The Comedy is Finished (4 page)

They both looked sullen. One of them said, “You
could
be a reporter.”

“Flashing Federal ID? I’m some fucking stupid reporter.” And he went inside.

Almost any of the other agents in the Los Angeles office, with their local police contacts, would have been better qualified than Mike to be liaison on this case, except that the victim was Koo Davis; a famous name, a celebrity, and a man with lots of official friends back in D.C. No one lower-ranking than Assistant to the Chief of Station could possibly be sent to cover the first day, when legally the FBI’s connection with kidnapping—a state, not federal, crime—was advisory only; which was why it was Mike’s baby. And his big chance.

He had no idea, on walking into Soundstage Four, whether the local law would welcome him with open arms or closed faces, but it turned out he was in luck. The local man in charge, a tall leathery old duff called Chief Inspector Jock Cayzer, seemed both friendly and competent, and started right off by saying, “FBI, huh? Good to have you aboard.”

Cayzer had a hard strong handshake. He wore a brown suit and a string tie and a Stetson, and he talked with the gruff slow twang of Texas or Oklahoma, but the deep creases in his face and the knobby knuckles of his blunt-fingered hands said plainer than words that he was the real thing and not one of the million imitations spawned in the Los Angeles area. Despite the strong handshake, and the keen look in his silver-flecked blue eyes, and his strong deep voice, he was surely older than the mandatory retirement
age, so his still being here, actively in charge, meant he either knew his business or knew the right people. Probably both. So Mike had better be careful with him.

He knew his business, that much was sure. He took Mike around the building, explaining the situation, and Mike could only agree with everything Cayzer had so far chosen to do. What had happened, Koo Davis had been on stage talking with the studio audience before taping his program, and on his way back to the dressing room—down this corridor, through this door, along that hall—he’d disappeared; probably out this door, leading to this alley. Presumably he’d been snatched, though so far there’d been no word from the kidnappers. On the other hand, the kidnapping (if that’s what it was) had taken place barely half an hour ago: “They might not even be gone to ground yet,” Cayzer said.

As to who they were, and how they might have done it, there were some clues, beginning with that studio audience. In normal movie studio fashion, Triple S was under controlled access, with high walls or fences all around the property and only two usable gates, both manned by private guards. The minute the alarm had reached Cayzer’s office, he had ordered the lot sealed; no one off, no matter who they were or what their reason, and only police and other authorized officials on. The result was, the studio audience that had come to see Koo Davis was still here, undergoing a kind of thrilled boredom. They’d been told what had happened and that they wouldn’t be permitted to leave just yet, so they knew they were involved in a very dramatic moment, but on the other hand they were just sitting there on those bleachers, with nothing to do and nothing to see.

And they were two short. “They keep a headcount,” Cayzer explained. “They get a mob comes to these things, but they only let in the first two hundred and fifty, that’s final, no more and no less.
I’ve had three of these studio fellas swear to me up and down and sideways there was exactly two hundred fifty people let in today, and we done our own headcount, and now there’s two hundred forty-eight.”

“So that’s how they got in,” Mike agreed. “The next question is, how’d they get out?”

“I do believe we got a hint on that,” Cayzer said. “Two of my men talked to the fellas on the main gate, asking who come in and out during the ten minutes between Davis disappearing and us closing the place down, and we got one good-looking prospect. A Ford Econoline van, belongs to one of the girls works in the studio offices. The fella on the gate remembered it because she only brings it in on Fridays and she usually leaves later in the day. Girl’s name is Janet Grey, she’s been working here less than two months, she didn’t ask her boss’ permission before she took off early.”

“Sounds good,” Mike said. “You got an address?”

“Down in West L.A. County boys looking into it now.”

“She won’t be there,” Mike said.

Cayzer grinned, making another thousand creases in his face. His eyes were meant for seeing across open miles, they seemed too powerful for small rooms, small concerns. “I’ll be surprised, there’s even such an address,” he said.

Mike said, “What about the family?”

“Well, that’s sort of a problem,” Cayzer said. “Seems Davis’s separated from his wife, she’s out in Palm Beach, Florida. Then he’s got two sons, both grown up, one of them in the television business in New York, the other one lives in London. Your boss said—”

“Webster Redburn.”

“That’s him; Chief of Station. He said his people would see about notification of the family. We got no relatives around this part of the world at all. The closest we can come is Davis’ agent, a woman
called Lynsey Rayne. She’s waiting in my office right now for news.”

“We could all use some news,” Mike said. “What’s your next move?”

“I have men searching this whole lot,” Cayzer said. “Indoors and out. Don’t expect they’ll come up with anything.”

“Probably not. These people hit and run.”

“That’s right. Then there’s that audience. I think I might’s well let them go, unless
you
want them.”

“This is your show,” Mike said. “I’m just an observer.”

“Oh, I think we could work together right from now,” Cayzer said. His grin, it seemed, could develop a sly twist at the left corner. “Less you’d
rather
wait till tomorrow.”

“Anything I can do to help,” Mike promised, “just let me know.”

“Fine. Think I oughta let that audience go home?”

“Did you talk to them about pictures?”

Cayzer looked blank. “Pictures?”

“Snapshots.”

“Well, god damn it,” Cayzer said. “Sometimes I don’t know if I was stupid all my life or if I’m just getting stupid with old age. Come on along, you can ask them yourself.”

Mike followed Cayzer to a large soundstage full of sets and cameras, with an audience-f line of bleachers along one side. A technician gave him a hand mike, and he stepped out into the floodlights, where forty minutes ago Koo Davis had been making people laugh. Now his absence was making the same people wide-eyed with anticipation, and Mike was strongly aware of all those eyes glittering at him out of the semi-dark. He was also strongly aware of the floodlights; they were making his headache worse. His eyes felt as though the pressure behind them would make them pop out onto the floor; and good riddance.

With the bleachers so broad and shallow, the audience was much closer to the stage than in a normal theater, and Mike immediately had the sense that these people were
still
an audience, still spectators rather than participants. They were waiting for him to amuse them, thrill them, capture their interest.

He did the latter merely by introducing himself: “Ladies and gentleman, my name is Michael Wiskiel. I’m an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, here to assist Chief Inspector Cayzer in his inquiry.”
His
inquiry; the social niceties are important everywhere. “Now, I imagine some of you nice people are tourists in this area, and all of you have your own lives you want to get on with, so we’ll try not to hold you up very much longer. I suppose some of you brought cameras along today, I wonder if any of you have Polaroids. Anybody?”

A scattering of hands was raised; Mike counted six.

“Fine. So any pictures you folks took today, you’ve already got them in your pocket or purse, all developed and ready to be looked at. I wonder, did any of you people happen to take any pictures while you were out on line, before you got in here, and would those pictures show anybody
else
in the line?”

A stir in the audience, as two hundred forty-two people turned in their seats to watch six people self-consciously leaf through little clusters of photographs. Four of them eventually turned out to have pictures of the sort Mike had in mind, and ushers brought these photographs to the stage.

Seven snaps. Mike looked at the first, and saw four more-or-less distinguishable people behind the smiling squinting foreground lady who was the obvious subject of the photograph. He called out, “Could we have some light on the audience?” and immediately a bank of overhead spots came up, lighting the audience as though
it
had become the stage.

“Let’s see now,” Mike said. “Here’s a young man in a pale blue sweater, black hair, wearing sunglasses. Anybody?”

The young man was found, and when he stood and put on his sunglasses Mike matched him to the photograph. Also the lady wearing the white scarf and green polka dots. And also the elderly couple in matching white turtleneck shirts.

And so on through the seven Polaroids. Every identifiable face was still among the two hundred forty-eight. Either the two kidnappers had been very careful or very lucky.

“Well, it was worth a try,” Mike told the audience, when the pictures had been returned to their owners. “So now let me ask about other cameras, where you’ve still got the film inside. Anybody?”

More: thirty-five hands went up. Mike arranged with Cayzer to have police officers collect the film rolls, identifying the owner of each, and promising that the pictures would be developed, all developed prints and negatives would be returned to their owners, and reimbursement would be made for unused parts of rolls.

“Now, one last thing,” Mike said, when the film had been collected. “We’ll want group pictures of you all. If you were wearing something outside on line that you’re not wearing now, like sunglasses or a hat, please wear it in the picture.” There’s something about standing on stage with a hand mike that compulsively brings out the ham in everybody; Mike couldn’t resist adding, “And if you’re here with somebody you shouldn’t be, don’t worry, we won’t say a word to your wife.” The answering chuckle, from two hundred forty-eight throats, delighted him.

While Cayzer’s men took the pictures, section by section, and copied down the names and addresses of everybody present, with their location in each photograph, Mike and Cayzer had a talk behind the set, Cayzer saying, “My people finished their search of the lot. Nothing, nobody, no report.”

“What we expected.”

“That’s right. You want to talk to Janet Grey’s co-workers?”

In a cracking, terrible falsetto, Mike said, “Oh, I just can’t
believe
Janet would be involved in anything like this. She was always such a
quiet
girl, she just kept to herself all the time, a
very
good worker, never made any trouble or called attention to herself in
any
way.”

Grinning, nodding, Cayzer said, “You just saved yourself an hour and a half. So what do you want to do next?”

“Hear from the kidnappers,” Mike said.

Koo Davis is in trouble, and he knows it, but he doesn’t know why. And he doesn’t know who, or how, or even where. Where the hell
is
this place? An underground room with a bar and a john and a cunt-level view of a swimming pool; the naked girl with the scars on her back spent half an hour paddling around in the water out there, after Koo was locked in. She swam and dove, the whole time pretending there wasn’t any window or anybody watching, and all in all Koo was very happy when she finally got her ass out of the pool and left him in peace. She has a fantastic body when you can’t see the scars, but she doesn’t turn him on. Just the opposite: having that cold bitch flaunt herself like that shows just how little he matters to these people. They kidnapped him, they probably figure to sell him back for a nice profit, but other than as merchandise they couldn’t care shit about him, and that makes Koo very nervous.

Why me?
he asks himself, over and over, but he never comes up with an answer. Because he has a few bucks? But Jesus, a lot of people have a few bucks. Do they think he’s a millionaire or something? If they ask for too much money, and if they don’t believe the answer they get, what will they do?

Koo doesn’t like to think about that. Every time his thoughts bring him this far, he quickly switches to another of his questions; like, for instance,
Where am I?
Still somewhere in the Greater Los Angeles area, that’s for sure. He estimates he was no more than half an hour in that truck or whatever it was. From the turns,
this way and that, when they took him away from Triple S, he’s come to the conclusion they drove first on the Hollywood Freeway and then either the Ventura Freeway west or the Pasadena Freeway east; probably Ventura, out across the Valley. Then at the very end they did some climbing, with a particularly steep part after one fairly long stop. So he’s most likely on an estate somewhere in the Hollywood Hills, on the north slope, overlooking the Valley. And not some cheapjack place either, not with this room next to the pool. Somebody spent money on this layout.

Why do they want to keep him from identifying this place, yet they don’t care if he sees their faces? And why the fuck would rich people play kidnapper? These clowns operate like they’re at home here, they’re not worried about the owners coming back and interrupting the operation, so they must—

Unless they killed the owners.

Time to switch to another question. Like: Who exactly do they deal with, these kidnappers, who do they put the arm on? The network? Chairman Williams and the vice-presidents, that crowd of Easter Island statues? You can’t get blood from stone faces; if Koo knew his businessmen—and he did—Williams wouldn’t pay more than three bucks to get his sister back from Charles Manson.

But who else was there? Lily? “Hello, we got your husband Koo here, you remember him. He’s for sale.” How much would Lily pay for a living Koo Davis?

Koo is something of a showbiz oddity, a man who’s been married to the same woman for forty-one years; but that isn’t quite the record it sounds. As he once explained to an interviewer (in an answer cut from the published interview at Koo’s insistence), “You want my formula for a happy marriage? Marry only once, leave town, and never go back.”