the flat expressionless eyes. A flower child, yes; but it’s been winter a long time.

“She could have been involved in anything,” Wiskiel said.

Lynsey waited in the office, even though there was nothing happening and Jock Cayzer several times promised to call her the instant they heard anything new. The phone number here had been announced over the radio and television as the place to call “if you have any information on the disappearance of Koo Davis,” so it was likeliest this was the way the kidnappers would make contact. “The minute they call, Ms. Rayne,” Cayzer said, “I’ll let you know.”

But she wasn’t to be moved. “They’ll call tonight,” she answered, matter-of-fact but determined. “I want to be here, in case they let Koo say anything. I’ll know...how he is, from the way he sounds.”

During the next two hours the phone did ring from time to time, and Lynsey on each occasion became once more tense, all concentrated eyes and ears, but it was only the usual cranks and clowns. Then, a little before eight-thirty, the next event came, not from the phone but from the workroom next door, where three police officers studying snapshots taken from Koo’s audience suddenly hit paydirt. Two faces had emerged that were not to be found anywhere in the main group photographs. In the darkened workroom they all stood looking at the blown-up slide on the wall, the two strangers clearly visible behind and to the right of the smiling ten-year-old boy who was the photographer’s primary focus.

“They’re young,” Lynsey said. She felt both surprised and obscurely annoyed, as though their youth somehow made things worse.

They were young, both about thirty, slouching and round-shouldered in an even more youthful manner. The one in profile had thick curly black hair, a full beard and sunglasses, and wore a yellow T-shirt with some unidentifiable saying or picture on it, plus a short blue denim jacket and jeans. His companion, facing the camera, also wore sunglasses, but his rather bony worried-looking face was clean-shaven. His hair, over a high rounded shiny brow, was a wispy thinning brown, blowing in the breeze. He was wearing a light plaid open-collar shirt, what looked to be a light brown suede zipper jacket, and chinos.

“Those are just soldiers,” Jock Cayzer said. “We haven’t seen the general yet.”

“When we do, Jock,” Wiskiel said, “he’ll look a lot like them.” And he switched on the workroom lights.

The phone rang in the other room. “Not another one,” Lynsey said.

“I’ll get it,” Wiskiel said, and went back to the other room.

All phone calls were being taped, on equipment also in this workroom. A monitor was on, so Lynsey and the others in here could listen to both parts of the conversation, beginning with the click when Wiskiel picked up the receiver and said, “Seven seven hundred.”

The voice on the other end was young, male and very uncertain. It struck Lynsey that either of those young men in the photograph could conceivably sound like this. “Excuse me,” it said. “Is this the number for, uh, if you know something, if you want to talk about Koo Davis?”

“That’s right. This is FBI Agent Wiskiel here.”

“Oh. Well, uh, I think I’ve got something for you.”

“What would that be?”

“Well—It’s a cassette recording, I guess it’s from the kidnappers. It’s got Koo Davis’ voice on it. It’s pretty weird.”

The boy was twenty. A tall slender blond California youth, his name was Alan Lewis, he lived in Santa Monica with his parents, and he attended UCLA, where he was an assistant features editor on The Californian, the university’s daily newspaper. According to his story, he’d been watching television when a phone call had come from a woman who wouldn’t give her name but who said, approximately, “You can have a scoop for your paper. We have Koo Davis, we are holding him in the name of the people. Look in your car. On the front seat you’ll find a tape. It isn’t too late, the people still can win.”

“At first I thought it was a joke,” the boy explained. “But I couldn’t figure out who she was. She didn’t sound like any of the girls I knew. She sounded—I don’t know—”

Wiskiel suggested, “Older?”

“Yeah, I guess so. No, not exactly. Well, maybe older, but mostly, well, sad. You know? She was saying these things, ‘The people still can win,’ and all that stuff, but there wasn’t any pep in it. That’s why I finally figured maybe it was on the level, and I went out and looked in the car.”

Where he had found the cassette recording on the front seat, as promised. Having his own cassette player, he’d listened to part of the recording, but once he’d satisfied himself he was really hearing Koo Davis’ voice he’d immediately called the special number given on television. As to why he’d been chosen to receive the cassette, he could offer no explanation other than his job on the university paper: “She did say she was giving me a scoop.” Nor could he identify either the Identikit drawing of “Janet Grey” or the two men in the photograph.

In the workroom again, Lynsey and the others waited while the technician inserted the cassette, arranged to simultaneously record it onto his own tape, and pushed the Play button. After a few seconds of rustling silence the familiar voice began, abruptly, loud and clear and unmistakable:

“Hello, everybody, this is Koo Davis. To steal a line from John Chancellor, I’m somewhere in custody. To tell the truth I don’t know where I am, but it looked better in the brochure.”

There was a handy metal folding chair; weak-kneed, Lynsey dropped into it, trembling and astonished at her reaction to that voice, known in so many ways, personal and public. Until this instant, now, when the voice proclaimed so clearly that Koo was still alive and unharmed, she had been hiding from herself the fear, the terror, that he was dead, or that awful dreadful things were being done to him. Now, her sense of relief was almost as strong as if he were already home again and safe; she felt the blood rushing from her head, she felt the overpowering physical need to faint, and she fought against it, digging her nails into her palms. It wasn’t over; Koo wasn’t home; he wasn’t safe; she couldn’t relax, not yet.

The easy, confident, astonishingly cheerful voice went on: “The crowd here is a lot like television people. Floor managers. Stand here, do that, talk into the mike, read this script. I don’t know about these hours, though. Did you guys check this out with AFTRA?”

Lynsey felt Wiskiel frowning at her, and she elaborately and silently mouthed the explanation: “The union.” He nodded.

“Anyway, folks,” Koo was saying, suddenly speaking more quickly, as though one of the “floor managers” had off-mike ordered him to get on with it, “I’m supposed to say something here to prove I’m really me and not Frank Gorshin, so check with my agent Lynsey Rayne—are you sure this is the right gig for me, honey?—about the writer I call ‘The Tragic Relief,’ with the initials dee-double-u.”

At Koo’s mention of her own name, Lynsey’s eyes had suddenly filled with tears, which she determinedly blinked away. And when she saw Wiskiel again frowning at her she nodded at him, to say that Koo’s reference to The Tragic Relief had made sense to her.

“And now,” Koo was going on, “I’m supposed to read this statement. Here goes: I am being held by elements of the People’s Revolutionary Army—huh, think of that—and have so far not been harmed—except for the punch in the nose, let’s not forget about that. The People’s Revolutionary Army is not materi—Wait a minute. I don’t usually get words like this in my scripts. The only really big word I know is BankAmericard. The People’s Revolutionary Army is not ma-ter-i-a-lis-tic-ally or-i-en-ted—there—and so this is not a kidnapping in the ordinary capitalist sense. Well, that’s a relief. We have chosen Koo Davis not because he is rich—smart, very smart—but because he has made a career of being court jester to the bosses, the warmongers and the forces of reaction. You left out the Girl Scouts. Okay, okay. The United States, which trumpets endlessly about civil rights in other nations, itself has thousands of political prisoners in its jails. Ten of these are to be released and are to be given air passage to Algeria or whatever other destination they choose. These ten are to be released within the next twenty-four hours, or a certain amount of harm will come to me. I don’t think I like that part. Once the ten have been released and are safely at the destinations of their choice, I will be permitted to return to my normal life. If there is any delay, the People’s Revolutionary Army will take what action toward me it deems fit. The ten people are: Norman Cobberton, Hugh Pendry, Abby Lancaster, Louis Goldney, William Brown—who are these people?—Howard Fenton, Eric Mallock, George Toll—sounds like a VIP list at the bus station—Fred Walpole, and Mary Martha DeLang. This complete recording is to be played on all network and Los Angeles area radio and television news programs beginning at eleven o’clock tonight, and is to be played on all network radio and television news programs during the day and evening tomorrow. If it isn’t played according to these instructions, the People’s Revolutionary Army will take appropriate action toward me. These demands are not negotiable. So that was, uhhhh, the message from our sponsor. And from the way it looks here, my only hope is I flunk the audition and they send me home.”