Two Much! by Donald E. Westlake

Author:Donald E. Westlake
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com / Open Road

VOLPINEX SAID, “I’VE never had much of a sense of humor, myself.”

“You surprise me,” I said.

We were having lunch at a snowy table by a tall arched window. This dining room on the third floor of the club, hushed and half full, overlooked Park Avenue swarming with taxis. A new office building across the way, a dull slab gridwork of glass and chrome, formed a great segmented mirror in which I could see Volpinex’s club reflected like a dream of the landmarks commission: Victorian brownstone elegance shimmering on a surface of functional blah. I had waved my hand near the window early in the meal, hoping to see myself across the way, but the reflection didn’t offer that much detail.

“I’ve always thought of comedy,” Volpinex went on, “as a mark of unreliability. A fellow in my fraternity was always telling jokes, and then he hanged himself.”

“I won’t do that,” I promised.

He brooded at me. “No, I don’t suppose you will.”

“Chilly in here,” I said, and buttered a roll with a cold silver knife.

Volpinex always surprised me; in memory he tended to become older and fatter, but in life he was invariably a slender healdiy thirty-year-old. My contemporary, in fact, and about my size, but probably in better physical shape: a karate expert, for instance. Born of Count Dracula, out of a White House aide. It was his humorlessness, the determined flatness and bullshit of his speech, that made him seem fat and fifty.

Speaking out of that train of thought, I said, “Comedy keeps people young.”

“In the sense that it’s childish, yes.”

“Besides,” I said, “I’ve always heard that comedy is what separates us from the animals.”

“Parrots tell jokes,” Volpinex said, “and hyenas laugh.”

“What do you think separates us from the animals?”

“Nothing,” he said, and the conversation paused while the waiter brought Volpinex’s oysters, my mussels, and our half bottle of Chablis. The tasting ritual was accomplished with deep and solemn pleasure on all sides, and the waiter went away. Volpinex said, “I do, however, appreciate that humor can be a salable commodity.”

“Anything can be sold,” I said.

He gave me a thin glinting smile. “Including yourself, for instance.”

“There’s always the possibility,” I suggested, “that I signed the contract not because I love money but because I love Liz.”

“I suppose that’s a joke,” he said, his smile fading. “You’ve never been audited,” he said, dipped an oyster in the blood red sauce, and ate.

I squinted at him. “Say again?”

“By Internal Revenue,” he explained. “They’ve never audited your tax returns.”

“They’d need a microscope.”

“You strike me,” he said, “as the sort of person who would commit fraud for the sheer pleasure of it Claim your dog as a dependent, that sort of thing. A tax audit might very well finish with you in Danbury.”

He meant the Federal prison there. In true Volpinexish language, the Feds call it a Correctional Facility. I said, “What are you getting at? Free legal advice?”

“Should you marry Elizabeth Kerner,” he said, “your economic position would alter significantly. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the IRS then took an interest in you.

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