Donald Westlake - What's So Funny?

"Oh, I get it," Eppick said. "And is that back there the only entrance?"

"Oh, no, sir. The staff entrance is around to the other side of the hill."

"Staff entrance," Eppick echoed. "Staff entrance into this… forest."

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you, Pembroke."

"Sir."

Eppick faced the others. "Pretty good," he said.

Dortmunder had decided not to lie down any more, no matter what happened. Seated on the floor, semi-braced against the right door, with his left hand stiff-armed to the floor, he felt the limo sway to and fro as they continued their slow and steady serpentine progress through the forest, the road now tending more or less steadily uphill.

All these pine trees, and all so gigantic. It was like driving through a magic forest in a fairy tale. Dortmunder had just thought of that fanciful idea when the limo rounded yet another spreading tree, and in front of them appeared what at first looked to be several truckloads of dark brown shingles dumped in a pile in a clearing in the forest, but which, on further study, proved to be a sprawling three-story wood-shingle house with dark green window frames and a dark green shingle roof, as though it were more plant than structure and had grown in this place. A broad veranda girdled the house, both inviting and secretive.

To the right of this building was a pocket version of itself, being a garage with three green wooden doors, and this was where the dirt road became blacktop, opened to embrace all three doors, and stopped. To right and left, in among the trees, two more structures could be seen, also pretending to be abandoned piles of shingles, both of them smaller than the main house but larger than the garage.

As Pembroke angled the limo toward the garage door nearest the main house, Eppick said, "Those other buildings guesthouses?"

"On the left, sir. On the right is staff quarters."

"Who lives here now?"

"Oh, no one, sir." Pembroke stopped the limo and switched off the engine. "There has been no one on the property, sir," he said, "since the last time Mr. and Mrs. Hemlow attended a concert at Tanglewood more than three years ago. That would have been in August, sir."

BRADY TRIED TO find his place in the Kama Sutra even while Nessa kept on galloping beneath him at cheetah speed, putting him in a position similar to the person who has to rub his belly and pat his forehead at the same time. Got it; that page! Brady bent to his lesson, and Nessa abruptly stopped.

Brady reared back. "Already? No!"

An urgent hand reached around behind her to grasp his hip. "A car!" she cried, her words only half muffled by the pillow.

Now he too heard it, the throaty purr of some expensive automobile rolling up toward the house. Flinging the Kama Sutra away, he leaped off the bed and ran across the large master bedroom toward the front windows, as behind him Nessa scrambled into her clothes.

A long sleek black limousine rolled to a stop at the garage door behind which Brady's battered Honda Civic sat, as Brady peeked around the curtain. The car doors opened down there and four men climbed out, one at first on hands and knees until two of the others helped him up. The one from the front seat in the chauffeur's hat would be a chauffeur, and he's the one who led the others toward the house, taking a key ring from his pocket.

The door wasn't locked! Racing back across the room, grabbing his jeans from the floor but nothing else, Brady shrilly whispered, "Hide everything!" and tore out to the hall as behind him Nessa, already hiding the Kama Sutra under a pillow, wailed, "Oh, Brady!"

No time. Out Brady went, and down the broad staircase to the living room three steps at a time, naked as he usually was when around Nessa, his jeans flapping in the air behind him. Across the living room he dashed, jeans hand behind him, free hand reaching out ahead, and got to the door and snapped the lock just as he heard the first footsteps echo across the veranda.

Pausing one millisecond, his back against the door, to pull on his jeans and study the living room, at first he saw nothing out of place, but then, there it was, a beer bottle he'd left behind on the coffee table after dinner last night.

Running again, he arced past the coffee table and grabbed the bottle on the fly, as he heard the key in the front door lock and heard the doorknob turn. The door started to open, and through the doorway he went, and hurtled down the broad corridor to the kitchen, the only other room on the ground floor that would contain evidence of their intrusion.

A voice behind him, back in the living roam: "Well, this is some rustic."

Who were those people? They come here, they have a chauffeur, they have keys, but they've never seen that incredible living room before?

It was, that living room, as Brady would agree, some rustic, and so was the rest of the house. The living room, thirty feet wide and twenty feet deep, with a huge stone fireplace on one end wall, was two stories high, with a cathedral ceiling, the whole thing done in rough wood, the beams with the bark still on, the walls rough-surfaced boards, the plank floor dotted with old Navajo rugs, the furniture large, deep, comfortable, what God would buy for His own weekend place. Suspended above it all was a huge chandelier that pretended to be a whole lot of kerosene lamps with glass chimneys but was actually electrified and on a dimmer.

Brady had run to the kitchen to try to clean it up before they came back here, but now his curiosity was aroused. He stood an instant, not knowing whether to sneak back and listen or proceed with his kitchen police, when the kitchen's side door opened and Nessa appeared, dressed, having come down the back stairs.

Good. "Clean it!" he whispered, waving at the not-clean kitchen — they tended to go to bed immediately after meals, though they knew they shouldn't — and tiptoed back down the corridor, now hearing a second voice say, with a kind of weary seen-everything sound, "I guess this is what you call your compound."

A third voice, brisk, in charge, said, "Upstairs should be the best place to stash something."

What? Brady kept even closer, just out of their sight. Meanwhile, the second voice said, "No, it isn't."

There was a little pause then, that might have been uncomfortable, and the third voice said, "Pembroke, why don't you wait in the car?"

"Sir."

Nobody spoke then until the front door opened and closed, and then the take-charge third voice said, "Upstairs. Farther from the doors and windows. More hiding places."

"Too heavy," said the weary second voice, "for one guy to lift."

"Oh."

"Don't worry, Johnny," the first voice chimed in, much the most chipper of them, "we'll find a good spot somewhere down here."

"Then I suggest," the third voice said, as though trying to recapture command here, "we might just as well sit over there by the fireplace a few minutes and think about it."

"Fine idea."

"Sure."

Oh, good, Brady thought, and, scampered back to the kitchen, where Nessa was hurriedly shoving used plates, pots, silver, cups, glasses and cereal bowls into cupboards, drawers and the broom closet. "Stop!" he whispered. "Not there."

In just as harsh a whisper, Nessa said, "Brady, we've got to hide all this."

"Upstairs."

"What?"

"They're not going upstairs. They're looking for a place down here to hide something, so they'll open everything , and they're sure to see all that stuff. Carry it all up, just out of sight up the stairs, and I'll keep an eye on them, warn you when they're coming."

"How come I get the dirty job?" she demanded, but he'd already fleet-footed away again, this time peeking around the doorway to see the trio at their ease on the armchairs at the far end of the living room, looking very much like a genre painting of the day the mob broke into the Winter Palace.