Donald Westlake - Smoke

"Speaking personally, and with great and undimmed gratitude, I well remember the generosity with which Jack responded to our own fund drive, here at the kirk, when we had all that trouble with the roof, which some of you may remember. The more communicants among you. Those days with buckets in the pews, all that, well behind us now, gone and forgotten, and we have Jack Fullerton as much as anyone, except of course DeMartino Roofing, who did the actual work, to thank and thank we will. Did at the time. Do now. Remember Jack in our, er, thoughts.

"Jack Fullerton was a man of vision, who came to us from a family rich in men of vision, and who leaves in his wake, in his path, in his, behind him, more of the same. The Fullerton vision. Wealth carefully husbanded, largesse generously distributed, honor maintained, the law obeyed, and the family upheld.

"And so we say, from the deepest bottom part of ourselves, good-bye, Jack. We are all better men — and of course better women, and better children, too — for having known you. You enriched our lives, in so many ways: Jack. Farewell. Please bow your heads."

The sidewalk was covered by a lumpy layer of cigarette butts. The mourners, if that's the word, crunched over all those filters on their way to the cars, many of them lighting up the instant they emerged from the sanctuary within.

Car number three was a stretch limo, gleaming black, with darkened side windows. The blue-suited, uniform-capped chauffeur stood beside the closed rear passenger door, hands crossed at his crotch, face unreadable behind sunglasses. "Peter," David muttered as they crossed the sea of cigarette butts, "there must be some mistake."

"We'll find out," Peter said, and strode forward, David in his wake. When they reached car number three, Peter said, as though to the manner born, "Drs. Loomis and Heimhocker."

The chauffeur glanced down at the three-by-five cardboard card held discreetly in his left palm. "Yes, sir," he said, and stooped to open the door.

Well, well; not bad. Peter climbed in first, and then David, and in the low dim interior they found a lot of black leather upholstery on a bench-type seat across the rear, and facing that seat, more black leather on two separate seats just behind the driver's-area partition, flanking a console veneered to look almost exactly like wood.

Peter went for the broad bench seat at the rear, but David, as the chauffeur clicked shut the door behind him, slid into one of the rear-facing separate seats, the one nearest the sidewalk. Settled there, he said, "I wouldn't sit back there, Peter. Someone more important than us is going to get into this car."

Peter looked mulish for just a second, but then shrugged and said, "You're probably right," and shifted his long skinny body around to the other single seat, across the console from David.

The limo's engine softly purred, and its air-conditioning was switched on to a very comfortable level: decent temperature, low humidity. Outside the gray-tinted windows they could see the humidity-laden people move heavily through the real world, and they couldn't help but grin. Whatever chance it was that had led them into this vehicle, they were happy for it.

"Not bad," Peter said.

David turned and winked. "Stick with me, baby," he said.

Peter looked past David at the sidewalk outside the window, and his expression changed, became more sour. "If this is the garden of Eden," he said, "here comes the serpent."

David looked, and saw that it was true. Crossing directly toward their limo was the dark cloud of Mordon Leethe; was he going to be in their lives constantly from now on? They watched him speak to the chauffeur, who consulted his cuecard, and then opened the door. In came an ugly puff of hot wet city air and its moral equivalent, Mordon Leethe, who nodded at them, slid over to the far corner of the rear seat, and the chauffeur shut the door.

What was there to say? They'd finished with Leethe on Friday. Still, David could not help but be polite. Therefore, "Hello," he said.

"Hello," Leethe said.

Duty done, David looked out the window again. Who else were they waiting for? If someone more important than themselves, certainly someone more important than Mordon Leethe. Who probably knew, come to think of it, but David wouldn't dream of asking.

"Did you enjoy the service?" Leethe asked.

David turned his head, startled, but apparently Leethe had directed that question at Peter, who answered, "Enjoy? Do we enjoy funerals?"

"Frequently," Leethe said, and the limo door opened once more.

David had been distracted by Leethe, and had not seen these people arrive, so they burst onto his awareness all of a heap. First, the woman: thirty-something, blond, expensive dark clothing, expensive tanned face, expensive expression and manner — all in all, a property with a high fence around it and a sentry at the gate.

Entering, sleek knees together, this woman slid over next to Leethe without glancing at him or anyone else. She was then followed by the man: forty, at most. Trim, muscular, thick-necked but narrow-jawed, as though a greyhound had coupled with a malamute. Light brown hair in a furry low cap beyond a very high forehead. Ears tight to the skull, almost inset. Full mouth, slender nose, ice-cube eyes, eyebrows so pale as to be almost nonexistent. An aura of control, command, importance, that David found discomfiting in the extreme, a reaction that embarrassed him. Aren't we all equal, dammit? Oh, if only they could be upstate right now, with Robert and Martin, where nobody ever frightened anybody.

This time, once the chauffeur had shut the door, he went around to get in behind the wheel. Apparently the cortege was gearing up, almost ready to roll.

Leethe said, "Merrill, may I introduce—"

But the new man said, "No, Mordon, wait till we're on the road." To the woman, he said, "Wake me when we get to the Hutch."

She nodded, not looking at him. She had a black shoulder bag, now in her lap. While the man — Merrill, apparently — stretched out his legs so that David had to move his own out of the way, settled himself comfortably, and closed his eyes, seeming to go at once to sleep, the woman rooted around in the bag, came out with a slender appointment book and a tiny pen, and proceeded to read the entries, occasionally adding something or drawing a line through something.

David and Peter looked at one another. David looked at Leethe, who was gazing out his window at the mess of Park Avenue traffic.

Smoothly, the limo moved forward.

At the legal speed limit, once they reached the FDR Drive, the mortal remains of Jack Fullerton the Fourth and its train of twenty-seven cars sped northward up the eastern hem of Manhattan, across the Triborough Bridge without paying the toll — it looked as though they had motorcycle policemen with them — up the Bruckner Expressway and over to the Hutchinson River Parkway, the truck-free conduit to New England. Still technically in the Bronx, but with every outward indication of having left the city behind, the Hutch is the psychological watershed; beyond this point be suburbanites.

"Merrill," said calmly and quietly by the woman in a low but pleasing voice, was the first word spoken in car number three since it had pulled away from The Church of Lenox Hill. Instantly the man's ice eyes opened, he sat up, retracted his legs from David's space, stretched a series of muscle groupings without shifting very much in his place, and then pointed at the console while saying to David, "Get me a Perrier, would you?"

"What?" David leaned forward to look at the front of the console, and it contained a door, which he opened, feeling suddenly and foolishly like Alice in Wonderland. And there, inside the console, was a small refrigerator, full of not only little green bottles of Perrier but also beer, soft drinks, and splits of champagne.