Donald Westlake: What's So Funny?

It was in a recent Audi 9000, forest green, 17K on the odometer, that Stan cruised the area of 598 East Third Street, a neighborhood not used to seeing cars of that quality abroad on its streets. Being New York, though, everybody in the district was cool about it.

May had said the meeting was scheduled for ten, and Stan got there at quarter past, so it should still be going on. In the check-cashing place? Unlikely; more probably somewhere upstairs. Motor running and flashers on, to assure the world he was not abandoning this nice car, Stan left it beside a handy fire hydrant long enough to run over and look at the names for the upstairs tenants, and found it right away: EPPICK. He hadn't known it was spelled that way.

It was a long meeting John was having with this cop, as Stan waited in the car next to the fire hydrant, now with flashers on but engine off. Ten fifty-two read the very nice dashboard clock when at last John came out and started to walk away. Stan honked, but John just kept walking, so Stan had to start the engine, open his window, chase John around the corner, and yell, "Hey!"

Nothing. John just kept plodding forward, head down, arms and legs moving as though the machinery were a little rusty, and apparently now operating without functioning ears.

"Hey!" Stan yelled again, and honked, all of which had the same effect as before. Nil.

"John! Goddam it!"

Now John stopped. He looked alert. He stared up at the sky. He stared at the building he was going past. He stared back the way he'd come.

What is this? You hear a horn, you don't look at the street? Stan pressed the heel of his palm against the horn and left it there, until at last John turned to gape, then pointed at Stan as though telling somebody, "I know that guy!"

Having captured his subject's attention, Stan released the horn and called, "Come on over. Get in."

So John came around and took the passenger seat and said, "What are you doing around here? This one of your routes?"

"I wanted to talk to you," Stan said, driving forward. "Where you headed?"

"You wanted to— You mean— How did you—"

"I called and talked to May. Where you headed?"

"Oh. Well, I got a meeting up in midtown this afternoon, that's all."

"All of a sudden, you take a lot of meetings."

"Not my idea," John said.

Stan figured he'd find out sooner or later what was going on. Meanwhile, there was his own little scheme to consider. He said, "Whadaya say, I drive you up there, put this car back, we grab a bite."

"Sure. Why not?"

There was nowhere to eat on Park Avenue. There was nowhere to eat on Fifth Avenue. On Sixth Avenue and Seventh Avenue the streets were filled with tourists standing on line to eat in places exactly like the places they'd eat in back home in Akron or Stuttgart or Osaka, except back there they didn't have to stand on line.

Stan and John eventually found a dark bar with food on a side street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, where the plump but not soft waitress said, "How you fellas today?"

"Hungry," Stan said. "We just walked across Manhattan."

"I hear they got buses now," she said, and distributed menus. "You want a drink while you read?"

They both wanted beer. She went away and they studied the menus, and John said, "Can you tell the difference between ostrich burger and bison burger?"

"Bison's got four legs."

"Burger."

"Oh. No. Turkey burger I can tell. All those others I think they come outa the same vat, back there in the kitchen."

"I can remember," John said, "when 'burger' only meant one thing, and the only word you ever had to stick in front of it was 'cheese. »

"You're showing your age, John."

"Yeah? That's good. Usually I show twice my age."

The waitress having returned, Stan ordered the bison burger and John the ostrich burger, and then John said, "You wanted to talk to me."

"Well, with all these meetings you got, you didn't get to our little meeting last night."

"No, that cop come along."

"And he's still along, I guess."

"It looks like it's gonna be a long story, I'm not sure. I know you wanna know what it's all about."

"Naw, John, I don't poke and pry in somebody else's business."

"Nevertheless," John said, "to make up for it, my not getting to the meeting last night, I'll tell you the story so far. The ex-cop is working for this rich guy that wants to what he calls 'retrieve' something that got stolen from his father eighty years ago."

"Wow. That's a long time."

"It is. So this afternoon," John said, "I'm supposed to meet the rich guy's granddaughter, because she's the one knows where it is. So I'm not even sure if it's possible, or if it's real, but you don't just say no to a cop. Or an ex-cop either."

"No, I get that," Stan said.

"So now," John said, "tell me yours."

"What I wanna do," Stan said, and the waitress appeared, with two platters, and said, "Who had the ostrich burger?" and they couldn't remember. So she just put the platters down, accepted an order for another couple beers, and went away, which meant they didn't know exactly what they were eating, but that was okay.

Around a mouthful of either ostrich or bison, John said, "You were gonna tell me what you wanna do."

"I wanna hand to you," Stan said, and paused for a beer delivery, and said, "the idea I was presenting to everybody — except you — last night."

"Sure. I wanna hear it."

"It's out in Brooklyn."

John looked pained. "I dunno, Stan," he said. "That place I went to today was Brooklyn enough for me."

"That's the trouble with all you guys," Stan told him. "You're all Manhattancentric."

John looked at him. "What kinda word is that?"

"A word from the newspaper," Stan said. "And therefore authentic."

"Okay."

"It isn't all Manhattan, you know. There's four other boroughs."

"Maybe three," John said.

"What? Who you throwin out?"

"Staten Island. It's over in New Jersey someplace. You can't even get there on the subway. Any place you have to go to by boat is not part of New York City."

"Governors Island."

"So? That's an island."

"So's Staten."

Looking exasperated, John said, "You moving to Staten Island? Is that the news you wanted to bring me?"

"No, I'm very happy in Canarsie."

"Just a little defensive. So tell me the idea. Did everybody else love it?"

"Let me tell it to you, okay?"

"Go."

"Because I'm in Canarsie," Stan said, "I drive a lot, which people in Manhattan don't do. So I see things that people in Manhattan don't see. So out along the Belt Parkway, they're building this mosque, you can see it from the road."

"Mosque."

"Yeah, you know, a religious place that—"

"I know what it is, Stan."

"Okay. So they're building it, I read about it in the paper—"

"The Manhattancentric paper."

"Maybe the same one, I dunno. It said, they're getting a lot of Arab oil money for this mosque, they're building one that's gonna be like the big one in London with the golden dome, only, this being New York City, they ran into some problems."

"Naturally."

"Cost overruns, extra permits they didn't know about, unions they never heard of, the whole thing grinds to a halt."

"Of course it does," John said. "Didn't they know that?"

"Well, they're religious people," Stan said, "and they're immigrants, and nobody ever tells anybody how New York works, everybody just does it."

"I almost feel sorry for these people," John said.

"Well, don't feel too sorry. They shut down now, but they're gonna start up again next spring, with some more oil money, and now they know a little more about the system, so this is just a delay is all."

"I'm happy for them," John said. "But up till now I don't see your idea in here."