Donald Westlake - What's So Funny?

"Good morning, Mrs. W."

"Close the door, dear, and sit on the sofa here. You have your pad; good."

The little settee next to Mrs. W's desk was far less comfortable than it looked. Fiona perched on it and looked expectant.

Mrs. W seemed more ruminative than usual this morning. Frowning a little, she watched her hands move small figurines around on her desk as she said, "As I remember, in addition to your law degree, you have a strong interest in the study of history."

"Your memoir is fascinating, Mrs. W"

"Of course it is. But it's a different history I want you to think about now."

"Yes, ma'am?"

"Do you remember a discussion we had — two discussions, I think — about the Chicago chess set?"

Oh, dear. Fiona had been afraid to even mention the chess set, but wanting to help her grandfather in his quest — even if at the moment he believed he'd given it up — she had given it a try. She'd even — when they were looking together at the photos of the pieces on Mrs. W's computer — managed to «discover» the mismatch in weight among the rooks.

But that had been some time ago. She'd given the effort up when she'd seen she was getting nowhere and might even be putting herself at risk. But now Mrs. W herself had raised the issue; for good, or for ill? Heart in her mouth but expression as innocent as ever, Fiona said, "Oh, yes, ma'am. That beautiful chess set."

"You noticed one of the pieces was the wrong weight."

"Oh, I remember that."

"Very observant of you," Mrs. W said, and nodded, agreeing with herself. "That fact kept bothering me, after our discussions, and I soon realized there was far more mystery surrounding that chess set than merely one unexpectedly lighter rook."

Looking alert, interested, Fiona said, "Oh, really?"

"Where is that chess set from?" Mrs. W demanded, glaring severely at Fiona. "Who made it? Where? In what century? It just abruptly appears, with no history, in a sealed glass case in the lobby of my father's company, Gold Castle Realty, when they moved into the Castlewood Building in 1948. Where was it before 1948? Where did my father get it, and when? And now that we know the one piece is lighter than the rest, and is a castle, now we wonder, where did my father get his company name?"

"Gold Castle, you mean."

"Exactly."

Knowing how she could answer every last one of Mrs. W's questions, but how doing so would be absolutely the worst move she could make, Fiona said, "Well, I guess he had to have it somewhere else before he put up the new building."

"But where?" Mrs. W demanded. "And how long had he had it? And who had it before him?" Mrs. W shook her head. "You see, Fiona, the more you study that chess set, the deeper the mystery becomes."

"Yes, ma'am."

"History and mystery," Mrs. W mused. "The words belong together. Fiona, I want you to ferret out the history and the mystery of the Chicago chess set."

I am being given, Fiona thought, the one job in all the world at which I have to fail. I'm the mystery, Mrs. W, she thought, I'm the mystery and the history, my family and I, and you must never know.

Mrs. W was going on, saying, "I don't mean I want you to devote your life to that, but for at least a little time every day you should work on this problem. What is that chess set, and where did it come from?"

"Yes, ma'am." With the sudden thought that there might be something useful here, after all, useful to her grandfather and to Mr. Eppick and to Mr. Dortmunder, she said, "Do you think I should go look at the chess set?"

Mrs. W didn't like that idea at all. "What, physically stare at the thing? We know what it looks like, Fiona."

"Yes, of course," Fiona said.

"If it had a label on the bottom reading 'Made In China, someone would have noticed it before this."

"Yes, ma'am."

"If it ever turns out there is a need for a physical examination, I'm sure we could arrange it. But for now, Fiona, the question you are to concern yourself with is provenance. What is that chess set's history? What is its mystery?"

"I'll look into it, Mrs. W," Fiona promised.

A BLUSTERY SUNDAY IN March, and Dortmunder and Kelp trudged back across the snowy warehouse roof, following their own reversed footsteps toward the distant fire escape. They were dressed in black parkas with the hoods up, black wool trousers, black leather gloves and black boots, and the wind snaked through it all anyway. The plastic backpacks they wore, also black, were just as empty as when they'd come up onto this roof, and they were going to stay that way, at least for today.

It was Kelp who'd lined up the customer for the video games said to be stacked like candy bars in the warehouse below, and it was this customer who'd told them everything they needed to know to effect entry to the place from above. Everything, that is, except the existence of the two pit bulls down there, gleaming like devils in the safety light.

At first, Kelp had suggested they might be a hologram: "It's a video game place, why not?"

"Go down and pet one," Dortmunder suggested, so that was that. While the pit bulls stared upward, yearning to be best friends but unable to climb the steel rungs mounted on the wall, Dortmunder and Kelp quietly closed the trapdoor they'd opened and turned back, empty-handed. Days like this one could be discouraging.

All at once the opening chords of Beethoven's Ninth burst across the windy air. Dortmunder dropped to the snowy roof, staring around in panic for the orchestra, and then realized Kelp was fumbling in his trouser pocket and murmuring, "Sorry, sorry."

"Sorry?"

"It's my new ringtone," Kelp explained while, without a pause, the invisible orchestra leaped back to the beginning and started all over again.

"Ringtone."

"I usually," Kelp said, finally managing to drag the cell phone out of his pocket, "keep it on vibrate."

"I don't want to know about it," Dortmunder said.

Kelp made the racket go away, put the machine to his head, and said, "Hello?"

Dortmunder turned away, brushing himself free of dirty snow and reorienting himself vis-a-vis the fire escape, when Kelp said, "Yeah, hold on, wait a minute," then extended the phone toward Dortmunder with a very strange expression on his face: "It's for you."

Dortmunder didn't believe it. "For me? Whadaya mean? People don't go around calling me on roofs !"

"He doesn't know where you are," Kelp said. "It's Eppick. Come on, it's for you."

Eppick. Dortmunder hadn't thought of that guy in three months, and had been perfectly prepared to never think of him again, but here was this phone, on this roof, with snowy wind all around, and he was supposed to talk to Johnny Eppick For Hire.

So all right. He took the phone: "Yar?"

"You don't have a cell."

"No thanks to you."

"That's pretty cute," Eppick said. "You weren't at home, you don't have an answering machine either, you might not even have indoor plumbing for all I know. I was gonna leave a message with your friend, call me, but here you are."

"I have indoor plumbing."

"Glad to hear it. Mr. Hemlow is back."

"No. I don't want him back."

"But this is good news," Eppick said. "The granddaughter has maybe come through after all. I don't know the details yet. Mr. Hemlow wants to lay it on the two of us."

Dortmunder was about to say no, he hadn't found much profit in his dealings with the firm of Hemlow & Eppick, and besides, Eppick no longer possessed those overly candid photos, but then he thought about the pit bulls to whom he'd so recently been introduced, and his other current prospects, which added up to a round nil, and he thought there might be worse roads to travel than the one that led back to Mr. Hemlow, with whom, at least, with luck, he would not be bit.