Donald Westlake - Smoke

"Maybe."

"The sooner the better," Freddie said. "I wonder if I oughta go back to those doctors, make up some kinda deal, see have they got an antidote that works."

"That could be trouble, Freddie," Peg said. "If they had you arrested or something."

"Still. To get my, you know, my self back."

"Well, I've been thinking about that," Peg said, "and maybe this thing isn't such a tragedy after all."

"It's not a tragedy, " Freddie agreed. "It's just a pain in the ass."

"Or maybe," Peg suggested, "an opportunity."

The Dick Tracy face gave her a skeptical look. "What kinda opportunity?"

"Well, what is it you do for a living?"

"Steal things."

"And if nobody can see you?"

Freddie thought about that. He rested Dick Tracy's chin on the heel of his invisible right hand, which looked worse than he knew, and he said, "Hmmmmm."

"You see what I mean," Peg said.

Freddie shifted position, nodded Dick Tracy's head, and said, "You mean, get naked and sneak into places."

"Yeah, that's right, you'd have to be naked, wouldn't you?"

"Warm places," Freddie decided. "Sneak into warm places. But then what?"

"Steal," Peg said.

"Steal what? I grab a handful of cash, I head for the door, people see this wad of cash floating through the air, they make a jump for it, what they grab is me. "

"Too bad you don't have a, like a bag that's invisible, too."

"I got trouble enough with just me invisible."

"Well, it won't be all trouble, Freddie, will it?"

He sighed; Dick Tracy's mumps recurred. "What else is it, Peg? Look how I am."

"Well, I can't look how you are, can I?"

"That's part of the problem right there. And I have to sit around with my head inside this microwave oven here—"

"We'll punch airholes around the top."

"After I take it off."

"Okay," she said. "But, you know, Freddie, maybe we don't have to be so completely negative about this situation."

"Oh, no?" He waved his round empty sleeves at her. "You call this positive?"

"Possibly," she said, musing, thinking. "Possibly it's positive."

Freddie loved it when Peg thought. In the first place, she was so good at it, and in the second place, she looked so lovable while doing it. So he didn't interrupt, merely sat there, invisible inside his clothes and Dick Tracy head, and watched her think, and after a while he saw the slow smile of success spread across her face. "Yeah?" he said.

"Yeah," she said.

"Now it's all hunky-dory?"

"Not exactly" she said. "It's true there's still stuff we're gonna have to adapt to here, we both know that—"

"Like don't make love with the lights on."

"Don't remind me. But that isn't all there is to what's happened here, just problems and adaptations."

"No?"

"Freddie," she said, with a broad smile at Dick Tracy's latex-chiseled features, "it just might be, when we get used to it, invisibility, just maybe, it could be fun."

7

To be a tobacco-company lawyer is to know something of the darkness of the human heart. Little surprised Mordon Leethe, nothing shocked him, not much interested him, and there was nothing in life he loved, including himself.

A stocky heavy-shouldered man of fifty-six, Mordon Leethe had been a skinny six foot two when he'd played basketball all those years ago at Uxtover Prep, but caution and skepticism had worked on him like a heavy planet's gravity, compressing him to his current five foot ten, none of it muscle but all of it hard anyway, with tension and rage and disdain.

Mordon was going over the latest PAC regulations regarding corporate donations to political campaigns — he loved Congress; hookers defining how they'll agree to be fucked — when the phone rang. He picked it up, made a low sound like a warthog, and the voice of his secretary, Helen, a nice maternal woman lost in these offices, said in his ear, "Dr. Amory on two. R&D."

Helen was a good secretary. She knew her boss could not possibly keep in his mind the name and title of every person listed in his Rolodex, so whenever someone he wasn't used to was on the line, Helen would identify the caller when announcing the call. By just now saying, "R&D," she'd jogged Mordon Leethe's memory, reminding him that Dr. Archer Amory was head of NAABOR's research and development program, a three-pronged project that attempted to (1) prove that all proof concerning the health dangers of cigarette consumption is unproved; (2) find some other use for tobacco — insulation? optical fibers? — should worse come to worst; and (3) prepare for a potential retooling to marijuana, should that market ever open up.

Which of these R&D tines had led Dr. Archer to call an attorney? All Mordon Leethe knew was the equation: Doctor = bad news. Shrinking, condensing yet another tiny millimeter, he punched "2" without acknowledging Helen's words, and said, "'Morning, Doctor. How are things in the lab?"

"Well, the mice are still dying," said a hearty brandy-and-golf voice.

"I know that joke," Mordon said sourly. "The elephants are still alive, but they're coughing like hell."

"Really? That's a new one. Very funny."

It was really a very old one. Mordon said, "What is it today, Doctor?"

"You're going to be getting a visit from two of our independent-contractor researchers."

"Am I."

"Their names are—"

"Wait."

Mordon drew toward himself today's yellow pad, flipped to a new page, picked up his Mont Blanc Agatha Christie pen with the ruby-eyed snake on its clip, and said, "Now."

"Their names are Dr. David Loomis and Dr. Peter Heimhocker, and they—"

"Spell."

Amory spelled, then said, "I want to emphasize, these two are not employees of my division, nor in fact employees of NAABOR at all. They're independent contractors."

This is something very bad, Mordon thought. He said, "And what's their problem?"

"I'd rather they told you that themselves. When today would be a good time to see them?"

Very very bad. Mordon looked at his calendar. "Three o'clock," he said.

"Do keep me informed," Archer Amory said.

Fat chance. "Of course," Mordon said, and dropped the phone like a dead rat into its cradle.

Since it was dangerous for Mordon to drink at lunch — his real self kept trying to come out — he refrained, taking only Pellegrino water, which meant his mood in the afternoons was much worse than his mood in the mornings. Into this foul presence came the two doctors, at five minutes before the hour of three, tension in their every aspect. Mordon remarked their sexual proclivity without regard; he didn't dislike any human being more than any other human being. " Doctor Amory," he said, with slight savage emphasis on the title, "tells me you two have some sort of problem."

"We think we do," said Dr. Peter Heimhocker. This was the one Mordon had the most trouble looking at. White men in Afros are hard enough for normal people to take; for Mordon, after lunch, that fuzzy halo of black hair above that skinny pale face was practically incitement to amputation. Of the head.

The other one, Dr. David Loomis, looked at his partner with frightened outrage. "You think we do! Pee -ter!" He was the somewhat heavier one, a soft-bodied, earnestly petulant man with thinning hair on top, unnaturally blond.

Meanwhile, Heimhocker was saying, "David, do you mind?"

It was going to be necessary to look at Heimhocker. Looking at him, Mordon said, "Why not tell me what happened?"

While Heimhocker opened his skinny mouth and took a long deep breath, visibly gathering his thoughts, Loomis, in a sudden spasm of words, cried out, "We kidnapped a man and gave him an experimental formula and he got away!"

Mordon moved backward in his chair. "Did you say "kidnapped'?"