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

vault.”

    “Yes,” she said, as alert as a dog who’s just seen you pick up a ball.

    He said, “Do you know what it looks like? Do you know how you get there? Does it have its own elevator?”

    “I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose it could.”

    “So do I. These partners that can get down there, can you talk to them about this? Ask ‘em what it’s like?”

    “Oh, no,” she said. “I’ve hardly ever even seen one of the partners.”

    “The living ones, you mean.”

    “Wait,” she said. “Let me show you something.” And she stood, went over to the construction that contained everything, and came back with a sheet of paper. She slid it across the table to him and it was the company’s letterhead stationery. Pointing, she said, “These names across the top, that’s the name of the firm.”

    “Yeah, I got that. All the way to Klatsch.”

    “Exactly. Now these names down the left side, those are the actual current partners and associates.”

    “The ones that are alive.”

    “Yes, of course.”

    He looked, and the names were not in alphabetical order, so they must be in order of how important you were. “You’re not here,” he said.

    “Oh, no, I’m not — Those are the partners and associates, I’m —” She laughed, in a flustered way, and said, “I’m just a wee beastie.”

    Dortmunder waved a finger at the descending left–hand column. “So these guys —”

    “And women.”

    “Right. They’re the ones can go down to the vault, if they got business there.”

    “Well, the top ones, yes.”

    “So not even all of them.” Dortmunder was trying not to be exasperated with this well–meaning young person, but with all the troubles he now found staring him in the face it was hard. “So tell me,” he said, “this chess set being down there in that vault, how is this good news?”

    “Well, we know where it is,” she said. “For all those years, nobody knew where it was, nobody knew what happened to it. Now we know.”

    “And you love history.”

    Sounding confused, she said, “Yes, I do.”

    “So just knowing where the thing is, that’s good enough for you.”

    “I … I suppose so.”

    “Your grandfather would like to get his hands on it.”

    “Oh, we’d all like that, ” she said. “Naturally we would.”

    “Your grandfather hired himself an ex–cop to help him get it,” Dortmunder told her, “and the ex–cop fixed me up with a burglary charge if I don’t bring it back with me.”

    “If you don’t bring it back?” Her bewilderment was getting worse. “Where’s the burglary if you don’t bring it back?”

    “A different burglary,” he explained. “An in–the–past burglary.”

    “Oh!” She looked horribly embarrassed, as though she’d stumbled upon something she wasn’t supposed to see.

    “So the idea was,” he told her, “I come here and you tell me where the chess set is, and I go there and get it and give it to your grandfather, and his ex–cop lets me off the hook.”

    “I see.”

    “This vault under this — What is this building, sixty stories?”

    “I think so, something like that.”

    “So this vault way down under this sixty–story building, probably with its own elevator, with a special guest list that your name has to be on it or you don’t even get to board the elevator, in a building owned by a bank that used to be called Capitalists and Immigrants, two groups of people with really no sense of humor, is not a place I’m likely to walk out of with a chess set I’m told is too heavy for one guy to carry.”

    “I’m sorry,” she said, and she sounded as though she really was.

    “I don’t suppose you could get a copy of the building’s plans. The architect plans with the vault and all.”

    “I have no idea,” she said.

    “It would be research.”

    “Yes, but —” She looked extremely doubtful. “I could look into it, I suppose. The problem is, I couldn’t let anybody know what I