Donald Westlake - Smoke

The problem is, your farmer will never call a mechanic, no matter what the job. Your farmer is his own carpenter, and he isn't a good carpenter. He's his own plumber, electrician, mason, roofer, auto mechanic, and midwife, and he's pretty bad at all of them. Geoff had seen wiring in some of these old farmhouses and barns that would give you nightmares; in the one that burned down this morning, for instance. If you ever see anything that's built to Code, you know a farmer didn't build it.

The farmers will tell you the reason they do everything themselves, instead of calling in somebody who knows what the hell he's doing, is because they're poor, which isn't exactly true. Oh, they're poor, all right, but that isn't the reason they do everything themselves. The reason is, they're proud; and we know what pride goeth before, don't we?

Geoff, in his ruminations, was just at the point of brooding on pride and its aftermath when he saw the van, definitely that selfsame gray van, owned by one Margaret Briscoe of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York, and last seen zipping away down Market Street out of town with Margaret Briscoe at the wheel and an invisible man named Freddie as the passenger.

And now the van was parked in front of Geoff's house. Geoff, in his pickup and still wearing his smoke-permeated firefighting gear, drove on by his house and reached first for his police radio, switching it over to the frequency it shared with Cliff's Service & Auto Repair out on County 14, Cliff being one of his two part-time deputies. "Cliff," he said into the mike. "Tell me you're there."

Geoff drove to the end of Dudley, made a U-turn, and parked behind his police cruiser. "Come on, Cliff," he said into the mike. " Be there."

"I was under a car, dammit. What's up?"

"Cliff, get your badge and your gun and go on down to my house. Out front, you'll see a van, gray. Do not let anybody into that van."

"Do I use lethal force?"

Clearly, Cliff had been watching too many action movies on his VCR. "Only if you absolutely have to," Geoff said.

"Roger."

Geoff switched off the police radio before he could hear Cliff say over and out, and picked up his walkie-talkie. "Hi, guys," he said into it. "Somebody turn off the damn radio and pick up."

The walkie-talkie connected him with his construction crew. Having finished the porch conversion here in town, they were at work now installing two rest rooms out at the Roeliff Summer Theater. The summer-theater operators having been given an anonymous grant for this purpose, their patrons would no longer have to use the Portosans out in the parking lot; at least not once Geoff and his guys got finished installing the wheelchair- and handicapped-access, water-saving, energy-conserving, unisex, washable-wall interior rest rooms.

"Is that you, Smokey?"

"If this is a dumb joke," Geoff said, "this must be Steve. Yeah, Steve, it's me. I want you guys to down tools—"

"Missy's gonna be mad."

"That's Missy's problem. I want you to down tools and come over to my house. All of you. There's somebody in there, I'm not sure who, not sure how many. Bring your walkie-talkie, and stay just down the block. Park in front of Whalens'. Don't come in or show yourselves unless I call you."

Steve, his joking ways forgotten, said, "Geoff? You got a real problem there?"

"Don't know yet. Goin in to find out."

"We'll be around."

"Cliff's watching a van out front. Don't let him shoot you."

"He might shoot at me."

Geoff got out of the pickup. He was in his tall firefighting boots, and black water-repellent coat, and now he put back on his fire-chief helmet, pocketed the walkie-talkie, and crossed Market Street to come at his house from the rear, as he'd done the last time he'd encountered Freddie and Peg.

Letting himself quietly into the house through the back door, he paused to remove his firefighting boots, but kept his helmet on, and eased forward slowly through the house. Not a sound. Nothing visible out of place.

His office door was closed and, when very quietly and cautiously he tested it: locked. He palmed his key, eased it into the keyhole, slowly turned it, and eased open the door.

Nothing. Office empty. Office chair not tilted back, so the invisible Freddie was not in it.

So what was going on? Where were they? Turning away from his now-open office doorway, standing in the middle of his front hall in his tube socks and firefighting gear, arms akimbo, Geoff looked this way and that and up the stairs, and nothing was to be seen, nothing was to be heard. "Peg?" he called. "Freddie?"

A smiling fat man with a pistol in his hand came out of the parlor. The pistol was pointed at Geoff's chest. The smiling fat man said, "You lookin for Freddie, too? What a coincidence, so are we. Let's look together."

51

This was not what Peg had had in mind, not at all.

When she had realized, back home in the apartment in Bay Ridge, that this guy Barney was either too mean or too crazy to stand up to, that he would do terrible things to find out what he wanted to know, that in fact he might even be serious about cutting off her finger and sending it to Freddie, she had done her best to think fast. Not easy, under the circumstances.

She would have to give these people something. Not Freddie, but something. A place to go, and they would certainly bring her along. She absolutely would not turn poor Freddie over to the tender mercies of Barney and his friends, but if she took them somewhere and Freddie wasn't there, then what? Wouldn't they get mad? Wouldn't this guy Barney be both meaner and crazier? If she wouldn't be able to stand up to him when he was calm — and she knew she wouldn't — how could she possibly stand up to him when he was upset?

That was when she'd thought of the little town of Dudley, and its he-man police chief. There was a hero for you. He already knew about Freddie, so no long explanations would be needed, and in fact, they'd already explained to him that Freddie was some kind of scientist, she could no longer remember exactly what kind, and that bad guys were chasing him, so here would be the bad guys.

That's the way she'd seen it in her mind's eye, their arrival on the front porch of that big old house on the main street of Dudley, knocking on the door, and Chief Whatsisname answering, and her popping him a wink as she'd say, "These fellas are here looking for Freddie." And let him take over.

Instead of which, the bad guys captured the hero in the first second of play, just like that.

So now, with the bad guys seated around this old-fashioned parlor, and the he-man that failed standing in the middle of the room with Peg beside him, Barney questioned him, and Peg listened to the answers.

His name was Geoff Wheedabyx. He was police chief, and also fire chief and a lot of other stuff in this town, maybe even Indian chief as well. And he said he didn't know where Freddie Noon was. "This is the first I'm hearing his last name," he said. "Thank you for that."

"You know him, though," Barney said. "You know Freddie."

"I've seen him," Geoff Wheedabyx acknowledged, then chuckled sheepishly and said, "I've met him, I mean."

Mordon Leethe, the awful attorney, said, "He knows Freddie, all right."

"So why doesn't he know where he is?" Through his maddening perpetual smile, Barney was beginning to exhibit dangerous signs of frustration.

Leethe said, "Barney, there's another question that comes first."

Barney showed by a raised eyebrow that he didn't think that was possible. "Yeah?"

"This is the fire chief, is that correct?"

"That's what his costume says."

"But he's also the police chief, Barney. Is he armed?"

"No," Geoff Wheedabyx said.