What's So Funny (24 page)

“I’m thinking,” Andy Kelp said, “of giving up my answering machine.”

Surprised, Dortmunder said, “You? You live for those gizmos. Call waiting, call forwarding, call lateraling, all those things.”

“Maybe not any more. Anne Marie’s out today,” Kelp explained. “Some old friend of hers from Kansas is showing her New York.”

“Right.” Dortmunder understood. It’s always the out–of–towners who know the real New York. “Statue of Liberty?”

“Empire State Building,” Kelp agreed. “Grand Central Station. I think they’re even gonna grab a matinee at Radio City Music Hall.”

“Anne Marie,” Dortmunder said, “has a very good heart.”

“First thing attracted me to her. Anyway, I was out myself a little, you know how it is.”

“Uh huh.”

“I come back just now, there’s
three
messages from Eppick. Three, John.”

“Maybe he’s tensing up,” Dortmunder said.

“No maybe about it. Three messages that he wants
me
to ask
you
what’s going on. They’re not even my messages, John.”

“Does he really think,” Dortmunder wanted to know, “anybody’s gonna tell him what’s going on on the
phone?
You’re not the only one with those gizmos, you know.”

“You tell him that, John, it’s you he wants to talk to.”

“Maybe later. Listen, satisfy some curiosity.”

“Sure.”

“How come, when you were in there last night, you didn’t go in there?”

“What? In where?”

“Maybe,” Dortmunder decided, “we should talk in the open air.”

Having called this conclave, Dortmunder went first: “You were ahead of me, last night, on that roof.”

“You went out on that roof?” Kelp was surprised.

“I had to. The householder come home.”

“I heard all the fuss,” Kelp agreed. “I figured, it was somewhere else in the building and you took off back outa there, or it was the householder and you went through him and then back outa there. I didn’t figure you for the roof.”

“Neither did I,” Dortmunder said. “But there I was. And you were already gone.”

“That was the place to be.”

“Oh, I know. So I went over and I found those rungs —”

Kelp was astonished, and said so. “John, I’m astonished.”

“No choice,” Dortmunder said. “Down the rungs, down the fire escape. What got me was how clean you went through that basement door.”

“What basement door?”

“Into Perly’s building. What other way was there?”

Kelp was now doubly astonished. “You went into Perly’s building?”

“What else could I do?”

“Did you never turn around?” Kelp asked him. “Did you never see that humongous apartment house right behind you? You get thirty–seven windows to choose from over there, John.”

Dortmunder frowned, thinking back. “I never even looked over there,” he admitted. “And here I thought how terrific you were, you got through that basement door without leaving a mark, got through and out the building and not one single sign of you.”

“That’s because I wasn’t there,” Kelp said. “Where I was instead, I went into an apartment where there’s nobody home but there’s a couple nice de Koonings on the living room wall, so I went uptown to make them on consignment to Stoon, and then I went home. I never figured you to come down that same way. And wasn’t that a risk, you go in there before we want to go in there? Did you leave marks, John?”

Insulted, Dortmunder said, “What kind of a question is that? Here I tell you how impressed I am how
you
didn’t leave any marks —”

“It was easier for me.”

“Granted. But
then,
back last night, you were like my benchmark. So what I left was what you left. Not a trace, Andy, guaranteed.”

“Well, that’s terrific, you found that way in,” Kelp said. “Is that our route on the day?”

“We don’t have to do all that,” Dortmunder told him. “While I was in there anyway, I looked around, I picked up some stuff.”

“Stuff they’re gonna miss?”

“Come on, Andy.”

“You’re right,” Kelp said. “I know better than that. Maybe I’m like Eppick, I’m getting a little tense. So what stuff did you come out with?”

“Their extra garage door opener.”

Kelp reared back. “Their what?”

“That they don’t remember they have,” Dortmunder said. “Bottom drawer of the secretary’s desk, way in back, under stuff, covered with dust.”

“That’s pretty good,” Kelp admitted.

“Also some other stuff,” Dortmunder said. “Perly’s an organized guy, he made himself a lot of notes about the exact time the thing’s coming down from the bank and all the extra security they’re gonna lay on while it’s there.”

“He didn’t.”

“He did. Also, he’s got a copy machine.”

Kelp laughed, in pleasure and amazement. “You got their garage door opener,” he said. “You got their security plans.”

“Right,” Dortmunder said, going for modesty.

Kelp shook his head. “And all I got was a couple de Koonings.”

“Well, we took different paths,” Dortmunder said, now going for magnanimity.

“We sure did.” Seated on the park bench, Kelp watched a bifurcated bus make the long looping U–turn around the triangle, to go from southbound on Hudson to northbound on Eighth. “So what do you think next?” he asked.

“I think,” Dortmunder said, “we make a little meet. All of us. At the O.J.”

“Oh, it always fits you and you know it,” Fiona said, trying to sound loving rather than irritated, and the phone rang, yet again. “Not again!” she cried.

Brian’s leer strengthened. “She’s your boss,” he said.

This was the last thing Fiona had expected to result from having invited Mrs. W to March Madness. Was this the sixth or seventh call, with hours still ahead before the actual party? Mrs. W had regressed to some antediluvian teenage past, working out her anxieties on the telephone.

Mostly the calls were about costumes, or, that is, the personae inside the costumes. So far, Fiona had gently but firmly shot down Eleanor Roosevelt, the Gibson Girl, Annie Oakley, and Ella Fitzgerald. (Ella Fitzgerald?)

But the calls hadn’t been entirely about the conundrum of Mrs. W’s personal disguise for the evening. Should one dine ahead, or would it be a catered affair? Oh, dine ahead, definitely. Then Mrs. W would dine at home and pick up Fiona and Brian later.

Another issue. Would she be the only person of a certain age present at the party? Actually, no. Among the advertisers and other corporate types who might drop in were people of all ages, though the older ones tended to be more often male than female, and mostly interested in a new young companion to chat with.

Well, would there be anyone present whom one (Mrs. W, that is) might know? Not a chance.

Fiona answered the phone in the big room, wondering what the problem would be this time around. “Hello?”

“Do forgive the intrusion, dear —”

“Not at all, Mrs. W. Whatever I can do to help. Do you have another idea for a costume?”

“Well, yes, I do, in fact,” Mrs. W said, “but this time I don’t need advice. From what you have said of tonight’s festivities, I have now decided on the absolutely perfect masquerade.”

“Really?” Tense, worried, wondering if she could talk Mrs. W out of whatever lunge into the past she’d made this time, Fiona said, “Who, Mrs. W?”

“No, my dear, that would be telling. You will be quite impressed when you see me. Now, my car shall pick you up at ten–twenty, is that right?”

“You don’t want to tell me.” Dread clutched at Fiona’s bosom.

“Let it be a surprise, dear.”

“I’m sure it will be.”

“What I was ringing up about, in fact,” Mrs. W went on, “was your friend Brian.”

Fiona could see Brian, in fact, in the bedroom, just pulling on the Reverend Twisted trousers, shiny black wool with so much extra material and pleating that he now looked, from the waist down, like a half–blown–up Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade balloon. “Yes, Brian,” she said. “What about him?”

“I should have asked this before,” Mrs. W said, and she did sound a bit uneasy when she said it. “Will your Brian object to, in effect, escorting two ladies to the event?”

Out of sequence, Brian had put on the flat–brimmed Reverend Twisted hat and was viewing himself in the closet mirror, leering so hard he looked like a Cadillac grille. “He won’t mind a bit,” Fiona promised Mrs. W. “Trust me.”

Meanwhile, down at the left end of the bar, the regulars were discussing poker, one of them now saying, “Yeah, but why a flush?”

A second regular cocked his head in response. “And your question?” he asked.

“Just that,” the first one said. “Okay, I mean, a pair, trips, I get that. Even a straight, you can see the concept, your numbers are in a straight line. But why a flush?”

A third regular, who maybe hadn’t caught all the nuances of the original question, explained, “That means they’re all in the same suit.”

The first regular lowered a gaze on him. “And?”

“They just are,” the third regular said. “All the same color.”

“And?”

A fourth regular, sounding a bit tentative for a regular, said, “Well, if they’re red …”

“Yeah, fine,” the first regular allowed. “That could be. But what about when it’s black? What about when it’s clubs?”

The second regular, who hadn’t been heard from for a while, said, “Well, you wanna talk about that, how come they’re called clubs?”

It was the third regular who said, “That’s because they look like clubs,”

“No, they don’t,” the second regular told him. “They look like clovers. Three–leaf clovers.”

The fourth regular, still tentative, said, “So what about spades?”

“They’re black,” the third regular said.

The fourth regular, suddenly no longer tentative, said, “We know that, dummy, but whado they look like?”

The third regular looked into space. “Dummy?” he asked, as though uncertain of his hearing.

“Well, them,” the first regular said. “Them, they look like spades.”

“No they don’t,” the fourth regular said, all tentativeness forgot. “You wanna try to dig a
hole
with one of those things?”

“No,” the first regular told him, “I don’t wanna dig a hole with one of those things, they’re
cards,
you play games with them.”

“Dummy?”

“I go back to my original question,” the first regular said. “Why a flush?”

“When you lose,” the second regular suggested, “your money goes down the toilet.”

“What’s with this dummy?” the third regular insisted.

“They don’t have dummies in poker,” the first regular told him. “They have dummies in bridge.”

“I can see,” the second regular said, “you don’t play poker.”

“Oh, yeah?” The first regular turned away to call, “Rollo, you got a decka cards?”

Rollo turned half away from his bottle count to say, “No, I’d rather have a license.” Then, catching a glimpse of the patient Dortmunder out of the corner of his eye he turned full around and said, “There you are.”

“There I am,” Dortmunder agreed.

“You got an envelope under your arm.”

“That’s true.”

Having his research materials from Perly’s office to bring to the meeting, Dortmunder had commandeered from the trash a manila envelope that had once contained color photos of flat scrubland in Florida that some misguided sales agent had been certain “J.A. Dortmunder or Resident” would eagerly look upon as the site of a “dream vacation or retirement residence.” Feeling a little exposed to be walking around with an envelope too big to conceal on his person, he’d written on it
Medical Records,
in the belief that was something nobody would want to look too closely at. “It’s just some stuff,” he explained to Rollo, “to show the guys.”

“Well, you got some guys back there,” Rollo told him. “The other bourbon’s got your glass.”

“Good. I didn’t want to disturb you,” he said, gesturing at the bottles along the backbar.

“You don’t disturb me,” Rollo said. “It’s a place of business.”

“Right.”

Leaving Rollo and that conversation, Dortmunder walked down to the end of the bar and past the regulars, as the fourth one was saying, “You know what’s a very good card game? Frisk.”

“Frisk?”

Suddenly tentative again, the fourth regular said, “Isn’t that it? Frisk? Like bridge.”

Rounding the end of the bar, Dortmunder walked down the hall, past the doors labeled POINTERS and SETTERS with black dog silhouettes, and past the former phone booth, now an unoccupied sentry box containing nothing but notes to and from the lovelorn plus a few frayed wire ends, and into a small square room with a concrete floor. Beer and liquor cases were stacked against all the walls, floor to ceiling, leaving just space enough for a beat–up old round wooden table with a once–green felt top, this surrounded by half a dozen armless wooden chairs. The only light source was a single bare bulb under a round tin reflector hanging from a long black wire over the center of the table.

This was where they would meet, and it turned out, this time Dortmunder was the last to arrive, and as usual, the prize awarded to the last arrival was that he got to sit at the table with his back to the door. Andy Kelp had apparently been the first to show up, since he now sat in the place of utmost security on the opposite side of the table, facing the door. In front of him on the felt stood the bottle of alleged bourbon, plus two short fat glasses, one half full and one containing only ice cubes.

To Kelp’s left sat Stan Murch, and to Stan’s left Judson Blint, the kid. In front of each of them was a glass of draft beer and between them the saltshaker they shared, it being a tenet of Stan’s creed that a little salt sprinkled into a glass of beer would restore a faltering head, a belief the kid had lately signed onto.

Across from those two, more or less taking up that opposite quadrant, was Tiny Bulcher, his fist closed around a glass that looked as though it might have cherry soda in it but which actually contained a mixture of vodka and less expensive Chianti, a drink Tiny claimed was not only robust but also good for the digestion. His digestion, anyway.

It was Tiny who’d been speaking when Dortmunder entered the room: “If that’s his attitude, fine, I put him back in the meat locker.”

People tended to look for a distraction when Tiny was telling his stories, so the room significantly brightened when everybody saw Dortmunder walk in. “There you are!” Kelp sang out.

“You got my glass,” Dortmunder said, shut the door, and sat with his back to it, putting the envelope on the table in front of him.

“Coming up,” Kelp said, and poured into the emptier glass at his disposal, then paused with the bottle hovering. “Good?”

“That’s fine,” Dortmunder agreed.

As the glass relayed from Kelp to Stan to the kid to Dortmunder, Kelp said, “We just been waiting for you to get here with the stuff.”

“You tell them what I got?”

“No,” Kelp said. “I thought you’d like that pleasure yourself.”

“Thank you, Andy,” Dortmunder said, took a sip of his drink, and nodded at the others. “I got it all here,” he said, and patted the envelope.

Judson said, “Medical records?”

“That’s just the cover story,” Dortmunder told him. “Inside, it’s a different story.”

Kelp said, “He had an interesting night, John did.”

“Andy and I,” Dortmunder said, “we thought we’d check out the place where the chess set’s gonna be when it’s outa that damn vault, and the place is a private eye’s office down in the West Village.”

Judson said, “An office?”

“Well, he’s got the whole building.”

Stan said, “That’s some private eye.”

Dortmunder shrugged. “It’s only a two–story building. Anyway, what with one thing and another, I’m on this roof I gotta get off, and down into this space behind all these buildings, and
I
thought the only way out was through this Perly’s building.”

Judson said, “Perly?”

“That’s the guy’s name. Jacques Perly.”

“Very pretty,” Tiny said, not as a compliment.

“Anyway,” Dortmunder said, “Andy was out ahead of me, turned out he went a different way, through an apartment building I didn’t notice.”

Stan said, “An apartment building you didn’t notice? How do you not notice an apartment building?”

Kelp, to offer some assistance, said, “It was nighttime, Stan, and it was very dark and confusing down in there.”

“If you say so,” Stan said.

Ignoring that, Dortmunder said, “So I went through Perly’s building, without, I might say, leaving one single trace that I went through there. And while I was there, I figured, let’s see what it looks like here. So I tossed it, and I found some stuff.”

Stan said, “What stuff?”

“Well, their other garage door opener,” Dortmunder told him. “I didn’t bring that with me, I got it at home.”

Stan said, “This is a place with a garage? In Manhattan?”

Kelp said, “You see them sometimes, Stan, with the sign.
No Parking, Active Driveway.
”

“It’s an old industrial building,” Dortmunder explained. “Converted for Perly.”

Abruptly, Judson laughed. “You got their garage door opener! You could go there any time, bing–bing, you’re in.”

“It’s loud,” Dortmunder cautioned him. “You go in that way, you’re not exactly sneaking up on anybody.”

“Still,” Judson said. “It’s nice.”

Kelp said, “John, tell them what else you got.”

“Well, Perly is a very organized guy,” Dortmunder said, taking from
Medical Records
the sheets of paper covered with copies of Perly’s neat small handwriting. “He put down the time the chess set’s getting there, who’s moving it, the security people they’re gonna have then and later, the extra security stuff they’re gonna lay on like motion sensors —”

“I hate motion sensors,” Tiny said.

“We all do, Tiny,” Dortmunder agreed. “Anyway, I made copies, so we can know what he knows.”

Tiny said, “How many copies?”

“Just one, Tiny. I didn’t wanna hang out there too long.”

“Well, I don’t wanna hang out
here
too long,” Tiny said. “Kid, read it.”

So for the next five minutes Judson read Perly’s careful notes, while the others listened in a silence that moved steadily toward awe. When he finished, the silence went on for another few seconds, until Kelp said, “They really don’t want us in there.”

“Not up to them,” Tiny said.

“Well, let’s do a little recap here,” Stan said. “I think I got it, but tell me if I’m right. This guy Perly gets to his office at ten tomorrow night.” He looked at Judson. “Right?”

“That’s what it says,” Judson agreed.

Stan nodded. “He’s got stuff to do, get ready for his house–guests. And they’re gonna show up at eleven. Am I still right?”

“Absolutely,” Judson told him. “These are the security guys and the tech guys with the equipment.”

“And with them,” Stan said, “they got Tiny’s motion sensors.”

“I don’t like motion sensors,” Tiny said.

“We know, Tiny,” Stan told him. He looked around. “They also got — what? New phones.”

“A cell phone,” Kelp said. “And a special landline phone doesn’t use Perly’s connections.”

“They’ve also got,” Dortmunder said, “a metal cabinet with thirty–two lockable drawers for the chess pieces.”

“And the complete security thing at the office door like at the airport with the doorway you go through,” Stan said. He looked around. “Am I leaving anything out?”