What's So Funny? d-14

by Donald E. Westlake

  "Well, certainly not the army," Mrs. W snapped. "Nothing as valuable as that."

  "No, ma'am. We know your father's friends and business associates called it the Chicago chess set because he brought it from there, but I can't find any circumstance in which he called it the Chicago chess set."

  "Or anything else."

  "Or anything else," agreed Fiona. "There is no record that he ever said where it came from, or how he happened to own it. I'm sorry, Mrs. W, there's just no history."

  "Well, there, you see," Mrs. W said, with an irritated head-shake at the picture of the chess set. "Behind every great fortune there is a crime."

  Alert, Fiona said, "There is?" because she found that a truly interesting idea.

  But now Mrs. W's irritated headshake was directed at Fiona. "Balzac, dear," she said. "Père Goriot. And I fear that the crime behind my family's fortune may have more than a little to do with that chess set."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  Again Mrs. W frowned at the picture on the computer screen. "Will the crime be found out? Is there risk in that ugly toy? Is there anything to do other than let sleeping chessmen lie?"

  "I don't know, Mrs. W."

  "No, you don't. Well, thank you, Fiona. I'll think about this."

  "Yes, ma'am." Fiona turned to go, then said, "Mrs. W, there is something else."

  "Yes?"

  "I wasn't even going to mention it, it's so silly."

  "Well, either mention it or don't mention it," Mrs. W told her. "You can't dither forever."

  "No, ma'am. It's my boyfriend, Brian."

  Mrs. W's eyebrows lowered. "Is something wrong there?"

  "Oh, no, nothing like that," Fiona assured her. "It's just — Well, you know, he works for a cable station, and they have a party every year in March, sort of the end of winter and all, and Brian said I should invite you. He's wanted to meet you, and—"

  "Been telling tales about me, have you?"

  Mrs. W hadn't said that as though she were angry, yet Fiona became very flustered and felt the color rise up into her cheeks. She couldn't think of a thing to say, but apparently her pink face said it all for her, because Mrs. W nodded and said, "That's all right, dear. I don't mind being an eccentric in other people's stories. I can't imagine what Jay Tumbril says about me, for instance. Tell me about this party."

  "It's really very silly," Fiona said. "A lot of the people there dress up in costumes, not everybody. I won't."

  "Like Halloween," Mrs. W suggested.

  "Sort of."

  "And when and where is this?"

  "Saturday, down in Soho. It starts at eight, but Brian doesn't like to get there until ten."

  "Very sensible. Let me think about it."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "And," with a sudden snap to her voice, "get me Jay Tumbril on the phone."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "I've made up my mind," Mrs. W said. "The time has come to bring in experts, to get to the bottom of this. Fiona, we are going to look at that chess set."

  39

  GRODY WAS ALWAYS in the process of expanding, without having either the money or the space to do so. The studio in Tribeca, being the entire third floor of an old industrial building where, in the late nineteenth century, aprons and overalls were manufactured, was always undergoing renovation, the carpenters and electricians with their leather toolbelts like space-age gunbelts and their macho swagger serving as the oil to the water of the staff's resident geeks.

  Because the brick exterior walls of the building and the unrepealable law of gravity meant they could never actually add to their territory, the only way to accommodate more offices, more studios and more storage was to keep chopping finer and finer, until the rooms were like closets and the closets had long ago been sacrificed to the need for more space. Hallways had been squeezed to within an inch of the fire code. And one result of all this adjusting and repacking and clawing for space was that many of the resulting rooms were of unusual shapes, triangles and trapezoids. Long-ago-sacrificed doorways meant many of the routes within the GRODY confines were circuitous indeed. All of which was one reason why the company found it so hard to hire or keep anybody over the age of twenty-five.

  Coming to work Thursday morning, after the astonishing news last night that Mrs. W actually would come along to Saturday's March Madness, Brian made his roundabout way toward his own office, one of the few octagons in here thus far, in which, no matter which way you faced, the workspace shrank away in front of you. Just after squeezing past two carpenters toting over their shoulders eight-foot lengths of L-shaped metal like bowling alley gutters creased down the middle, only lined along both sides with holes — what was that for? straining beer? — Brian was distracted from his route by a knocking on a window somewhere.

  Oh; to the left. One of the control rooms was there, with a sealed window to the hall left over from some previous incarnation, and standing in it was Sean Kelly, Brian's shaggy boss, who mouthed things at him through the glass; some sort of question.

  But the point of the control room was that it was soundproof, so Brian merely shrugged and pointed helplessly at his ear. Sean nodded, frowned, nodded, and pointed vaguely away with his right hand while doing a finger-up circular motion with his left. Come around and talk to me, in other words.

  Sure. Brian nodded, paused to figure out the shortest way from this side of the glass to that side of the glass, and set off, along the way passing an electrician, seated wedged in a corner, still smoking slightly, accepting sustenance in a flask from his fellows.

  Brian's route took him past his octagon, which had a doorway but no door because there was nowhere for it to open to. He nodded at it, trekked on, and eventually came to the control room containing both Sean and an expressionless technician seated at the controls, watching a tape of a hilarious animated outer-space drunk scene to be aired at eleven tonight, in competition with the world news. (They expected to win again.)

  "Hey, Sean."

  "Hey." Sean seemed troubled, in some vague way. "Man," he said, "you got any problems at home?" Hurriedly, he erased that from the imaginary blackboard between them. "I don't mean none of my business, man, you know, I just mean, anything gonna impact us here."

  Brian could have pointed out that a permanent construction site was all impact, but he cut to the chase: " What problem, Sean? I do something wrong?"

  "No, man," Sean said. "Nothing I know about. It's just, I got this call yesterday, just walking out of the office, this guy, says he's from the enforcement arm of the Better Business Bureau."

  "Enforcement arm?"

  "That's what he said, man." Sean grinned and scratched his head through his shaggy hair. "Can you see them comin around? 'You gotta give the twenty percent, man, it's right there in your ad. Might make a nice bit."

  "Sean, he wanted to talk to you about me? Or just the place?"

  "No, man, you, strictly you. Do you borrow from your coworkers—"

  "Fat chance."

  "Uh huh. Do I know where you cash your checks, have you ever had unexplained absences—"

  "Everybody does, Sean."

  That quick grin of Sean's came and went. "Sing it, sister. He wants to know, do I think you're having trouble in your home life, interfering with you here, whado I think your work prospects are—" Jesus.

  "It was freaky, man." Another grin. "Don't worry, I covered for you."

  Suspicion struck Brian. "You goofed on him."

  "Naw, man, would I—"

  "You would. Wha'd you tell him?"

  "I just answered his questions, man, told him you were the number one jock in the shop."

  "And? Come on, Sean."

  Sean looked slightly sheepish, but still grinned. "Well, I did mention," he said, "those Venusian bordello scenes you do…"

  "Lost It in Space. Yeah?"

  "I said, you were so good at it, it's because you think they're real."

  "Sean, what did you—"

  "No, that's all, man, honest to God. Jus
t sometimes we find you at your desk, you're in this trance state, you're getting laid on Venus. That's all I said, man."

  "And did he believe you?"

  Sean looked amazed at the question. "Brian? What do I know how Earth people think?"

  Brian had all that day to figure out what was going on, and yet he didn't.

  40

  JAY TUMBRIL HAD all Thursday night to brood about Livia Northwood Wheeler and the Chicago chess set, which didn't leave much time for sleep, but he couldn't very well do that in the office either, so by eleven Friday morning he was both sleep-deprived and jittering on the edge of panic. He hated to admit there might be a circumstance in which his control of the situation was less than perfect, but there were such circumstances and this was one of them, so it was time to pull the emergency cord.

  The point was, if you found yourself in a position so far outside your expertise you hadn't the faintest bloody idea what to do next, then the thing to do next was to call upon someone who does have expertise in the area, whatever that area might be. In this case, there was only one expert in the area that Jay knew, so just after eleven he picked up the intercom and said, "Felicity."

  "Sir."

  "Get me Jacques Perly."

  "Sir."

  Three minutes later, Felicity was back on the line: "Mr. Perly says he's in his car, northbound on the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Drive, speaking on his hands-free carphone, and wonders if he should ring you back later or will you rough it now."

  Jay knew damn well Perly had actually said "the FDR Drive," but Felicity was so proud of her studies to become an American citizen that he merely said, "Thank you, Felicity, I'd rather talk to him now, it's a bit urgent."

  "Sir."

  Jay broke the connection, and spent the next twenty-five seconds rehearsing how he'd describe the situation. Then the buzz sounded, and he picked up and said, "Jacques."

  "I'll put him right on."

  "What?"

  "Just joking," Perly said.

  "I knew that was you, you didn't change your voice or anything. What do you mean, joking?"

  "Your secretary said it was urgent."

  "Yes, well— Yes, it is. Also, Jacques, extremely confidential."

  "We know that."

  "Sorry. Didn't mean to insult you. The truth is, I'm a little tense, didn't get much sleep last night…"

  "You, Jay?"

  "It's Livia Northwood Wheeler again!"

  "What? The Hemlow girl? Or did Clanson make his move?"

  "No, nothing to do with them. This is something completely different."

  "Tell me."

  Jay forced a deep breath, assembled his thoughts, and said, "Among the items under dispute in the law case involving Mrs. Wheeler and several of her relatives is a chess set, never I believe properly evaluated, but said to be worth in the millions."

  "Worth fighting over, in other words."

  "Yes. Since the suits began — I'll only say by now they sue and countersue and cross-sue one another to a degree of complexity you could only otherwise find in a map of the New York City subway system — the courts have placed this asset in the care of the law firms involved, four of whom, including us, have offices in this building, so that for the last few years the chess set, called for some reason the Chicago chess set, though I doubt it was made there, has been in the sub-cellar vaults beneath this building."

  "And likely to stay there for a while, I should think."

  "Except," Jay said, "now Mrs. Wheeler wants it brought up and placed somewhere that experts of various stripes may examine it."

  "Dangerous."

  "Infuriating," Jay corrected him. "As her attorney in this matter, it is up to me to take this request to the court. I unfortunately see no reason why the court would deny it, nor why any of the other litigants would object. I can see that every blessed soul concerned with this matter would like to take a look at that bloody chess set."

  "So what's the problem?" Jacques asked.

  "Where it is now," Jay told him, "in that vault beneath this building, it is safe as houses."

  "But a little too inaccessible," Jacques suggested, "for perusal by experts."

  "Exactly. Nor will the bank accept the concept of various people trooping through their vaults. It must come up. But whose task will it be to keep the damn thing safe while it's up and about, like the groundhog looking for its shadow?"

  "Oh, I see."

  "Yes, you do. It is up to this firm to find a site both accessible to the experts and agreeable to, if not the other litigants, at least to their legal representatives."

  "And still be safe as houses," Perly suggested.

  "If only we could." If Jay had had hair, he'd have torn it. "Not in these offices," he said. "We can't keep track of the copiers around here. And no other firm has more secure offices. It's not an official investigation, and so we can't ask the police to step in, and in fact for various potential ownership rights and inheritance liabilities, we'd rather leave officialdom out of this matter."

  "When does she want to make this move?"

  "Now! Yesterday!"

  "Well, that's not possible. I could make a suggestion, Jay."

  "Then why don't you?"

  "I'm afraid it— Excuse me, there's a multiple-car collision up ahead, I'll just steer around— Oh, good, the police are on the scene, I'm being waved through— Oh, my God! Jay, you never want to see anything like that your whole life long."

  "Don't describe it to me."

  "I will not."

  "You were going to make a suggestion."

  "Oh, Lord. Give me a second, Jay."

  "Of course."

  That must have been horrendous, Jay thought, to rattle Jacques Perly. How much simpler life was when people couldn't tell us what they could see from their cars.

  "What I was going to say, Jay—"

  "Yes, Jacques."

  "— That I was hesitant to make my suggestion because it could seem self-serving."

  "You want to guard the piece? You're not a sentry, Jacques."

  "I wanted to suggest my offices," Jacques said. "Extremely safe, extremely secure, but absolutely accessible. You've been there."

  "Well, yes, but— I don't know what to say."

  "You would hire private security, of course, 24/7, but the building itself is ideal for you, and I'm sure we could work out a rental acceptable to all concerned. I would have to keep my own business going at the same time, of course."

  "Of course. Jacques, the more I think about this—"

  "Well, think about one more thing," Jacques told him. "Ah, we're in the snowbelt now."

  "Are we?"

  "Ask yourself this, Jay. Why now? You said Mrs. Wheeler now wanted this, and wanted it at once. Why, Jay? After all these years, why now?"

  "I haven't the vaguest idea."

  "Could it be, Jay, because of her recent hire?"

  "You mean—?"

  "Has Fiona Hemlow put that suggestion into Mrs. Wheeler's head? And did Brian Clanson set the whole thing up? Is Brian Clanson just sitting there, waiting for that chess set to come up out of that vault?"

  "Oh, my God."

  "I'm already on Clanson, Jay, because of that other thing you asked me to do, though of course he has no idea he's under surveillance. We'll intensify that, study his associates. If your Chicago chess set is in my offices, and Brian Clanson makes a move to snatch it, we'll have him, Jay, in the of— our—"

  "Jacques? You're breaking up."

  "We'll— later." And Jacques Perly was gone.

  41

  THURSDAY EVENING WAS a busy time at the Safeway. The store stayed open late, and people stocked up on their groceries for the weekend. May didn't usually work the evening shift, since the one regularity John really liked in his life was dinner, but sometimes people got sick or fired or mislaid themselves somewhere, and May might be asked to fill in, like tonight. A little after seven now; she could quit at eight, pick out something nice for their evening repast in the del
i department that wouldn't take a lot of preparation, and home she'd go. Easy.

  The first thing she noticed about the guy was that the only thing he was carrying was a little packet of lightbulbs. He was on her checkout line, the people in front of him and behind him all with carts piled up to their chins, so that at first he just looked like a very easy example of the which-one-doesn't-belong-in-this picture quiz. She stood there, sliding items over the bar code reader, sliding them twice if she didn't hear that ping the first time, pushing the items onto the belt to roll on down to tonight's packer, an overweight kid with an overbite whom all the staff here knew only as Pudge, a name he didn't seem to mind, and she kept looking at the guy with the lightbulbs until finally she caught his eye and gestured with her head toward the last checkout line in the row, which was for people with six items or fewer, though the sign actually said six items or less. The guy grinned a thank-you and spread his hands a little; he'd rather stay here.

  Huh. Ping. Ping. Then the lightbulb inside her head went off. He's a cop. He looks like a cop, heavy and self-confident, somebody that nobody would ever call Pudge, and he's doing something a normal person wouldn't do, which is wait in a long line of people buying out the store while he's only got one item. So that would make him not only a cop, but a cop with a particular interest in May, which could not be good news.

  Her first thought was that John had been arrested, but her first thought always was that John had been arrested, so her second thought was to reject the first thought. If they'd arrested John, why come here? And if they were going to come here, why not just do a real cop thing and jump the line entirely to say what they had to say?

  Well, she'd find out soon enough. A few thousand more pings and here he was, pushing the little packet of four hundred-watt frosted white bulbs toward her with a ten-dollar bill as he grinned and said, "You know, you really oughta get an answering machine."