Donald Westlake - Smoke

They went on through Rhinebeck to its even smaller suburb, a steep village called Rhinecliff, where the Amtrak trains from New York, on their way to Albany and Buffalo and Montreal, pulled in a dozen times a day. The station building was midway down a steep slope, with a small full parking area above and a downhill entrance drive clogged with parked cars. The van drove down in there, found itself a niche in among the others, and Barney parked at the curb up top, where he could look down through the parked cars and just barely see the van.

Nothing happened for about twenty minutes, and then a train must have come in, because people suddenly began emerging from the station building down there, maybe a couple dozen, lugging their luggage. Barney watched Briscoe get out of her van and open its side door and lean against the front passenger door like she was waiting for a Little League team. This was interesting; what was the woman up to?

The last of the passengers came out of the station, to be greeted by friends or to climb into their cars or to take off in the two taxis that had showed up at the last minute. Briscoe waited a little longer, then shut the van's sliding door, got behind the wheel, and drove off, back the way she'd come. Barney waited till she was out of sight, then U-turned and followed, to see where she was going.

To have lunch. There was a cafeteria on the main street in Rhinebeck, and that was where she went, in no hurry at all, worried about nothing. Damn.

Barney couldn't find another lunch place nearby, and since she knew his face he couldn't go in where she was, so he stopped at the local supermarket to get himself a sandwich and coffee from their deli department, which he ate in the car. Do something, Peg, he thought. Do something.

She did something. After lunch, she got in the van and drove back to the damn railroad station. This time, the wait was half an hour, then what looked like the same couple dozen ex-passengers appeared, did the same things as before, and left. And again Briscoe opened the van's side door and waited. And again, once all the passengers were gone, she shut that door and got back into the van.

But this time she didn't drive away. Instead, she backed into a parking space that had just been vacated, and when Barney got out of the Impala to walk back to where he could see her, she was in there behind the wheel reading a magazine. Waiting for the next train, right? Had to be.

There was another side street that went downhill behind the station, and when Barney walked down that way, out of sight of the parking area where Briscoe sat, he found, as he'd hoped, another entrance to the station. Going in there, he got a copy of the schedule and carried it back to the Impala, to study it and figure out what was going on.

Okay. Judging from the times on this schedule, the first two trains she'd met had been northbound out of New York. And then Barney got it, all of it. The son of a bitch had been there yesterday! When he and Leethe had showed up. Noon had skipped out, invisible, and arranged with Briscoe to meet him here today. The Amtrak out of New York City was carrying an invisible man. Freeloading.

I hope somebody sits on the son of a bitch.

All right. All Barney had to do now was wait until Briscoe left here, and he'd know she had Freddie Noon inside that van. Then he'd follow, out of sight, to wherever they were hiding out, up here in the north country. High Sierra time, right? Too bad there wasn't snow on the ground. That'd slow down your goddam invisible man.

Barney looked at the schedule, and the next train out of New York wasn't for another two hours and a half. Hell. Okay, he'd been on long stakeouts before. If Briscoe could do it, Barney could do it.

But he didn't have to stay here the whole damn time, did he? No, he didn't. So he U-turned again, and went back to Rhinebeck, and had a second lunch there, at the place where Briscoe had eaten, and then used the pay phone and a charge card the shooflys didn't know about to make some calls, square himself in his world. He called the Organized Crime Detail and said he was in Brooklyn following up some possibilities about the Paviola family. He called his wife and said he was calling from the office but was about to go on stakeout again, this time in a department car, so no phone, and he'd get in touch with her when he got in touch with her. He also made a couple more calls, concerning other matters he had cooking, and heard nothing too troublesome. Then he walked down to the drugstore on the corner, where he bought four magazines and two newspapers and two maps of the general area.

Back at the railroad station, having double-checked that Briscoe and the van were still there, he U-turned and parked up the block, out of her sight, and spread out the maps on the steering wheel to see where he was and where they might all be headed.

And the first thing he saw was a big bridge just a couple miles north, and no passenger service on the other side of the river. So Briscoe could be planning to cart Noon somewhere over there. But not too far, or this wouldn't be the right train stop.

Finished with the maps, he went through the two newspapers, and was about to turn to Playboy for the haberdashery tips when a disgorgement of cars up from the railroad station told him the next New York train had arrived. Dropping the magazine, he waited and watched, but after the last of the cars and taxis had come up and run off, the van had still not appeared.

Barney got out of the Impala and walked back to where he could see down the driveway, and there it was, still there, Briscoe still at the wheel. Shit. He went back to the car to look at the schedule, and it would be another three hours before the next train. Dammit, the local people ought to complain, they really ought to, get themselves better service.

Barney almost missed it. He was just picking up Playboy when a tiny movement in his rearview mirror caught his eye, and when he looked there was Briscoe, walking up out of the driveway, stopping at the top to look left and right, then turning right to walk along past the upper-level parking area.

Now what? Barney watched in the mirror, and Briscoe took the same route he'd taken earlier, down to the next cross street, then right toward the rear entrance to the station.

He had to know what was happening, but he also had to be very damn careful. Getting out of the Impala, he walked back toward the station, following her. He could see the top of her head far away on the cross street, past the cars parked in the upper area. He hung back until she'd disappeared past the corner of the building, then followed, and when he got to the corner she was well down the street, still going straight. Past the railroad station the street became some kind of overpass, leading to a low wall and a sharp left turn angling down. More cars were parked along there, on the right side; Briscoe walked down the middle of the street to the end, then made the left.

Barney trotted forward once she was out of sight. He saw that this overpass went above the railroad tracks, and that the left turn carried the roadway, now a kind of bridge or ramp, down a long slope to a launching site at the river. A few vans and pickups were parked down there, with empty boat trailers hitched at their backs, and Briscoe was walking straight down to join them.

Had Barney been wrong? Was she waiting for Noon to arrive by boat? Or, worse thought, had he arrived, and they were leaving by boat? That would be a true pain in the ass.

But, no. After a minute, Barney saw what was happening. Briscoe was just killing time, that's all, sightseeing while she waited for the next train. Barney couldn't blame her.

Just in case, though, he kept watching. Briscoe walked on down to the launching area, strolled around there a few minutes, looked out at the river and the green cliffs and white mansions over there on the other side, and Barney leaned against the wall at the top of the overpass, feeling warm in the sunshine in his dark jacket, watching her.