What's So Funny? d-14

by Donald E. Westlake

  "No, he isn't happy about you. I'll be in the lobby."

  Eppick was in a rhinoceros-horn chair in the lobby, and got up from it when Dortmunder was let in by the doorman, who looked as though he wasn't entirely certain this was the right thing to do.

  "All right," Eppick said, still impatient. "Let's go."

  In the elevator, Dortmunder said, "I seem to be laying out a whole lotta cab money."

  "That's because," Eppick said, "you're an independent contractor."

  "Oh," Dortmunder said, and the elevator opened, and a fuming medicine ball awaited them in his wheelchair.

  "Gentlemen," Mr. Hemlow spat. Dortmunder hadn't known you could spit a word like "gentlemen," but Mr. Hemlow made it sound easy. "Sit down," he ordered, and the wheelchair spun away toward the view.

  Once everybody was in position, Dortmunder and Eppick side by side in the antique chairs, Mr. Hemlow facing them in the middle of the view, Mr. Hemlow, over the tempo-setting twitch of his right knee, lowered a glower at Dortmunder and said, "I understand you spoke to my granddaughter this morning."

  "Yeah, I did," Dortmunder said. "Not in the place, on the sidewalk out front."

  Eppick glared at Dortmunder's right eye and ear. "You accosted her? On the street?"

  "I didn't accost her. It was a little conversation."

  Mr. Hemlow, the lid barely on his rage, said, "You asked her to take part in a criminal act."

  "I don't see that," Dortmunder said. "Where's the crime? I didn't even ask her to jaywalk."

  Eppick said, "Sir, could you back it up a little here? I don't really know what's going on. What did he ask her to do?"

  "I just—"

  "I'm not asking you" Eppick spat. Now everybody was spitting. "I'm asking Mr. Hemlow."

  "As I understand it," Mr. Hemlow said, "your associate here has decided it's too much trouble to make his way into that bank vault and retrieve the chess set, so he wants—"

  Appalled, Eppick cried, "Your granddaughter to go down there?"

  "No, not quite that bad. He wants Fiona to approach Livia Northwood Wheeler and—"

  "I'm sorry, sir," Eppick said. "Who?"

  "She is the Sgt. Northwood descendant," Mr. Hemlow explained, "who is represented by Fiona's firm in the family lawsuits."

  "Oh," Eppick said. "Thank you, sir."

  "Fiona's firm represents Livia Northwood Wheeler," Mr. Hemlow went on, those little red eyes glowering at Dortmunder. "Fiona doesn't represent her, does not have any legitimate reason to speak to the woman, even if she were willing to do what you asked of her."

  Eppick said, "Sir, what did… John here, ask?"

  "Perhaps John himself should tell you," Mr. Hemlow said.

  Eppick turned a judgmental gaze on Dortmunder, who shrugged and said, "Sure. We can't get down in there, so I figured, maybe we could get the thing to come out instead. The specs and stuff the granddaughter gave me, which by the way I think was more legally iffy than what I asked her today, those specs showed one piece was too light, and we figure the sergeant switched it for a phony—"

  "To give himself a stake," Eppick said, nodding, agreeing with himself. "Very smart."

  "Nah, anybody could figure that."

  "I meant him."

  Mr. Hemlow said, "John here took this information to Fiona and asked her to pass it on to Mrs. Wheeler with a recommendation that she have the entire chess set appraised."

  "Which," Dortmunder said, "would bring it up outa that vault."

  "Were Fiona to address a client of the firm," Mr. Hemlow said, "without being asked specifically to do so by a partner or an associate, she would be let go at once."

  "Fired, you mean," Dortmunder said.

  " 'Let go' conveys the same information," Mr. Hemlow said.

  Eppick said, "Sir, let me have a word with John, if I may."

  "Certainly."

  Eppick nodded his thanks, then turned to Dortmunder. "I see what you were trying to do," he said, "and it wasn't bad. I understand that vault is maybe a little tougher than some places you've seen in the past."

  "All places I've seen in the past."

  "Okay. And the idea to get the thing out of the vault to somewhere maybe a little easier to get at, that's good, too."

  "Thank you," Dortmunder said, with dignity.

  "The problem is, though," Eppick said, "you can't use the granddaughter, not for anything. She started the ball rolling, but now she's out of it. We gotta protect her, we gotta protect her job, we gotta protect her reputation."

  "Uh huh."

  "She is not," Mr. Hemlow said, "an asset."

  Dortmunder frowned, not getting that, but decided to let it slide.

  Eppick apparently understood it, though, because he nodded in approval and said, "Exactly." To Dortmunder he said, "But the idea's a good one. We just gotta find some other way to make some other member of the family want experts to take a look at the chess set."

  "Then," Dortmunder said, "Mr. Hemlow, I gotta ask you this. There's one last thing I'd want from your granddaughter, and I think it's okay, but you tell me."

  Dubious, head rolling down over the medicine ball more than ever, Mr. Hemlow glowered up through his eyebrows and said, "What would that be?"

  "She said, she told me one time, there's seventeen family people in this, everybody suing everybody, all with their own lawyers. Could she get me a list of the seventeen, and which lawyer each one's got?"

  Mr. Hemlow thought a minute, but the head was nodding while he did it, not in time with the metronome knee. Then he said, "She could do that."

  "Thank you."

  "I will arrange for her to compile such a list and give it to me. I will convey it to Johnny here, and he can pass it on to you."

  "Great."

  "But then," Mr. Hemlow said, "that is the end of it. You will never have contact with my granddaughter ever again."

  "Oh, sure," Dortmunder said.

  Riding down in the elevator, Dortmunder said," Whadaya mean, independent contractor?"

  "It's one of the job definitions," Eppick told him, "you know, that the government has. Like, if you work for wages, you're a salaried employee, so you can be in a union, but if you're an independent contractor you can't be in a union."

  "I'm not in a union," Dortmunder said, and the elevator door opened at the lobby.

  Leaving the building, Eppick said, "We're both going downtown. Come on down to the corner, we'll grab a cab. I'll even pay."

  Dortmunder said, "But you don't want to give the doorman a dollar to get a cab right here."

  "Neither do you," Eppick told him.

  So they walked down to the corner and eventually found a cab without help, and as they rode downtown together Dortmunder said, "Tell me more about this independent contractor. Whadaya mean, it's a government definition?"

  "It shows where you fit in the workforce," Eppick said. "There's certain things you gotta match up with, and then you're an independent contractor."

  "Like what?"

  "You don't get a fixed salary every week."

  "Okay."

  "You don't work in the same office or factory or whatever every day."

  "Okay."

  "You carry your own tools on the job."

  "I do that," Dortmunder said.

  "You work without direct supervision."

  "You know it."

  "There's no withholding tax on what you make."

  "Never happened yet."

  "The employer or whoever doesn't give you a pension or health care."

  "This is my profile to the life," Dortmunder said.

  "Then there you are," Eppick said. "And now, go to work on those family members. I think you're onto something there."

  "Soon as I get the list," Dortmunder promised.

  When May got home that evening, Dortmunder helped by carrying one of the grocery sacks. In the kitchen, he said, "I found out something today."

  "Oh?"

  Dortmunder smiled. "I am an independent contractor
."

  She looked at him and put the cereal away. "Oh," she said.

  27

  LATER THAT SAME day, Kelp was in his own apartment in the West Thirties, chatting with Anne Marie Carpinaw, the friend he'd made one time on a trip to Washington, DC, and had brought home to protect her from that place. Deciding to raise a certain issue, "You're a woman," Kelp pointed out.

  "I believe," Anne Marie said, "that was the first thing you noticed about me."

  "It was." Kelp nodded, agreeing with them both. "And as a woman," he said, "I just have this feeling you might maybe have some certain expertise."

  "About what?"

  "Well, in this case, jewelry."

  "Yes, please," she said. "It's never in bad taste, and never out of style."

  "Not like that," he said. "A different kind of expertise."

  The look she gave him had something caustic in it. "I could show my expertise at sulking, if you like."

  "Come on, Anne Marie," Kelp said. "I just wanna pick your brain."

  "Well, that's all right, then," she said. "I was wondering when you'd get around to my brain."

  "I didn't have that much need for it up till now." She laughed, but pointed a finger at him. "You're on the lip of the volcano there, pal."

  "Then let me ask my question," he said. "It's most likely you don't know the answer, but I definitely don't know the answer, and I gotta start somewhere."

  "Go ahead."

  They were in their living room, which earlier he had salted with a manila envelope on the coffee table. This he now picked up, and withdrew from it two photos of the red queen from the chess set, plus the sheet giving the queen's dimensions and weight. "What I wanna do," he said, handing her these documents, "is make a fake one of these. It doesn't have to be a hundred percent perfect, because we're gonna paint it with red enamel."

  "This is the thing," she said, studying the photos, "that John is working on."

  "Well, we both are," Kelp said, "if we get past a couple little problems. And one of them is how to make a copy of that thing there, same size, same shape, pretty much the same weight."

  "Well, that's easy," she said. "Particularly if the jewels don't have to match."

  "No, they're gonna be painted over. Whadaya mean, it's easy?"

  "You came to the right person," she said. "What I will do is turn this over to the Earring Man."

  "The who?"

  "Women lose earrings," she pointed out. "You know that."

  "You find 'em in cabs," Kelp agreed, "you find 'em next to telephones, you find 'em on the floor the morning after the party."

  "Exactly," she said. "So there you are, you had a pair of earrings you loved, now you've only got one earring, and one earring isn't going to do anything for anybody except some pathetic guy trying to be hip."

  "I've seen those guys, too," Kelp said. "They look like they're off the leash."

  "So if you're a woman," Anne Marie went on, "with one earring of a pair you loved, you go to this jeweler that everybody calls Earring Man because he will make you an exact match."

  "That's pretty good," Kelp said. "I never knew that."

  "I think there's probably an Earring Man, or maybe more than one, in every urban center in the world where women don't have to wear headscarves. The one I know is in DC. I wore earrings a lot more when I was a congressman's daughter than when I'm some heister's moll."

  Surprised, Kelp said, "Is that who you are?"

  Looking at the photos again, she said, "How much of a hurry are you in for this?"

  "Well, since John says 'we're never gonna get our hands on the real one, I'd say you could take your time."

  She nodded, thinking it over. "I still have some unindicted friends down in DC," she said. "I'll make a couple calls and probably fly down tomorrow. He'll most likely want a couple weeks."

  "He'll know," Kelp said, "there's a certain amount of secrecy involved here."

  "Oh, sure," she said. "Earring Man would never betray a confidence." Grinning at the memory, she said, "The great story about him is the time a woman came in, very sad, with the one earring, and she lost the other in a cab, just like you said. He went to work on it, and a couple days later another woman came in with the other earring and claimed she lost the missing one in a cab. He never called either of them on it, never found out which one was lying, didn't care."

  Kelp said, "Anne Marie, in that case, how come you know about it?"

  She couldn't believe the question. "Andy," she said, "people gossip all the time. That isn't the same as tattling."

  Sometimes you know when the explanation you've got is the only explanation you're going to get. "Fine," Kelp said. "Whadaya wanna do about dinner?"

  28

  IT TOOK FIONA two full days, until late afternoon on Wednesday, burrowing into other people's files and records, to compile the list of all the litigating Northwood heirs requested by her grandfather. During this time, her own work suffered, of course, so when she finally had the list printed out and safely inside a manila envelope inside her shoulder bag under her desk, she turned immediately to the concerns and hungers and unfulfilled dreams of another enraged family — oil — but had only been at it for twenty minutes when her desk phone rang.

  Oh, what now? She didn't have time for this, she'd be here till midnight, and what would happen to Brian's dinner, would he prepare some exotic cuisine and then just sit there and watch it congeal, hour after hour? Why would people phone her at a time like this?

  No choice; she had to answer. "Hemlow," she said into the phone, and a clipped British female voice said, "Mr. Tumbril wishes to see you in his office. Now."

  Click. Stunned, Fiona put down her phone. Why would a partner in the firm want her in his office? And why, of all the partners, Mr. Tumbril? In New York, a city known for fierce litigators the way New Orleans is known for overweight chefs and Los Angeles for fanciful accountants, the name Jay Tumbril was in itself very often enough to make mad dogs settle and homicidal maniacs run screaming from the room.

  Well, she'd soon find out what it was about. She made her circuitous way across the Feinberg domain to Mr. Tumbril's corner — of course — office, outside which Mr. Tumbril's British secretary, as lean of head and body as a whippet, accepted her proffered identity, spoke briefly into her phone, and said, "Go in."

  Fiona went in, closing the door behind her. She had never been inside Mr. Tumbril's office before, but the office itself wasn't primarily what she immediately saw and reacted to; it was Livia Northwood Wheeler, seated at attention on a pale green sofa along the windowless side wall and gazing at Fiona with an extremely complex expression on her face, appearing to combine apprehension, expectation, doubt, defiance, arrogance, and possibly a few additional herbs for flavor.

  "Ms. Hemlow."

  Her master's voice. Reluctantly, Fiona turned away from that bouillabaisse of an expression to the much clearer and sterner expression on the face of Jay Tumbril. A tall, large-boned man in his fifties, with a small ferret-like face, he was not quite so fearsome when seated behind his large neat desk, flanked by large clean windows showing views of the jumble of Manhattan, as when he was on his feet, pacing and stalking in front of a jury, but he was still quite fearsome enough. In a smaller voice than any she'd known she possessed, Fiona said, "Yes, sir."

  "The last time Mrs. Wheeler visited these offices," Tumbril said, "you approached her as she waited for the elevator. You said I had sent you."

  Shocked, Fiona cried, "Oh, no, sir!" Turning in horror toward Mrs. Wheeler, she said, "I didn't say that. I didn't say that at all."

  Mrs. Wheeler was no longer looking at her, but at Tumbril instead, and her expression now was a simple combination of surprise and offense. "Jay," she said, "you're misrepresenting me. It was my conclusion you'd sent her after me. She denied it at the time."

  Tumbril didn't like that. "Why would I send her after you?"

  "There was a certain amount of rancor in this room at the time of my last visit," she s
aid, apparently unafraid of Tumbril, no matter how much he glared at her. "I thought perhaps you were trying to make peace."

  "Why would I do that?" Said with more impatience than curiosity, as though he didn't expect there could be an answer.

  Nor was there one. "My mistake," Mrs. Wheeler said.

  Accepting victory as his due, Tumbril turned his scowl back on Fiona. "Since I didn't send you to speak to Mrs. Wheeler," he said, "who did?"

  "No one, sir."

  "It was your own idea."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Miss Hemlow," Tumbril said, "do you know the firm's policy with regard to young assistants such as yourself making direct contact with clients?"

  "Yes, sir," Fiona said, in a voice so small she could barely hear it herself.

  "And what is that policy, Miss Hemlow?"

  It was one thing to study cross-examination technique in law school, but quite another to undergo it. Fiona said, "Sir, we're not supposed to deal directly with a client unless a partner or associate requests it."

  "Jay," Mrs. Wheeler said. "I didn't mean to get this girl in trouble."

  "She got herself in trouble, Livia." Tumbril made a little sweeping-away motion toward Fiona, as though she were dust, and said, "She had no excuse to speak to you. She never even had work assigned to her to do on your affairs. Why would she speak to you?"

  "Well," Mrs. Wheeler said, "she said she admired me."

  "Admired you? For what?"

  "For the stance I was taking in my suit."

  Tumbril sat well back in his large leather chair to gaze with thorough disapproval at Fiona. "You went into the files?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Of a case toward which you had absolutely no responsibilities?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "You searched through matters that were none of your concern," Tumbril summed up, "and then you went to the principal in the matter to toady up to her."

  "No, sir, I just—"

  "Yes, sir! Well, young lady, if you thought you might be advancing yourself with this behind-the-scenes rubbish, you've done quite the reverse. You will go and clear out your desk and wait for security to escort you from the building."

  "Jay!"

  "I know what I'm doing, Livia. Miss Hemlow, the firm