What's So Funny (5 page)

Feinberg, Kleinberg, Rhineberg, Steinberg, Weinberg & Klatsch was indeed, according to this board, on the twenty–seventh floor, so Dortmunder took a 16–31 elevator with a couple messengers and looked at the reception area while they transacted their businesses with the receptionist.

It was a large though low–ceilinged place with gray carpet and gray furniture in the two seating areas and black desk space in front of the receptionist and along the wall behind her. The walls, a soothing dusty green, were mostly covered with big swirling pieces of abstract art in non–startling colors, so you could feel you were hip without having to do anything about it.

The receptionist, once the messengers cleared the area and Dortmunder could step forward in their place, was just exactly too beautiful to be real, though she seemed unable or unwilling to move any part of her face. She looked at Dortmunder’s hands for the package, didn’t see one, and finally made eye contact, so Dortmunder could say, “Fiona Hemlow.”

She reached for a pen: “And you are?”

“John Dortmunder.”

She wrote that on a pad, applied herself to her phone bank, murmured briefly, then said, “She’ll be out in a moment. Do have a seat.”

“Thanks.”

The seating area had gray glass coffee tables among the gray sofas, but nothing to read, so Dortmunder sat on a sofa and looked at the paintings and tried to decide what they looked like. He’d just about come to the conclusion that what they mostly resembled was the bowl after you’ve finished the ice cream when a very short young woman in black skirt, black jacket, high–necked plain white blouse and low–heeled black shoes marched in from a side aisle, looked around, gave Dortmunder a real estate agent’s smile and strode over, hand out: “Mr. Dortmunder?”

Rising, he said, “That’s me.”

Her handshake was firm but bony. Her black hair was short, curled around her neat small ears, and her face was narrow; good–looking in an efficient sort of way. She looked to be in her mid to late twenties, and there was no point even looking for a familial resemblance between her and the medicine ball in the wheelchair.

She said, “I’m Fiona. You met my grandfather.”

“This morning, yeah. He gave me the background. Well, some of it.”

“And, I,” she said, being perky in somehow a subdued fashion, which was maybe how girl lawyers effervesced, “will give you the rest. Come along, I’ll escort you back.”

He followed her down a hall with doors on one side, all open and showing small cluttered offices, each with a neat middle–aged man or woman at a desk, intently concentrating on the phone or the computer or a bunch of pages. Then she went through an open doorway at the end of this hall into a much larger space all broken up into small pieces, like an egg carton, with chest–high walls every which way so you could see what everybody was doing. The people at the machines in these little cells were generally younger than the ones in the private offices, and Dortmunder had already come to suspect that Fiona Hemlow’s work environment was in this mob scene somewhere when she said, “I arranged a small conference room for us. Much more private. No distractions.”

“Good.”

To get to this small conference room, she had to lead him a zigzag route through the people–boxes, and he was surprised the black composition floor wasn’t covered with lines of breadcrumbs left by previous people afraid they wouldn’t be able to find their way back.

A perimeter of the boxes was reached, and Fiona led the way along a wall to the left with alternating closed doors and plate–glass windows, through which he could see the conference rooms within, some occupied by two or more people in intense head–thrust–forward conversation, some empty.

Into an empty one she led the way, shut the door, and said, with a smile, “Sit anywhere. A beverage? Coke? Seltzer?”

Dortmunder understood that in the business environment it was considered a gesture of civilization to offer the guest something to drink without booze in it, and probably a hostile act to refuse it, so he said, “Seltzer, yeah, sounds good.”

She went away to a tall construction on the end wall that contained everything necessary to life: refrigerator, a shelf of glasses, TV, DVD, notepads, pens, and paper napkins. She poured him a seltzer over ice and herself a Diet Pepsi over ice, brought him his drink and a paper napkin, and at last they could sit down and have their chat.

“So you found this thing,” Dortmunder began. “This chess set.”

She laughed. “Oh, Mr. Dortmunder, this is too good a story to just jump in and tell the end.”

Dortmunder hated stories that were that good, but okay, once again no choice in the matter, so he said, “Sure. Go ahead.”

“When I was growing up,” she said, “there was every once in a while some family talk about a chess set that seemed to make everybody unhappy, but I couldn’t figure out why. It was gone, or lost, or something, but I didn’t know why it was such a big deal.”

She drank Diet Pepsi and give him a warning finger–shake. “I don’t mean the family was full of nothing but talk about this mysterious chess set, it wasn’t. It was just a thing that came up every once in a while.”

“Okay.”

“So last summer it came up again,” she said, “when I was visiting my father at the Cape, and I asked him, please tell me what it’s all about, and he said he didn’t really know. If he ever knew, he’d forgotten. He said I should ask my grandfather, so when I got back to the city I did. He didn’t want to talk about it, turned out he was very bitter on that subject, but I finally convinced him I really wanted to know what this chess set meant in the family, and he told me.”

“And that made you find it,” Dortmunder said, “when nobody else could.”

“That’s right,” she said. “I’ve always been fascinated by history, and this was history with my own family in it, the First World War and invading Russia and all the rest of it. So I took down the names of everybody in that platoon that brought the chess set to America, and the other names, like the radio company they wanted to start, Chess King Broadcasting, and everything else I thought might be useful, and I Googled it all.”

Dortmunder had heard of this; some other nosey parker way to mind everybody else’s business. He preferred a world in which people stuck to their own knitting, but that world was long gone. He said, “You found some of these people on Google.”

“And I looked for brand names with chess words,” she said, “because why wouldn’t Alfred Northwood use that kind of name, too? A lot of the stuff I found was all dead ends, but I’m used to research, so I kept going, and then I found Gold Castle Realty, founded right here in New York in 1921, and then it turned out they were the builders of the Castlewood Building in 1948. So I looked into Gold Castle’s owners and board of directors, and there’s Northwoods all over it.”

“The sons,” Dortmunder said.

“And daughters. But mostly now grandsons and granddaughters. It had to be 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.

“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 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 was looking for.”

“That’s right.”

“And I don’t actually see how it could help,” she said. “I mean, I don’t think you could, say, dig a tunnel to the vault. So far as I know, there is no actual dirt under midtown, it’s all sub–basements and water tunnels and steam pipes and sewer lines and subway tunnels.”

“I believe,” Dortmunder said, “there’s some power lines down in there, too.”

“Exactly.”

“It doesn’t look good,” Dortmunder suggested.

“No, I have to admit.”

They brooded in silence together a minute, and then she said, “If I’d known, I’d never have told Granddad.”

“It isn’t him, it’s the ex–cop he hired.”

“I’m still sorry I told him.”

Which meant there was nothing more to say. With a deep breath that some might have been called a sigh, he moved his arms preparatory to standing, saying, “Well —”

“Wait a minute,” she said, and produced both notepad and pen. “Give me a number where I can reach you. Give me your cell.”

“I don’t have a cell,” he said. But I’m going to, he thought.

“Your landline, then. You do have a landline, don’t you?”

“You mean a phone? I got a phone.”

He gave her the number. Briskly she wrote it down, then said, “And you should have mine,” and handed him a small neat white business card, which he obediently tucked into a shirt pocket. She looked at the landline number he’d given her, as though it somehow certified his existence, then nodded at him and said, “I don’t promise anything, Mr. Dortmunder, but I will do my best to find something that might help.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“I’ll call you if I have anything at all.”

“Yeah, good idea.”

Now he did stand, and she said, “I’ll show you out.”

So he tried a joke, just for the hell of it: “That’s okay, I left a trail of breadcrumbs on my way in.”

She was still looking blank when she shook his hand good–bye at the elevators; so much for jokes.

Riding down, alone this trip, he thought his best move now was go straight over to Grand Central, take the first train out for Chicago. That’s supposed to be an okay place, not that different from a city. It could even work out. Meet up with some guys there, get plugged in a little, learn all those new neighborhoods. Get settled, then send word to May, she could bring out his winter clothes. Chicago was alleged to be very cold.

Leaving the C&I International building, he figured it’d be just as quick to walk over to the station when here on the sidewalk is Eppick with a big grin, saying, “So. You got it all worked out, I bet.”