Donald Westlake - What's So Funny?

Eppick's head slued around. "Isn't what right?"

"We'll have to stop for lunch somewhere."

"Sure. Pembroke probably knows a place."

"Let me think," Pembroke said.

Kelp faced front — that is, rear — and said, "So they can't hear us unless we want them to."

Up front, Pembroke and Eppick were in conversation, presumably about lunch, but the words couldn't be made out from back here. Dortmunder said, "You're right, they can't. Is there something we want to say?"

"About that idea of mine "with the chess set."

"The purloined chess set thing," Dortmunder said, and nodded. "That was pretty cute, I gotta say."

"It's more than cute for us," Kelp said.

"It is? How?"

"Once they're all painted red and black enamel," Kelp said, "who's to say that's the real piece or maybe some imitation we slid in, help keep all that gold from going to waste?"

Dortmunder frowned at Kelp's profile, but then, for security reasons of not being overheard, he faced the rear of the limo again as he said, "You're acting as though we're gonna get that thing."

"Never say die," Kelp advised.

"Die," Dortmunder said. "We're not gonna get into that vault."

"We'll burn that bridge when we come to it," Kelp told him. "In the meantime, you gotta talk to that granddaughter again."

"I already asked her for building plans," Dortmunder said. "She doesn't think she can get them."

"They'd be nice, too," Kelp said, "but what I'm thinking about is pictures of the chess set."

"Pictures?"

"It's been on display. It's part of a court case. There are gonna be pictures. If we wanna bring in a couple ringers on the day, we got to know what they look like."

"They look like chess pieces in a vault under a bank," Dortmunder guessed.

"Well, you'll talk to the granddaughter," Kelp said. "Can't do any harm."

The food in New England was part hard black and part soft white. Fortunately, they carried national brands of beer in the dark-brown-laminated, green-glass-globed, black-flounce-skirted-waitress imitation Klondike/Yukon something or other where they broke their journey, so starvation was held at bay.

"I like that seat, I think I'll keep it the rest of the trip," Dortmunder announced grimly when they left the scene of their designer lunch, and nobody even argued, so he got to sit up in the balcony with Kelp the whole rest of the way.

As they neared Riverside Drive, Eppick twisted around to the space in the partition and said, "You two don't have to see Mr. Hemlow. I'll report."

Grinning, Kelp said, "Gonna tell him the enamel chess set was your idea?"

Eppick grinned right back. "What do you think?"

"I think," Kelp said, "Pembroke can drop us off downtown."

Eppick frowned a little, not sure that was part of the deal, but Pembroke, professional eyes remaining on the road, said, "Of course, sir," so that was all right.

Soon they were easing to a stop at the curb in front of Mr. Hemlow's building, and if the uniformed doorman who came trotting out and down the steps to open first the rear — "Not us, him," Kelp said — and then the front door had any attitude toward what was coming out of this particular limousine, it didn't show on his face.

Eppick, before departure, looked meaningfully back at Dortmunder and said, "You'll keep in touch. Progress, and all that."

"Oh, sure."

Pembroke's mild gaze was on them in the rearview mirror: "Sirs?"

"I'm the first stop," Kelp told him. "The West Thirties."

"Sir."

They set off, and Kelp said, "Not so bad, go home by limo."

"They'll probably raise my rent," Dortmunder said.

Kelp nodded at the floor. "Is that as comfortable down there as it looks?"

"Try it," Dortmunder suggested.

WHEN HER CUBICLE phone rang at seven-thirty, Fiona assumed it was a wrong number, or some other kind of mistake. Who would call her at the office, particularly after working hours? Certainly not Brian, who would always wait for her to phone him so he could put on tonight's gourmet dinner. Nor would it be any of her friends or relatives, who would never phone her at work, not even during the business day.

Ring , it went again, while she tried to think it through. A wrong number would be a distraction, but if she ignored it and let it go on into voice mail, then it would merely be a distraction postponed. In fact, having rung once — twice now — it was already a distraction, taking her away from the implications of mortmain as applied to this particular real estate bequest in this thinned-out old upstate Patroon family.

Ring . That was three; after four, it would go to voice mail.

And what if Brian had been hit by a taxi or something and it was the hospital calling, needing to know his blood type or whatever? Not that she knew his blood type, and not that the hospital wouldn't be able to work it out for themselves, but nevertheless, just before the fourth ring that would have sent the call irrevocably down that black vertical chute into the echoless dungeon of voice mail, Fiona snapped up the receiver with her left hand, hit the button with her right, and was reaching for a pen as she said, "Fiona Hemlow."

"Hey, you're still there." The voice was vaguely familiar, a little rough, not the sort of person she would know.

Pen down, finger hovering over the button that would end this call, she said, "Who's that?"

"John. You know, yesterday we talked. Hold on." Away from the phone he said, "Gimme a minute here, do you mind? I got my party." Speaking to Fiona again, he said, "You know, in your office yesterday."

"Oh, John, yes, of course," she said, that dogged pessimistic face clear in her mind now, matching up perfectly with that weary voice. "You wanted to talk to me?"

"Well, not on the phone, you know, not exactly. I been waiting outside here—"

"What? Outside this building?"

"Yeah. That's where you are, right? I thought, you come out, we could have a talk while we walk. Hold on." Off, he said, "I'm being polite. You be polite." Back, he said, "I was beginning to think, maybe you went home early—"

"Never."

"So you go home late."

"Always."

"How late? I mean, instead of hang around, I could come back— Hold on." Off, he said, "You got a watch?" There was some sort of muffled complaint and then he said, "I don't want your watch, I wanna know what time it is."

"It's seven-thirty," Fiona said.

"See?" he said, off. "She knows what time it is, it's seven-thirty."

Fiona said, "How long have you been waiting?"

"Since five. You'd be surprised, you know, how many people come out of these buildings at five. So finally, I figured, I better check this here, so I borrowed this cell phone—" Off. "I borrowed it, you're getting it back."

"I'll come down now," Fiona said.

The inadvertent supplier of the cell phone was long gone when Fiona reached the street, where John Dortmunder leaned against the front of the building like a small gray rebuttal to all the work ethic within. Approaching, she said, "Mr. Dortmunder, I—"

"John, okay?" he said. "Mr. Dortmunder makes me nervous. The only time I'm Mr. Dortmunder is when I'm being arraigned."

"All right, then," she said. "You're John, and I'm Fiona."

"It's a deal," he said. "Which way you walk?"

"Over to Broadway and up to the subway."

"Okay, we'll do it."

They got to the corner and had to wait for the light, during which he said, "Mainly what I want is pictures."

She couldn't think of what. "Pictures?"

"Of the thing. The thing in the vault."

"Oh," she said. "The chess set."

For some reason, he didn't like to hear those words spoken out in public. "Yeah, yeah, that's it," he said, and patted the air downward in front of himself as though wanting to tell her to pipe down without being rude about it. All at once, she was aware that other people, all around them, were standing here waiting for the light to change, and she piped down.