Donald Westlake - Smoke

They took the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel — well, what else would you do? — and once they were in the tunnel Freddie said, "Time for me to get ready." He clambered through the space between the seats, into the empty rear of the van, sat down on the floor back there, and began to unwrap himself.

Since the van was without back windows, it had only exterior rearview mirrors, for which Peg was now grateful. It meant she couldn't see her guy gradually disappear. Nevertheless, it was startling, just before they left the tunnel at the Manhattan end, when what was clearly a forearm rested on the back of the driver's seat and Freddie's voice just behind her right ear said, "All set," but when she turned her head for a quick look, there was nobody in the van except her, and nothing back there but a crumpled pile of clothes on the floor.

The sudden adrenaline rush made her veer too close to the cab on her left, which yawped in angry response. Pulling back into her own lane, emerging from the tunnel into sunlight — even Manhattan gets sunlight, some days — Peg said, "Neaten up those clothes, Freddie, you're gonna have to put that stuff back on."

"You're right," said the voice, and the forearm left her seatback, and she heard but did not turn around to watch Freddie's clothing arrange itself more neatly in a rear corner.

"Where do I go from here?" Peg asked, since big green signs dead ahead were giving her a number of choices, and not much time to make one.

"West Side," Freddie's voice said. From the sound of it, he was now leaning on the back of the passenger seat, and when Peg glanced over there, yes, that was the indentation of his arm. This, she thought, not for the first time, is going to take some getting used to.

Peg took the West Side Highway, Freddie's disembodied voice telling her to bear to the right at Twenty-third Street and then make the right turn onto Forty-second Street, which she did, only then saying, "Where we going, Freddie?"

"West Forty-seventh. The diamond district."

"Oh, yeah?" Peg was pleased. "I've never been there."

"Neither have I," Freddie said. "At least, not in the daytime."

9

There are a couple of centers of the wholesale diamond trade in New York City, one down by the Manhattan Bridge and the other on West Forty-seventh Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Diamonds are the principal business of this block, but they also deal in other precious stones, and gold and silver, and platinum, and whatever else is small and shiny and very very valuable. Here entire buildings are given over to the buyers and sellers of costly stone and metal, all seated at the small wood-and-glass tables under the extremely bright lights, protected by layer after layer of security, negotiating in Yiddish or Dutch or Japanese or Boer or Portuguese or Bantu or even, if all else fails, English. Millions of dollars in value change hands on this block, not every month, not every day, but every minute, most of the transactions handled by somewhat shabby-looking people who seem to take no pleasure from riches or even the idea of riches but only from the process itself. They don't live to make money, they live to make deals, and they've gotten pretty good at it.

When Peg made the turn from Seventh Avenue, Freddie could sense it already, the buzz and stir of furious life all up and down the block. There's something here for me, Freddie thought, as he often did, adrenaline surging, and as usual it was a happy thought. "Park anywhere, Peg," he said.

Peg gave the air around him a caustic look, then turned her attention back to the street, lined solidly on both sides with parked trucks, vans, station wagons, and sedans armed with company names on their doors. (A civilian vehicle would be eaten alive on this block.) "Oh, sure," she said. "How about on top of that cable-company van?"

"Whatever works for you, Peg," Freddie said. He was too excited by the street to worry about details. The bowl of succotash and soy sauce (without the bowl) was gone now, happily digested, and he was ready to roll.

Midway down the block, on the right, stood a fire hydrant. A roofing company truck was parked next to it, of course, but whatever had recently blocked the rest of the legal clearance must have just this minute left, so Peg slid in there, backed and filled into the tiny space, and at last said, "There."

"Leave the motor on and switch on the blinker lights," Freddie advised. "That way you're not parked, you're stopped. And I tell you what, Peg. After a few minutes, move over to the passenger seat here. When I knock on the window, you open it, okay?"

"How will I know it's you?"

"Because you won't see me, Peg," Freddie said. "If you see somebody, don't open it. If you don't see somebody, it's me."

"Of course," Peg said. "I'm sorry, Freddie, the traffic got me rattled."

"S'okay. Close the door after me, okay?"

The side door of the van opened on the curb side. Freddie slid it slowly back, sorry for once there wasn't a window in it so he could see exactly what was just outside there, and when it was ajar barely enough he wriggled through and stood silent a moment, back against the van, checking it all out, while Peg reached over to slide the door shut.

The first thing Freddie didn't like was the sidewalk. It wasn't what you would call clean. It was also crowded with people, rushing, scurrying, sidestepping, side-slipping people. Tall skinny black messengers with many-shaped packages strapped to their backs; black-coated and black-hatted Hasidim, some pushing wheeled black valises; short round Puerto Rican file clerks in Day-Glo clothing; tourists from Germany and Japan, gawping at what might have been theirs; MBAs in their last suit, looking for work; lawyers and process servers and bill collectors, sniffing the air as they prowled; white-collar workers taking fifteen minutes to do an hour of errands; Central American delivery boys with white aprons, bearing cardboard trays of paper cups; cops and rental cops and undercover cops, all eyeing one another with deep suspicion; mail-persons and United Parcel persons and FedEx persons hurrying past one another, pretending the other persons didn't exist; druggies visiting Terra in search of supplies; and the homeless with their empty cups, trying against all the odds to get at least a little attention, if not sympathy, from this heedless throng.

All those bodies in motion formed a constantly changing woven fabric, a six-foot-high blanket of rolling humanity, and it was now Freddie's job to weave himself horizontally through this fabric, slipping through the weft and warp without any of the textile becoming aware of his existence; to be, in short, the ultimate flea. To do all of that, and to do it successfully, would require every bit of his concentration, leaving nothing for the careful self-protective study of this dubious sidewalk that the surface really deserved. Freddie knew his bare feet were just going to have to get along as best they could.

Freddie took one tentative step away from the van, and here came hurtling two hooky-playing kids in big sneakers, waving cigarettes and laughing at each other's dumb jokes. Freddie dodged them, but then almost ran into a guy carrying a roll of tarpaper on his shoulder, coming out of the roofing-company truck. A rollout in the other direction put Freddie in the path of three middle-aged Japanese women, marching arm in arm, cameras dangling down their fronts, forming a phalanx as impenetrable as the Miami Dolphins' defensive line.

Freddie recoiled, back against the cool side of the van, heart beating, doubt rising to the surface of his brain. This mob was dangerous. It was true they rarely crashed violently into one another, hardly did anything worse than the occasional shoulder bump, but that was because they could see one another and take whatever minimal evasive action might be necessary to avoid a head-on collision. But they couldn't see Freddie, and would have no notion of getting out of his way or even accounting for his presence on the sidewalk. They would tromp his toes, knee him in the groin, elbow him in the breadbasket, and pound their foreheads into his nose, all without ever having the slightest clue that his toes, groin, bread-basket, or nose were anywhere in the vicinity.