Free The Comedy is Finished by Donald E. Westlake Page B

make panic as hilarious as Koo Davis.”
    I’m scared, Koo thinks, but he doesn’t say it aloud; it ain’t that hilarious. Remembering how often he simulated fear in all those movies, and later on television, he’s surprised at how different the real thing is. Of course, like everyone else he’s known brief moments of fear in his life—mostly on those USO tours—but what he’s feeling now is steady, growing, ongoing. He’s afraid of these people, he’safraid of what will happen, he’s afraid of his own helplessness, and he’s afraid of his fear.
    “Why would anybody be afraid of getting killed?” he asks. That’s a line from Your Genial Ghost , and it was supposed to be a rhetorical question, but in fact death is not at all what Koo fears now. His imagination crawls instead with images of pain, images of humiliation. He’s afraid they’ll hurt him in some awful way, and he’s afraid he won’t be brave in front of them. He’d hate to live the rest of his life remembering himself groveling on the floor in front of these bastards.
    What if they do something to his throat or his mouth, so he can’t talk? What if they blind him or scar him in some awful way? What if they cut him—he’s always been afraid of knives, sharp things.
    “We’ve got nothing to fear but fear itself—and that big guy over there with the sword.” The Zombie Goes to College . He keeps trying to reassure himself—they haven’t done anything to him yet, have they? They haven’t even threatened very much. But Koo remembers the look on that one guy’s face, the bearded son of a bitch who showed him the gun way back at the beginning. He’s probably also the one who hit him when the sack was over his head. And he doesn’t talk, he just stands there and glares at Koo like he’d prefer Koo’s head on a platter, with an apple in his mouth.
    If only they wanted money. He’d been afraid earlier that they’d ask too much, but now he believes he could somehow have raised any amount they wanted. Ask for money, you bastards, and I’ll find it, one way or the other I’ll buy my way out of here. “Will you take a post-dated check?” Anything; ask for something I’ve got, ask for something that makes some kind of goddamn sense .
    Ten political prisoners. The Feds won’t do it, Koo is convinced they won’t do it, and why the hell should they? Koo has no illusions about his “friendships” with generals and senators; one ofthe perks of being a general or a senator is to hang around with famous show biz people, and one of the perks of being a famous show biz celebrity is to hang around with generals and senators. “They come out ahead on that deal,” Koo says, but he doesn’t really mean it. He’s always enjoyed the company of VIPs, playing golf with them, going on hunting weekends, cruising on their yachts, visiting at their ranches, and he knows damn well they’ve enjoyed him just as much, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to release ten weirdos and crazies in return for one Koo Davis.
    They won’t do it. No negotiation with terrorists , that’s been the official position for years, and Koo has always agreed with it, and even where he is now he still agrees, because if you give in to these bastards it just encourages more of them.
    Well, what encouraged this bunch?
    Shit; Koo doesn’t want to sit around thinking about it. He just wants to go home, back to his life, back to being what he’s good at. He’s no good at sitting here in the semi-dark, wondering what’s going to happen next. “My mother didn’t raise me to be a hostage.”
    What will they do when the Feds say no? They won’t quit, not right away. They’ll try to pressure the Feds to change their minds, won’t they? And how will they do that? Koo knows how, but doesn’t want to know, he doesn’t want to think about it. He wants this over with, and he doesn’t see any good way for it to end. If this is reality encroaching on his happy private world,