The Comedy is Finished

8

It was one-thirty in the morning, and Mike Wiskiel had been asleep less than an hour, when the phone rang with news of the next development in the Koo Davis kidnapping. Mike mumbled into the phone, muttered a few words of explanation to his half-asleep wife, and stumbled back into his clothing. He’d had a couple quick bourbons before going to bed, which made him even groggier now, and the first time he went out to the garage he had to go back into the house for his keys.

His car, a maroon Buick Riviera, was a barely restrained beast in his uncertain hands. It lunged from the garage, swayed dangerously as it made the turn out of the driveway, and raced heedlessly down out of the quiet sleeping residential hills of Sherman Oaks. In an all-night taco joint on Ventura Boulevard Mike got a rotten cup of coffee to go, and up on the Freeway heading east he gradually came awake.

It had been a strange experience earlier tonight, listening to that Koo Davis tape. Mike was just old enough to remember Koo Davis as a regular weekly voice on the radio, so listening to that tape had been for him an eerie double-layered experience in which present drama and past comedy, his own middle-aged self sitting there in that Burbank office and his past self as a skinny child sprawled on the living room carpet in his parents’ home in Troy, New York, had combined like a movie montage in his emotional reactions. He’d found himself smiling, ready to chuckle, ready to laugh out loud, half expecting to hear the old regulars from that distant radio program—the sharp-tongued nasal-voiced script girl constantly correcting Koo’s grammar or pronunciation, the get-rich-quick brother-in-law with the voice like mashed potatoes and the endless series of goofy inventions and dumb money-making schemes, the bad-tempered neighbor with the weirdly roaring power mower—and it had been very hard to replace those voices (and his own childhood idea of what those people must look like) with the faces and the unfunniness and the grim intentions of the Identikit girl and the two sullen young men.

And now something else had happened; but what? “We’ve heard from them again,” was all Jock Cayzer had said on the phone.

When Mike arrived the office contained, in addition to Jock and Lynsey Rayne, an elderly stoop-shouldered man with a Sigmund Freud goatee, and another agent from the local Bureau Headquarters, Dave Kerman. Lynsey Rayne, who had been here all along, was apparently prepared to stay until Koo Davis was released; surely service above and beyond the call of an actor’s agent. She was gaunt and hollow-eyed by now, but showed no sign of weakening resolve.

Was there something sexual between this woman and Koo Davis? Of course, Davis was an old man and Lynsey Rayne probably wasn’t much over forty, but even an old man likes to have a woman around, and the real Mrs. Davis was more than three thousand miles away. Lynsey Rayne wasn’t behaving like a simple business associate, but did that necessarily mean it was sex? Somehow the style of her reaction wasn’t like the tenterhooks fear of a loved one. She was more like...like an intensely involved nurse, like the competent older sister in a parentless household, or (farther afield, maybe ridiculous) like the bomber squadron commander in World War Two movies, waiting by the landing field to see how many of his “boys” have made it “home.”

Jock Cayzer introduced the dapper bearded man. He was Doctor Stephen Answin, Koo Davis’ personal physician. “I came as quickly as I could,” the doctor said. He had a habit of ducking his head, as though apologetic, shooting quick glances over the tops of his spectacles, but the hesitant self-conscious manner was belied by his appearance; the goatee was as neat as a freshly clipped hedge, and his blue cashmere suit, raw silk ascot and gleaming pointed-toe shoes (all crying out their origin in male boutiques along Camden or Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills) suggested a rather dandyish self-assurance.

“The kidnapper’s due to call back soon,” Jock said, looking at his watch.

Mike said, “Call back? You’ve got an appointment?”

“To talk to the doctor. Come listen.”

They trooped into the workroom, where all incoming calls were being put on tape. An FBI technician named Menaged was there, with the earlier conversation already cued up. He played it, and Mike listened to the voices.

Receptionist: “Seven seven hundred.”

Caller (cold emotionless male voice, in something of a hurry): “This the Koo Davis number?”

Receptionist: “Yes, sir.”

Caller: “Davis is sick.”

Receptionist: “Beg pardon?”

Caller: “You’ve got two minutes on this call, then I hang up. We checked Davis a while ago, and he’s all of a sudden in bad shape. We didn’t hurt him, but he’s sick. He’s throwing up, sweating, can’t move. He’s muttering something about pills in a dressing room. Is he on some kind of maintenance medicine?”

Receptionist: “Sir, I couldn’t possibly—”

Caller: “Not you. This is going on tape, right? Get Davis’ doctor, get those pills if he’s got pills. I’ll call back at two o’clock.”

Receptionist: “I’m not sure I can—Hello? Hello?”

The technician switched it off, saying, “He’d hung up by then.”

Mike checked his watch, and it was not ten minutes before two. Turning to the doctor, he said, “Does that make sense to you?”

“I’m afraid it does, yes.”

“Davis is on some kind of medicine? What does he have?”

“It isn’t that simple,” the doctor said. Between his assured appearance and his bashful manner it was hard to get a coherent reading on the man, but Mike suspected in him a kind of embarrassment. Why?

The doctor was going on, saying, “If Koo were a diabetic, or had leukemia in remission, something along those lines, it would be much easier to define for you what the problem is. Let me explain; Koo Davis is not a young man. He’s sixty-three, but he refuses to behave as though he were. He pushes himself far too hard, and he doesn’t want to be hampered by illness in any way. He was medically unfit during the Second World War, you know, and one of his problems was with his digestion. He takes— I admit he takes a great deal of medicine. Half the things I’ve prescribed are to counteract the side-effects of some of the other things. He’s lived that way for years, and so long as he has his medicines he can continue in the same fashion for many years more. But it has been a long long time since his stomach, his liver, his intestines, have been asked to deal with his food, for instance, in a completely natural way. They can’t do it. Until he gets his medication, he won’t be able to eat a thing, he won’t be able to sleep or have proper elimination or even breathe without difficulty. If he doesn’t receive his medicines, and I would say proper medical care, within the next several hours, the consequences could be very serious.”

All of which was said with the doctor’s combination of confidence and sheepishness, though it did seem to Mike that a true sense of unease came through the mixture. As perhaps it should; what the doctor was saying was that Koo Davis was a prescription junkie, a man hooked on preventive medicines, who simply couldn’t live his normal life without them.

All of which had been created by this doctor, or by several doctors; or created by Davis with their acquiescence. There was undoubtedly some ethical ambivalence in the position in which Doctor Answin now found himself. “These consequences,” Mike said, not particularly interested in smoothing things for the doctor, “how serious could they be?”

“He won’t live.” The doctor blinked behind his stylish spectacles, shrugged his shoulders, spread well-washed hands crosshatched with thick black hairs. “Within a week, possibly a bit more, he would simply die, from starvation, from shock, from any number of complications and contributing factors. In less time than that, in say two days, there could be irretrievable damage. Koo’s health is a very delicate balance, between what his body can stand and what he insists on doing. We have made it possible for him to exceed his body’s potential for years; this event could be extremely damaging.”

Mike said, “What about these pills?”

“I’ve got them,” Lynsey Rayne said. “As soon as that—creature—was off the phone, I called Ian Komlosy, head of Triple S; got him out of bed. He sent someone to open the studio and let me into Koo’s dressing room. His pill-case is in the other office.”

Jock Cayzer said, “It seems to me the most important thing here is to get this man together with his medicines.”

“It would be best if I could see him as well,” Doctor Answin said, ducking his head.

“I doubt we can swing that, Doctor,” Jock told him. “And if they did let you see him, they’d probably want to keep you right along with him.”

“I wouldn’t permit you to go,” Mike said. Then, remembering the twenty-four hours weren’t yet up, he was still merely an advisor, he added, “And I don’t believe Jock would either.”

“Sure not,” Jock said. “But, Doctor, I will want you to talk to the fellow, when he calls back.”

“Make them let him go,” Lynsey Rayne said. Her gaunt face looked as though she too were about to be critically ill. “They can’t keep him if he’s sick, they’ll have to let him go, start all over again with someone else.”

“I doubt they’ll see it that way,” Mike told her.

“Then let me talk to them. Doctor Answin, you tell them; it isn’t just the pills, it’s medical attention, it’s his age, it’s all the risk involved.”

Mike said, “Miss Rayne, that fellow said on the last call he wouldn’t talk more than two minutes, obviously to keep us from putting a trace on the call. He’ll surely do the same thing when he calls back. Doctor Answin should tell them the truth, answer questions as truthfully—and briefly, Doctor, please—as he can. If there’s time, he can make an appeal for Mr. Davis’ release, but you know and I know it won’t do any good. If we do convince them Davis is in critical danger, they’ll tell us that simply reinforces the tightness of their deadline. Negotiations of this kind aren’t easy under any circumstances. If we tell them Koo Davis is a goner unless they release him, we’re handing them a gun they can put at our heads.”

“Then release those people,” Lynsey Rayne said. “Ten leftover radicals, my God, what difference can it make anymore? Let them go to Algeria, anywhere they want, good riddance.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Rayne,” Mike said. “Nobody in this room can make that decision. And so far, I don’t even think all ten have been positively identified, so it might be a bit early to characterize them all as simply harmless ‘leftover radicals’.”

“Whoever they are,” she said, “getting them out of the country has got to be a good idea. Is Koo’s life worth keeping these people in prison?”

“I don’t know,” Mike said. “We hope to get Washington’s answer to that question tomorrow.”

As he was speaking, the phone rang. Everyone stopped, looking at the tape reels suddenly turning, listening as the technician turned up the sound.

Receptionist: “Seven seven hundred.”

Caller: “You know who this is. You got the doctor?”

Jock was pointing at a phone on one of the worktables. As Doctor Answin picked it up, the technician turned the taped sound down slightly; still, there was an odd echo in the room as the doctor’s voice went into the phone and emerged a micro-millisecond later from the tape machine. “Doctor Answin here.”

“What’s the story? You got one minute.”

“I should see him. He’s not a young man, he should have proper medical care.”

“No. Give me an alternative. Quick.”

The doctor sighed and shook his head, then spoke in a brisk, matter-of-fact manner: “Koo Davis is a very sick man. He can’t live more than a few days without his medications, and there would be irreversible damage before death.”

“All right. You got the pills he was talking about?”

“Yes. We have Koo’s pill-case here.”

“A whole case, huh? All right. One car—not a police car, no car with a police radio—should get on the San Diego Freeway northbound at the Sunset Boulevard entrance at three A.M. The car should identify itself with a white handkerchief tied at the top of the antenna. Drive at fifty in the right-hand lane. When a car behind you flashes its highs, pull off the road, put the case outside the car, drive on. Do not get out of the car. If you get out of the car, or if you try to put more than one car on the Freeway, we won’t pick up the pills, and the bastard can live or die. This is Davis’ own case?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t bug it, don’t switch it for another case. Any cute stuff at all, and Davis doesn’t get his pills.”

Mike had scribbled on a piece of paper, “Make it 6AM,” and he now held this in front of the doctor’s eyes. The doctor nodded and said, “I don’t think we could do it that soon. Make it six A.M.”

The caller laughed, a dry scornful sound. “When it’s light enough for choppers? No, Doc, you don’t follow us home. We’ll make it three.”

“I’m not sure I—”

The technician said, “He hung up.”

The small metal object in Mike’s palm was the size and shape of a shirt button. “Look, Miss Rayne,” he said. “They won’t find this. Some of those medicines are in capsule form. I can put this in one of the capsules and how in God’s name are they going to find it?”

The button was actually a radio transmitter, capable of broadcasting a single beam for a distance of perhaps a quarter-mile. They planned to follow this transmitter to wherever Davis was being held—except that Lynsey Rayne was putting up an unexpected argument. “There’s a chance they’ll find it,” she insisted. “Either looking for it or by accident. And you just listen to that man’s voice. He wants to hurt Koo, you can hear it. Don’t give him the excuse.”

Mike was losing his patience. In ordinary circumstances he would simply go ahead and plant the transmitter, but Lynsey Rayne had already threatened once to phone Washington, to throw Koo Davis’ weight around and get a countermanding order from Bureau Headquarters. The point wasn’t whether or not Koo Davis’ name was influential enough to get the order reversed; his name definitely was influential enough to get Lynsey Rayne a hearing. It was now five-thirty in the morning, Washington time, and Mike Wiskiel was not going to be the man responsible for rousting a lot of important people out of bed at this hour. The problem had to be solved here, in this office.

Unfortunately, Mike had to fight the battle alone, Jock Cayzer having artfully eased himself out of the conversation the instant trouble began to emerge on the horizon. Jock was now in the workroom next door, dealing with the arrangements for the medicine delivery, while Mike was here in the main office, alone with Lynsey Rayne. “Look, Miss Rayne,” he said, and tried very hard to control his impatience and contempt. But the woman was getting in the way of the job to be done, arguing tactics when what mattered was results. And basing her convictions on the sound of a voice on the telephone! “Look. The important thing is to get Davis out of these people’s hands.”

“No, it is not.” She wouldn’t even accept that much. “The important thing right now is to keep Koo alive. Don’t you plan to negotiate at all?”

“Washington negotiates,” Mike said. “If we can do it a quicker way, we do it. Miss Rayne, this isn’t the kind of negotiation you’re used to, we’re not dealing here with a bunch of calm businessmen. These people are terrorists, they’re criminals, and they’re most likely more than a little psychotic. If we can deal with them, we will, but if we can get Koo Davis out of their hands, that’s the goal to aim at.”

“You’ll want it to finish with a shootout,” she said bitterly. “Everybody killed, and all you button-down types being manly with your walkie-talkies.”

Mike closed his eyes. “Miss Rayne,” he said, “a shootout is the last thing I want, I swear that on a stack of Bibles. I want Davis alive and safe just as much as you do.”

“Then get the medicine to him and don’t try to outsmart them.” Her bone bracelets jangled when she waved her arms about, and her expression was becoming increasingly helpless and agonized. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Mr. Wiskiel, I know I’m getting your back up and I am sorry, I don’t mean to. I know you know your business, and I know you’re right about the kind of people we’re dealing with, but even by your description you can see we shouldn’t take chances. They are criminals, they know their business as well as you know yours. That man knew you were thinking about helicopters the second Doctor Answin mentioned six o’clock; I didn’t. He knows you’ll want to try this transmitter thing, and he even warned against it, said don’t bug the case. If you challenge them, if you try to be trickier than they are, and if they catch you at it, they’ll be insulted. And they’ll take it out on Koo. ‘More than a little psychotic,’ you said. But you want to taunt them while they’ve still got Koo!”

“It would be better if we could use a case or box of our own,” Mike admitted, “with the transmitter already built into it. But the doctor let them know it was Davis’ own case, so we have to stick with what we’ve got, and if we put this little gizmo inside a capsule, it won’t be found.”

“It might be found. You don’t have the right to take that kind of chance with Koo’s life. With anybody’s life.”

Dave Kerman, the other FBI man on duty here tonight, came in from the workroom to say, “Mike, we’re ready to go. The doctor’s typed up a set of instructions, what pills to give and what symptoms to look out for and all that, and we’re set. And time’s a little short.”

Mike sighed and shook his head. “All right, Miss Rayne, you win. I think you’re wrong, but you probably can throw a lot of weight around, so we’ll forget it.”

In victory, Lynsey Rayne looked unhappy, defensive. “It isn’t whether or not I can throw weight around.”

“Oh, yes it is,” Mike told her. Turning away, he dropped the transmitter into Dave Kerman’s palm, winking at him on the side away from Lynsey Rayne as he said, “Take this back to the office, Dave.”

“Right,” Dave Kerman said, and went off to install the transmitter in the pill-case.