The Comedy is Finished by Donald E. Westlake Read Free Book Online Page A

you’re easy. Everybody knows who you are, I don’t have to go out and sell you. I just sit in the office, say yes to one offer in ten, skim my percentage and live fat.”
    Laughing, Koo said, “Now I got to hear the other one.”
    “Max has been sick a long time,” she said. “I’ve been your agent for the last five years. Nobody knows you better than me.”
    And she was right, wasn’t she? “Nobody knows you better than me.” Jesus Christ, when Koo casts around in his mind for his closest relation, his nearest and dearest, he comes up with his agent . Lynsey’s a terrific lady, one of the best— not one of the blondes to be trouped and shtupped—but is this any way to run a life? Your next of kin is your agent?
    A distraction, a distraction. He paces his small soft-surfaced carpeted prison, trying to push all the bad thoughts, the horrible questions, right out of his mind. Death, love, money...
    Hunger. How about that one? There’s something he can think about, because the fact of the matter is, Koo is getting damn hungry.
    There’s a lot of food in his room, bread and cereal and milk and even what smells like bargain basement Scotch, but Koo won’t touch any of it. It’s the booze that makes him nervous about the rest. Why give him so much, and why throw in whiskey? Maybe it’s drugged, huh? They’ve left him alone a couple hours, so maybe they’re just waiting for the drug to take effect. Koo doesn’tknow how or if he can help himself out of this jam, but one thing is sure: if he’s doped up, he can’t take advantage of any break that might come along.
    As for his cell, his cage, his prison, Koo looks around and says out loud, “I been in worse places, and paid forty bucks a night.” It has become his habit in recent years to talk to himself, but only in the form of one-liners, asides, comments on the action of his life. This remark is unfortunate, though, because it leads his thoughts directly to the next question, which is: how much will this room cost? All or most of his assets? His life?
    “Then there’s the view,” Koo says, hurriedly. “It overlooks the garden. Completely. And the weather’s been so wet recently.” Turning, pacing the small room, making fretful hand gestures, he says, “I wish I had a cigarette, and I don’t even smoke. I’d use it to point at things.”
    Koo used to smoke. For nearly thirty years, one of his trademarks was the cigarette between the first two fingers of his left hand, used in casual gestures, mostly with gag lines where something was being dismissed. “I told him, Sergeant, I don’t want to be in the Army at all .” A silhouette drawing used in the logo of his weekly television show back in the fifties showed his profile and his waving left hand with the cigarette and a curl of smoke coming up around his face. But seven years ago his doctor told him to stop, giving him a lot of medical reasons that Koo refused to hear, and Koo stopped. Like that. He’s never been willing to think about death, about his own mortality or any of the grimmer steps along the path, the aches and pains, the accidents and illnesses and gradual wasting away that must come to every human being in time. He doesn’t want to think about all that shit, and he won’t think about all that shit, and there’s nothing more to be said about it. He’s got enough money to hire good doctors, so he hires gooddoctors, and he does what they tell him to do, and if they insist on telling him why he just nods and grins and doesn’t listen.
    There’s no way out of this room. The door is securely locked, and it opens outward so there’s no way to get at the hinges. Shortly after he was left alone in here Koo did some poking at the fabric covering the wall, working low on the corner nearest the door, and behind the cloth he found Sheetrock and behind that concrete block. “No way am I gonna dig through concrete block,” he told himself, and searched no further.
    The next question was