The Comedy is Finished Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 womancalled 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-full 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