Donald Westlake - Smoke

"Take off?" Peg looked out at the street. Police patrols, that was what Freddie was thinking of. But if the police came along, and if they didn't like the look of the situation here, all they'd have to do was park across the front of this driveway, blocking her in.

Get arrested? Do eight years of prison laundry upstate? This, Peg thought, is not what I signed on for.

She might have said something, she wasn't sure what, but the fur coat, now sporting loafers and white socks, was skidding back out of the van. She watched him go, and there was just something so stupidly comical about a shin-length mink coat wearing white socks and brown shoes and no head that she forgot the awful possibility of getting Jean Harris's old room, and simply watched as the mink coat made a dozen trips in and out of the building, bringing great armloads of fur, dumping them into the back of the van, shoving them in, pushing them in, piling them in, until the leading edge of the pile, like a furry iceberg spreading, began to intrude into the driver compartment. "Enough, Freddie!" Peg yelled through the muffling mountain of mink, not sure he'd even be able to hear her back there.

But he did. "Right!" his voice shouted, dulled but intelligible. Thunk thunk, the rear doors closed. "Drive it out!"

She did. Stopping in the street, looking in the right-hand outside mirror, she watched the mink coat with the white socks and brown shoes, and what a busy mink coat it was! First it ran inside the building one last time, then ran back out as the garage door lowered, then came forward to close and lock the gates, with itself on the outside. Finally, it came up to the van and opened the passenger door. As Peg watched through the open door, the mink coat paused, then suddenly went mad and then limp, as Freddie took it off. The coat then appeared to stuff itself in among the other coats crowding the back of the passenger seat, and Peg looked away, watching the street for police patrols, until Freddie said, "Okay, Peg, you can look now."

He was back, or Bart Simpson was back, standing out there beside the van. She smiled, relieved, actually liking Freddie when all was said and done. Putting the van in gear, she said, "Now what?"

"On to Jersey Josh," Bart said, sounding like a cartoon character with a head cold, and climbed into the van.

14

"9," Jersey Josh repeated, with more emphasis.

"The thing is, Josh," Freddie Noon's voice said in his ear from this old telephone, "I'm making these deliveries, see, I mean I'm already loaded up here."

Obviously, as Josh well knew, there was only so much one could say under such circumstances, because who knows how many telephones are tapped? All of them, probably; after all, this is the information age. But what Josh understood, from what little Freddie could say, and from the traffic noises in the background, was that Freddie was calling from a pay phone somewhere out on some street, and that his van was already loaded up with whatever it was he wanted to sell Josh, and he didn't like the idea of driving around the city for hours with his van full of felony convictions.

However, that was Freddie's problem, and had nothing to do with Josh. Josh's problem was, he would not, repeat not, repeat never, never ever lower the elevator and open the delivery entrance at the side of the building in daylight. Period. June is the worst of months for a fellow like Josh, with daylight practically all around the clock, which meant he was not going to think about opening that door down there until 9 P.M. Two A.M. would be better, but 9 P.M. he could live with.

But not a second earlier. "9," he said, for the third time.

Freddie sighed. "Okay, Josh, I understand. I just don't like Peg out by herself at night, that's all."

The woman again? Josh flinched, his head suddenly aching at the memory, as he said, "Not U?"

"Naw, you know, I pushed myself, I shouldn't have got out of bed so soon; I just can't make it. You know Peg now, so that's okay."

"S." He knew Peg, all right.

"So she'll be there at nine o'clock."

And this time, Josh thought, she doesn't get off so easy. This time, no more Mr. Nice Guy. This time, no subtlety, no wine and cheese, no Centerspread Girls. This time, direct action. Hit her on the head, start from there. "9," Josh said, and hung up, and went to look for something heavy.

Nine. Josh stepped onto the thick wooden-plank floor of the freight elevator, turned the key in the lock, and the oil-smeared motor in its housing up on the roof growled into action, sounding like an old lion with emphysema. Slowly the open-sided platform lowered, shaking under its cables, and as Josh descended, the growl of the motor became blended with the snarls and threats and bitings of the Dobermans, flinging themselves at the heavy metal cage. Josh amused himself with the dogs in his usual fashion as the platform settled down into its lower position, then turned his back on them, ostentatiously farted, and used his key to open the ground-level garage door.

The van was there. In the darkness, Josh couldn't see exactly who was at the wheel, but assumed it was the woman. "N!" he cried, and waved for the driver to back the van in onto the elevator platform.

The van's windows had been shut. Now the driver's window slid down and the woman's head appeared, looking back at him. "Just unload it," she called.

Oh, no, not that easy. "Up," Josh insisted, pointing toward his lair upstairs.

As usual, the woman was nothing but trouble. "Why not unload it right here?" she asked.

"2 much work," he said, which happened to be true, though not the reason. Jabbing his thumb skyward, he repeated, "N. Up."

"Oh, all right."

She closed her window before backing the van into the elevator. Did she think she was going to stay in there? No way.

With the van inside, Josh used his keys to close the door and raise the elevator, leaving the key in the elevator lock for later. He opened the rear doors of the van, and looked in at enough fur to clothe an entire Norse horde. "M," he said, his word of satisfaction, rarely heard. Going around to the driver's window, he looked in through the glass at the woman and said, "Help."

She lowered her window less than an inch. "What?"

"Help."

"You mean, unload?" She shook her head as he was nodding his. "I don't do heavy lifting," she said, and closed the window.

Heavy lifting. All women can lift fur coats, they've got special muscles for the job. Grousing, muttering letters of the alphabet to himself, Josh sloped on back to the rear of the van and started pulling out furs, hanging them on garment racks he kept around for just this purpose, every coat still equipped with the hanger it had worn at the fur-storage place.

A lot of furs. Good furs, too, Freddie always had a good eye. Four garment racks crammed with minks in shades of brown and black, giving off that cold warmth peculiar to natural fur.

Valuable. More than the diamonds, last time. There had to be two hundred thousand dollars' worth of fur bending the metal bars of these garment racks. In the normal course of business with Freddie Noon, that would be a twenty-G payment, and of course Freddie would know it, so his woman would know it, so there was no point arguing, was there? No.

Josh went around to the driver's window, rapped on it, and the damn woman lowered it that same inch. "Twenty," he said.

She smiled at him, sweetly, the lying little bitch. Her smile lied. "Freddie said," she said, also sweetly, "twenty-five."

Josh frowned. Had he estimated wrong? Or had Freddie? "Wait," he decided, and went back to look at the furs again, paying more attention to labels this time, and lengths, and finally deciding he'd been right the first time around.