What's So Funny?

by Donald E. Westlake

  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 said, 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 will mail you your final compensation. You will understand we will not be able to give you a reference.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good-bye, Miss Hemlow.”

  Stricken, not yet able to think about what was happening to her, Fiona turned toward the door.

  “Young lady,” Mrs. Wheeler said, and when Fiona turned her heavy head the older woman had leaned forward to hold out a card. “Phone me,” she said.

  Hardly knowing she was doing it, Fiona took the card. She couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  Tumbril could. “You’re making a mistake, Livia.”

  “Not the first one I’ve made in this office,” she told him.

  Tumbril threw one last scowl at Fiona. “You may go.”

  She went.

  The envelope! If security found that envelope, with all that information on all the Northwood heirs, she’d be worse than fired, she’d be charged with felonies, her reputation would be destroyed forever.

  Trying not to look in a desperate hurry, Fiona walked faster than she’d ever walked before through the maze of cubicles to her desk. She pulled the envelope from her shoulder bag, slapped a mailing label on it, wrote her grandfather’s name and address on the label, and carried it away, to drop it in an absent person’s out basket on her way to the ladies’.

  Once in there, she realized she actually did need a stall for a moment, which was just as well because, when she stepped out, security was standing there, frowning at her, a heavyset severe woman in a uniform of brown. She said, “Fiona Hemlow?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re supposed to be at your desk.”

  “When you’re fired,” Fiona told her, “it makes you need to go to the ladies’ room. I’ll just wash my hands.”

  The security woman followed her back to her cubicle, where her neighbor Imogen widened her eyes but knew enough not to say anything. Fiona took her few personal possessions from her desk, permitted the security woman to search her bag, and then they headed off for the elevators.

  Fiona looked at it all, so familiar, so much of her life. All those hunched backs, those computers, telephones, stacks of documents, all of these creatures pulling steadfastly at the oars of this galley while their betters sat out of sight, next to windows.

  Fiona smiled. Suddenly a weight had lifted, and she hadn’t even known she was carrying it. “You know,” she told the security woman, “I’m a very lucky person.”

  29

  FRIDAY AFTERNOON, ANNE Marie took a shuttle back up to LaGuardia from DC. Kelp cabbed out there from the city a little ahead of time, so he’d have leisure to find just the right wheels with which to deliver Anne Marie back to their love nest. His first priority, as always, was a car with MD plates, he being firmly of the conviction that doctors have a greater than average experience of the highs and lows of human life, and will therefore whenever possible gravitate toward the high; as in their choice of personal vehicle, for instance.

  This trip, however, was more than ordinarily special, as being the return of Anne Marie after three days of travel to and from DC and dealing with the Earring Man while there, all on Kelp’s behalf. So, when he began his ramble through long-term parking, keeping an eye out for MD plates and no dust (early in the long term), his other criterion was that he wanted a woman doctor’s car. In the old days he would have looked for a modest sedan with lower-than-average mileage but more than the usual dents, but times had changed and the old signifiers no longer signified.

  Well, something had to signify. Kelp strolled for a while among the wheels on offer, and then he saw a white Lexus RX 400h, the low-fuel-consumption hybrid, and yes, MD plates; unusual on a white car. This doctor drives a hybrid, so this doctor cares about the planet. And the bumper sticker: The Earth—Our Home—Keep It Tidy. Uh huh. And when he looked through the driver’s window, there was the clincher: two bottles of Poland Spring water in the cup holders.

  An electronically inclined acquaintance of Kelp’s named Wally Knurr had recently sold him, at very little above cost, a carefully restructured universal remote. Originally meant to find its way through the various individual electronic signals of every known TV, VCR, and DVD, the machine now provided the same service for your most recent automobile models, thus bypassing all the physical violence of yesteryear. It took Kelp barely a dozen clicks with the remote to make the Lexus give him the bleep of welcome. He checked inside, to be sure the parking fee ticket was in its place behind the sun visor, saw that it was, locked the Lexus again and went off to find Anne Marie.

  Who seemed to be the only one in her group to come down the long ramp from the gates without a briefcase. What she lugged instead was a bulky black leather shoulder bag bouncing on her right hip, which made her look like a particularly fetching stew out of uniform, and from the tail ends of a few conversations he observed as the herd headed this way some of her fellow passengers had dreamed of being in a position to get her even further out of uniform, but forget all that now: her boyfriend’s back.

  They kissed, to the disgust of the briefcase-toters, and made their way out to long-term, where Anne Marie gazed with pleasure upon the Lexus and said, “For me?”

  “I picked it out special.”

  “You�
�re very thoughtful,” Anne Maria told him, as he remoted them into the car.

  Once he had the seat adjusted back from somewhere up against the firewall, the Lexus was fine. Kelp happily paid the three-day parking charge and out they went to Grand Central Parkway, westbound toward the city.

  As they drove, he said, “I guess it all went okay, then.”

  “You owe me four hundred bucks.”

  “Extra beyond the airfare, you mean. How’d I do that?”

  “Mr. Earring Man wanted an advance,” she said. “He smelled a felony, and would risk his reputation for no less.”

  “I can understand that,” Kelp said. “You did right to pay him.”

  “You know, Andy,” she said, “I’m not the gang’s banker.”

  “Oh, I know that,” Kelp assured her. “Me and John, over the weekend, we’ll do a little this and that.”

  “Good.”

  “But otherwise, he says no problem, huh?”

  “He didn’t want to admit how easy it was going to be,” she said, “but I could tell.”

  The 125th Street Bridge was near. “I missed you,” he said.

  “Good. I missed you, too.”

  “We’ll have a nice dinner out.”

  She considered that. “We’ll have a nice late dinner out,” she decided.

  30

  AS FAR AS Dortmunder was concerned, his was a for-profit operation, so he wasn’t in love with the idea that, not only was this particular heist impossible, but now they were in the red on the thing to the tune of four hundred bucks. He understood that Anne Marie had done what Anne Marie had to do, but even so.

  Over the weekend, to pay this debt, Dortmunder and Kelp made a couple little after-hours visits to some Madison Avenue luxury purveyors so upscale and rarefied the little sign in the door said, English spoken, which further necessitated a West Side visit to a fellow named Arnie Albright, known to the authorities as a receiver of stolen goods but to his customers as the guy you went to when you were carrying something you didn’t want to carry any more.

  Negotiations with Arnie were usually brutish, nasty, and short, the short because Arnie well knew he had competitors who, while perhaps a little more off the beaten path and certainly noted for bargaining an extremely hard dollar, were also well ahead of Arnie in the acceptable human being category. Arnie knew his customers could only stand to look at him for so long, particularly when, such as now, his recurring wet red rash had returned, to spread over his lumpy face so that he looked as though he’d fallen asleep in a bowl of salsa. When you finally did get the cash, you wanted to go home and wash it.