Donald Westlake - Smoke

"Okay. Her name's Peg."

"S."

Jersey Josh Kuskiosko lived over a onetime truck-repair place near the Lincoln Tunnel. The building was squat and brick, with a tall ground floor and a normal-size second floor, its grubby windows overlooking a tunnel approach; open one of those windows, you're dead in ten minutes. Nobody had ever opened them.

In the old days, the upstairs had been used only for storage of parts and files, since the downstairs had at that time been full of the noise and stench of big trucks, many of them not stolen, undergoing repair. But some years ago the owners of the business moved to the other end of the tunnel, over in Jersey, where the rents are lower and law enforcement even more slack. This left the owners of the structure, the British royal family, with yet another lemon on their hands. Fortunately, the British royal family is used to thinking in the long term, so they simply held on to the parcel, as they've continued to hold on to so many Manhattan parcels, waiting for the idea of gentrification of the world's most important city to come around and be popular again.

These days, the downstairs was rented as storage space by a restaurant-supply company, so on that thick oily concrete floor down there stood big restaurant stoves, walk-in freezers, industrial dishwashers, wooden boxes full of dishes and cutlery, all kinds of stuff, much of it not stolen, and all of it protected by locks, bolts, chains, alarms, razor wire, and two Doberman pinschers who were never fed quite enough.

Upstairs — you got up there through a door at the right front of the building, next to the two big wide green accordion-metal overhead garage doors — were Jersey Josh's apartment, office, and storage area. Some of the restaurant-supply company's security measures also protected his space, but in addition to that he had his own double layer of doors at the foot of the stairs, both metal, both wired for a variety of things, including a disagreeable but probably not fatal electric shock should you insert anything at all into any of those inviting-looking keyholes.

The stairs themselves were steep and narrow, so that only one person could ascend at a time. The door at the head of the stairs was also metal, and contained a peephole for looking through, a slit for shooting through, and a small hinged openable panel for accepting pizzas through.

Behind this door was a large living room with two natural brick walls and two plaster walls painted a kind of dirty white. These weren't dirty walls, these were walls painted a specific white only found in New York City, variously known as landlord white or cockroach white; it goes on gray and drab, and therefore will always look the way it does the first day it's spread, and so it doesn't have to be repainted as often as walls painted more esthetically pleasing colors.

The furnishings here are, you might say, eclectic, since everything was bought from thieves, including the saggy green sofa, all the lamps (he paid a premium, three dollars, for the table lamp that represents a Moor in a turban and scimitar and wide lavender pants), and the rug on the floor, on which can clearly be seen the traffic patterns of its previous owners.

Almost no one penetrates deeper into Jersey Josh's domain than the living room, but then, almost no one except police with warrants would want to. His bathroom is large and contains a big old clawfoot tub (stolen), but is otherwise unspeakable, as is his kitchen. His bedroom is as large as his living room, and furnished out of the same back doors. The floor-length mirror on its farthest wall is actually a door, leading to Jersey Josh's business space: a room with a desk and two safes, plus several rooms of watches, fur coats, TV sets, and SaladShooters. At the farthest end is the wall-less ancient elevator for which only he has the key, used to bring larger goods up or send shipments down for resale to dealers from Pennsylvania and Maine.

When Jersey Josh uses this elevator, it descends into a cage on the first floor, which separates his realm from the territory of the restaurant-supply company; always, when he and the elevator lower into that cage, the Doberman pinschers are there, slavering, in such a frenzy to tear his flesh they bite the bars of the cage. Good-humoredly, Jersey Josh spits at them and makes obscene gestures in their direction, before turning to open the overhead garage door which only he can operate without electrocution, and which leads to a side alley, where the customers await, with their trucks.

Usually, Jersey Josh was content in this comfy little nest he'd carved for himself from the cold heart of the city, but tonight he was to have a lady visitor, and tonight he wasn't sure the place was absolutely up to snuff. He fussed around, dusting the Moor, running water in the bathtub to redistribute the grease in there, spraying the rooms with an aerosol product that was supposed to make them smell like a mountain glade but which in fact gave them an odor strongly reminiscent of an Eastern European chemical plant. But it was the best he could do.

Also, there was his personal self. Short, heavyset, out of condition, with long lank gray hair and a deeply lined face the exact color of Egyptian mummies, Jersey Josh was not at the best of times easy to look at, and his best of times had been some decades ago. Nevertheless, when he was ready — seven-thirty, half an hour early, agog with anticipation — and looked at himself in his mirror/secret door, he saw an image that did not displease him totally. Wasn't there something of Henry Kissinger in his stance, a soupзon of Ari Onassis in the debonair tilt of his brow? If he were a little taller, couldn't he give Tip O'Neill a run for the money? Wasn't there more than a trace of Ed Meese in his whole self-confident air?

7:32. Jersey Josh put Blue Nun on ice, Centerspread Girls in the VCR ready to roll, and sat down to wait.

8:04. Doorbell. Josh jolted awake from a warm dream. Doorbell. The lady. Right.

He struggled out of the saggy sofa, wiping drool from his chin, and lumbered across the room to push the intercom button: "R?"

"It's Peg, uh . . . Peg."

Female. Young. Nervous. Check, check, and check. "S," Josh said, and pushed admittance button number one. Then he peered through the peephole in the upstairs door, and didn't push button number two until he heard her thud into the interior door down there, expecting it to open. Push. Open.

In she came, holding the door open a long time down there, as though thinking she might turn around and go back after all. She even muttered to herself, showing more of the nervousness he liked, then looked up toward his door, and at last released the door down there and started up the stairs.

Nice. Good-looking, but not a real beauty, not enough to scare a person. Good strong legs, coming up those steep stairs. Good long fingers holding the rail. Nice round head, slowly rising toward him.

He didn't make her ring the bell at the top, the way he did with most people, including the pizza kid. Instead, just as she reached the last step he opened his final door, smiled at her in a way he hoped wouldn't show his teeth too much, and said, "I."

"Hello," she said, blinking at him, taken aback. She almost seemed to lose her balance for a second in the doorway, maybe from the long climb, causing her to lean against the door, opening it more widely than normal, while Josh automatically resisted, gripping the knob. Then she got her footing again and smiled a little shakily and went past him into the living room.

Josh closed the door, metal door chacking into metal frame with a satisfying finality. He turned to see his guest surveying his room, so he took the opportunity to survey her, the black shoes, black slacks, black spring coat, the blond hair, the little winks of gold at her earlobes. "S'just my place," he said, shrugging, sorry to hear himself apologize for it.