Donald Westlake - Smoke

It was what Bradley'd said. David and Peter read their copies, and read their own names under signature lines mid-way down the second page, and both noticed that the subject of the discussion remained determinedly vague. Invisible men were never directly mentioned, which was a pity; what a thing it would be, to have on a legal document.

Leethe took a lot longer to read it, then removed his own Mont Blanc pen from his inner pocket and said, "I think we need to add here, "Not to be frivolously withheld.'"

"Where's that?" Bradley asked. Leethe pointed to the spot, and Bradley considered it, then shrugged. "Of course. If you feel you need it."

"I would be happier."

"Then by all means. Peter, David, would you write that in on your copies?"

He showed them where and what to write, and they did, and then he had them sign their copies and initial the addition, then exchange the copies and sign and initial, then take Bradley's and Leethe's copies and sign and initial them, and it was all very like buying a house.

Bradley kept one signed copy, and gave the rest to Leethe, who put them away in his attachй© case and said, "As a matter of fact, I also have something here for signature."

Bradley waited politely, and Leethe took out his own little stack of papers and put them on the table, saying, "The first point is, the American Tobacco Research Institute never approved experimentation on human beings."

"Oh, now! " Peter cried. "It was accepted from the very beginning that at some stage field trials would have to be done, and that means human volunteers, everybody knows that."

"I have searched the relevant files," Leethe assured him, while his fingers demonstrated by running up a slope in midair. The hands then swept to the sides, palms down, clearing snow. "I found nothing." The hands met in prayer. "If it isn't on paper," Leethe said, "it doesn't exist."

Before either Peter or David could reply, Bradley interjected, "Granted."

Peter stared at him, betrayed. "Granted?"

"It would have been better," Bradley gently suggested, "if you'd gotten that understanding in writing at the outset, but we're not going to worry about it now." While Peter continued to look shocked, and almost mutinous, Bradley turned to Leethe and said, "We accept the point. We also accept the fact that the particular experimental subject under discussion was not a volunteer."

"Which the institute," Leethe added, the first finger of his right hand playing metronome, "would never have approved."

"Agreed."

"At this point," Leethe went on, "the institute, not acknowledging any onus of responsibility in this matter, but certainly aware of an accrual of goodwill that has grown between the doctors and the institute over the last years, is prepared to assist the doctors in finding the missing experimental subject—"

"You're already looking for him!" Peter cried.

Leethe ignored the interruption. "— for the purpose of assuring themselves the subject will come to no harm as a result of their actions. In return, the institute requires the doctors, in writing, to hold the institute harmless in all matters both prior to and proceeding from this date, in connection with this flawed experiment."

"You want carte blanche," Bradley said.

"The institute does not intend to carry the can," Leethe said, and carried a pretty bad bag of garbage out.

"David and Peter could only sign such an agreement," Bradley said, "if the institute places them in charge of the search for the experimental subject—"

"Oh, come, now."

"— and places them in charge of the subject himself, once he has been located."

"I'm not sure the institute could—"

"The alternative is that Peter and David will go to the state medical association."

Leethe blinked. He gazed at David and Peter, who did their best to maintain poker faces. "Would you, indeed," he said.

"We need protection from somewhere ," Peter said.

Leethe pondered, then shrugged and said, "We'll find common ground."

Bradley nodded. "I have no doubt."

Leethe dealt out his documents, saying, "Look these over, and tell me what you feel should be altered."

They all took copies — it was another two-pager — but Bradley said, "Before we do that, Mr. Leethe, I'd appreciate it if you'd bring us up to date on the search for . . ." He turned to David and Peter. "What is his name?"

"We're not sure," David said. "We think he lied on his medical form."

"Fredric Noon," Leethe said.

Bradley nodded at him. "Thank you. How goes the search for Fredric Noon?"

"It goes well, I think," Leethe said. His hands gathered a light blanket to his chest. "We have hired a New York City policeman, to conduct the—"

"Police?" David cried.

"Not officially," Leethe assured him, as his left hand, two fingers up, waved back and forth in benediction. "The gentleman is moonlighting for us."

"Moonlighting," Bradley echoed, and smiled. "What a lovely image."

"Oddly inapt, with this fellow, I think," Leethe said, as his hands lifted, tossing a little stardust into the air. "In any event," while both hands became play guns and shot David and Peter in their stomachs, "he's found Noon's girlfriend, the one he's been living with recently." While his left hand rested, palm down, on the table, his right, finger upraised, pointed out various constellations. "I hope to hear good news very shortly."

"When you find him," Peter said, "we want to be there."

"That's what we're here to iron out," Leethe told him, smoothing a bedspread. "When we do get our hands on friend Noon at last, I assure you, we'll be delighted to have you assist."

David and Peter might have nodded agreement with that, but Bradley said, "What you mean, I think, is that when you find Noon, you'll be delighted to have assisted David and Peter, and you'll want to go on assisting them."

"Semantics," Leethe said, and shrugged.

"Is my business," Bradley said, and picked up Leethe's document. "Shall we see what we have here?"

27

The thing about anger is, it tends to overcome one's sense of self-preservation, even if that one is such a one as Barney Beuler, whose sense of self-preservation had been honed for years on the whetstone of the New York Police Department. Coming off the Amtrak train from Rhinecliff into Penn Station at eight that night — after dark! — Barney was so enraged by life in general, Amtrak in particular, and Fredric Urban Goddam Noon in special particular, that he couldn't have cared less if shooflys had wired his wristwatch.

Fortunately for him, they hadn't. In fact, fortunately for Barney, all of his many enemies over there on the side of truth, justice, and the American way were otherwise engaged when he stomped up the filthy steps of Penn Station from the filthy platform, bulldozed his way through the filthy homeless living their half-speed half-lives in the terminal, found an exposed pay phone on a stick — not even an enclosed phone booth, for a modicum of privacy — and dialed Mordon Leethe at home. At this point, he didn't give much of a shit what happened, so long as revenge was a part of it.

"Hello?"

"Barney."

A second or two of baffled silence, and then, "Barney? Barney who?"

"Oh, fuck you, Leethe!"

"Oh, Barney! I'm sorry, I didn't recognize your voice, you sounded different."

Barney hardly recognized himself; fury had annealed him. "We have to meet," he snarled, while wide-eyed families from Iowa clutched one another close and moved in little clumps farther away across the terminal. "Now," Barney added, and his teeth clacked together.

"I'm engaged this evening."

"With me ."

Leethe sighed, a dry and rasping sound. Barney almost expected dead leaves to drift out of the telephone. "I could see you at eleven," Leethe agreed at last, reluctance dragging out the words. "There's a bar near me."