Donald Westlake: What's So Funny?

"So you found this thing," Dortmunder began. "This chess set."

She laughed. "Oh, Mr. Dortmunder, this is too good a story to just jump in and tell the end."

Dortmunder hated stories that were that good, but okay, once again no choice in the matter, so he said, "Sure. Go ahead."

"When I was growing up," she said, "there was every once in a while some family talk about a chess set that seemed to make everybody unhappy, but I couldn't figure out why. It was gone, or lost, or something, but I didn't know why it was such a big deal."

She drank Diet Pepsi and give him a warning finger-shake. "I don't mean the family was full of nothing but talk about this mysterious chess set, it wasn't. It was just a thing that came up every once in a while."

"Okay."

"So last summer it came up again," she said, "when I was visiting my father at the Cape, and I asked him, please tell me what it's all about, and he said he didn't really know. If he ever knew, he'd forgotten. He said I should ask my grandfather, so when I got back to the city I did. He didn't want to talk about it, turned out he was very bitter on that subject, but I finally convinced him I really wanted to know what this chess set meant in the family, and he told me."

"And that made you find it," Dortmunder said, "when nobody else could."

"That's right," she said. "I've always been fascinated by history, and this was history with my own family in it, the First World War and invading Russia and all the rest of it. So I took down the names of everybody in that platoon that brought the chess set to America, and the other names, like the radio company they wanted to start, Chess King Broadcasting, and everything else I thought might be useful, and I Googled it all."

Dortmunder had heard of this; some other nosey parker way to mind everybody else's business. He preferred a world in which people stuck to their own knitting, but that world was long gone. He said, "You found some of these people on Google."

"And I looked for brand names with chess words," she said, "because why wouldn't Alfred Northwood use that kind of name, too? A lot of the stuff I found was all dead ends, but I'm used to research, so I kept going, and then I found Gold Castle Realty, founded right here in New York in 1921, and then it turned out they were the builders of the Castlewood Building in 1948. So I looked into Gold Castle's owners and board of directors, and there's Northwoods all over it."

"The sons," Dortmunder said.

"And daughters. But mostly now grandsons and granddaughters. It had to be the same Northwood, came here from Chicago when he stole the chess set, used it to raise the money to start in real estate, and became hugely successful. They are very big in New York property, Mr. Dortmunder. Not as famous as some others, because they don't want to be, but very big."

"That's nice," Dortmunder said. "So they've got this chess set, I guess."

"Well, here's where it gets even better," she said, and she so liked this part she couldn't stop grinning. "The original Alfred X. Northwood," she said, "married into a wealthy New York family—"

"Things kinda went his way."

"His entire life. He died rich and respectable, loved and admired by the world. You should see the obit in the Times . Anyway, he died in 1955, aged seventy, and left six children, and they grew up and made more children, and now there are seventeen claimants to Gold Castle Realty."

"Claimants," Dortmunder said.

"The heirs are all suing each other," she said. "It's very vicious, they all hate each other, but every court they go into they get gag orders, so there's nothing public about this information at all."

"But you got it," Dortmunder said, wishing she'd quit having fun and just tell him where the damn chess set was.

"In my researches," she said, "I came across inklings of some of the lawsuits, and then it turned out this firm represents Livia Northwood Wheeler, Alfred's youngest daughter, who's suing everybody in the family, no partners on her side at all." Leaning closer to him over the conference table, she said, "Isn't that delicious? I'm looking for the Northwoods, and everything you could possibly want to know about their business for the last eighty years is in files in these offices. Oh, I've done a lot of after-hours work, Mr. Dortmunder, I can assure you."

"I'm sure you have," Dortmunder said. "Now, about this chess set."

"It used to be," she said, "on display in a bulletproof glass case in the corporate offices of Gold Castle Realty in their thirty-eighth floor lobby of the Castlewood Building. But it is an extremely valuable family asset, and it is being violently fought over, so three years ago it was removed to be held by several of the law firms representing family members. Four of these firms are in this building, For the last three years, the chess set has been held in the vaults in the sub-basement right here, in the C&I International bank corporation vault. Isn't that wonderful? What do you think, Mr. Dortmunder?"

"I think I'm going back to jail," Dortmunder said.

SHE BLINKED. "I'M sorry?"

"Don't you be sorry," be said. "I'll be sorry for both of us."

"I don't understand," she admitted. "What's wrong?"

"I know about banks," he told her. "When it comes to money, they are very serious. They got no sense of humor at all. You ever been down to this vault?"

"Oh, no," she said. "I'm not authorized."

"There it is right there," he said. "Do you know anybody is authorized?"

"The partners, I suppose."

"Feinberg and them."

"Well, Mr. Feinberg isn't alive any more, but the other partners, yes."

"So if — Wait a minute. Feinberg's name is there, head of the crowd, and he's dead ?"

"Oh, that's very common," she said. "There are firms, and not just law firms either, where not one person in the firm name is still alive."

"Saves on new letterhead, I guess."

"I think it's reputation," she said. "If a firm suddenly had different names, then it wouldn't be the same firm any more, and it wouldn't have the reputation any more."

Dortmunder was about to ask another question — how a name could sport a reputation without a body behind it — when he realized he was straying widely away from the subject here, so he took a deep breath and said, "This vault."

"Yes," she said, as alert as a dog who's just seen you pick up a ball.

He said, "Do you know what it looks like? Do you know how you get there? Does it have its own elevator?"

"I don't know," she said. "I suppose it could."

"So do I. These partners that can get down there, can you talk to them about this? Ask 'em what it's like?"

"Oh, no," she said. "I've hardly ever even seen one of the partners."

"The living ones, you mean."

"Wait," she said. "Let me show you something." And she stood, went over to the construction that contained everything, and came back with a sheet of paper. She slid it across the table to him and it was the company's letterhead stationery. Pointing, she said, "These names across the top, that's the name of the firm."

"Yeah, I got that. All the way to Klatsch."

"Exactly. Now these names down the left side, those are the actual current partners and associates."

"The ones that are alive."

"Yes, of course."

He looked, and the names were not in alphabetical order, so they must be in order of how important you were. "You're not here," he said.

"Oh, no, I'm not — Those are the partners and associates, I'm—" She laughed, in a flustered way, and said, "I'm just a wee beastie."

Dortmunder waved a finger at the descending left-hand column. "So these guys—"

"And women."

"Right. They're the ones can go down to the vault, if they got business there."