Donald Westlake - Smoke

"Sure," said Freddie.

"Which is where you come in," Peter said.

"No," Freddie said.

"Listen to the proposition first," Peter advised him.

Freddie shrugged, which reminded him this VDT was getting heavy. "Can I put this down?" he asked.

"Not yet," Peter said. "Here's the proposition. If you agree, you'll sign a release here, and we'll give you the medicine, and you'll stay in this house for twenty-four hours. We'll have to lock you up, of course, but we'll feed you and give you a decent place to sleep."

"The rose room," David said to Peter.

"Exactly," Peter agreed. To Freddie he said. "The point is, we'll need to observe you, for reactions to the medicine. After the twenty-four hours, you'll be free to go. Without our equipment, of course."

"Heh-heh," Freddie said, acknowledging the joke.

"If you decide, on the other hand, not to cooperate—"

"You'll call the cops."

"I knew you were quick," Peter said.

Freddie considered. These guys were legitimate doctors, okay, and this thing was even called a research facility, the very phrase that had brought him in here. And it's on the East Side of Manhattan, so it's all gotta be on the up and up, right?

And what's the alternative? Good-bye to all that, that's the alternative. Police, prison, guards, fellow cons. That's the alternative.

So, if worse comes to worst, Peg can learn Japanese, that's all.

Freddie said, "And if something goes wrong, you got the antidote, right?"

"Nothing will go wrong," Peter said.

"Not a chance," David assured him.

"But you do got the antidote, right?"

The two doctors exchanged a glance. "If necessary," David said, jingling the handcuffs, "and it won't be necessary at all, but just in case it should be necessary, we would have an antidote, yes."

"And I get to put this thing down," Freddie said, meaning the VDT.

"Of course," David said.

Freddie looked from one to the other. "One thing," he said, "and one thing only. You don't need the handcuffs."

4

Both Peter and David would have felt more comfortable with the burglar in handcuffs, but that had turned out to be actually a sort of deal-breaker, so finally they'd agreed, and that meant the only restraint they had on this fellow Freddie was Peter's pistol. Fortunately, it was clear that Freddie believed Peter might be capable of using the pistol, a belief neither Peter nor David shared, but a belief they were willing to encourage.

Freddie having signed the release form with an unrecognizable scrawl, they moved him at last up one flight from reception to the rear lab room, where they seated him in a metal chair and did a cursory examination to be sure he was as physically fit as he claimed, and he was. There was no evidence of alcohol or drugs, no irregular heartbeat, no troublesome sounds in his lungs, and a perfectly average blood pressure. So that left nothing to do but give him the formula and see what happened.

No, actually there was still one thing more to be done. Before the experiment could get under way, they first had to decide which formula to try on him, since they could only hope to test one of the two formulas per experimental subject. LHRX1 and LHRX2 were both put out on the chrome table, side by side, the syringe and the after-dinner mint, and there they waited while David and Peter discreetly argued over which one was the likelier to succeed, therefore which one should be tried in this first human experiment. They argued for several minutes, at an impasse, and then the subject said, "I get it. That's always the way."

They turned to study him. Peter said, "What is?"

The subject pointed. "The shot is the stuff I got to take, and the cookie's the antidote, that I probably won't even need."

They looked at him. They looked at one another. Peter, who'd been arguing for LHRX1, the serum in the syringe, smiled and said, "An omen, clearly. David, we'd best do what it says."

"Oh, very well," said David, who hadn't really expected to win the argument anyway.

Peter smiled again as he crossed to pick up the syringe. Holding it point upward beside his shoulder, he turned to the subject. "In the buttock, I'm afraid," he said.

"And I saw that one comin', too," the subject said. But he made no trouble about it, merely stood and dropped his trousers and bent over the lab table and jumped a foot when Peter swabbed the spot with the cotton wad dipped in alcohol. "Jesus!" the subject cried. "That hurt!"

"I didn't do it yet," Peter told him, and did it, and the subject didn't move at all, because he was too confused. "There you are," Peter said, stepping back a pace. "You may adjust your clothing."

The subject did.

"You may sit down again," Peter said.

"Not yet," the subject said. "My ass cheek is real sore."

It was not, and Peter knew it, but he also knew how childish patients are, so he merely said, "Stand, then, if you like."

The subject stood. He said, "What happens next?"

"Nothing, not at first," Peter told him. "We all stand around here like idiots—"

"While our dinner dies upstairs," David said.

Peter turned to him. "We'll microwave it, David, it will be good as new."

"Hardly."

Peter turned back to the subject. "We'll stand here bickering about nothing at all," he explained, "for fifteen minutes, and then we'll take your pulse and look in your eyes and do a few more things like that, and then we'll close you away in the guest room upstairs—"

"It has its own john," David assured him.

"— and then," Peter said, "we'll examine you again at . . ." He consulted his watch. "It's nearly midnight now. Every two hours. We'll disturb your beauty sleep, I'm afraid, at two, and four, and six, and so on."

"Disturbing our own, as well," David added, as though the subject cared.

"During the day tomorrow," Peter went on, "the staff will be down here, in the research area, but only David and I ever go up to the living quarters, so no one else needs to know you're here. We'll feed you at appropriate times, and go on observing you at two-hour intervals, and at midnight tomorrow we will be happy to let you go."

"Me, too," said the subject. "Can I call my girl?"

"Sorry," said Peter.

"She'll worry," said the subject.

"I imagine she's used to that," Peter said, "given you for a boyfriend."

So that was the end of that. Conversation grew more desultory, time crept by, and at last the fifteen minutes were up. David and Peter gave the subject his first postserum examination, found no abnormalities, and wrote everything down on a long yellow legal pad. "Fine," Peter said. "Now we go upstairs. The elevator's too small for three, I'm afraid."

As they were leaving the lab, the subject pointed back to LHRX2, saying, "What about the antidote? Doesn't that come along with us?"

"Don't worry," Peter said. "You won't need it."

"Besides," David said, "that isn't—" But then he broke off, at a warning glare and headshake from Peter, behind the subject's back. Oh, of course. The point was to keep the subject soothed, not permit him to get more than necessarily tense. "We know where it is," David said, "if we need it. Which we won't."

"Okay."

With no more complaint, the subject went on ahead of them up the stairs two flights and then past their cold dinners and down the hall and into the rose room. "See you at two," Peter said, and locked the door, and he and David went back to their main living quarters, where David mourned their dinner a while before nuking it in the microwave, and Peter said, "We can't take turns, of course. This is still a criminal here, we'll both have to wake up every two hours."

"Assuming we sleep at all," David said. "Oh, Peter! Wouldn't it be wonderful if it works?"