What's So Funny? d-14

by Donald E. Westlake

  "Oh, let it wait till we get there," the detective advised.

  Brian's boss, Sean Kelly, had his office on the right along here, an elongated rectangle that looked as though it wanted to grow up to be a bowling alley. Sean was at his Star Trek replica control panel in there when Brian walked by, and he was deep in conversation with Detective Penvolk's older gloomier brother. Sean rolled his eyes as Brian walked by, though Brian had no idea what he meant by that.

  Had something bad happened during March Madness? There hadn't been any overdoses, had there? That was so old century. Still, something was going on, if one detective wants to talk to Brian and another detective wants to talk to Sean.

  As they continued down the angling corridor, Brian dropped unconsciously into a prison shuffle, and said over his shoulder, "The reason I asked, I mean, what this is all about, you know, this kind of thing could make you nervous. I mean, not knowing. What it's all about."

  "Oh, don't let it worry you," the detective advised. "If you're innocent, you've got nothing to be afraid of."

  Irrepressible at all the wrong times, "Innocent?" Brian asked. "Moi?"

  Detective Penvolk chuckled. Faintly.

  60

  WHEN KELP STEERED the Colossus up to the closed gate to Mr. Hemlow's compound in Massachusetts around one-thirty that afternoon, the van was already there, parked in front of the gate. Stan and Judson, with all the time in the world, strolled back and forth on the recently snow-cleared drive, working out the kinks after all those hours in the car.

  Looking grim, Kelp said, "I'm not gonna ask him," as he pulled in behind the van.

  "I will," Tiny said.

  "He'll only tell you," Kelp warned him.

  "Then I'll know something," Tiny said.

  They all climbed out of the Colossus and said hellos back and forth, and then Tiny said, "Kelp wants to know how you went to Queens and got here first."

  "I don't care one way or the other," Kelp said.

  "If you're headed north," Stan told them all, "that's the best way out of midtown. You take the bridge and Northern Boulevard, then the BQE to Grand Central to the Triboro Bridge—"

  "And there you are back in Manhattan," Kelp said.

  "They call it Triboro because it goes to three boroughs," Stan said. "You take it north to the Bronx, to the Major Deegan, which happens to be the Thruway, which is the widest fastest road in any of the boroughs. Meanwhile, when you do it your way, you're in traffic jams on the FDR, traffic jams on the Harlem River Drive and traffic jams on the West Side Highway, and you're not even outa Manhattan yet. Also, I suppose you had to fill the tank on that thing six, seven times to get here."

  "It is a little thirsty, this beast," Kelp admitted, and spread his hands, forgiving everybody. "But we're all here now, so what difference does it make?"

  Judson, admiration in his voice, said, "Stan is one heck of a driver."

  "We know," Kelp said.

  "Andy," Dortmunder said, before any tension could develop, "you're supposed to buzz them now, aren't you?"

  "Right."

  Kelp went off to the intercom mounted on the post beside the gate, and Dortmunder said to Stan, "There's a flat clear spot we found the last time in there. That's where we'll switch."

  Stan, not sounding thrilled, said, "And I get to drive the monster."

  "It's not so bad," Dortmunder told him. "It's kinda like driving a waterbed."

  As Kelp got off the intercom, the two halves of the gate swung silently outward. "They say they got lunch ready for us," he said.

  "That's a good thing," Tiny said.

  They climbed back into the vehicles and drove through, the van moving over to let the Colossus go first. Behind them as they went, the gate closed itself.

  Soon Kelp stopped once more, at a spot where, on the left side of the driveway, there was a small clearing. There might have been a little house there at one time, or just a turnaround for cars, or possibly extra parking for parties. Whatever the original idea, the space now was just a small clearing without the usual towering pines, the land at this time of year showing hardy weeds growing up through old snow.

  Once again, they all piled out of the cars, but this time Stan and Judson took green plastic tarpaulins from the back of the van and spread them on the weedy patch while the other three dragged the box containing the chess set out far enough to get at the interior box containing the chess pieces. This part of the set was heavy enough all by itself for Tiny, who carried it over to the green tarps, to say, "Huh," before putting it down.

  While he was doing that, Dortmunder and Kelp were pulling several cans of spray enamel out of the van and placing them on the periphery of the tarps.

  "We'll see you up there," Stan said, when everything was ready.

  "Shouldn't take us long," Kelp said. "Save us some lunch."

  "Tell Tiny," Stan suggested.

  "Don't be too long," Tiny suggested.

  Judson gestured at the tarps. "The people up at the house," he said. "What are they supposed to think about all this?"

  "They're servants," Tiny told him. "They're supposed to think, what a nice job I got."

  "Oh. Okay."

  As Stan and Judson got into the front of the Colossus, Tiny resumed his usual occupation of the backseat. Dortmunder and Kelp started rattling spray paint cans, listening to the little balls bounce around inside, and the Colossus disappeared around the next curve into the pines.

  Kelp said, "Hold on, I need the red queen."

  "Right."

  Now they bent to the chess pieces and distributed them into two sections on the tarps, all standing in place, the red-gem pieces over here, the white-gem pieces over there. Kelp took the Earring Man's red queen from his pocket, put the original into his pocket in its place, and now the two of them went to work. Dortmunder sprayed his bunch black, Kelp went for the red. Fortunately, there was very little breeze, so they managed not to spray one another but still could circle the clusters of chessmen and get a pretty good shot at them from all sides.

  As they sprayed, Dortmunder said, "We're only switching the one piece. We're leaving a lot of value up here."

  "The way I figure," Kelp said, bending to get to the deeper crevices, "the four hundred bucks we paid for the queen was like seed money. We break up the queen and sell the parts and Anne Marie goes back to Earring Man for a few more second-team members, after the chess set heist is yesterday's news. We know the set's gonna stay up here. We just come back from time to time, do another little switcheroo. Money in the bank."

  "Kings and queens in the bank," Dortmunder said. "Even better."

  The job didn't take long. The box that had held the pieces went back into the van, along with a couple unused cans of paint, and then they got into the van, Kelp driving, to go the rest of the way to the compound.

  As they started off, Dortmunder looked back at the two clusters of martial figures spread on the green tarps like a pair of abandoned armies, as though feudalism had just abruptly shut down in this part of the world. He said, "They'll be okay there, right?"

  "Sure, why not," Kelp said. "Stay out in the air, dry overnight, tomorrow we'll set them up in that big living room. In the meantime, what could happen?"

  61

  WHEN FIONA GOT back from lunch at her favorite bistro down on Seventy-second, it was not quite one-thirty, and Mrs. W was waiting, perhaps patiently, in the office Fiona shared with Lucy Leebald. "You heard me on the phone," she said, "that there is to be a meeting this afternoon about this dreadful event."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "I want you with me."

  Surprised, Fiona said, "You do?"

  "I will want a reliable witness," Mrs. W said. "I may want a lawyer, of which you are still one, and with some familiarity with the case involved. And I may need moral support."

  "You, Mrs. W?"

  "We'll see," said Mrs. W, pulling on her gray suede gloves. "Come along. We'll be back anon, Lucy."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  T
he meeting was in a large conference room at Feinberg, her old stamping grounds. It felt very strange to walk through this tasteful gray territory as someone else entirely, no longer a wee beastie, but… well. No longer their wee beastie, but Mrs. W's wee beastie, a far better job description indeed.

  The sleekly dressed secretary who led them through the Feinberg maze was a new one, but that was often the case. They turned at last into a short corridor and there, obviously waiting for them, was Jay Tumbril, as hateful-looking as ever. He gave Fiona a quick dismissive sneer and said to Mrs. W, "You brought her. Good."

  "You said you would explain why when we got here," Mrs. W said.

  "All in good time," Tumbril said, and gestured to the nearby open door. Inside there, Fiona could see, was the conference room, full of people, none of them looking happy.

  But that wasn't the point. She said, "Mrs. W? He asked you to bring me?"

  "All in good time, as I say," Tumbril answered, and pointed at one of the two low sofas along the corridor. "Wait there, young woman," he said. "Do not try to leave the building."

  "Why would I leave the—"

  But he had already turned away, ushering Mrs. W in. Without another glance in her direction, he also entered the conference room and shut the door.

  This was a dead space in the Feinberg domain, a short corridor with a large conference room on each side, for meetings that wouldn't fit into the smaller rooms such as the one where Fiona had first talked with Mr. Dortmunder. There was no other furniture here than the sofas, each accompanied by a low end table on which reading matter was carelessly stacked, most of it three-year-old New York magazines.

  Having nothing else to do — leave the building, indeed! — Fiona sat down and tried to find a New York too old for her to remember the articles inside.

  The meeting went on and on. Fiona read New York magazines. She read TIME way out of time. She read Golf Digest. She even read Yachting.

  Inside the conference room, the meeting was occasionally stormy. From time to time she could hear voices raised, male and female, though never what they were saying.

  Every once in a while, she sensed movement and would look up to see one of her former co-workers staring at her from the end of the corridor. They always fled away like Eloi when she caught their eye, too afraid to be seen with her to allow them to satisfy their curiosity as to why she was here. And to think she used to like some of those people.

  The meeting, which had begun at two, didn't end until nearly four, and then seemed to trickle away more than finish. The door opened and people began to come out, but they were all still talking, arguing, gesturing at one another. They paused in the corridor or back in the conference room or the doorway between, to make another point. None of them had grown any happier since the meeting had started. The exodus was like the end of a church service, but hostile.

  And then, among the departing parishioners, here came Mrs. W and Jay Tumbril. Fiona stood, the two approached her, and Mrs. W said, "Well, Jay? Now will you tell us what it's all about?"

  "Ms. Hemlow will, I believe," Tumbril said, and gestured at the closed door to the other conference room. "We'll have some privacy in here."

  So the three went in, Tumbril shut the door, and he turned to say, "We might as well sit."

  It was a very long conference table. Tumbril sat at its head, with Mrs. W on his left hand and Fiona on his right. Mrs. W said, "Jay, I don't handle suspense particularly well. Say what you have to say."

  "Let's give Ms. Hemlow the opportunity." Tumbril turned his spotlight glare on her. "Would you like to tell us about it?"

  Bewildered, Fiona said, "About what? I don't know what you mean."

  "No?" Another smirk from the senior partner. Sitting back in his chair — they were actually quite comfortable chairs — he said, "Perhaps I should tell you, your coconspirator has already been arrested."

  "My what?"

  "He's probably already implicating you," Tumbril went on, "putting all the blame on your shoulders to try to make things easier for himself. That's what his sort generally does."

  "Jay," Mrs. W said, "you are perplexing the both of us. If you have something to say, man, say it."

  "Your sweet little assistant here, Livia," Tumbril told her, "is part of the gang that stole the Chicago chess set."

  Fiona felt her face go beet-red, and her heart pounded as though it would explode. How could they have found out? She might have blurted something irretrievably incriminating if Mrs. W hadn't distracted Tumbril from her flaming face by saying, "Jay! Have you lost your mind? This girl couldn't lift that thing!"

  "She was what I believe the police call the inside man," Tumbril said, "or in this case the inside woman. She's the one passed on to the gang the details of where the set would be kept while out of the vault. That was all they needed."

  These few seconds when Tumbril was distracted by having to explain things to Mrs. W were all Fiona needed to get control of herself. She could feel the blood recede from her cheeks as sanity returned to her brain. Whatever had gone wrong, what she had to do now was just keep denying everything, she knew that much. Deny deny deny. But she couldn't help wondering, who had the police caught? Mr. Dortmunder? Somehow, she hoped not.

  Mrs. W was saying, "I don't believe that for a second, Jay, and if you weren't blinded by prejudice you wouldn't believe it, either. And how is it you never mentioned this magnificent break in the case during the meeting we all just underwent together?"

  "The police don't want it made public," Tumbril told her, "until it's wrapped up. Preferably with a confession. From the fellow they've already got, or possibly from this young lady here."

  Now Mrs. W was openly scoffing. "Look at the girl," she said. "She would no more gallivant with a gang than you would play basketball."

  "Bas— Livia, try not to wander. I told you at the beginning she was up to something. Didn't I? When she flung herself on you in these very offices."

  "Flung her—"

  "Mr. Tumbril," Fiona said, and, when she had the man's gimlet-eyed attention, "who did they arrest?"

  "Ah, yes." The smirk raised itself a notch, and Tumbril leaned forward, the better to observe her reaction. "His name is… Brian Clanson. Do you recog—"

  "Brian!" This was so astonishing, so absurd, she almost laughed out loud. "Brian? You think—" Then she did laugh, at the thought of Brian organizing a robbery like this. Or organizing anything, for that matter.

  But then the laugh cut off in her throat and she too leaned forward. "They arrested him?"

  "That's what usually happens to thieves. Wouldn't you like to make your plea bargain with the district attorney before he does?"

  Brian knows, she thought. I told him about Mr. Dortmunder and the chess set months ago, when I thought it couldn't ever happen. He's certain to remember.

  Will he tell the police, to protect himself? But how would that protect him? If he said he didn't do it, but he'd known it was probably going to happen and he hadn't reported it, how would that do anything to save him?

  The only thing Brian could possibly do was keep silent and wait for them to realize they'd made a mistake. The only question was, would he understand that was the only thing he could possibly do?

  Was there any way she could get to him, talk to him? Would they let him have visitors? But didn't they secretly record jailhouse conversations? Wasn't that in the papers all the time, that they weren't supposed to tape private conversations but they did anyway, and then people got convicted of things?

  But even if she could see Brian, what could she say to him? And what would Brian say to the police?

  Brandishing a self-confidence she didn't at all feel, Fiona said, "Brian didn't have anything to do with stealing that chess set. It is just a stupid mistake, and they'll have to let him go."

  "Is that so?" Now Tumbril leaned back, hands folded on his paunch. "And are you claiming the chess set is not the reason you approached Mrs. Wheeler?"

  Fiona hesitated, and in
the hesitation knew that the hesitation itself had given the answer, and so changed her own response even as it was forming. In fact, she was a good lawyer. "No," she said. "I won't deny it. It was because of the chess set."

  "Fiona!"

  "Tell us more," Tumbril offered, with his little smirk.

  "I'll have to tell you the whole story."

  "I have all the time in the world," he assured her.

  "All right, then," she said. "In 1920—"

  And she went on to tell them the entire history of the chess set and the platoon members' failed efforts to find either it or their missing Sgt. Northwood. She told them of hearing the story from her grandfather, and ended with her coming to work here at Feinberg, where she had learned about the lawsuits with all the Northwoods attached, and with that very same chess set attached.

  "And I told my grandfather," she finished, "that at last we knew what had happened to the chess set, so he could at least be content at the end of his life knowing the answer to that awful mystery." Turning to Mrs. W, she said, "And I did want to meet you because of that. Your father stole everything from my great-grandfather, and stole his hope from him, or all of our lives would have been very different."

  "Dear God," Mrs. W said, in the faintest voice she'd ever used in her life.

  "Tell me about your grandfather," Tumbril suggested, smirking as though he thought he was being sly.

  "He's an eighty-year-old millionaire in a wheelchair," she told him, "with a fortune from patents of his inventions in chemistry."

  Tumbril blinked, slowly. For the first time, he seemed to have nothing to say.

  "And to think," Mrs. W said, "you wanted to accuse this child of theft. How long, Jay, do you suppose it would be before that story of hers went public? Our fortune, our lives, based on a despicable crime? My father stole from his own soldiers!"

  "I remember you said, Mrs. W," Fiona said, "every fortune starts with a great crime."

  "Balzac, dear," Mrs. W said. "Always give credit where due."