What's So Funny (14 page)

“It’s one of the job definitions,” Eppick told him, “you know, that the government has. Like, if you work for wages, you’re a salaried employee, so you can be in a union, but if you’re an independent contractor you can’t be in a union.”

“I’m not in a union,” Dortmunder said, and the elevator door opened at the lobby.

Leaving the building, Eppick said, “We’re both going downtown. Come on down to the corner, we’ll grab a cab. I’ll even pay.”

Dortmunder said, “But you don’t want to give the doorman a dollar to get a cab right here.”

“Neither do you,” Eppick told him.

So they walked down to the corner and eventually found a cab without help, and as they rode downtown together Dortmunder said, “Tell me more about this independent contractor. Whadaya mean, it’s a government definition?”

“It shows where you fit in the workforce,” Eppick said. “There’s certain things you gotta match up with, and then you’re an independent contractor.”

“Like what?”

“You don’t get a fixed salary every week.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t work in the same office or factory or whatever every day.”

“Okay.”

“You carry your own tools on the job.”

“I do that,” Dortmunder said.

“You work without direct supervision.”

“You know it.”

“There’s no withholding tax on what you make.”

“Never happened yet.”

“The employer or whoever doesn’t give you a pension or health care.”

“This is my profile to the life,” Dortmunder said.

“Then there you are,” Eppick said. “And now, go to work on those family members. I think you’re onto something there.”

“Soon as I get the list,” Dortmunder promised.

When May got home that evening, Dortmunder helped by carrying one of the grocery sacks. In the kitchen, he said, “I found out something today.”

“Oh?”

Dortmunder smiled. “I am an independent contractor.”

She looked at him and put the cereal away. “Oh,” she said.

“I believe,” Anne Marie said, “that was the first thing you noticed about me.”

“It was.” Kelp nodded, agreeing with them both. “And as a woman,” he said, “I just have this feeling you might maybe have some certain expertise.”

“About what?”

“Well, in this case, jewelry.”

“Yes, please,” she said. “It’s never in bad taste, and never out of style.”

“Not like that,” he said. “A different kind of expertise.”

The look she gave him had something caustic in it. “I could show my expertise at sulking, if you like.”

“Come on, Anne Marie,” Kelp said. “I just wanna pick your brain.”

“Well, that’s all right, then,” she said. “I was wondering when you’d get around to my brain.”

“I didn’t have that much need for it up till now.” She laughed, but pointed a finger at him. “You’re on the lip of the volcano there, pal.”

“Then let me ask my question,” he said. “It’s most likely you don’t know the answer, but I definitely don’t know the answer, and I gotta start somewhere.”

“Go ahead.”

They were in their living room, which earlier he had salted with a manila envelope on the coffee table. This he now picked up, and withdrew from it two photos of the red queen from the chess set, plus the sheet giving the queen’s dimensions and weight. “What I wanna do,” he said, handing her these documents, “is make a fake one of these. It doesn’t have to be a hundred percent perfect, because we’re gonna paint it with red enamel.”

“This is the thing,” she said, studying the photos, “that John is working on.”

“Well, we both are,” Kelp said, “if we get past a couple little problems. And one of them is how to make a copy of that thing there, same size, same shape, pretty much the same weight.”

“Well, that’s easy,” she said. “Particularly if the jewels don’t have to match.”

“No, they’re gonna be painted over. Whadaya mean, it’s easy?”

“You came to the right person,” she said. “What I will do is turn this over to the Earring Man.”

“The who?”

“Women lose earrings,” she pointed out. “You know that.”

“You find ‘em in cabs,” Kelp agreed, “you find ‘em next to telephones, you find ‘em on the floor the morning after the party.”

“Exactly,” she said. “So there you are, you had a pair of earrings you loved, now you’ve only got one earring, and one earring isn’t going to do anything for anybody except some pathetic guy trying to be hip.”

“I’ve seen those guys, too,” Kelp said. “They look like they’re off the leash.”

“So if you’re a woman,” Anne Marie went on, “with one earring of a pair you loved, you go to this jeweler that everybody calls Earring Man because he will make you an exact match.”

“That’s pretty good,” Kelp said. “I never knew that.”

“I think there’s probably an Earring Man, or maybe more than one, in every urban center in the world where women don’t have to wear headscarves. The one I know is in DC. I wore earrings a lot more when I was a congressman’s daughter than when I’m some heister’s moll.”

Surprised, Kelp said, “Is that who you are?”

Looking at the photos again, she said, “How much of a hurry are you in for this?”

“Well, since John says we’re never gonna get our hands on the real one, I’d say you could take your time.”

She nodded, thinking it over. “I still have some unindicted friends down in DC,” she said. “I’ll make a couple calls and probably fly down tomorrow. He’ll most likely want a couple weeks.”

“He’ll know,” Kelp said, “there’s a certain amount of secrecy involved here.”

“Oh, sure,” she said. “Earring Man would never betray a confidence.” Grinning at the memory, she said, “The great story about him is the time a woman came in, very sad, with the one earring, and she lost the other in a cab, just like you said. He went to work on it, and a couple days later
another
woman came in with the
other
earring and claimed
she
lost the missing one in a cab. He never called either of them on it, never found out which one was lying, didn’t care.”

Kelp said, “Anne Marie, in that case, how come
you
know about it?”

She couldn’t believe the question. “Andy,” she said, “people
gossip
all the time. That isn’t the same as tattling.”

Sometimes you know when the explanation you’ve got is the only explanation you’re going to get. “Fine,” Kelp said. “Whadaya wanna do about dinner?”

Oh, what now? She didn’t have
time
for this, she’d be here till midnight, and what would happen to Brian’s dinner, would he prepare some exotic cuisine and then just sit there and watch it congeal, hour after hour?
Why
would people phone her at a time like this?

No choice; she had to answer. “Hemlow,” she said into the phone, and a clipped British female voice said, “Mr. Tumbril wishes to see you in his office. Now.”

Click. Stunned, Fiona put down her phone. Why would a partner in the firm want
her
in his office? And why, of all the partners, Mr. Tumbril? In New York, a city known for fierce litigators the way New Orleans is known for overweight chefs and Los Angeles for fanciful accountants, the name Jay Tumbril was in itself very often enough to make mad dogs settle and homicidal maniacs run screaming from the room.

Well, she’d soon find out what it was about. She made her circuitous way across the Feinberg domain to Mr. Tumbril’s corner — of course — office, outside which Mr. Tumbril’s British secretary, as lean of head and body as a whippet, accepted her proffered identity, spoke briefly into her phone, and said, “Go in.”

Fiona went in, closing the door behind her. She had never been inside Mr. Tumbril’s office before, but the office itself wasn’t primarily what she immediately saw and reacted to; it was Livia Northwood Wheeler, seated at attention on a pale green sofa along the windowless side wall and gazing at Fiona with an extremely complex expression on her face, appearing to combine apprehension, expectation, doubt, defiance, arrogance, and possibly a few additional herbs for flavor.

“Ms. Hemlow.”

Her master’s voice. Reluctantly, Fiona turned away from that bouillabaisse of an expression to the much clearer and sterner expression on the face of Jay Tumbril. A tall, large–boned man in his fifties, with a small ferret–like face, he was not quite so fearsome when seated behind his large neat desk, flanked by large clean windows showing views of the jumble of Manhattan, as when he was on his feet, pacing and stalking in front of a jury, but he was still quite fearsome enough. In a smaller voice than any she’d known she possessed, Fiona said, “Yes, sir.”

“The last time Mrs. Wheeler visited these offices,” Tumbril said, “you approached her as she waited for the elevator. You said I had sent you.”

Shocked, Fiona cried, “Oh, no, sir!” Turning in horror toward Mrs. Wheeler, she said, “I didn’t say that. I didn’t say that at all.”

Mrs. Wheeler was no longer looking at her, but at Tumbril instead, and her expression now was a simple combination of surprise and offense. “Jay,” she said, “you’re misrepresenting me. It was
my
conclusion you’d sent her after me. She denied it at the time.”

Tumbril didn’t like that. “Why would
I
send her after you?”

“There was a certain amount of rancor in this room at the time of my last visit,” she said, apparently unafraid of Tumbril, no matter how much he glared at her. “I thought perhaps you were trying to make peace.”

“Why would I do that?” Said with more impatience than curiosity, as though he didn’t expect there could be an answer.

Nor was there one. “My mistake,” Mrs. Wheeler said.

Accepting victory as his due, Tumbril turned his scowl back on Fiona. “Since I didn’t send you to speak to Mrs. Wheeler,” he said, “who did?”

“No one, sir.”

“It was your own idea.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Miss Hemlow,” Tumbril said, “do you know the firm’s policy with regard to young assistants such as yourself making direct contact with clients?”

“Yes, sir,” Fiona said, in a voice so small she could barely hear it herself.

“And what is that policy, Miss Hemlow?”

It was one thing to study cross–examination technique in law school, but quite another to undergo it. Fiona said, “Sir, we’re not supposed to deal directly with a client unless a partner or associate requests it.”

“Jay,” Mrs. Wheeler said. “I didn’t mean to get this girl in trouble.”

“She got herself in trouble, Livia.” Tumbril made a little sweeping–away motion toward Fiona, as though she were dust, and said, “She had
no
excuse to speak to you. She never even had work assigned to her to do on your affairs. Why would she speak to you?”

“Well,” Mrs. Wheeler said, “she said she admired me.”

“Admired you? For what?”

“For the stance I was taking in my suit.”

Tumbril sat well back in his large leather chair to gaze with thorough disapproval at Fiona. “You went into the files?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Of a case toward which you had absolutely no responsibilities?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You searched through matters that were none of your concern,” Tumbril summed up, “and then you went to the principal in the matter to toady up to her.”

“No, sir, I just —”

“
Yes,
sir! Well, young lady, if you thought you might be advancing yourself with this behind–the–scenes rubbish, you’ve done quite the reverse. You will go and clear out your desk and wait for security to escort you from the building.”

“Jay!”

“I know what I’m doing, Livia. Miss Hemlow, the firm will mail you your final compensation. You will understand we will not be able to give you a reference.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good–bye, Miss Hemlow.”

Stricken, not yet able to think about what was happening to her, Fiona turned toward the door.

“Young lady,” Mrs. Wheeler said, and when Fiona turned her heavy head the older woman had leaned forward to hold out a card. “Phone me,” she said.

Hardly knowing she was doing it, Fiona took the card. She couldn’t think of a thing to say.

Tumbril could. “You’re making a mistake, Livia.”

“Not the first one I’ve made in this office,” she told him.

Tumbril threw one last scowl at Fiona. “You may go.”

She went.