What's So Funny? Part 21

ON WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, two days after his lunch with Jay Tumbril, Jacques Perly completed a very encouraging conference with two international art thieves and a sometime producer for the Discovery Channel, then drove back to the city from Fairfield County in bucolic Connecticut. The West Side Highway deposited him onto Fourteenth Street in Manhattan, and a few deft maneuvers later he steered the Lamborghini onto Gansevoort Street, thumbing the beeper on his visor as he did so. The battered old green garage door that obediently lifted in response was in a low squat structure that perfectly suited the neighborhood; an old stone industrial building converted to more upscale uses without losing its original rough appearance.

Perly steered into the building, beeped the door shut, and drove up the curving concrete ramp to where the conversion began. The high stone exterior walls up here were painted a creamy white, and ceiling spotlights pinpointed the potted evergreens in front of his office door. This s.p.a.ce was large enough for two cars to park, though usually, as now, it contained only Perly's. Leaving the Lamborghini, he crossed to the faux Tudor interior wall and stepped into his reception room, where Delia looked up from her typing to say, "Hi, Chief. How'd it go?"

"Well, Delia," Perly said, with justifiable pride, "I believe we'll have an amphora on our hands in very short order. And thirty minutes of airtime."

"I knew you'd do it, Chief," she said. She'd never tell him, but she loved him madly.

"I thought I might," he admitted. "What's doing here?"

"The crew's reported on that Fiona Hemlow matter," she said. "Jerry sent his stuff over by messenger, Margo e-mailed it in, and Herkimer stopped by with it. Fritz says he'll have pix for you by the end of the day. It's all on your desk."

"Good girl. Man the barricades."

"Always, Chief."

He went into his inner office, a large room with tall windows across the back and a big domed skylight in thick gla.s.s, framed in steel. The furniture was clubby and quietly expensive, the wall decorations mostly pictures of recovered art. His desk, large and old and dark wood, had come from one of the daily New York newspapers that had gone under during the final newspaper strike of 1978. He sat at it now and drew to himself the three packets of information delivered by his crew.

Fifteen minutes later, he thumbed the intercom. "Delia, get me Jay Tumbril."

"Right, Chief."

It took another six minutes, while he skimmed the reports once more, before he got the buzz, picked up his phone, and said, "Jay."

"I'll put Mr. Tumbril right on," said a girl whose English accent was probably real.

"Fine." Perly had forgotten that Jay Tumbril was one of those people who scored points for himself in some obscure game if he made you get on the line first.

"Jacques."

"Jay."

"That was quick."

"It doesn't take long when there's nothing there."

"Nothing?"

"Well, not much. There's one little- But we'll get to that. The girl first. Fiona Hemlow."

"Yes."

"She's clean, Jay. A good student, conscientious, as obedient as a nun."

Jay, sounding faintly displeased, said, "Well, that's fine, then."

"Comes from money," Perly went on. "Her grandfather, still alive, was an inventor, a chemist, came up with some patents made him and the rest of the family rich."

"So she's not after Livia's money, is what you're saying."

"She isn't, no."

"Yes? I don't follow."

"For the last three years," Perly said, putting a finger on the name on the top sheet of Herkimer's report, "Ms. Hemlow has been shacked up with a character named Brian Clanson."

"He's the one you're dubious about."

"He is." Perly tapped Clanson's name with a fingernail, as behind him his computer dinged that an e-mail was coming in. "I ask myself," he said, "if this character put up our little nun to ingratiate herself with Mrs. Wheeler."

"So he'd be after her money."

"It's only a possibility," Perly cautioned him. "At this point, I have no reason to believe anything at all. I just look at this character, and I see someone from, to be honest, a white-trash background, a community college education, no contacts of any consequence in the city, and an extremely marginal job as some sort of ill.u.s.trator for a cable channel aimed at Neanderthals. I can believe Ms. Hemlow hooked up with him because he has that redneck charm and because she's a naif who thinks well of everybody, but I can also believe Mr. Clanson hooked up with her because she has money, or at least her grandfather does."

"Mmm."

Turning in his swivel chair, Perly saw the e-mail was from Fritz, and opened it. The photographs. "Further than that," he said, "I can believe he came to the conclusion that Mrs. Wheeler was the likeliest prospect among your firm's clients for him to get his hands on."

"So you think he set the girl to go after Mrs. W."

Perly opened the photo marked BC and looked at Brian Clanson, arms folded, leaning against a tree in a park somewhere, big boned but skinny, like a stray dog, with a loose untrustworthy smile. "I'll only say this, Jay," he said, looking Clanson in the eye, "it's out of character for that girl to have imposed herself on Mrs. Wheeler all on her own. There has to have been a reason, and I can't find any other reason in the world except Brian Clanson." And he nodded at the grinning fellow, who showed no repentance.

Jay said, "So you want to look into Clanson a little deeper."

"Let's see if this is the first time," Perly said, "he's tried to work something funny with his betters."

"Go get him," Jay Tumbril said.

38.

AT THE SAME TIME that Jacques Perly and Jay Tumbril were discussing the investigation into Fiona Hemlow and Livia North wood Wheeler, those two ladies, all unknowing of the scrutiny, were discussing the results of Fiona's own investigations. "There's just no record," Fiona was saying, spreading her hands in helplessness as she stood in front of Mrs. W's desk.

Mrs. W had a photo of the chess set displayed on her computer, and she now frowned at it with the same mistrustful expression that Perly, downtown, wore when gazing on the photo of Brian Clanson. "It's vexing," she said. "It's just vexatious."

"Your father, Alfred Northwood," Fiona said, consulting her memo pad, in which she had placed careful and thorough notes of the history just as though she hadn't had it memorized a long time ago, "came to New York from Chicago in 1921. We know that for certain. We know he was in the army in Europe in the First World War and became a sergeant, and went to Chicago after he left the army, though I couldn't find any records of what he was doing there. There's also no record of his having the chess set in the army or in Chicago-"

"Well, certainly not the army," Mrs. W snapped. "Nothing as valuable as that."

"No, ma'am. We know your father's friends and business a.s.sociates called it the Chicago chess set because he brought it from there, but I can't find any circ.u.mstance in which he called it the Chicago chess set."

"Or anything else."

"Or anything else," agreed Fiona. "There is no record that he ever said where it came from, or how he happened to own it. I'm sorry, Mrs. W, there's just no history."

"Well, there, you see," Mrs. W said, with an irritated head-shake at the picture of the chess set. "Behind every great fortune there is a crime."

Alert, Fiona said, "There is?" because she found that a truly interesting idea.

But now Mrs. W's irritated headshake was directed at Fiona. "Balzac, dear," she said. "Pere Goriot. And I fear that the crime behind my family's fortune may have more than a little to do with that chess set."

"Yes, ma'am."

Again Mrs. W frowned at the picture on the computer screen. "Will the crime be found out? Is there risk in that ugly toy? Is there anything to do other than let sleeping chessmen lie?"

"I don't know, Mrs. W."

"No, you don't. Well, thank you, Fiona. I'll think about this."

"Yes, ma'am." Fiona turned to go, then said, "Mrs. W, there is something else."

"Yes?"

"I wasn't even going to mention it, it's so silly."

"Well, either mention it or don't mention it," Mrs. W told her. "You can't dither forever."

"No, ma'am. It's my boyfriend, Brian."

Mrs. W's eyebrows lowered. "Is something wrong there?"

"Oh, no, nothing like that," Fiona a.s.sured her. "It's just - Well, you know, he works for a cable station, and they have a party every year in March, sort of the end of winter and all, and Brian said I should invite you. He's wanted to meet you, and-"

"Been telling tales about me, have you?"

Mrs. W hadn't said that as though she were angry, yet Fiona became very fl.u.s.tered and felt the color rise up into her cheeks. She couldn't think of a thing to say, but apparently her pink face said it all for her, because Mrs. W nodded and said, "That's all right, dear. I don't mind being an eccentric in other people's stories. I can't imagine what Jay Tumbril says about me, for instance. Tell me about this party."

"It's really very silly," Fiona said. "A lot of the people there dress up in costumes, not everybody. I won't."

"Like Halloween," Mrs. W suggested.

"Sort of."

"And when and where is this?"

"Sat.u.r.day, down in Soho. It starts at eight, but Brian doesn't like to get there until ten."

"Very sensible. Let me think about it."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And," with a sudden snap to her voice, "get me Jay Tumbril on the phone."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I've made up my mind," Mrs. W said. "The time has come to bring in experts, to get to the bottom of this. Fiona, we are going to look at that chess set."

39.

GRODY WAS ALWAYS in the process of expanding, without having either the money or the s.p.a.ce to do so. The studio in Tribeca, being the entire third floor of an old industrial building where, in the late nineteenth century, ap.r.o.ns and overalls were manufactured, was always undergoing renovation, the carpenters and electricians with their leather toolbelts like s.p.a.ce-age gunbelts and their macho swagger serving as the oil to the water of the staff's resident geeks.

Because the brick exterior walls of the building and the unrepealable law of gravity meant they could never actually add to their territory, the only way to accommodate more offices, more studios and more storage was to keep chopping finer and finer, until the rooms were like closets and the closets had long ago been sacrificed to the need for more s.p.a.ce. Hallways had been squeezed to within an inch of the fire code. And one result of all this adjusting and repacking and clawing for s.p.a.ce was that many of the resulting rooms were of unusual shapes, triangles and trapezoids. Long-ago-sacrificed doorways meant many of the routes within the GRODY confines were circuitous indeed. All of which was one reason why the company found it so hard to hire or keep anybody over the age of twenty-five.

Coming to work Thursday morning, after the astonishing news last night that Mrs. W actually would come along to Sat.u.r.day's March Madness, Brian made his roundabout way toward his own office, one of the few octagons in here thus far, in which, no matter which way you faced, the works.p.a.ce shrank away in front of you. Just after squeezing past two carpenters toting over their shoulders eight-foot lengths of L-shaped metal like bowling alley gutters creased down the middle, only lined along both sides with holes - what was that for? straining beer? - Brian was distracted from his route by a knocking on a window somewhere.

Oh; to the left. One of the control rooms was there, with a sealed window to the hall left over from some previous incarnation, and standing in it was Sean Kelly, Brian's s.h.a.ggy boss, who mouthed things at him through the gla.s.s; some sort of question.

But the point of the control room was that it was soundproof, so Brian merely shrugged and pointed helplessly at his ear. Sean nodded, frowned, nodded, and pointed vaguely away with his right hand while doing a finger-up circular motion with his left. Come around and talk to me, in other words.

Sure. Brian nodded, paused to figure out the shortest way from this side of the gla.s.s to that side of the gla.s.s, and set off, along the way pa.s.sing an electrician, seated wedged in a corner, still smoking slightly, accepting sustenance in a flask from his fellows.

Brian's route took him past his octagon, which had a doorway but no door because there was nowhere for it to open to. He nodded at it, trekked on, and eventually came to the control room containing both Sean and an expressionless technician seated at the controls, watching a tape of a hilarious animated outer-s.p.a.ce drunk scene to be aired at eleven tonight, in compet.i.tion with the world news. (They expected to win again.) "Hey, Sean."

"Hey." Sean seemed troubled, in some vague way. "Man," he said, "you got any problems at home?" Hurriedly, he erased that from the imaginary blackboard between them. "I don't mean none of my business, man, you know, I just mean, anything gonna impact us here."

Brian could have pointed out that a permanent construction site was all impact, but he cut to the chase: " What problem, Sean? I do something wrong?"

"No, man," Sean said. "Nothing I know about. It's just, I got this call yesterday, just walking out of the office, this guy, says he's from the enforcement arm of the Better Business Bureau."

"Enforcement arm?"

"That's what he said, man." Sean grinned and scratched his head through his s.h.a.ggy hair. "Can you see them comin around? 'You gotta give the twenty percent, man, it's right there in your ad. Might make a nice bit."

"Sean, he wanted to talk to you about me? Or just the place?"

"No, man, you, strictly you. Do you borrow from your coworkers-"

"Fat chance."

"Uh huh. Do I know where you cash your checks, have you ever had unexplained absences-"

"Everybody does, Sean."

That quick grin of Sean's came and went. "Sing it, sister. He wants to know, do I think you're having trouble in your home life, interfering with you here, whado I think your work prospects are-" Jesus.

"It was freaky, man." Another grin. "Don't worry, I covered for you."

Suspicion struck Brian. "You goofed on him."