The Comedy is Finished

35

Mike watched in grim satisfaction as Ginger Merville was led away to the other car. He felt no sympathy for such creatures. Five years ago, seven years ago, you could understand and almost forgive all those people who flirted with the kind of antisocial behavior they liked to mislabel ‘revolution’; you could understand it because most of them were merely dupes, sheep going along with the popular sport of bad-mouthing Authority. (And also, of course, he had to admit, because it was an unsettled time, a difficult time, and he was as glad as anybody that it was over.) But to continue now in such actions was no longer forgivable, no longer merely a fad or a sport. Ginger Merville had played with fire too long, and he was about to get very badly burned, and Mike was happy to be the one to strike the match.

Dave Kerman, putting away the notepad in which he’d copied down what Merville had had to say, said, “Nice work, Mike.”

Mike shrugged, pleased with himself but trying not to show it. “All I did was shake the little bastard’s hand.” To the Sheriff’s Department officer, who had just come over from his own vehicle, Mike said, “Have someone pick up this car, okay?”

“Will do, sir. He was what you wanted, was he?”

“Just what the doctor ordered.”

“I still have his license and registration.”

“He won’t need them for a while. Leave them with the car.”

“Yes, sir.”

The car containing Merville drove off as Mike and Dave Kerman walked back to the Buick. It was Mike’s private car, but Dave drove, freeing Mike to get on the radio. As Dave swung around in a U-turn, heading back toward the Coast Highway, Mike called Jock Cayzer down at the beach house site, telling him, “They’re there, Jock. We got confirmation from Merville.”

“Very nice,” came the pleased voice, crackling through the static.

“And our information is, Koo Davis is still alive.”

“Praise the Lord.”

Dave Kerman laughed at the phrase, and made the right turn onto the Coast Highway. Mike said, “Keep them bottled up, Jock. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

The problem was, the area was so thoroughly public. The Coast Highway itself was four lanes wide, being not only the scenic route along the coast but also the main road to Oxnard and Santa Barbara and beyond, filled with traffic all day long; rerouting all those vehicles up through the hills would be complicated and arduous. Besides that, the entire beachfront from Malibu State Beach just west of the house to Las Tunas State Beach several miles to the east swarmed with people, who would have to be safeguarded. All of which meant that a lot of preliminary work had to be done, and there was no way to do it without attracting the attention of the people inside the house. They could only hope the kidnappers wouldn’t panic, wouldn’t kill Koo Davis or do anything else stupid once they became aware of the tightening net.

A mobile command center had been set up in two trailers in a diner parking lot on the shoreward side of the road, just east of the target house. When Dave Kerman angled the Buick around the police-line sawhorses and into this parking lot, Mike saw there were now six trailers, the other four all being connected with the media; three TV remote units and one documentary film unit. “The vultures are here,” he said.

Dave Kerman grinned. “Why not? When else are they gonna get Koo Davis on the program for free?”

At times like this, the final moments of the hunt, when the TV and newspaper people began to cluster and swarm hot-eyed for blood, Mike felt a certain disgust for the media and all its representatives. As far as he was concerned, though his own work might become messy and dirty in the heat of the struggle, both the motives and the result were clean; the media, on the other hand, was engaged in the unhealthy task of pandering to unhealthy desires. Now, striding from the car to the main trailer, he grimly ignored the two camera crews recording his progress and refused either to listen or respond to the questions of the microphone-waving reporters who trotted to his side. His earlier embarrassed pleasure at becoming in a small way a media celebrity was washed away by this repugnance. “Out of the way,” he said to a reporter who had become just a little too bold, and stepped into the trailer.

A dozen people were crowded into the long narrow cream-walled space inside the trailer, among them Jock Cayzer and Lynsey Rayne. Lynsey came forward at Mike’s entrance, looking frightened but elated, saying, “Is it true? He’s certainly alive?”

“According to Merville.” But then he quickly softened that, preferring to have her optimistic: “And he was telling the truth, no question about that. He opened up like a flower.”

Some toughness in his tone startled her, and she looked at him more closely. “What did you do to him?”

She’s still a liberal, Mike reminded himself; we get Koo Davis back by fair play only. “Believe it or not,” he said, “the only time I touched him was when I shook his hand.”

“Just so Koo’s all right,” she said. Meaning fair play was no longer an issue?

“He isn’t all right yet,” Mike told her. “We still have to get him away from those people.” And he stepped deeper into the trailer.

The furnishings were a grab-bag of bits and pieces; some folding chairs of various styles, a couple of folding-leg card tables, one sturdy wooden table and a couple of small battered gray-metal desks. At one of these sat Jock Cayzer; approaching him, Mike said, “Is our phone line in?”

“Let’s see.” Jock lifted the receiver of the phone which was the only thing on the surface of his desk, listened, and shook his head. “Not a thing.” Cradling the receiver again, he called toward the other end of the people-filled trailer, “How much longer on the phone?”

“One minute!” The person who answered was a big bearish young man with shoulder-length blond hair and shaggy blond beard. He was dressed in work pants, a yellow T-shirt and a large tool-filled workbelt around his waist, and he was kneeling on the floor at the far end of the trailer, a screwdriver in one hand and a telephone receiver in the other. “Just checking with the operator,” he called, waved the screwdriver, and went back to work.

Mike said, “I’m assuming that place has a phone and we know the number.”

“It does,” Jock assured him, “and we do.”

“Good.” Then Mike added, “According to Merville, they killed our inside girl.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Jock said. “We didn’t do her any favor.”

Lynsey had followed Mike, and now she said, with new worry, “If they’ve already killed once, they don’t have anything to lose anymore.”

“These people started killing years ago,” Mike told her, and went over to the wooden table, which was filled with an untidy Rube Goldberg assembly of electronic parts and wiring. Half of it comprised a two-way police radio, at which an operator sat, receiving occasional messages from elements at the perimeter of the siege area. The rest was the recording equipment, being fussed over by their regular technician from the Burbank office. Mike said to him, “You ready to tape phone conversations?”

“I think so.” The technician looked harried, very unlike his normal calm self; he apparently didn’t like being transported out of his comfortable home environment. “I won’t know for sure,” he said, “until they get the phone working.”

“They say that’ll be just a minute.”

“They always say that,” the technician said.

The radio operator said, “Sir?”

“Yes?”

“An L.A. Sheriff’s car on the beach just reported. The word’s got around, and the offshore is filling up with small boats.”

“Boats! Are they looking to get killed?”

“I guess they’re just looking, sir.”

Mike pointed to the array of radio equipment. “Can you get the Coast Guard on that thing?”

“I believe so, yes, sir.”

“Get onto them, explain the situation, and tell them we’d appreciate their cooperation clearing that area. And if they feel like sinking a couple of those stupid bastards out there, we leave them to their own initiative.”

The radio operator grinned. “Yes, sir.”

“Try your phone now!” cried the young man from the far end of the trailer.

Mike watched as Jock picked up the phone and listened. “Sounds good,” Jock called.

“Terrific.” Mike said to the technician, “You set?”

“I need to hear a conversation.”

“Right. Jock? Dial the weather or something.”

Jock waved an okay, dialed the number, and the technician fiddled with his dials and switches. Suddenly a female voice filled the trailer: “—perature seventy-eight degrees, humidity—”

The technician hit another switch, and nodded in embattled satisfaction. “Set,” he said.

“Good.”

Mike crossed to the other desk, sat down, and drew its telephone close. As he did so, Lynsey, standing in front of the desk, said, “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Mike looked at her, not knowing what on earth she was talking about. “Huh?”

“Telling me they started killing years ago. Why should that make me feel better?”

“Oh. Because it isn’t new to them,” Mike told her. “They’re less likely to panic, because they’ve already known for years the consequences of getting caught.”

“I see,” she said, surprised. “I see what you mean.”

“Now do you feel better?”

“Not really. I won’t feel good till this is all over and Koo is safe.” Then she added, “May I sit by you?”

“Of course. Drag over a chair.”

She did, bringing one of the lightweight metal folding chairs and placing it at the side of the desk. Meantime, Mike asked Jock for the beach house phone number, and dialed it as Jock read it off. Lynsey sat down and Mike nodded at her, listening to the phone’s ring-sound in his ear.

She said, “What if they don’t answer?”

He held up a finger, meaning he didn’t want to talk right now. He was counting the rings: five, six, seven...“We’ll wait for them,” he said. Eight, nine...

In the middle of the fourteenth ring, someone picked up at the other end, but at first didn’t speak. Mike waited, hearing the faint sound of breathing, and finally he said, “Hello?”

It was a woman’s voice: “Wrong number.”

“Peter Dinely, please,” Mike said.

There was a sharp intake of breath, then silence. Would she hang up? No; she said, “Who is this?”

“Michael Wiskiel, of the Federal Bur—”

“Hold on. Hold on a minute.”

“Sure.”

He heard the receiver clatter onto a hard surface. Looking at Lynsey’s expectant face, he pressed the phone hard against his ear, trying to hear what was going on in that room at the other end, but heard nothing until the new clatter of somebody picking the receiver up again. A wary voice said, “Yes?”

“Peter Dinely?”

“Where did you get that name?” The voice sounded like the one on the final tape, but less harsh; the same voice without the rage. Which answered the question about the tape’s authenticity, now that it no longer mattered.

“Ginger Merville told me,” Mike said.

Surprisingly, the man at the other end laughed. “Poor Ginger,” he said, but not as though he actually sympathized. “Did he come to you or did you go out and grab him?”

“We grabbed him.”

“So he couldn’t even make a deal. I imagine he’s very upset.”

“I imagine you all are,” Mike said, trying to sound as though he cared. “Merville told us Koo Davis is still alive.”

“Oh, did he?”

The voice now seemed to imply that Merville was wrong.

Mike looked away from Lynsey’s eyes. “You’re in a lot of trouble, Dinely,” he said, “but you could stop now before you make things worse.”

“Are you stupid, or do you think I’m stupid?”

“Neither,” Mike said. It was obviously necessary to stroke this fellow’s ego a bit, and Mike was more than willing. He was willing to do whatever was needed to get Koo Davis back, safe and sound. “You’re smart,” he told Dinely, “you’ve proved that the last few days, but there’s just too many of us. It didn’t matter how smart you were, you couldn’t pull this off and get away with it.”

“But we have gotten away with it, so far.” Dinely’s air of self-confidence was almost convincing; almost. “And we’ll go on getting away with it,” he said, with just a bit too much bravado. “I take it you want Davis back.”

“Alive.”

“Of course. We’ll make a deal.”

Mike closed his eyes and pressed his lips together, knowing what was coming. The clear route to the airport, the plane waiting, Dinely’s promise to release Davis once he was aboard the plane. Mike would agree, of course, because once the gang was out of the house and in motion there would be a thousand different ways to stop them. But without endangering Koo Davis even further? Very aware of Lynsey’s presence, but keeping his eyes shut, Mike said, “Let’s hear it.”

“We have our own car,” Dinely began. “The green Impala in the carport.”

“Yes.”

And Dinely went on to outline exactly what Mike had expected. The Coast Highway was also California State Highway 1, which south of here at Santa Monica went inland, along Lincoln Boulevard, down to Los Angeles International Airport; that was the route they would take, and the plane that was to be waiting for them should be equipped for flying over water. Davis would be released at the airport. Sure.

“It’ll take a while to set up,” Mike said.

“Not too long,” Dinely told him. “You don’t want us to get nervous here.”

“And we need assurance,” Mike said, now opening his eyes and looking at Lynsey again, “that Koo Davis is still alive. Let me speak to him.”

There was a brief uncomfortable silence, and then Dinely said, “That isn’t possible right now.” His voice sounded odd; Mike couldn’t quite figure out what was wrong. It wasn’t as though Dinely were lying about Davis still being alive, but almost as though Dinely were in some strange way embarrassed about something.

Apparently Mike’s reaction was showing in his face, because Lynsey suddenly looked alarmed, instinctively reaching out, not quite grasping him by the forearm. Speaking slowly into the phone, choosing his words carefully, Mike said, “Is there some sort of problem?”

“Davis is, uh, locked up,” Dinely said. “And it’s not—possible just this second to unlock him. Give me your phone number there.”

“Listen,” Mike said. “Is Koo Davis alive or isn’t he?” And now Lynsey did hold his arm, her fingers a tight bony pressure.

“Yes, he’s alive.” Dinely sounded exasperated. “Give me your phone number and I’ll call you back when he’s—available.”

“It’s four two six,” Mike said, “nine nine seven oh. But, listen.”

Too late. Dinely had hung up.