What's So Funny? d-14 Page 11

  Belatedly deciding it would be a mistake to draw a lot of attention to himself, Judson veered from his monitor-bound route toward the register instead, deeper along that wall. They would think he was merely looking for one of the tenants here, wouldn't they?

  Judson had no real business in the C&I building, not on Sunday nor on any other day. He had just been feeling so bad about John ever since he'd casually demolished everybody's hopes yesterday by saying flat out that they'd never get into that bank vault, and had seen the sag of John's face like a wedge of cheese in a microwave.

  But why should they believe him? He was the kid, what did he know? Of course, it was just that all the others were pretending there was hope, to buoy John's spirits, and the kid had been too dumb to go along, so once he'd burst the bubble, there was nothing left for anybody else to say.

  But was he right? Was it true that the vault was impregnable? Rising from bed in his Spanish Chelsea apartment this morning, he'd known the only thing he could do was look at the place for himself, just in case — just in case, you know — there might somehow, in some little tiny way nobody else had noticed, be a way to squiggle into that vault after all.

  And back out. That was one of the most important life lessons he'd learned so far: It's nice to be able to get into a place, but it's essential to be able to get out again.

  Over at the big black square rectangle of the register, with all the white letters and numbers on it defining every company with space in this building, Judson gazed upward, hoping the guards had lost interest in him (but certainly not looking over there to find out), and found himself marveling at how many different names there are in this world. All individual, most pronounceable. Think of that.

  "Help you?"

  Judson jumped like a hiccup, and turned to see one of the guards right there next to him, frowning at him, being polite in a very threatening way. "Oh, no!" he blurted. "I'm just… waiting for a friend of mine. He didn't come down yet, that's all."

  "Where does he work?" the guard asked, pretending to be helpful, and then, more suddenly, more sharply, "Don't look at the board! Where does he work?"

  Where does he work? Judson pawed desperately through his short-term memory, in search of just one of those names he'd so recently been reading and marveling on, and every last one of them was gone. His mind was a blank. "Well," he said. "Uh…"

  "Hey, there you are! Sorry I'm late."

  Judson turned his deer-in-the-headlights eyes and there was Andy Kelp, striding with great confidence across the sun-gleaming marble lobby, like the galactic commander in a science-fiction saga. "Oh," Judson said, relieved and bewildered. What words were he supposed to speak? "I," he said, "I forgot where you work. Isn't that stupid?"

  "I wish I could," Andy said, cheerful as ever. "Let's not go up there, it's too nice a day."

  "Oh. Okay."

  Andy nodded a greeting at the guard. "How ya doin?"

  "Fine," the guard said, but he didn't sound it.

  Judson felt the guard's eyes on his back all the way out to Fifth Avenue. Once safely out there among the tourists and the taxis, Andy said, "Let's mosey southward a little." And, as they did so, he said, "Just implanting your facial features on the staff there, eh?"

  "I wasn't trying to."

  "No? What were you trying to do?"

  "I felt so bad about John, I thought, why don't I just take a look, see if maybe…"

  They stopped for a red light among the tourists, many of whom appeared to have been inflated beyond manufacturer's specifications, and Andy said, "My thought exactly. I even went to double-o that golden dome, the least I can do is give a gander to a bank. I get there, I can see you're in need of assistance."

  "I was," Judson said humbly.

  "See, kid — The light's green."

  They crossed, amid all that padding, and Andy said, "See, if you're gonna case a place, it's not a good idea you give them a glossy photograph of yourself. What you do, you come in, you walk over to the elevators, you give that other door the eye, you look at your watch, you shake your head, you walk out. You don't look at guards, you don't stand still, you don't hang around, but when you're outside you've got the situation cold."

  "There's no way to get into the vault," Judson said.

  "You said that yesterday."

  "But now I know it."

  "I tell you what," Andy said. "It's a nice day, we're out here anyway, let's go see did John get over it."

  24

  JOHN WASN'T WATCHING football, and May didn't like that at all. Here it was November, the middle of the season, every team still at least theoretically in the running, and John doesn't even sit down to watch Sunday football. Not even the pregame show. It was worrying.

  May was in the kitchen, involved in that worrying, when the street doorbell sounded, a noise she was still getting used to, that bell having been on the blink for many years until the landlord abruptly fixed it as a run-up to a rent increase. But now, unasked for and unneeded, here it was working again, and the sound had already trained her enough so that she automatically went to the little round grid in the kitchen wall and said into it, "Hello?"

  "It's Andy," said a garbled voice that could have been any Martian.

  Andy? Andy doesn't ring doorbells, he picks locks, you don't know Andy's going to make a visit until he's sitting in the living room.

  What was going on here? John doesn't watch football, Andy Kelp doesn't pick locks, the world is coming to an end. "Come on up," she said dubiously, and pushed the button below the grid.

  Did he plan to ring the upstairs doorbell, too? Well, we don't have to put up with that. So May walked down the corridor from the kitchen to the apartment front door, passing along the way the open door on her right to the room where John sat brooding in the direction of the switched-off television set but not, she knew, actually seeing it.

  With the apartment door open, she could hear the asymmetric tramp of feet coming up the stairs; more than one, then. And yes, into view from the staircase came Andy and with him that nice kid Judson who'd attached himself to the group recently.

  "Harya," Andy said, approaching. "I brought the kid."

  "I see that. Is he the reason you rang the bell?"

  Looking a bit sheepish, Andy grinned and said, "Basically, yeah. We don't want to give him too many bad habits all at once."

  "Hi, Miss May," Judson said.

  "Hi, yourself," May said, and stepped back from the doorway. "Well, come on in. John's in the living room, not watching football."

  "Oh," Andy said. "That doesn't sound good."

  "That's what I think."

  They went in to see John as though entering a sickroom. Brightly, May said, "John, look who's here. It's Andy and Judson."

  He sort of looked at them. "Harya," he said, and stopped sort of looking at them.

  "Sit down," May said, so Andy and Judson perched uncomfortably on the sofa and she wrung her hands a little, not a normal gesture for her, and said, "Can I get anybody a beer?"

  Andy could be seen to be about to say yes, but John, in a voice of doom, said, "No, thanks, May," so Andy closed his mouth again.

  "Well," May said, and sat in her own chair, and everybody carefully didn't look at John.

  Andy said, "This weather. For November, you know, this weather's pretty good."

  "Very sunny out there," Judson added.

  "That's nice," May said, and gestured at the window. "In here, you hardly notice."

  "Well, it's really sunny," Andy said.

  "Good," May said.

  And then nobody said anything, for quite some time. Andy and Judson frowned mightily, obviously racking their brains in search of topics of conversation, but nothing. The silence in the room stretched on, and everybody in there except John became increasingly tongue-tied and desperate. John just continued to brood in the direction of the television set. Then:

  "The problem is," John said.

  Everybody turned to him, very alert. But then he didn't
say anything else, just shook his head.

  They waited; nothing. Finally May said, "Yes, John? The problem?"

  "Well, I'm thinking about it backwards," John said. "That's what's been wrong."

  May said, "Backwards? I don't follow."

  "When the kid said yesterday, we can't get into the vault—"

  "I'm sorry I said that, John," Judson said. "I've been wanting to tell you that, I'm sorry."

  "No, you were right," John said. "That's what I've been saying all along, there's no way to get into that vault."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Fuggedabodit. See, what it is I gotta do, I gotta stop thinking about getting into the vault because I can't get into the vault. That's the backwards part."

  Judson said, "It is?"

  "The mountain," John explained, "gotta go to whatsisname. Mohammed."

  Fearing the worst, May said, "John?"

  "You know," John said, and gestured vaguely with both hands. "He won't go to that, so that's gotta go to him. Same with the vault. We can't get in at the chess set, case closed, no discussion, so what we gotta do is get the chess set to come out to us."

  "That's brilliant, John," Andy said. "How do we do that?"

  "Well," John said, "that's the part I'm working on."

  25

  THOUGH FIONA AND Brian ended their workdays at radically different hours, they began them together, up no later than eight, soon out of the apartment, a stop at Starbucks for coffee and a sweet roll as breakfast on the subway, then the ride downtown together until Fiona got off the train in midtown, Brian continuing on toward his cable company employer's studios down in Tribeca.

  This Monday morning was the same, with the usual hurried peck on the lips as Fiona left the train, paused to throw her empty coffee cup into the same trash barrel as always, and walked up the flights of concrete stairs to the street, then down Broadway and over to Fifth, where a poor beggar huddled against the chill air near the entrance to C&I.

  Fiona reached into her coat pocket in search of a dollar — she always gave such unfortunates a dollar, not caring how they might spend it — when she realized it wasn't a beggar at all, it was Mr. Dortmunder. Terribly embarrassed, feeling her face flush crimson, hoping he hadn't seen her reach into her pocket or at least hadn't interpreted it for what it was, she forced a large smile onto her face, stopped in front of him and, too brightly, said, "Mr. Dortmunder! Hello again."

  "I figured," he said, "we should maybe talk out here, not all the time up in Feinberg. You got a few minutes, we could walk around the block?"

  She checked her watch, and she was in fact running a little early today, so she said, "Of course." To make it up to him for mistaking him for a beggar, she said, "I'd be happy to."

  "Nice," he said. "So we'll walk."

  So they walked, amid the morning scurry of office workers. The Monday crowds on Fifth Avenue were very different from Sunday's; those tourists were still in their hotel rooms, discussing the comparative excitements of a sightseeing bus around Manhattan or a ride on the Staten Island ferry, while the people on the sidewalks this morning were much faster, much leaner, and much more tightly focused on where they were going and why. It was hard for Fiona and Mr. Dortmunder to move among them at the slower pace required for conversation, but they tried, taking the occasional shoulder block along the way.

  "What it is," Mr. Dortmunder said, "we got a real problem getting at that thing down in that place, like I told you last time."

  "I'm sorry this whole thing got started," she said.

  "Well, so am I, but here we are." He shrugged. "The thing is," he said, "your grandfather and the guy working for him, they're pretty set on getting that thing. Or, I mean, me getting that thing."

  She felt so guilty about this, much worse than mistaking him for a beggar. "Would it help," she said, "if I talked to my grandfather?"

  "Defeatist isn't gonna get far with him."

  That sounded like her grandfather, all right. Sighing, she said, "I suppose not."

  "But there maybe could be another way," he said.

  Surprised, ready to be pleased, she said, "Oh, really?"

  "Only," he said, "it's gonna mean I'm gonna have to ask you to help out."

  She stopped, absorbed a couple rabbit punches from the hurrying throng, and said, "Oh, no, Mr. Dortmunder!"

  They'd reached the corner now, and he said, "Come on around here, before they knock you out."

  The side street was easier. Walking along it, she said, "You have to understand, Mr. Dortmunder, I'm an attorney. I'm an officer of the court. I can't be involved in crime."

  "That's funny," he said. "I've heard of one or two lawyers involved in crime."

  "Criminal lawyers, yes."

  "That's not what I mean."

  A luggage store with an inset entrance wasn't yet open for business. Pulling him into the space, surrounded by luggage behind windows, she said, "Let me explain." Sure.

  "Feinberg," she said, "is a respectable serious law firm. If they knew I was even this much involved in— Mr. Dortmunder, let's be honest here."

  "Uh," he said.

  "What we're talking about," she said, "is robbery. Burglary. It's a felony, Mr. Dortmunder."

  "That's what it is, all right."

  "You simply can't ask me to be involved in a felony," she said. "I mean, I'm trying to be good at what I do."

  "I'm not asking," he said, "for you to slip this thing out under your coat or anything. Let me tell you the situation, okay?"

  "I'll have to tell my grandfather," she said, "that neither you nor he nor anyone else can expect any help from me of any kind. Not on this matter."

  "That's nice," he said. "I'd like to tell him the same thing myself. Will you listen to what I got to say?"

  Fiona could be mulish when pushed. Feeling pushed, face closed, she said, "Go right ahead."

  "Those specs and pictures you gave me of the thing—"

  "Already I'm in so deep!"

  "Miss Hemlow," he said, "you don't know deep. Here's the thing about those specs. One of the rooks is the wrong weight."

  This snagged her attention. "It's what?"

  "It weighs three pounds less than the other ones," he said. "We figure, Northwood had a fake made up, sold the real one off for railroad fare."

  "My goodness."

  "Yeah, I know. Anyway, your company has one of these family members, right?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "If we could get the news to that one," he said, "that there's a problem with one of the pieces, then maybe there's problems with more than one, maybe somebody in the family was up to some hanky-panky, and maybe he wants to—"

  "She."

  "Okay. Maybe she wants to get the whole chess set investigated by some experts. You know," he said, and his eyes actually gleamed. "Bring it up out of that vault, bring it to the expert's lab or wherever it is, have the thing there for a while."

  "Oh, my God," she said.

  "I can't do it," he pointed out. "You can see that I can't go talk to this person, how do I know any of this stuff? You could talk to her."

  "Oh, my God," she said, more faintly.

  He cocked his head and studied her. "Will you do it? I gotta tell you, it's the only way your grandfather's gonna get the thing."

  "I have to," she stammered, "I have to think." And she fled the storefront, leaving him there, looking more than ever like a beggar.

  26

  WHEN DORTMUNDER GOT back to the apartment May was already off to her job, but she'd left a note on a Post-it stuck to the six-pack in the refrigerator, where he'd be sure to see it. "Call Epic on his cell," it read, and gave the number.

  "I'd like to call Eppick in his cell," he muttered, but transferred the note to the wall beside the phone and dialed.

  "Eppick!"

  "It's, uh, John. You wanted me to—"

  "That's right." Eppick sounded in a hurry. "Grab a cab, come—"

  Dortmunder waited. "Yeah?"

  "— In
the lobby."

  "What?"

  "I'll be there before—"

  "Where?"

  Silence. Not a hovering silence, or a pregnant silence, more of a bat cave silence; they're all asleep in there. Then a dial tone, so he hung up.

  Try again? Why? Dortmunder turned back toward the refrigerator, remembering the six-pack that had been used so effectively as a means of communication, and the phone rang.

  Well, there were some things you simply had to go through. He went back and picked up the phone: "Yeah?"

  "I'm in this cab, the recep — buildings bounce — soon as you — read me?"

  "No."

  A little silence, then, " — These cell phones!" It sounded like an expletive might have been deleted.

  "I understand," Dortmunder said, "they're the wave of the future."

  "Then the future's looking bleak. I want you to—" Dial tone.

  "Good-bye," Dortmunder told the dial tone, achieved a can of beer from the six-pack and went to the living room to get the Daily News May had been reading earlier this morning. He brought it back to the kitchen table, because he knew damn well Eppick was not a guy to give up, and sat there for a while turning newspaper pages. Since he didn't look at the paper more than a couple times a week, usually when he found one on a subway seat, he could never figure out what all those comic strips were all about. Were those supposed to be punch lines over there on the right?

  In the sports section, the standings were about as expected. It occurred to him that sports might be more interesting if the football players wore basketball uniforms and the basketball players wore football uniforms, and the phone rang.

  Okay; he went over and answered: "Here."

  ''That's better. John, you gotta grab a cab and come right up to Mr. Hemlow's place."

  "The reception's a lot better now."

  "I made the cab stop at a pay phone. Come up right away, John, Mr. Hemlow isn't happy."

  "Why should Hemlow be happy?"