Donald Westlake - Smoke

"I could have sworn," he said.

She lifted both eyebrows. "What?"

"Oh, nothing."

The tour continued, and so did the jabs and jostles, until finally, back downstairs in the kitchen, while Call Me Tom was pointing out the food disposal in the sink, Peg yanked away from one poke too many, and cried out, in exasperation, "I know! I know!"

Call Me Tom gazed at her, hurt. "You don't have one of these in New York," he said, justifying himself. "They're not legal in the city."

"I'm sorry," Peg told him, "I just, uh, I didn't mean that, I was thinking about something else. Anyway, we'll take it."

"Good," Call Me Tom said, well pleased, but then looked confused. "We?"

"My boyfriend," Peg explained. "He couldn't come up today, he's working, but he'll visit me on weekends. We'll share the cost."

"Are you sure he won't want to see it first, before you take it?"

"Oh, no. I know Freddie's taste," Peg assured the agent. "I'm as positive of how he'll feel about this place as if he were standing right here next to me."

"That's beautiful," Call Me Tom said. "When a couple have that much understanding of one another and confidence in one another."

"We understand each other pretty good," Peg said, and on the way out she did at last manage, with a sudden unexpected shove of the front door, to give Mr. Smartaleck a satisfying whump. She distinctly felt and heard it hit, and definitely heard that sharp intake of breath.

Peg smiled, all the way back to the van.

21

At just about the same moment that Peg was looking into the empty medicine cabinet up north in Columbia County, "A very frustrating guy, your Freddie Noon," Barney Beuler was telling Mordon Leethe in the backseat of a maroon Jaguar sedan in the underground garage where they'd met before. Barney liked this way of meeting, except for the dental bills; he really did have to keep those appointments. On the other hand, his teeth had needed work for some time, as both his wife and his lady friend had more than once pointed out. And the main point was, he liked the idea of these secret meetings in the underground garage here, these shadowy figures together. Like he was Deep Throat, in the backseat of this car here. The other Deep Throat.

Anyway, "A very frustrating guy," he repeated, and settled more comfortably into the luxurious cordovan-tone leather of the Jaguar upholstery.

"Is that right," said Leethe. Sour as ever, which was his problem, wasn't it?

The other nice thing about meeting here instead of at the restaurant was, down here Barney didn't have to do his restaurant grovel with this asshole. They could meet as . . . what? Partners.

"Lemme tell you about Freddie Noon," Barney told his partner. "He's got no phone listed in his name, he isn't registered to vote—"

"That's a surprise," Leethe said, with deep sarcasm.

"No, there's a lotta guys registered you wouldn't think so," Barney told him. "Your serial killers, for instance, they tend to be very scrupulous voters. I dunno, maybe it's a way to meet people."

"You were talking about Fredric Noon."

"His pals call him Freddie," Barney said. "And he's got a true scoundrel's take on life. No vehicle registered in his name, no account with Con Edison, no way to get a handle on him. A guy that's ready to cut and run at any second."

"Are you saying it's impossible to find this fellow?"

"Well, we know he's in town," Barney said, "with those fingerprints of his showing up in all the wrong places. Pretty good, huh? The invisible burglar." Barney'd been getting a kick out of that idea ever since he'd browbeaten Leethe into telling him the secret.

"We would prefer him," Leethe said, "to be an invisible burglar for us. "

"Well, naturally. Okay, the other thing is, besides he's in town, we can figure he's got himself a lady friend. Somebody's got to get those electric bills, put their name on the apartment lease. The question is, how do you find the lady friend?"

"I take it," Leethe said, "you wanted to speak to me because you've succeeded."

"Wait for it," Barney told his partner. He refused to let Leethe's sourness spoil the occasion. "It happens," he said, "I have a friend in the department has a friend in probation has a client that's an old pal of Freddie Noon. So my friend asks his friend to ask Freddie's friend how Freddie's doing these days, and Freddie's friend says he thinks Freddie went straight—"

"Hah."

"Well, yeah, but what would you expect the guy to say? Except, he says he thinks Freddie went straight when he took up with a dental technician named Peg."

"There must be a lot of such people," Leethe said.

"Yeah, but they're all licensed," Barney said. "Dental technicians are licensed. So we're talking about somebody that lives in New York, that's named Peg, that's on the list of licensed dental technicians, that's the right age and race and sex and marital status."

"She could be black," objected Leethe. "Or Asian. Or married. Or the wrong age group."

"You go with the probabilities," Barney said. "And when you go with the probabilities, you find she's a single white broad in her twenties named Peg Briscoe and she lives in Bay Ridge."

"Very good," Leethe allowed, which was about on a par with a normal person having an orgasm.

"On the basis," Barney said, "of those fingerprints found at the furrier and the diamond center, and on the basis of Peg Briscoe being a known associate of Fredric Urban Noon, and on the basis of I'm the one that found the connection, I got an okay to go question Peg Briscoe on her knowledge of the whereabouts of one F. U. Noon."

"F.U.?"

"Think of him as F.U.N."

"Slightly better," Leethe acknowledged. "But why go through all that hugger-mugger?"

Barney pointed at the top of his head. "See this scalp? There's shooflys want to wear this on their belt. Everything I do, every goddam thing, I gotta take it for granted they're watching me. So I always cover my ass."

"If only my corporate clients," Leethe said, "could absorb that concept into their thinking."

"Civilians think like civilians," Barney said, and shrugged. "There's no point trying to change them."

"You're probably right. What happens now?"

"When I'm done at the dentist," Barney said, "I'll go see this Peg Briscoe. You wanna come along?"

"What about those shooflys of yours?"

"I've already signed out that I'm going to interview Peg Briscoe. That's where I'll go, and when they see that's where I'm going they'll forget me for today. They don't have the manpower to watch every red-flag cop twenty-four hours a day."

"I should think not."

"So you'll go there, too, you'll drive, and you'll park near the place—"

"Where is it?"

"Bay Ridge, I'll give you the address. When I get there, I'll go around the block a couple times, make sure I'm alone. Then I'll park and go in, and when you see me go in you go in. Then we go talk to Briscoe together. And with any luck our pal Freddie."

"This is very good news." Leethe said. He damn near smiled, the bastard.

22

Driving south toward New York City on the Taconic Parkway, the keys to their new summer house in her pocket, Peg said, "I thought he looked a little funny when I gave him cash."

Beside her, Freddie was being Dick Tracy again, always a sign he was in a cheerful mood, sometimes a sign he was in too cheerful a mood, might decide to get playful or something. But at the moment he was just sitting there, being a good boy, wearing his head and his pink Playtex gloves. Using a gloved finger to scratch Dick's nose, he said, "Whaddaya mean, money? Why wouldn't he want money? You're telling me they still use wampum up here?"

"Checks," Peg said. Having lived a more or less normal life until she'd met Freddie, it was frequently her job to explain the straight world to him. "Nobody uses cash anymore," she explained.