Donald Westlake - What's So Funny?

"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."

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. Just 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."