Donald Westlake: What's So Funny?

"As you know, Jay," Perly said, "we've had our suspicions about young Clanson for some time now, so much so that I began an investigation of the fellow."

Mrs. W almost but didn't quite pop back up onto her feet. "You did what? To Brian? On whose authority?"

"Jay's," Perly told her. "As your attorney."

"Without telling me . And who was supposed to pay for this?"

"Mrs. Wheeler," Perly said, "I am sure you will find the result well worth the expense."

"Oh, are you."

"Jacques," Tumbril said, "I'd still like some help here."

"All right," Perly said. "Here's the sequence. On Saturday night, an agent of mine kept tabs on this fellow Clanson, and late that night — just twenty-four hours before the robbery! — photographed him casing my building!"

Tumbril nodded at the folder open in his hands. "Oh, is this him in the backseat?"

"And that is my building, just beyond him. What my man did," Perly said, "when he saw what neighborhood Clanson was headed toward, was to take a faster route, and be in position when the car went by."

"Then this next picture," Tumbril said, "is him and some others getting out of the car. We're farther away here, hard to make it out."

"My man did what he could with a telephoto lens. But I can tell you that's a low-life bar farther down my street. Meeting the rest of the gang there, no doubt."

Mrs. W said, "Jay, let me see those pictures."

As Jay handed her the folder, Fiona slid one chair to the left, so she could look at the photos, too, and Perly said, "Unfortunately, my man couldn't get clear pictures of the others in the car, but he said one was a tough-looking older woman, some sort of harridan, a real Ma Barker type, probably the brains of the gang."

Fiona looked at the photos. In awe, she raised her eyes to look at the stony profile of Mrs. W as that lady said to Perly, with icy calm, "A tough-looking older woman? A harridan? A Ma Barker type?"

"When we get our hands on her," Perly said, "and we will, I can guarantee you she'll have a record as long as your arm."

Now Mrs. W did stand, though not precipitately or with apparent excitement. She stood as a thoughtful judge might stand when about to pronounce a death sentence. "The vehicle Brian is riding in, Mr. Perly," she said, "is mine. I am the harridan seated next to him."

Perly blinked at her. "What?"

"The third member of our nefarious gang in my limousine, Mr. Perly," Mrs. W went on, "is Fiona here, my assistant. We had come from a party given by Brian's television station, and we were on our way to a lounge considered at the moment to be the most desirable social venue in the entire city."

Perry's mouth had sagged open during Mrs. W's speech, but nothing had come out of it, so now it closed again. He continued to stare at Mrs. W as though all cerebral function behind those eyes had come to a halt.

Tumbril, clearing his throat, said, "Livia, I don't think Jacques is usually in that neighborhood at night."

"He doesn't seem to be all there by day, either," Mrs. W said, turning her icy gaze on Tumbril. "And if you intend to pay him for this harassment of an innocent boy, Jay, it shall come from your pocket, because you are no longer my lawyer."

"Livia, you don't want to—"

"Mr. Roanoke," Mrs. W said, turning toward that interested observer, her manner still steely but less aggressive, "we would like Brian returned to us now."

"Yes, ma'am," Noah Roanoke said.

BEFORE DINNER, Mr. Hemlow read to them, in the big rustic cathedral-ceilinged living room at the compound, with a staff-laid fire crackling red and orange in the deep stone fireplace, part of a paragraph from Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue on the subject of chess: "Yet to calculate is not in itself to analyze. A chess player, for example, does the one without effort at the other. It follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative by observations very much at random; I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess. In this latter, where the pieces have different and bizarre motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound."

Closing the book, nodding his red-bereted head this way and that, Mr. Hemlow said, "What Poe calls draughts is what we know as the game of checkers."

Kelp said, "I like checkers."

Eppick said, "That's easy. Everybody likes checkers. Shall I put the book back on the shelf, Mr. Hemlow?"

"Thank you."

"My Mom used to read to me," Stan said. "When I was a kid. Mostly biographies of race car drivers."

"It's good when a family shares an interest," Mr. Hemlow said.

No hostess in her right mind would have put together a guest list for dinner like this and hope to make it work, but somehow it wasn't being too bad. Since nobody wanted to do the seven-hour round trip from and to New York in one day, it had been agreed that Mr. Hemlow would open the compound and he himself would spend the night in his ground floor bedroom in the main house with one or two staff members for assistance, while the other six would sleep in the simple but comfortable guesthouse, then head back to the city in the morning. Mr. Hemlow's staff, all local part-timers but loyal over the long term to a generous boss, would make dinner and breakfast, and now, as the group waited for dinner, they were chatting together, not too easily, in the main living room.

Eppick, having returned from putting Poe back in his place, said, "Mr. Hemlow, while we're waiting for dinner here, maybe this is the time to talk a little about recompense."

Nodding, Kelp said, "That sounds good."

"Yes, indeed," Mr. Hemlow said. "Something to whet the appetite, as it were. As you gentlemen know, I do not intend to sell the set but to keep it, right over there." And he gestured to where Kelp had earlier opened out the empty chessboard onto a large side table. "Nor," he added, "is there an accurate figure as to the set's value."

"That's one of the things," Eppick said, "they were gonna be working on in the private eye's office."

Tiny tapped a knuckle on his oak chair arm. "The millions, we know that much," he said. "That's close enough for us."

"Yes, of course." Mr. Hemlow was meeting most of the gang, and especially Tiny, for the first time, and seemed less taken aback than most people when initially rounding a corner to find Tiny Bulcher in their path. It may have been simply that life had already given him so many sharp lefts and rights that he couldn't actually be jolted any more. In any case, he merely gave Tiny's comment a benign response and went on to say, "I think we will all agree that, in this particular instance, the value to be considered is not the worth of the chess set but the worth of the skill and ingenuity and determination demonstrated by yourselves."

Stan said, "A fence would give us ten percent."

"The issue of a fence," Mr. Hemlow said, "does not arise, as this was a commissioned work."

"Unlike most jobs you people pull," Eppick added, "you aren't grabbing something to turn around and sell it. This time, you've been hired to do a little something in your area of expertise. You're like employees here."

Dortmunder said, "So this is the one time I'm not an independent contractor, is that it?"

"In a way," Eppick said. "But of course, without the retirement. Or the health program."

Stan said, "Or the softball team."

"That, too."