Free The Comedy is Finished by Donald E. Westlake

to the receding-dot light of the TV screen, he said, “They’ll produce. We picked the right horse, and they’ll trade.”
    “You shouldn’t have let him do all those jokes,” Mark said. “I told you at the time, make him do it over, without the wisecracks.”
    Peter shrugged; Joyce thought he showed astonishing forbearance with Mark. He said, “What difference does it make?”
    “Because he sounds like the winner,” Mark said. “He sounds like he’s got us .”
    “You worry too much about the appearance of things.” Peter put a hand to his face, stroked his cheek with his fingertips, his expression pained. Joyce recognized that gesture; it meant Peter was troubled, struggling to retain control or composure. Joyce wished Mark would leave Peter alone, he had enough to think about as it was. “The important thing is,” Peter said, “the other side knows he’s alive and well. He’s our trading counter, and he has to be recognizable.”
    “He made fun of us. He’s the star and we’re the stooges.”
    “Mark, so what? Would you rather be on top, with the power, or on the bottom making fun?”
    “ He’s on top,” Mark insisted. “ He has the power.”
    “Then go downstairs and kick him a few times,” Peter said, obviously annoyed and bored. “Show him who’s in charge.”
    Joyce was grateful when Larry chimed in then, awkwardly but earnestly changing the conversation, saying, “Um, Peter, what about the deadline business? What that FBI man said, that they can’t get an answer out of Washington in twenty-four hours. Do you think that’s true?”
    Mark said, “They have to be pushed.”
    Peter smiled easily at Larry. “We’ll send them another tape tomorrow night,” he said. “And this time we’ll let Mark direct the performance.”
    Larry looked disapproving, but didn’t react directly. Instead, he said, “How much time will we give them, really?”
    “We don’t know, really. The minimum time possible.”
    “I wonder...” Larry said, musing, then said, “Peter? Do you think he’s trainable?”
    Peter seemed amused. “Koo Davis? You want to orientate Koo Davis in dialectical materialism?”
    “An intelligent brain is capable of seeing truth,” Larry said.
    “Then give it a try,” Peter suggested. Joyce saw that he was mocking Larry, and that Larry knew but didn’t care. “Spend time with him tomorrow,” Peter said, “discuss the theory of labor. How much is a man worth who tells jokes for a living?”
    “All men are worth the same,” Larry said.
    Peter gave him a sly look. “More and more, Larry, your politics sound like religion.”
    Mark said, “I’ll go look at Davis, check him one last time tonight.”
    He means to do something cruel, Joyce thought, looking at Mark’s face, grim and angry behind the heavy beard. She was glad when Larry said, “I’ll go with you.”
    Mark gave him a venomous look. “You can go instead of me,” he said, and walked away, toward his bedroom.
    “Leave Davis alone for tonight,” Peter said. “He’s all right down there.”
    “I didn’t want Mark to see him alone.”
    “I know, Larry.”
    Liz abruptly got to her feet, saying, “Mark’s right, we should push them, get this over with. Phone that number they gave, put Davis on, let Mark twist his arm. When they hear Davis holler, they’ll start to move.”
    Peter shook his head, like a patient tutor with a backward pupil. “In the first place, they’d trace the call. In the second place, if we start with high pressure, where do we go from there? We begin calm, and we crank it up a bit at a time. If they stall we can still go way up. We can let Mark slice off his ears, for instance.” Peter chuckled, a low comfortable sound. “Can you imagine that round neat head without ears?”
    Joyce, who preferred to be silent, was driven to speech now, saying in a pained voice, “You aren’t serious, Peter.”
    “Of course not,” Peter told her, speaking easily, but Joyce watched his