Donald Westlake - What's So Funny?

"If no other sense," Stan said.

Judson said, "Somehow, I have the feeling he didn't make it."

"They're trying to find another nickname for him," J.C. said. "Something about barbeque."

"The golden dome," Stan said, his eye being on it, "is not as dumb an idea as some people think it is."

J.C. gave him a frank look. "Which people, Stan, don't think it's a dumb idea?"

"Me for one," he said. "My Mom, for two." J.C. pointed a scarlet-tipped finger at him. "Do not get your Mom involved."

"I'm just saying."

Judson said, "It's too bad John couldn't be there to hear the idea."

The silence that followed that remark was so extreme that both Judson and J.C. bent deeply suspicious frowns on Stan, to find him red-faced and struggling to find a deflecting comment. J.C. said, "You told him."

"We had a preliminary conversation on the subject, yes."

J.C. said, "And he hated it."

"It's true he doesn't yet see the potential," Stan said. "So all I was gonna suggest to Judson here, let's drive out, drive along the Belt, take a look at it, gleaming there beside the highway, it's like the dome of gold at the end of the rainbow."

Judson said, "I think that was a pot."

"A dome is a pot," Stan said. "Upside down."

"It is true," J.C. said, "that Judson here is a beardless youth—"

"What? I shave!"

"— but that doesn't mean he's green between the ears."

"Thank you, J.C."

J.C. considered what she was going to say next, as she hitched a hip onto the corner of the desk. "You know how it is sometimes," she said, "you see a very beautiful, very desirable woman, and man, how you'd like to get your hands on that?"

They both nodded.

"And then you find out," J.C. said, "she's unobtainable. That's all, just unobtainable. You know what I mean?"

They both nodded.

"So you feel sad a little while," she said, and they both nodded, "but then you move on, something else grabs your eye, all you've got left is a little nostalgic feeling for the never-happened," and they both nodded, and she said, "Stan, that's what that dome is. You saw it, you lusted after it, you tried to figure out how to get your hands on it, but it's just not obtainable. Try to think about something else."

The silence this time was more contemplative, and Judson deliberately gazed the other way while Stan worked his way through the seven stages of loss, or however many of those stages there are.

"Well," Stan said, at last, and Judson dared to look at him, and Stan had a recovered look on his face. "I guess for a while," he said, "I'll be taking some alternate route."

IT TURNED OUT Mr. Hemlow's compound wasn't upstate after all, but upstate plus, which meant, having driven straight north out of the city up through New York State for more than two hours, they suddenly veered off to the right oblique, like a basketball forward going in for a layup, and here they were in Massachusetts. And still not there.

Long before Massachusetts, Dortmunder had come to the realization that the only way he was going to survive this trip was by not sitting on the floor, which was bonier than it had seemed at first and also did a certain amount of jolting and juking, less noticeable to people up there on the comfortable upholstery. His alternative, after several failed experiments, was to lie on his back on the floor and stretch his legs out, so that his ankles were more or less between the ankles of Eppick and Kelp. In that position, left arm under his head for a pillow, he could feel foolish but also believe he would somehow live through all this.

Being on the floor like that, he didn't get to see a lot of the scenery go by, nor to participate much in the conversation proceeding above him, though he could certainly hear everything those two had to say to one another. After an early period of parry-and-feint, in which Eppick tried to interrogate Kelp while pretending he wasn't doing any such thing, and Kelp pretended to answer all those questions without ever actually conveying any solid information — much like a politician at a press conference — they settled into their anecdotage, each telling little incidents from other people's lives, never their own. "A guy I know once—" and so on. Eppick's little tales tended to finish with the miscreant in handcuffs, while Kelp's had the rascal scampering over the rooftops to safety, but they obviously both enjoyed the exercise and each other.

From time to time, in order to give his cramping left arm a rest, Dortmunder would roll over onto his right side, use his bent right arm beneath his head as a pillow, and let the twinging left arm lie straight down his side. At those times, he was in even less contact with the rest of the world, so much so that, at one point, he actually fell asleep, though he would have said that was impossible. That is, before—

"Snr—? Wha?"

"We're here, John," Eppick said, and stopped poking Dortmunder's shins with his toe.

Dortmunder sat up, incautiously, became painfully aware of many of his body parts, and braced himself against the floor, which was not vibrating.

The limo had stopped. Blinking gummy eyes, Dortmunder looked past the looming forms of Eppick and Kelp, and saw the steering wheel. Where was the chauffeur? Whatsit, Pembroke.

Oh. Out there in the woods.

They were on a dirt road now, surrounded by huge Christmas trees, and when Dortmunder twisted around — ouch — he saw out the back window that they were very close to some sort of paved road, on which, as he watched, a truck piled high with monster logs went rolling by.

Meanwhile, this dirt road had come to a metal gate in a simple three-strand wire fence extending away to left and right into the sweeping lower branches of the Christmas trees. What Pembroke was doing now was working at two padlocks holding the halves of the gate shut.

Watching Pembroke at it, Dortmunder thought, that doesn't look very high-tech to me.

Kelp said, "That doesn't look very high-tech to me."

"It doesn't have to," Eppick said, and pointed. "See those square white metal plates at every post? Those'll be the notices. This is an electrified fence."

"Oh," Kelp said.

"It won't kill you," Eppick said, "but it will make you change your mind pretty quick."

Now Pembroke was walking the two sides of the gate open, first to the right, then to the left. Beyond the opening, the dirt road angled rightward and almost immediately disappeared among those big dark tree branches.

Pembroke slid back behind the wheel, drove forward past the gate, got out, shut the parts of the gate behind him but didn't refasten the padlocks, got back into the limo and started them slowly forward onto this private land.

As they drove, Eppick twisted around frontward to say, "Pembroke, a question."

«Sir,» Pembroke said, but kept his eye on the road curving back and forth ahead of them, nothing visible now but long curving green branches of pine needles and this well-maintained dirt road.

Eppick said, "Yesterday, Mr. Hemlow called this the compound. How big is it?"

"In land, sir?"

"Well, yeah, in land."

"I believe, sir," Pembroke said, while steering massively left and massively right, using his whole upper body as though this were a toboggan on fresh snow, "the compound consists of just under thirteen hundred acres."

"And the whole thing is circled with electric fence?"

"And alarmed, sir, yes."

"Alarmed?" Eppick sounded impressed. "Where's the alarm go off?"

"Boston, sir."

Less impressed, Eppick said, "Boston? That's the other end of the state."

"It is the capital of Massachusetts, sir. Orders received from Boston, by e-mail or fax, are acted upon much more rapidly than orders received from Great Barrington."