The Comedy is Finished by Donald E. Westlake Page A

best bargaining chip they could have obtained, since government officials and other people closer to the center of power were all so much more carefully guarded.
    True, Mark had reasons to hate Koo Davis for himself if he wanted to dwell on them, but that wasn’t the point. Mark had left all that personal stuff behind, he was out of those emotional quagmires now, he behaved on the basis of logical necessity only . Whateverhappened to Koo Davis, it would be due exclusively to the impersonal logic of the situation. Revenge, hatred, none of that would make any difference.
    On balance, in fact, it was marginally better that Davis be alive. One or two more tapes should still be made—without the jokes. And it was tactically better that Davis remain a living redeemable counter in the game. So Mark’s decision to save his life had also been logical, an immediate decision among alternatives, and not the result of any misplaced emotional reaction. He had done the right thing for the right reason.
    At precisely three o’clock, a blue Dodge Colt rolled by, a white cloth fluttering flaglike from its antenna. Mark leaned forward to watch, hard-edged leaves brushing his bearded cheeks and the jungly smell of the shrubbery rich in his nostrils. No other car trailed the Colt.
    The white Ford Granada eased by in the opposite direction at three minutes past the hour. Mark watched it out of sight.
    At five past three he stood, stretching in the dark, his ankle-bones cracking. He waited there, in the darkness, and two minutes later the Impala came along, Peter at the wheel. Mark trotted out to the road, Peter stopped, Mark slid in on the passenger side, and Peter accelerated again, toward the freeway entrance.
    “Blue Dodge Colt,” Mark said. “Went through on the dot. Nobody followed it.”
    “Good. That package of yours smells.”
    Mark glanced at the brown paper bag on the back seat. “Can’t,” he said. “It’s very securely sealed in a Baggie.”
    “It smells,” Peter insisted. “Sniff for yourself.”
    Mark sniffed; there was a faint aroma, at that. “Maybe you farted.”
    Peter’s mouth corners turned down. He was not amused. He steered them onto the freeway, then accelerated to sixty. Therewere fewer than half a dozen vehicles anywhere in sight. Peter said, “It’s a stupid gesture anyway, even if you’re right.”
    “They’ll understand,” Mark said. “And I will be right.”
    “And if you’re wrong?”
    Mark shrugged. “Then it’s cost me one Baggie and one cassette. Besides, they’re already being cute.” And he told Peter about the white Granada.
    Peter obviously didn’t like that. “What’s the matter with them? Don’t they realize we don’t have to do this?”
    “They can’t help themselves. They’ve just got to play Counterspy.”
    Peter drove along, drumming his fingertips against the steering wheel. “Who knows what else they’re doing? We’ll call it off,” he decided. “We’ll phone them, tell them to do it right or not at all. They’re the ones want Davis alive.”
    “No, Peter. Let them do it again later? They still won’t be straight with us, you’ll just give them more time to get set up. We do it now.”
    “I’m not interested in being caught.”
    “None of us is.”
    Peter gave him a sidelong look. “You just want to use your Baggie.”
    “There’s that, too.” Then Mark pointed forward. “In the right lane.”
    The Colt was moving at the modest forty miles an hour specified by Mark, and there seemed no other vehicle pacing it. Staying in a middle lane, Peter hung well back, and waited.
    The San Diego Freeway north of Sunset Boulevard runs between two low barren treeless hills with virtually no buildings and an almost total lack of secondary roads. There’s only one freeway exit before the Valley itself, five miles to the north. It’s a strange landscape for the middle of a major metropolitan area, and it’squite dark at night. At one of the darkest spots, near