Donald Westlake - Smoke

She turned and smiled at him; nice teeth, better than his. "It's very individual," she said. Inside the black coat was a bit of white blouse, moving with her breath.

"S." He smiled back, forgetting about his teeth till he saw her look at them, then quickly stopped smiling, but was still pleased, no longer unhappy about his living room. "Take your coat," he said. She frowned at that, and he hurriedly added, "No, no, I'll give it back!"

That made her smile again. "I know you would," she said. "But I'm a little . . . chilly, I guess. I'll keep it on."

Disappointed, he said, "OK," then gestured at the sofa: "Siddown?"

"I'll sit here," she said, and took the wooden chair off to the side, on which somebody long ago had painted, pretty poorly, some Amish hex signs.

"But," Josh said, as she sat on the hex signs, "you can't see the TV!"

She looked at him. "So what?"

"Well." His imaginings scrambled in his brain. He motioned at the VCR atop the TV. "You could watch a movie."

"No, I'll just sell you these things," she said, taking a white tube sock from her coat pocket. The sock was clean, and had red bands around the top. Softening the rejection, she said, "Freddie's waiting for me at home. He's pretty sick, you know."

"He said leg."

"That's right, it went to his leg! He told you that, did he? I guess you and Freddie are pretty good friends."

"Pretty good," Josh agreed. How could he ask this woman to go to bed with him? What were the exact words, to go from here to there? Did he have anything he could put in a drink, knockout drops? Maybe roach poison, he had plenty of that around here. Or maybe he could just hit her on the head when her back was turned, do what he wanted, and then when she woke up he'd say she tripped or something, knocked herself out, and she'd never know anything at all had happened.

Meanwhile, she was holding the damn tube sock, saying, "Where should I put all this?"

"What's in?" he asked her, reluctant to engage in the wrong conversation.

"Diamonds. Some other jewels, too, but mostly diamonds. All unset."

"Sit there," he said, pointing again to the sofa. Then he pointed to the coffee table — kidney-shape avocado-colored Formica — and said, "Put 'em there. I'll get wine."

"I don't need any wine," the damn woman said, and extended the sock toward him, dangling it in the air like some damn scrotum, as though to make fun of him, smiling at him but not getting to her feet, not coming forward, not letting him get his hands on her at all. "Here, you do it," she said.

Grumpy, stymied, Josh snatched the sock from her hand, sat himself down on the sofa, and emptied the sock onto the coffee table.

Well, well. Unquenchable lust for the moment forgotten, Josh stared at the little mountain of diamonds, like the world's richest pile of cocaine, with here and there a dozen other kinds of gems visible on its slopes. Small stones, mostly, but choice.

Jersey Josh knew his business, you could say that much for him. He would check and double-check, but he already knew what he was looking at here. Somewhat over a hundred thousand dollars in gems, unset, untraceable. Probably not so much as a hundred and a half, but certainly more than a hundred.

Since Jersey Josh and Freddie Noon had done business together for quite a while, Freddie normally would get the favored rate, which was ten cents on the dollar, which would be ten thousand in cash for this pile of crystallized carbon here. But that wasn't Freddie Noon over there, was it? That was a lady Jersey Josh didn't know, who wouldn't sit with him on the sofa, who wouldn't look at a movie with him, who wouldn't drink any of his Blue Nun, who almost certainly would not have sex with him without a struggle, and bad feeling from everybody afterward. Ten thousand dollars would this lady not get.

"Minute," Josh said, palmed a couple diamonds, and got to his feet to go into the bedroom and get his jeweler's loupe, pausing to drop the diamonds into a dresser drawer and to pat his hair a couple times in front of the mirror.

A sound like a giggle came from the other room; was she loosening up, this woman? Josh lumbered back to the living room, and she was seated as before, knees together, arms folded, with her head bent forward now and shaking back and forth as she muttered something or other, then stopped when she saw he'd returned.

Woman talks to herself. Prays? Giggles. Maybe Josh'd be better off, have nothing to do with this woman, could be crazy. Nothing worse than a crazy woman. So loud.

Sitting up straighter, hands now in her lap, the woman said, "Did you bring those diamonds back?"

He stared at her. She could not have seen him palm them, could not. "What diamonds?" he asked.

"The ones you carried into the other room," she said, cool, calm, and collected.

He was rattled, but he shook his head anyway, and clamped his jaws tight shut.

She smiled easily at him, and as though to give him an out, she said, "I figured, maybe you wanted to weigh them or something."

"Did not," Josh said.

She considered him, then looked around, and pointed at the phone. "Should I call Freddie?"

A confrontation with Freddie Noon? Bad idea. Josh snapped his fingers, as though suddenly realizing what she was talking about; it wasn't much of a snap. "Weigh them," he agreed.

"I thought so," she said.

Feeling put-upon, Josh sat on the sofa again, in front of the little stack of diamonds. He screwed the loupe into his right eye, put a few of the stones in his right palm, studied them one by one.

Nice, very nice. Good quality. Excellent resale value. "Not so good," he said.

"Oh, sure they're good," the woman said, unruffled.

She was very annoying. Josh dropped the diamonds back onto the table, lifted his eyebrow to drop the loupe into his now-empty palm, and looked at her. "I know diamonds," he said.

"So does Freddie."

Hmm, yes. Whatever he gave this woman, she would take back to her friend Freddie, whose leg illness, whatever it might be, wouldn't last forever. Freddie Noon had for some time been a good source for Josh, and from the look of these diamonds Freddie was just now hitting his stride as a source.

Then there was the woman herself, named Peg; why make her angry or irritable? If she goes to bed with cheap burglars, why wouldn't she go to bed with Jersey Josh Kuskiosko?

All right. Time to lighten up. Taking a deep breath, Josh aimed an utterly false smile at . . . Peg . . . and said, "Peg."

She looked perky and alert. "Yes?"

"Wait," he announced, and heaved himself to his feet. At her look of surprise, he patted the air as though in reassurance, repeated, "Wait," and waddled off to his unspeakable kitchen, where he not only took the Blue Nun out of the refrigerator, but also the cheese spread he'd put in there last Christmas after nobody showed up. He gave it the sniff test — still fine. Crackers, crackers, crackers, here they are.

Speaking of crackers, the woman was muttering to herself in the other room again. Josh could hear her. That's okay, that's okay. Maybe crazy women aren't so bad, maybe they're better in bed, more . . . uninhibited. Josh tried to imagine what an uninhibited woman in his bed would be like, and had to lean briefly against the drainboard until the image faded. Then he opened the Blue Nun — the tock of the cork coming out silenced the muttering in the other room — chose his two least unspeakable glasses, put everything on an unspeakable tray, and carried it all to the living room, where he smiled at . . . Peg . . . as she looked at him in some surprise, gazing in particular at the wine bottle as he bore the tray across the room and put it down on the coffee table next to the little alp of diamonds.

"Oh, you shouldn't," Peg said.