What's So Funny? d-14 Page 9

  Fiona did very little to earn Feinberg's salary the next fifty minutes, but kept an eye on that route among the cubicles, knowing Mrs. Wheeler must eventually pass by once more, on her way out of the building. When at last, an eternity later, it did happen, Mrs. Wheeler again preceded by today's secretary, Fiona immediately leaped to her feet and went after them.

  There was always a wait of a minute or two in the reception area before the elevator arrived; that would be her opportunity. She knew that what she was doing was wrong, to speak directly to a client with whom she had no legitimate intercourse, she knew she could even theoretically be fired for what she was about to do, but she simply couldn't help herself. She. had to meet Mrs. Wheeler's eye, she had to hear Mrs. Wheeler's voice, she had to have Mrs. Wheeler herself acknowledge Fiona Hemlow's existence.

  There they were, standing in front of the elevator doors. The secretary, Fiona noticed, wasn't even trying to make conversation with this gargoyle, nor did the gargoyle seem to expect much in the way of what, in other circumstances, might be called human contact. Well, she was about to get some.

  Striding forward, covering her nervousness and insecurity with a bright smile and a brisk manner, Fiona gazed steadily at Mrs. Wheeler as she crossed the reception area, and just at the instant when the woman became aware of her approach, Fiona exclaimed, with happy surprise, "Mrs. Wheeler?"

  The distrust came off the lady like flies off a garbage truck. "Ye-ess?" The voice was a baritone cigarette croak, but with power in it; a carnivore's croak.

  "Mrs. Wheeler," Fiona hurried on, "I'm Fiona Hemlow, just a very minor lawyer here, but I did have the opportunity to work on just one tiny corner of your case, and I so hoped some day I would get the chance to tell you how much I admire you."

  Even the secretary looked startled at that one, and Mrs. Wheeler, flies rising in clouds, said, "You do?"

  "The stand you have taken is so firm," Fiona assured her. "So many people would just give up, would just let themselves be trampled on, but not you."

  "Not me," agreed Mrs. Wheeler, grim satisfaction almost melodious in that croak of a voice. Fewer flies were in evidence.

  "If I may," Fiona said, "I would just like to shake your hand."

  "My hand."

  "I don't want anything else, " Fiona assured her, and tried for a girlish-chum sort of chuckle. "I could even get in trouble just by talking to you. But of all the people I've learned about since I came to work here, you're the one I absolutely the most admire. That's why — if it isn't too much — if it isn't an imposition — may I?" And she extended her small right hand, keeping that perky hopeful smile on her face and worshipful gleam in her eye.

  Mrs. Wheeler did not take the hand. She didn't even look at it. She said, "If, Miss—"

  "Fiona Hemlow."

  "If, Miss Hemlow, Tumbril sent you after me to butter me up, please assure him it did no good."

  "Oh, no, Mrs.—"

  But the elevator had arrived. Without another glance at Fiona or the secretary, Mrs. Wheeler marched into the elevator as though it were the captain's bridge and she were usurping command. Silently, the door slid shut.

  The secretary said, "I don't think you ought to tell Jay that."

  "I don't think anybody needs to tell — Jay — anything about any of this," Fiona said, and went her way, finding herself for the first time brooding on the whole issue of family feuds that go on generation after generation, and doubting very much that her own family, in such a situation against the Northwood family, would ever be on the winning side.

  19

  BY SURREPTITIOUSLY RUNNING the last few feet to the limo — not an easy thing to do — Dortmunder managed to get absolute uncontested first shot at the seating. Settling with a sense of beleaguered triumph into that soft and comfortable backward-facing seat, he looked around to see Kelp sliding in next to him and was just as glad he wouldn't have to make conversation with Johnny Eppick the next two hundred miles.

  Eppick himself, arriving at the limo one pace too late, smiled benignly in at the two on the bench seat, said, "Enjoy the trip," paused to shut the rear door, then got into the front seat next to Pembroke and said, "We'll go back to New York now."

  "I thought we would," Pembroke said, and started the engine.

  As the car rolled down the long drive, Kelp, facing that empty rear compartment of the limo, said in a conversational voice, "We'll have to stop somewhere to eat, won't we, Johnny?"

  No answer. The glass partition behind Pembroke was half open, but apparently that wasn't enough. Kelp winked at Dortmunder and raised his voice slightly: "Isn't that so, Johnny?"

  Still nothing, so Kelp twisted around and spoke directly into the open section of the partition: "Isn't that right, Johnny?"

  Eppick's head slued around. "Isn't what right?"

  "We'll have to stop for lunch somewhere."

  "Sure. Pembroke probably knows a place."

  "Let me think," Pembroke said.

  Kelp faced front — that is, rear — and said, "So they can't hear us unless we want them to."

  Up front, Pembroke and Eppick were in conversation, presumably about lunch, but the words couldn't be made out from back here. Dortmunder said, "You're right, they can't. Is there something we want to say?"

  "About that idea of mine "with the chess set."

  "The purloined chess set thing," Dortmunder said, and nodded. "That was pretty cute, I gotta say."

  "It's more than cute for us," Kelp said.

  "It is? How?"

  "Once they're all painted red and black enamel," Kelp said, "who's to say that's the real piece or maybe some imitation we slid in, help keep all that gold from going to waste?"

  Dortmunder frowned at Kelp's profile, but then, for security reasons of not being overheard, he faced the rear of the limo again as he said, "You're acting as though we're gonna get that thing."

  "Never say die," Kelp advised.

  "Die," Dortmunder said. "We're not gonna get into that vault."

  "We'll burn that bridge when we come to it," Kelp told him. "In the meantime, you gotta talk to that granddaughter again."

  "I already asked her for building plans," Dortmunder said. "She doesn't think she can get them."

  "They'd be nice, too," Kelp said, "but what I'm thinking about is pictures of the chess set."

  "Pictures?"

  "It's been on display. It's part of a court case. There are gonna be pictures. If we wanna bring in a couple ringers on the day, we got to know what they look like."

  "They look like chess pieces in a vault under a bank," Dortmunder guessed.

  "Well, you'll talk to the granddaughter," Kelp said. "Can't do any harm."

  The food in New England was part hard black and part soft white. Fortunately, they carried national brands of beer in the dark-brown-laminated, green-glass-globed, black-flounce-skirted-waitress imitation Klondike/Yukon something or other where they broke their journey, so starvation was held at bay.

  "I like that seat, I think I'll keep it the rest of the trip," Dortmunder announced grimly when they left the scene of their designer lunch, and nobody even argued, so he got to sit up in the balcony with Kelp the whole rest of the way.

  As they neared Riverside Drive, Eppick twisted around to the space in the partition and said, "You two don't have to see Mr. Hemlow. I'll report."

  Grinning, Kelp said, "Gonna tell him the enamel chess set was your idea?"

  Eppick grinned right back. "What do you think?"

  "I think," Kelp said, "Pembroke can drop us off downtown."

  Eppick frowned a little, not sure that was part of the deal, but Pembroke, professional eyes remaining on the road, said, "Of course, sir," so that was all right.

  Soon they were easing to a stop at the curb in front of Mr. Hemlow's building, and if the uniformed doorman who came trotting out and down the steps to open first the rear — "Not us, him," Kelp said — and then the front door had any attitude toward what was coming out of this particular limous
ine, it didn't show on his face.

  Eppick, before departure, looked meaningfully back at Dortmunder and said, "You'll keep in touch. Progress, and all that."

  "Oh, sure."

  Pembroke's mild gaze was on them in the rearview mirror: "Sirs?"

  "I'm the first stop," Kelp told him. "The West Thirties."

  "Sir."

  They set off, and Kelp said, "Not so bad, go home by limo."

  "They'll probably raise my rent," Dortmunder said.

  Kelp nodded at the floor. "Is that as comfortable down there as it looks?"

  "Try it," Dortmunder suggested.

  20

  WHEN HER CUBICLE phone rang at seven-thirty, Fiona assumed it was a wrong number, or some other kind of mistake. Who would call her at the office, particularly after working hours? Certainly not Brian, who would always wait for her to phone him so he could put on tonight's gourmet dinner. Nor would it be any of her friends or relatives, who would never phone her at work, not even during the business day.

  Ring, it went again, while she tried to think it through. A wrong number would be a distraction, but if she ignored it and let it go on into voice mail, then it would merely be a distraction postponed. In fact, having rung once — twice now — it was already a distraction, taking her away from the implications of mortmain as applied to this particular real estate bequest in this thinned-out old upstate Patroon family.

  Ring. That was three; after four, it would go to voice mail.

  And what if Brian had been hit by a taxi or something and it was the hospital calling, needing to know his blood type or whatever? Not that she knew his blood type, and not that the hospital wouldn't be able to work it out for themselves, but nevertheless, just before the fourth ring that would have sent the call irrevocably down that black vertical chute into the echoless dungeon of voice mail, Fiona snapped up the receiver with her left hand, hit the button with her right, and was reaching for a pen as she said, "Fiona Hemlow."

  "Hey, you're still there." The voice was vaguely familiar, a little rough, not the sort of person she would know.

  Pen down, finger hovering over the button that would end this call, she said, "Who's that?"

  "John. You know, yesterday we talked. Hold on." Away from the phone he said, "Gimme a minute here, do you mind? I got my party." Speaking to Fiona again, he said, "You know, in your office yesterday."

  "Oh, John, yes, of course," she said, that dogged pessimistic face clear in her mind now, matching up perfectly with that weary voice. "You wanted to talk to me?"

  "Well, not on the phone, you know, not exactly. I been waiting outside here—"

  "What? Outside this building?"

  "Yeah. That's where you are, right? I thought, you come out, we could have a talk while we walk. Hold on." Off, he said, "I'm being polite. You be polite." Back, he said, "I was beginning to think, maybe you went home early—"

  "Never."

  "So you go home late."

  "Always."

  "How late? I mean, instead of hang around, I could come back— Hold on." Off, he said, "You got a watch?" There was some sort of muffled complaint and then he said, "I don't want your watch, I wanna know what time it is."

  "It's seven-thirty," Fiona said.

  "See?" he said, off. "She knows what time it is, it's seven-thirty."

  Fiona said, "How long have you been waiting?"

  "Since five. You'd be surprised, you know, how many people come out of these buildings at five. So finally, I figured, I better check this here, so I borrowed this cell phone—" Off. "I borrowed it, you're getting it back."

  "I'll come down now," Fiona said.

  The inadvertent supplier of the cell phone was long gone when Fiona reached the street, where John Dortmunder leaned against the front of the building like a small gray rebuttal to all the work ethic within. Approaching, she said, "Mr. Dortmunder, I—"

  "John, okay?" he said. "Mr. Dortmunder makes me nervous. The only time I'm Mr. Dortmunder is when I'm being arraigned."

  "All right, then," she said. "You're John, and I'm Fiona."

  "It's a deal," he said. "Which way you walk?"

  "Over to Broadway and up to the subway."

  "Okay, we'll do it."

  They got to the corner and had to wait for the light, during which he said, "Mainly what I want is pictures."

  She couldn't think of what. "Pictures?"

  "Of the thing. The thing in the vault."

  "Oh," she said. "The chess set."

  For some reason, he didn't like to hear those words spoken out in public. "Yeah, yeah, that's it," he said, and patted the air downward in front of himself as though wanting to tell her to pipe down without being rude about it. All at once, she was aware that other people, all around them, were standing here waiting for the light to change, and she piped down.

  WALK. They walked.

  "Well, of course we have pictures of it," she said, more quietly, as they crossed Fifth Avenue. "The entire— Well, the entire you-know was photographed and measured when the law firms accepted custody."

  "Measured; that's good, too."

  "I could e-mail it all to you," she said.

  "No, you couldn't."

  They had reached the other curb, where Fiona stopped, waited for the nearby walkers to move on, and said, "I could print it out for you."

  "Oh, yeah?"

  "That's better anyway. Absolutely no record."

  "No record, that's good."

  "We'll go back to the office," she decided, and they turned around.

  DON'T WALK.

  She said, "So you're really going to go ahead and do this, even though you hate everything about the vault?"

  "Your grandfather and the other guy like to see forward motion," he told her. "I'm doing what I can to keep everybody happy."

  WALK.

  Shouldn't he be angry about this situation? Fiona felt he should certainly be angry at her, if not her grandfather, for making this whole thing happen. And yet, he just seemed fatalistic and tired, trying not to go into that vault but sliding there inexorably, after just that one push from her. "I'm sorry, John," she said.

  "It isn't you," he said. "What I'm coming to a realization about," he said, as she withdrew from her wallet the card that would let her back into the C&I International building, "is, this is all the mistakes of my past life, coming back to haunt me. In order to pay for all those little misdemeanors and all those little lapses from all the time before I reformed, I gotta do an illegal entry into a bank vault that's impossible to get into and even if you could get into it, which you can't, doubly impossible to get out of, carrying a weight. Half a weight."

  During this speech, Fiona had carded them into the building and now led the way toward the elevators, but "Hold on," he said.

  Surprised, she turned to see him standing still in the gleaming high-ceilinged gray marble lobby. "Did you want something? The snack shop's closed."

  "I wanted to look at it," he said.

  "Oh."

  So they both looked at the lobby, Fiona trying to see it now through John Dortmunder's eyes, seeing it for the first time, not her own eyes which hadn't really seen the lobby as anything but another blank part of her daily commute for over a year.

  The place was very different through his eyes. On their left was the chest-high security station with the wall-mounted TV monitors behind it and the two gray-uniformed security men on duty, whom she'd barely noticed all this time because they knew and recognized her so that she never since the first week or so had had to show her Feinberg ID. But there they were nevertheless, looking in Fiona and John's direction with casual interest because they weren't at this moment in transit across the lobby but simply standing in one place, not a normal lobby occurrence.

  What else? The three shops on their right with pane glass windows facing the lobby, selling (1) snacks and reading matter, (2) luggage, and (3) stationery and computer software, were all closed now, though well-lit within.

  Across the
rear wall of the lobby were the brushed-steel doors of the elevators. To their left was the marked door to the staircase, for emergencies, and to the right of the elevator doors was another brushed-steel door that Fiona had never noticed before. Twice a day she'd passed it, and never noticed.

  With a silent glance at her, John walked toward the rear of the lobby. Fiona followed, knowing where he was headed. "I'll get the elevator."

  "Good."

  They both angled closer to that door on the right, him more so than her, but neither went directly to it, because after all two security men behind them had nothing better to do than watch people moving. However, she was close enough to see — so he must see it, too — that discreet gold letters on the door said NO ADMITTANCE and that it had a card slot like all the other entry card slots in her life, but no doorknob.

  "Uh huh," he said, and she carded for the elevator.

  Putting the card away in her wallet, she said, "You say you reformed?"

  "Right."

  "When was that?"

  "When I met your grandfather."

  "That's what I thought," she said, and the elevator door slid open.

  Fiona's access to the Feinberg computer system was not total — there were distant tunnels of data, mostly involving money or foreign linkages, that required passwords beyond her station in life — but much of Feinberg's knowledge was available to her. Being a wee beastie in these offices meant being a utility infielder, on tap to assist any of the more important associates who might need a little delving and precedent hunting done, so her access had to be broad and deep, so quite naturally included the files on the chess set known in the court papers as Chicago Chess Set, its official provenance not going farther back than Alfred X. Northwood's long-ago train journey from that city to New York, chess set in tow.

  "Chicago Chess Set," she read from the screen. "Yes, here it is. How much of it do you want?"