What's So Funny? Part 12

"Oh, they're fine," Kelp a.s.sured him. "Let's see what we got here."

"One little puzzle," Dortmunder said.

Kelp had picked up a photo of the complete chess set, but now he looked at Dortmunder. "You mean, aside from how do we get our hands on it?"

"One of the rooks," Dortmunder told him, "is light."

"Light? How do you mean, light?"

Using the photo Kelp was holding, Dortmunder pointed to white king's rook and said, "That one's about three pounds lighter than this one," pointing to white queen's rook, "but that one's the same as the two on the other side."

While Dortmunder riffled through more photos, Kelp stared at the picture of the entire set. "You mean all of these others weigh the same?"

"Almost. There's little tiny differences because there's different jewels in each one. Here, here's the separate pictures of those two. The one on the right there is the light one."

"King's rook," Kelp read the caption at the bottom of the picture and looked at the squat golden castle decorated with four sparkly pearls. "I thought rook meant to cheat somebody."

"Outa three pounds, I know. But one of these pages here uses the word 'rook' and then that thing, that para thing..." He finger-drew in the air the icon of a lying-down smile face.

"I know what you mean," Kelp said.

"Good, (or castle) it says. So that's a word for it."

Kelp bent over the individual pictures of the two white rooks, then leaned back and shook his head. "Maybe," he said, "we'll be able to tell more when we've got 'em in our hands. Heft them."

Dortmunder frowned at him. "Got 'em in our hands? Don't you remember, they're still in that vault. This is just so Eppick and Hemlow think something's happening, but Andy, nothing is happening."

"I don't know why you're so negative," Kelp told him. "Look at these pictures. Every day, we get closer."

"Yeah, and I know to what," Dortmunder said, and the phone rang. "That's probably Eppick now," he said, getting to his feet. "Wanting to know is it time to send the arresting officers."

"Give the man credit for a little patience," Kelp suggested.

Dortmunder barked into the phone and Stan Murch's voice said, "The kid and I just finished breakfast, in a place over by his place."

"That's nice," Dortmunder said, and told Kelp, "Stan and Judson just had breakfast together."

"Why's he telling you that?"

"We didn't get there yet," Dortmunder said, and into the phone he said, "Why are you telling me that? This isn't something else about that dome, is it?"

"No, no," Stan said. "I gave that up."

"Good."

"Kind of like a lost love."

"Oh, yeah?"

"I'm traveling strictly Flatbush Avenue these days."

"Well, it's still Brooklyn."

"But no dome. Listen, the kid and me," Stan said, "were wondering, since the dome thing's no good, did you maybe have something going on with that cop."

"Mostly," Dortmunder said, "he's got something going on with me."

"If we could help-"

"I'm beyond help."

Kelp said, "Tell them come over. The more brains the merrier."

"Andy says you should come over to my place, bring your brains."

"We'll be right there," Stan said, and they were, but they used the traditional entry method of ringing the street doorbell, and it so happened they did so just as the phone rang again.

"You get the phone," Kelp suggested, standing, "and I'll get the door."

"Good." Dortmunder crossed to the phone and said, "Harya," into it as Kelp pressed the release b.u.t.ton on the wall and walked away down the hall to wait for the arrivals to climb the two flights.

A voice that could only belong to Tiny Bulcher said, "Dortmunder, I worry about you."

"Good," Dortmunder said. "I wouldn't want to worry about me all alone."

"You having trouble with that cop?"

"Yes. Listen, Andy's here and now Stan and Judson are just showing up."

"You're having a meeting without me?"

"It didn't start out to be a meeting. People just keep showing up, like a wake. You wanna come over?"

"I'll be right there," Tiny said, and was.

There were four chairs around the kitchen table, and Judson could sit on the radiator, so once Tiny had been added to the mix they were all more or less comfortable. Since Dortmunder had just finished describing the current situation to Stan and Judson, Kelp did the honors with Tiny, including a description of Eppick's apparently broad and entirely unnecessary background data bank on everybody in the room.

"There are people," Tiny commented, "who, when they retire, they oughta retire."

"Tiny," Dortmunder said, "the way it looks, I'm the only one he's really putting the pressure on. When I don't get that chess set, I'm the one he's gonna blame, n.o.body else."

"San Francisco isn't a bad place to hang out sometimes," Tiny observed.

"I was thinking Chicago," Dortmunder told him, "and Andy suggested Miami, but Eppick knows all about that. He tells me, with all the millions of cops all connected now, he'll find me wherever I go."

Tiny nodded, thinking it over. "It's true," he said. "It's harder to disappear than it used to be in the old days. In the old days, you just burn your fingerprints off with acid and there you are."

"Ow," Judson said. "Wouldn't that hurt?"

"Not for twenty-five years," Tiny told him. "Anyway, you can't burn DNA off. Not and live through it."

Kelp said, "You know, we got another little conundrum here. I know it isn't as important as the main problem-"

"The vault," Dortmunder said.

"That's the problem I was thinking of," Kelp agreed. "Anyway," he told the others, "you see these pictures of these two rooks."

"Those are castles," Stan said.

"Yes, but," Kelp said, "rook is a name for them in chess. Anyway, everything weighs the way it's supposed to, except this one rook here is three pounds lighter than the other rooks."

They all leaned over the pictures, including Judson, who got up from the radiator and came over to stand beside the table, gazing down. Stan said, "They look alike."

"But you see the weight," Kelp said. "They wrote it down right there."

Stan nodded. "Maybe it's a typo."

"This stuff is all pretty careful," Kelp said.

Dortmunder said, "I don't find this as gripping as the main problem."

"No, of course not," Kelp said. "It's just a mystery, that's all."

"No, it isn't," Judson said. "That part's easy."

They all watched him go back to sit on the radiator again. Kelp said, "You know why this one's different."

"Sure." Judson shrugged. "You just got to put yourself in that sergeant's place, Northwood. There he is in Chicago with this thing, very valuable but it weighs almost seven hundred pounds. He's as broke as the other guys, but he's gotta get out of there fast before the platoon gets back. So he has a guy, maybe a jeweler, somebody, make up a fake, looks just like the real thing. That way, he can sell the pearls, sell the gold, get on that train, show up in New York in style and start his wheeling and dealing."

Everybody thought that was brilliant. Tiny said, "Kid, you're an a.s.set."

"Thank you, Tiny."

Judson beamed all over. Since he also looked as though any second he might start to blush, everybody else went back to looking at the pictures and talking to one another, Kelp saying, "So when we do our own little switcheroo, we want to make sure we don't do this guy."

Dortmunder said, "What do you mean, our own switcheroo? We got a vault between us and them, remember?"

Stan said, "I gotta say, from my perspective, it does seem worth the effort."

"Effort isn't the question," Dortmunder said. "The vault is the question."

"So let's ask the kid," Tiny said. "Kid, you solved the mystery of the rook; very good. Here's question number two: How do we get into the vault?"

Judson looked surprised. "We can't," he said.

22.

DORTMUNDER JUST SAT there and let the conversation wash over him, like a hurricane over a levee. To have his own conviction of the impregnability of the C&I International vault confirmed by Judson Blint - out of the mouths of babes, as it were - merely put the rat poison on the cake. It was all over, in the immortal words of Charles Willeford, except the paperwork.

The others around the table didn't want to believe it. "There's always a way to do anything," Stan insisted.

"And if there isn't," Kelp said, "you make one up."

"Exactly."

"So make one up," Tiny suggested.

The silence that ensued was brief but telling, before Stan said, "Well, you can't do a bomb scare."

"n.o.body," Tiny pointed out, "said you could."

"The idea with a bomb scare," Stan went on, "is they evacuate the building, then you can do what you gotta do, but it doesn't work that way. You try a bomb scare around this town, the building doesn't evacuate, it fills up to the brim, with cops, firemen, insurance adjusters, short con artists, farmers' markets, and doc.u.mentary filmmakers. So forget the bomb scare."

"I'll do that," Tiny said.

"And you can't overpower the lobby guards," Kelp said, "you know, with handguns and masks and sets of cuffs and all that, on account of the camera surveillance."

"That's too bad," Tiny said. "It sounds like it might've been fun."

"Well, it won't work that way," Kelp advised him.

"So here's a question," Tiny said, and everybody except Dortmunder looked alert. "Let's say," Tiny said, "somebody went in there in disguise, to look like one of the people got the okay to go down to this vault. Not me, one of you guys. In a suit, shine up your shoes, like that."

Kelp said, "I think you gotta show ID."

"ID is not a complete impossible," Tiny said. "For instance, you follow one of the bank execs home one night, out to Connecticut, you come back with the ID, family finds him next morning, healthy but tied up and gagged in a car in a commuter railroad parking lot."

They thought about that, then turned to Dortmunder. Kelp said, "John?"

It was his own house, so he couldn't even go home. He roused himself to say, "Special elevator down from the lobby, special card stick into the elevator door, don't know what extra stuff they got downstairs, but the lobby guards know all the execs or they get fired."

"Also," Judson said, just to sink that boat one more time, "it weighs almost seven hundred pounds. You're gonna look funny carrying that in your suit."

Into the next silence, Stan inserted, "What if-?"

They all, except Dortmunder, looked at him. Kelp said, "And?"

"I was just thinking," Stan said. "About safe-deposit boxes, you know. One of us gets a safe-deposit box, then we got a legitimate reason, go down to the vault."

"I think," Kelp said carefully, "it's a different vault, or a different part of the vault. Am I right, John?"

"Yes," Dortmunder said.