Donald Westlake - Smoke

It is my happy duty, Mr. Noon, to inform you that yours was one of the names thus drawn by television star Ray Jones on July fourth of last year. Your share of the judgment comes to two hundred eleven thousand, seven hundred eighty dollars ($211,780.).

CONGRATULATIONS, Mr. Noon! If you will call me at 555-1995 before the fourth of July of this year, I will be happy to give you further details in re this judgment. It will be necessary, of course, for you to provide identification, and the judgment is fully taxable, but otherwise, the money is yours.

Unfortunately, Mr. Noon, if I do not hear from you before July fourth, I will have to assume that you have passed away or are not the correct Fredric U. Noon, and your two hundred eleven thousand, seven hundred eighty dollars ($211,780.) will be shared on a pro rata basis with the remaining lottery winners. Congratulations again, Mr. Noon. I hope to hear from you soon.

With all best wishes,

Banford L. Wickes

Deputy Controller

New York State Gaming Authority

BLW:dw

This letter, with several variants, had been used sparingly but effectively over the last decades by a number of different law enforcement agencies, including the NYPD, to find and apprehend criminals who had dropped out of sight. The letter was sent to the criminal's last known address, in hopes it would be forwarded, or sent to some close relative.

In this case, the only address for Fredric Noon that Barney'd been able to find in police records, since he was neither in jail nor on parole at the moment, was the perp's parents' home in Ozone Park. The phone number had been provided by Leethe, who would have somebody of his own answer that dedicated line the one and only time it would ring. From there on, it was Leethe's task to reel the sucker in; Barney suspected he was up to it.

"Very nice," Leethe said at last. Closing the wine book, he returned it to Barney and said, "I'm looking forward to tasting some of those."

"I'm sure it won't be long, Mr. Leethe," Barney said, and carried the wine book back to the kitchen, where he removed the letter, folded it twice, put it in the official-looking envelope he'd had the guy at the copy place around the corner knock together, and tossed the envelope into the basket with the outgoing paid bills. Then he went back to his chums and his gnocchi.

Leethe hadn't told him what all this was about, of course, and Barney was too cool to show the slightest curiosity, nor was he so incautious as to stick his nose in anywhere until he found out what the story was. But a story was here, all right, he could tell that much. Profit in it for Barney Beuler? Hard to say.

Fredric Urban Noon was a nobody, a penny-ante sticky-finger from Queens, not connected to anything except other people's goods. Why would a major corporation like NAABOR want him? What had he been doing in a cancer research place? Did he steal a cancer cure? Barney ran that scenario in his mind, but it just wouldn't play.

So was it maybe something in the other direction? Did the little gonif make off with some proof of something bad about the tobacco company that they didn't want known? Was he shaking them down right this minute? Did he need a partner?

The only problem with that second scenario was, with everything that was already known about the tobacco companies that didn't bother them, or bother their customers, or their stockholders, or the feds, what could they possibly have left to hide?

It was seeming to Barney that he too might like one little word with this Fredric Urban Noon.

17

Freddie never got over how weird it felt to walk around naked in the public streets in the middle of the day, particularly in your own neighborhood, passing people you'd seen on these blocks for years. Not people you actually know, just people you recognized, but still.

For instance, that fat young mother coming out of the supermarket pushing the stroller full of fat baby and Cheez Doodles and Dr Pepper. She seemed to be staring right at him, but of course she wasn't, though still it seemed that way. On the other hand, he'd been seeing her around for a couple of years, but now for the first time he could pause and study her and marvel at how fat she'd managed to get herself while still in her twenties.

But that wasn't all. He could also look at the good-looking women, so far as this neighborhood had any, and he could watch the old guys in front of the social club and how they talked with their hands and their chins, and he could watch the different ways people wait for a bus, and he could thumb his nose at the patrol car when it drove slowly by, the cops inside there telling each other war-hero lies and laughing in their own private party; you could rob the Cheez Doodles right out of that fat kid's stroller, those cops would never even notice.

He could, in other words, do a thousand different things to help fight off boredom, without ever actually fighting off boredom.

What he was doing out here, just before lunch on a warm sunny Saturday in June, was making Peg happy. Trying to make Peg happy, anyway. He and she had a long talk in the van the other night, Thursday night, after they left Jersey Josh Kuskiosko. It was somehow easier lately for Peg to talk to Freddie after dark, so while she drove and he wore his Bart Simpson head she explained how she felt about things, and how she didn't want to break up with him or anything like that, but not being able to see him while he was all the time able to see her was really getting her down.

He made very sympathetic noises while she explained all this, and said he understood, and in fact he did understand, at least partially. Since she couldn't be with him completely while he was invisible like this, she had to have some time when she could be completely by herself. Of course, when you said it like that it didn't make any sense, but Peg had ways of saying it where it did make sense, or anyway it was important to her, so finally in the van Freddie suggested something that might help, and Peg agreed to it at once.

The idea was, since they weren't eating their meals together anymore — Peg still didn't know that food took a couple of hours to fully join his invisible body, and with luck she never would know — Freddie would leave the apartment at lunchtime any day it wasn't raining, go for a walk or take in a matinee movie (he wouldn't have to pay, after all) or whatever he wanted, while Peg ate her lunch and did whatever she had a mind to do in her own home without any thought that Freddie might be lurking somewhere, watching. (That was Peg's word, lurking, which Freddie himself wouldn't have used, but which he'd made no beef about, merely nodding his agreement, which of course she couldn't see.) Then, after an hour or so, Freddie would come home and have his own lunch, which Peg would have left on the kitchen table. It wasn't a solution to the problem, but it ought to at least help.

There was only one movie house in the neighborhood, and it showed a matinee only on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but all four days of one week the same movie. So Freddie yesterday went in and watched an action movie where guys get blown up and you see them arc through the air like off a trampoline and afterward their machine guns still work, never mind the guys.

This is not a movie you can see two days in a row. One day in a row is a lot. Also, it turned out the matinee was senior discount time, and seniors in a movie theater in the middle of the day act exactly they way they did when they were eight years old in the same circumstances, talking and yelling at each other, changing their seats, eating stuff and throwing the wrappers on the floor, asking each other what just happened up on the screen. The only difference is, they totter up the aisle instead of running, and it's the toilet they're headed for, not the candy counter.