Donald Westlake - Smoke

Heimhocker said, "David, let me. David, please. " Then he turned to Mordon, saying, "I don't know how much Archer told you—"

"Pretend Dr. Amory told me nothing."

"All right. David and I run a small research facility here in New York. Last night, a burglar broke in, and we captured him. We're just at a point here — well — you don't want to know about our research."

Mordon drew a noose on the yellow pad.

Heimhocker at last went on. "Suffice it to say, we're just at the stage in our work where we need practical field results."

"Guinea pigs," Mordon translated, being well familiar with the creation of smoke-screen phrases.

"Well, yes," Heimhocker said, and coughed delicately. "Human guinea pigs, in point of fact."

"Volunteers," the fidgety Loomis volunteered. "Or prisoners in a state penitentiary. Also volunteers, of course."

Mordon drew fuzzy hair above the noose. "What is the subject of this research?"

"Melanoma."

Mordon stared. "What the fuck has that got to do with cigarettes?"

"Nothing!" cried Loomis, appalled, waving his hands in front of his face like a man afraid of bats.

Simultaneously, Heimhocker practically leaped to his feet as he shouted, "There has never been the slightest link! Never!"

Then Mordon understood, and came close to smiling, but refrained. "I see," he said, and did see. "So you tried your whatsit on this burglar, but he then escaped, and you want to know what your legal exposure might be."

"Well," Heimhocker said, "us, of course, but also the American Tobacco Research Institute."

Now Mordon did smile, not pleasantly. "Is that what NAABOR calls itself with you two? Dr. Amory assures me they've already cut you loose."

"What?"

Mordon said, "Let me explain the situation. If your problem turns out to be a simple matter, I will handle it for you, and charge my normal corporate client, NAABOR. But if it turns out to be a police matter, a matter of felonies, I will direct you to a colleague of mine who handles criminal cases, and you'll work out your arrangements directly with him."

Loomis breathed the words, "Criminal case?"

"The first question, I suppose," Mordon said, writing the number 1 on his pad and circling it, "is, What is the likelihood your stuff killed the fellow?"

"Killed him!" They stared at one another, and then Heimhocker said, "No, there should be nothing. I mean, nothing lethal. "

"In one," Loomis said, "or the other, Peter. The combination, how do we know what that cocktail could do?"

"Not kill anybody," Heimhocker insisted, irritably. "We've been over this and over this, David."

Mordon said, "Cocktail? Would you explain?"

"The fact is," Heimhocker said, "we have two formulae. We gave the burglar one, but he got the idea—"

"We gave him the idea, Peter."

"All right, David, we gave him the idea." To Mordon he explained, a bit shamefacedly, "He thought the other one was some sort of antidote."

"And took it, is that what you're saying, on the way out?"

"Yes."

"And now he's somewhere in the world," Mordon summed up, "a felon, a burglar, not likely to consult a doctor or an emergency room, with two experimental medicines floating around inside him that you aren't absolutely totally sure what either of them would do, much less both."

"Not precisely, no," Heimhocker agreed, sounding defensive, "not before much more testing and—"

"Yes, yes, I'm not impugning your methodology," Mordon assured him. "At least, not before last night. What were these products of yours supposed to do?"

"Affect the pigment of the skin," Loomis said, eagerly, pinching his own pink forearm to demonstrate the concept skin.

"You mean it could give him a bad burn, something like that?"

"Oh, no, not at all," Loomis said, briskly shaking his head, and Heimhocker said, "Quite the reverse. The object is the elimination or alteration of pigment."

Mordon waited, but nothing more was forthcoming. At last he said, "Meaning?"

"Well, we've discussed this, David and I," Heimhocker said, "ever since it happened—"

"We had no sleep."

"No. And we talked it over and we think it's possible," Heimhocker went on, and cleared his throat, and said, "that the fellow is, at this point he might very well be, uh, well . . . invisible."

Mordon looked at them, at their serious frightened faces. He did not write anything on his pad. In fact, he put down the pen. "Tell me," he said, "more."

8

There are vans with many large windows all the way around, so the kids can look out on their way to Little League. And there are vans with a minimum of windows — windshield, and rectangles to both sides of the front seat — so the cops can't look in on its way to or from the felony. Freddie's van was of the latter type, with two seats in front, a floor gearshift between them, and a dark cavernous emptiness in back where an electrician would mount shelves but which Freddie kept bare because he was never exactly sure what size object he might want to put back there. The van had two rear doors (windowless) that opened outward like the library doors in a serious play, plus a wide sliding door on the right side in case he ever desired to steal a stove. The floor in back was carpeted with stubbly gray AstroTurf, and the bulb was gone from the interior light.

Bay Ridge is one of the more crime-free neighborhoods of Brooklyn, mostly because it is populated by so many hot-headed ethnics who take crime personally and who in any case like to beat up on people. Therefore, most residents leave their vehicles parked at the curb, no problem. But Freddie felt about his van much the way he felt about Peg, and he wouldn't leave Peg at the curb, so he'd worked out an inexpensive rental arrangement for space in the parking lot next to the neighborhood firehouse, where the firepersons kept their own private vehicles and where nobody messed around.

This morning, after their separate breakfasts, Peg took the keys and walked the two blocks to this firehouse, waved to a couple of the persons sitting around on folding chairs out front enjoying the spring sunshine and the spring clothing on the persons passing by — they waved back, knowing Peg and Freddie and the van all went together as a package — then got the van and drove it back to their apartment building. Usually Freddie did the driving, but Peg had taken a shot at the wheel several times before this, and was used to the stick shift on the floor.

What she wasn't used to was Freddie, not like this. She pulled up in front of the building, and out came a tall Bart Simpson, in normal shirt and pants and shoes, but with weird peach-colored hands that were actually Playtex kitchen gloves. Not being a kitchen sort of person, and so not used to Playtex kitchen gloves, Freddie had a little trouble at first opening the passenger door of the van, but then he got it, and got in, and said, "Peg, these gloves are hotter than the mask."

"Keep them on," Peg advised, and drove away before anybody in the neighborhood could get a good look at her traveling companion.

"We'll go to Manhattan," Freddie said. "Nobody looks weird there because everybody looks weird there."

"Well, you're sure gonna test that theory," Peg said. "You know, Freddie, I didn't notice it in the apartment, but in this little space here, when you talk, you sound kind of muffled."

"Well, no wonder," Freddie said. "I'm inside this condom here."

"Poor Freddie," Peg said, and concentrated on her driving.

There were some looks from surprised other drivers while they were stopped at red lights along the way, but not enough to be real trouble. Freddie sat well back in the passenger seat, usually with his face turned toward Peg — or Bart's face, actually — and anyway it was pretty dim inside the van, so probably the worst the nosy parkers in the other cars could say, to themselves or their fellow travelers, was, "That's a weird-looking guy," or, "That weird-looking guy looks familiar," or, "Doesn't that weird-looking guy look like Bart Simpson?" And even if somebody said, aloud, in the privacy of his or her own vehicle, "There's a guy in that car in a Bart Simpson mask," so what? They sell them, don't they? For people to wear, don't they? So what's the problem?