What's So Funny?

"He chose himself, if you want to know," Dortmunder said.

"Nevertheless," Mr. Hemlow said, "let me see what your friend has to say." To Tiny he said, "How much do you think is fair?"

"Not fair," Tiny said. "Right. Fifty G a man."

Even Mr. Hemlow was startled by that one. "A quarter million dollars?"

"Now we're getting there," Tiny said.

"I couldn't possibly," Mr. Hemlow said, "make an outlay that lavish."

"We can still give the thing back," Tiny said. "Let you try with a more economical bunch. Or just melt it down and sell it off ourselves."

Judson said, "That might be kinda fun, Tiny."

Mr. Hemlow said, "I could go to twenty-five."

"The fu

Dortmunder said, "Mr. Hemlow, I really think you gotta come up a little bit here, just so the guys have a sense of self-esteem outa this."

Mr. Hemlow shuddered all over, even more than usual, while his left leg tapped out a series of SOSes. Then he said, employing the number everybody in the room had known they would end on, "I will give you my absolute top offer, and that is thirty thousand dollars per man. For my own self-esteem, I can do no more."

A little silence. Everybody looked at Tiny, who looked around at everybody else and finally said, "You wa

Kelp said, "We're not go

Stan said, "And taking it apart, carrying it around to people like Stoon and Arnie, that's too much like work."

Dortmunder said, "You got a deal, Mr. Hemlow."

"Good."

"Di

65

MRS. W INSISTED on hosting a celebratory di

Mrs. W was already there, resplendent, as the saying goes, behind a large snowy white round table at a banquette built for six. They joined her, Fiona sliding in to Mrs. W's left, Brian to her right, and Brian began by ordering a little more vodka, just to be certain he was keeping the dosage up to the proper level.

The first business of the occasion was to order a meal. Vulture wings happened to be in residence, so Mrs. W and Brian both ordered some, while Fiona, feeling less adventurous, had the llama steak with yams. Then Mrs. W called for a New Zealand pinot noir she felt good about, the waiter left, and she said, "Brian. Are you quite recovered?"

"Dickens," he said. His voice still shook a bit, but not as much as when he'd first been released to them. "It's Dickens, that's what it is. I never knew what people meant when they said that, when they said Dickensian, you know, that place is Dickensian, or look down there, that's Dickensian. But now I do. Boy, believe me, now I do. That was Dickensian."

"It sounds terrible, you poor boy," Mrs. W said.

"I even thought," he said, with a meaningful look at Fiona, "if I knew anything I'd tell, just to get out of there. But then I thought, if I tell, I'm part of it, and I'll never get out. So I didn't tell. Not that I knew anything I could tell."

"Of course not," Fiona said.

He shook his head. "The place was so awful, I mean just the place. I mean cold, and hard, and dirty. But the people. Mrs. W, you don't even want to know there are people like that."

"No, I'm sure I don't."

"You don't want those people out of there," Brian told her. "You want me out of there—"

"Of course."

"But not those people. You don't want those people out of there. Ever. Lock 'em up and throw away the key, there's something else I never really understood. You know, I thought, for a while there I thought I was go

"Oh, Brian," Mrs. W said, and squeezed his near forearm in sympathy.

"I thought, how can I do this," Brian went on. "I thought, this is going to destroy me, even if I get out of here someday someday someday, it's going to destroy my talent, how can I ever try to draw something fu

"Oh, Brian," Fiona said, "you'll get over it."

"— put on the Reverend Twisted, knowing those people are there. I mean, I'm a different person now, I can't, I can't be like I was—"

"The new Brian may be even better than the old," Mrs. W assured him, and said, "Oh, your glass is empty," and raised a commanding hand to have his vodka refreshed.

By then the food and wine had started to arrive, so they set to, and the conversation skirted around other topics without ever leaving Brian's life-changing experiences entirely unobserved, and by the end of the meal the tremor in his voice was almost completely gone. They finished with shared desserts — peanut parfait, lychee flan, bees' nest soup — and were happily passing them around when all at once the theme music from Mighty Mouse rollicked beneath the table.

"Oh, I forgot!" Brian cried, scrabbling around inside his clothing. "I always turn it off when— I'm just so flustered, I don't know—" He popped the cell phone open and looked in it. "It's the station," he said. "Maybe they want me to take tomorrow off to recover. I better answer it."

The women agreed, and Brian spoke into the phone: "Here I am, out of custody." He gri

"And so do we," said Mrs. W.

"What? Sure I can talk." Brian looked alert, then confused, then terribly hurt. "But why? I was i