What's So Funny by Donald Westlake Read Free Book Online Page A

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.

Chapter 8
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    She blinked. “I’m sorry?”
    “Don’t you be sorry,” he 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