Smoke

by Donald E. Westlake

  What made it even worse, you could never be sure when he was looking at you. We all like privacy sometimes, to be alone with our thoughts, or our bodies, but these two hours in the van were the longest stretch Peg had had to herself—to be herself—in the last eight days. There was no privacy when you lived with an invisible man. He got all the privacy, and you got none. Never knowing when you’re under observation, whether he’s behind you or in front of you, never knowing how you look. At this particular moment, do you look sexy and pretty and thin, or do you look foolish or ugly or stupid? Or just merely cranky, probably, most of the time.

  And of course Freddie, being a man, hadn’t the slightest idea anything was wrong. He just went blithely on, being invisible, half the time in the apartment forgetting his Bart Simpson head, never wearing the gloves, never giving a second thought to the effect he was having on the person with whom he shared the apartment.

  Which might be unfair, actually, though Peg wasn’t in much of a mood to give Freddie the benefit of the doubt. But the other problem with living with an invisible man was the fact you can’t see him. It wasn’t merely that you can’t see him, you can’t see him. You can’t see the expression on his face, can’t tell if he’s pleased or miserable, can’t tell if he’s bored or excited, can’t tell what’s going on. We all of us to some extent chart our voyages through life based on the weather occurring in our loved ones, but with an invisible man you can never tell what the weather is. The voice gives some clues, the words give some clues, but where are the facial expressions? Where’s the body language? Where’s the goddamn body?

  I don’t know how much more of this I can put up with, Peg thought. There, the thought was out.

  So were the people. All at once, people were coming out of the fur-storage building a block and a half away, streaming across the street to the parking lot, calling out words to one another, waving, getting into their cars. A little pocket rush-hour now took place on the street in front of Affiliated Fur Storage, and then they were all dispersed, leaving only a little white security-company car parked at the gate. Five minutes later, as Peg watched, no longer impatient, no longer bored, happy and interested now that something was happening, three bulky men in brown uniforms came out of the building, paused to lock the front gate, then clambered into the little car and drove away.

  Peg didn’t wait for a signal from Freddie. She knew that place down there was empty, she knew he was in there dismantling the alarm system, she knew it would be only a very few minutes before he came out with a white towel or a roll of fax paper or something to wave at her, so she started the van and eased it slowly forward, through and beyond the intervening intersection.

  The seltzer bottler and the uniform laundry, not being seasonal businesses with a high-volume June, had both shut for the day more than an hour ago. This was strictly a commercial area around here, with no pedestrians ever and no traffic after business hours. Peg had the world to herself as she drove on down the street, and was pulling up in front of the loading entrance to Affiliated when the garage door back in there lifted and out walked a fur coat, holding a white plastic in-tray in its nonexistent hand. “Oh, Freddie,” Peg muttered, and just for a moment closed her eyes.

  The fur coat, seeing she was already there, retired into the building to put down the in-tray, then came out again and unlocked the gate, while Peg backed and filled, getting the van into position. The fur coat opened wide both sides of the gate, then waved an arm at Peg, and she backed into the driveway, looking left and right, this mirror, that mirror, not quite scraping the sides of the van, moving slowly as the fur coat retreated, and finally kabunking against the black rubber edge of the loading dock. She switched off the engine as the van’s rear doors opened and the fur coat said, “Peg, I thought they’d never go home.”

  “Freddie,” Peg said, trying to sound calm and dispassionate, “why are you wearing that coat?”

  “I’m cold, Peg. Believe me, it gets cold in there. I need my shoes and socks.”

  The van jounced as the fur coat clambered in, then sat on the floor. Socks moved through the air. Peg said, “You’re going to get dressed, aren’t you? I mean, regular dressed, your own stuff.”

  “Let’s do the job first,” he said. “Here, put my things on the seat, okay?” Freddie’s clothing floated toward her, as he said, “I’ll put the rest on when I’m done loading up the van.”

  Peg took the mound of clothing, mostly to stop it from floating like that. “You want help?”

  “No, you stay with the van, in case there’s some kind of trouble. If you gotta take off, I’ll make my way home later.”

  “Take off?” Peg looked out at the street. Police patrols, that was what Freddie was thinking of. But if the police came along, and if they didn’t like the look of the situation here, all they’d have to do was park across the front of this driveway, blocking her in.

  Get arrested? Do eight years of prison laundry upstate? This, Peg thought, is not what I signed on for.

  She might have said something, she wasn’t sure what, but the fur coat, now sporting loafers and white socks, was skidding back out of the van. She watched him go, and there was just something so stupidly comical about a shin-length mink coat wearing white socks and brown shoes and no head that she forgot the awful possibility of getting Jean Harris’s old room, and simply watched as the mink coat made a dozen trips in and out of the building, bringing great armloads of fur, dumping them into the back of the van, shoving them in, pushing them in, piling them in, until the leading edge of the pile, like a furry iceberg spreading, began to intrude into the driver compartment. “Enough, Freddie!” Peg yelled through the muffling mountain of mink, not sure he’d even be able to hear her back there.

  But he did. “Right!” his voice shouted, dulled but intelligible. Thunk thunk, the rear doors closed. “Drive it out!”

  She did. Stopping in the street, looking in the right-hand outside mirror, she watched the mink coat with the white socks and brown shoes, and what a busy mink coat it was! First it ran inside the building one last time, then ran back out as the garage door lowered, then came forward to close and lock the gates, with itself on the outside. Finally, it came up to the van and opened the passenger door. As Peg watched through the open door, the mink coat paused, then suddenly went mad and then limp, as Freddie took it off. The coat then appeared to stuff itself in among the other coats crowding the back of the passenger seat, and Peg looked away, watching the street for police patrols, until Freddie said, “Okay, Peg, you can look now.”

  He was back, or Bart Simpson was back, standing out there beside the van. She smiled, relieved, actually liking Freddie when all was said and done. Putting the van in gear, she said, “Now what?”

  “On to Jersey Josh,” Bart said, sounding like a cartoon character with a head cold, and climbed into the van.

  14

  “9,” Jersey Josh repeated, with more emphasis.

  “The thing is, Josh,” Freddie Noon’s voice said in his ear from this old telephone, “I’m making these deliveries, see, I mean I’m already loaded up here.”

  Obviously, as Josh well knew, there was only so much one could say under such circumstances, because who knows how many telephones are tapped? All of them, probably; after all, this is the information age. But what Josh understood, from what little Freddie could say, and from the traffic noises in the background, was that Freddie was calling from a pay phone somewhere out on some street, and that his van was already loaded up with whatever it was he wanted to sell Josh, and he didn’t like the idea of driving around the city for hours with his van full of felony convictions.

  However, that was Freddie’s problem, and had nothing to do with Josh. Josh’s problem was, he would not, repeat not, repeat never, never ever lower the elevator and open the delivery entrance at the side of the building in daylight. Period. June is the worst of months for a fellow like Josh, with daylight practically all around the clock, which meant he was not going to think ab
out opening that door down there until 9 P.M. Two A.M. would be better, but 9 P.M. he could live with.

  But not a second earlier. “9,” he said, for the third time.

  Freddie sighed. “Okay, Josh, I understand. I just don’t like Peg out by herself at night, that’s all.”

  The woman again? Josh flinched, his head suddenly aching at the memory, as he said, “Not U?”

  “Naw, you know, I pushed myself, I shouldn’t have got out of bed so soon; I just can’t make it. You know Peg now, so that’s okay.”

  “S.” He knew Peg, all right.

  “So she’ll be there at nine o’clock.”

  And this time, Josh thought, she doesn’t get off so easy. This time, no more Mr. Nice Guy. This time, no subtlety, no wine and cheese, no Centerspread Girls. This time, direct action. Hit her on the head, start from there. “9,” Josh said, and hung up, and went to look for something heavy.

  * * *

  Nine. Josh stepped onto the thick wooden-plank floor of the freight elevator, turned the key in the lock, and the oil-smeared motor in its housing up on the roof growled into action, sounding like an old lion with emphysema. Slowly the open-sided platform lowered, shaking under its cables, and as Josh descended, the growl of the motor became blended with the snarls and threats and bitings of the Dobermans, flinging themselves at the heavy metal cage. Josh amused himself with the dogs in his usual fashion as the platform settled down into its lower position, then turned his back on them, ostentatiously farted, and used his key to open the ground-level garage door.

  The van was there. In the darkness, Josh couldn’t see exactly who was at the wheel, but assumed it was the woman. “N!” he cried, and waved for the driver to back the van in onto the elevator platform.

  The van’s windows had been shut. Now the driver’s window slid down and the woman’s head appeared, looking back at him. “Just unload it,” she called.

  Oh, no, not that easy. “Up,” Josh insisted, pointing toward his lair upstairs.

  As usual, the woman was nothing but trouble. “Why not unload it right here?” she asked.

  “2 much work,” he said, which happened to be true, though not the reason. Jabbing his thumb skyward, he repeated, “N. Up.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  She closed her window before backing the van into the elevator. Did she think she was going to stay in there? No way.

  With the van inside, Josh used his keys to close the door and raise the elevator, leaving the key in the elevator lock for later. He opened the rear doors of the van, and looked in at enough fur to clothe an entire Norse horde. “M,” he said, his word of satisfaction, rarely heard. Going around to the driver’s window, he looked in through the glass at the woman and said, “Help.”

  She lowered her window less than an inch. “What?”

  “Help.”

  “You mean, unload?” She shook her head as he was nodding his. “I don’t do heavy lifting,” she said, and closed the window.

  Heavy lifting. All women can lift fur coats, they’ve got special muscles for the job. Grousing, muttering letters of the alphabet to himself, Josh sloped on back to the rear of the van and started pulling out furs, hanging them on garment racks he kept around for just this purpose, every coat still equipped with the hanger it had worn at the fur-storage place.

  A lot of furs. Good furs, too, Freddie always had a good eye. Four garment racks crammed with minks in shades of brown and black, giving off that cold warmth peculiar to natural fur.

  Valuable. More than the diamonds, last time. There had to be two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of fur bending the metal bars of these garment racks. In the normal course of business with Freddie Noon, that would be a twenty-G payment, and of course Freddie would know it, so his woman would know it, so there was no point arguing, was there? No.

  Josh went around to the driver’s window, rapped on it, and the damn woman lowered it that same inch. “Twenty,” he said.

  She smiled at him, sweetly, the lying little bitch. Her smile lied. “Freddie said,” she said, also sweetly, “twenty-five.”

  Josh frowned. Had he estimated wrong? Or had Freddie? “Wait,” he decided, and went back to look at the furs again, paying more attention to labels this time, and lengths, and finally deciding he’d been right the first time around.

  But then he decided it didn’t matter. He’d give her the twenty-five, and a little later he’d take it away from her again, and let her explain herself at home. He’d tell Freddie she’d left with the money, that’s all, and Freddie would have to know what a sneaking liar this woman was, so he’d have to believe his old friend Josh, wouldn’t he? And if he didn’t, if he took the damn woman’s part against his old friend, well, fine. If Josh never saw Freddie Noon again, that would be okay, too.

  So he went back to the driver’s window, and of course it was shut. He rapped more sharply on the glass this time, and when she opened it the usual inch he said, “S.”

  “Oh, good. Freddie will be very happy. This’ll make him get healthy even faster.”

  “Out,” Josh suggested, and turned the door handle, and it was locked. Damn woman!

  “I don’t need to get out,” she told him. “You can just give me the money right here, and I’ll be on my way. I don’t like to leave Freddie alone when he isn’t feeling well.”

  Stupid woman. The van’s back doors were open; he could just crawl in that way and get his hands on her. So he turned away from her nasty smiling face and walked toward the rear of the van, and she started the engine. He looked back, betrayed, and she’d lowered the window more now and was looking back at him. “Don’t go right behind there,” she advised. “It might back up and hurt you.”

  He stood glowering, unable to think of a single thing to say. She waited, smiling, then said, “Just get the money, all right, Josh? And I’ll be off. I don’t want to smell up your place with the exhaust.”

  Money. All right, get her the money. We’ll get her the money. And more. We’ll see who’s so smart around here.

  Josh went through his storage rooms to his office, opened a safe, and took out five of the five-thousand-dollar envelopes. This time, he’d make her count the money, so she’d be looking away when . . .

  Here was the rack of auto keys, the master keys for every kind of car, for this kind of car, that kind of car, and . . . Freddie Noon’s van. Josh slipped the key off its hook on the rack.

  This evening, a part of Josh’s fashion statement was grimy shirttails hanging out. He pulled up the tail on the right side so he could put the key in the pocket of his baggy rotten trousers, then wiped his sweaty hands on the shirttail, picked up the five envelopes, and plodded back to the van.

  It still sat there with its engine running, but the rear doors were now shut. The exhaust smell was getting pretty strong. Don’t want her to knock me out again, Josh thought, and grinned to himself, because this time he’d be the one doing the knocking out.

  Window open one damn inch. Giving her the envelopes one at a time was like mailing letters. “Count,” Josh ordered.

  “Oh, that’s okay, I’ll just—”

  “Count!”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll count,” she said, shrugging, and as she looked down at the envelopes in her lap, reaching for one, he reached for the key in his trouser pocket and found his shirttail on fire.

  Ipe! Josh jumped around like a Watusi, whacking at his right hip like a move in a Bob Fosse dance, while the damn woman in the van looked at him with the first honest smile he’d ever seen her wear.

  How could he catch fire? Holy Batman, his whole shirt was on fire! What had he touched, what had he brushed against, how—

  Yanking the shirt off to reveal the tattered and filthy sleeveless undershirt beneath, staring around in wild surmise, Josh saw, against the far wall, forty million dollars in counterfeit twenties in brown paper bags burning like a Magritte tuba.

  Fire! Disaster! Shrieking, leaving the shirt to burn itself out on the elevator floor, Jos
h scampered to the bags of money, grabbing fur coats along the way, throwing the coats onto the flames, throwing himself on top of the coats, smothering the fire.

  Creak/groan/creak/groan. Supine atop the smoldering minks, Josh looked up to see the van descending out of sight. Somehow, the damn woman had gotten out of the van and started the elevator. Josh couldn’t run after her, not with everything on fire here. He slapped at flames, rolled around on flames, scrambled to his feet, threw more coats on the smoking mess, jumped up and down on it all, and at last felt it was safe to turn his attention to the elevator.

  It was already at the bottom, down in the darkness there. The woman had the garage door open and was driving out. Josh stood panting at the lip of the big square opening, his nose full of burning fur and car exhaust and his own self, and her vicious voice came up to him from the blackness below. “I’ll send the elevator back up.”

  Huh.

  “And I’ll send along a little something to remember me by.”

  What did she mean by that?

  “And next time, Josh, you be nice.”

  Grungle-grungle, the delivery door closed down there. Kerough-kerough, the elevator started up. Snarl snarl . . . Josh peered, trying to see the rising wooden platform. Something was on it, moving . . . the Dobermans!

  Josh ran for his life.

  * * *

  After eighteen rings, Josh finally gave up and answered the telephone: “Y.”

  “Peg tells me she had to set the dogs on you,” Freddie Noon’s voice said.

  Four in the morning, and the Dobermans were still snarling and biting and hurling themselves at the other side of his secret mirrored door. God knows what they’d destroyed back there in the storage area. Tomorrow, the downstairs people would figure out how to get those murderous beasts back where they belonged, but for now, Josh’s private space was ass-deep in Doberman pinschers. “Y,” he repeated.