Smoke

by Donald E. Westlake

  The owner of the Toyota, a young red-haired Irish fireman with last night’s hangover lying on him like the results of a poison gas attack, assured Barney his vehicle had been in no fender-benders at all, but go ahead and look. So Barney went ahead and looked, studying the Toyota’s exterior from every angle, and along the way sticking the transmitter bug onto the frame of Peg Briscoe’s van. Then he thanked the fire guys for their help, and left the firehouse.

  All afternoon and evening, Barney sat in his car, parked where he could see Peg Briscoe’s building, and all afternoon and evening nothing happened. Which gave him time to think, and what he thought was that he was involved in something a little different here. If you’re on the lookout for an invisible man, it isn’t business as usual. For instance, forget descriptions. Forget tailing the guy through the streets. All you can hope to do is find out for sure where he is, close down that spot, and when you know you’ve got him inside a perimeter he can’t get out of, you make your proposition.

  Barney knew exactly what his proposition would be when the time came, and he thought he knew how to make Noon go along with it. His proposition was a straightforward one: assassination. Forget industrial espionage, tiptoeing around cigarette-company meetings, all this penny-ante stuff. There were those two guys, for instance, that he was endlessly paying off to keep their evidence about Barney to themselves. They were still alive only because Barney Beuler would be the prime suspect if either of them went down. The prosecutors were right now trying to get something on those guys, to force them to give up Barney, and he knew it. Take them out, and nobody would ever be able to put together an indictment against Barney Beuler; nobody, ever.

  But how to do it? How to terminate those dear old friends? Barney had brooded on this problem for months. He couldn’t do it personally; they’d have him in a second. And who could he hire that wouldn’t turn on him, set him up, sell him for their own rotten reasons?

  But if you had yourself an invisible man, and if that invisible man had a big family he liked, and a girlfriend he wanted to protect, you could be in Europe if you wanted, safe and clean and absolutely untouchable, while those two dangerous guys went down. And then after that, Noon could still be useful. Through his job, naturally, Barney knew a few guys in the world of organized crime, and those people were always looking for the clean hit. Farm Freddie Noon out. Why not? Retire on the little son of a bitch.

  The only snag that Barney could see, other than finding Noon in the first place, was that violence had never been part of the guy’s MO. But that was okay; everybody’s capable of violence. Noon had just never been motivated before, that’s all.

  In the meantime, there was still the first step to accomplish. Find Noon, box him in. So Barney sat in his car as the long June twilight descended on Bay Ridge, and he watched Peg Briscoe’s apartment, and nothing at all happened. It would be nice, wouldn’t it, if she came out? It would be even nicer if the door opened and nobody came out. Barney was looking forward to that one, hope against hope.

  But no, it didn’t happen. Around eight, he drove away to find a fast-food joint, then swung around the firehouse on the way back and the van was still there, so he took up his position again, parked where he could see Peg Briscoe’s front door.

  A little after nine, he called home, told his wife he was on stakeout and she could call him on the car phone if she needed anything. Around ten, he called his girlfriend on West Seventy-fourth Street in Manhattan and told her he’d probably come over around midnight, why not have a nice little supper ready? And at eleven-thirty, he quit for the night.

   

  * * *

   

  One of the things Barney had that he hoped nobody knew about was a second car. He kept it in an apartment building’s garage on the block behind his girlfriend’s place, and he had bribed the supers involved so he now had the keys he needed to take the elevator from his girlfriend’s place down to the basement, go through several locked doors and one narrow open areaway, and eventually wind up in the garage. If the shooflys were watching his girlfriend’s place they’d just have to assume he was spending entire days in the sack, while they were sitting in cars surrounded by empty cardboard cups. Good, ya fucks.

  Barney and his second car, a nondescript older Chevy Impala, reached Bay Ridge a little before eight-thirty in the morning, and the van was still there. He drove over to park near Briscoe’s building, and was barely in position when out she came, by herself—well, maybe by herself—and walked away toward the firehouse.

  At last. Barney placed the transmitter compass on the dashboard and waited; the thing would make a low buzzing sound once the van was in motion, and he’d be able to follow it without ever having to be within sight of it.

  It’s funny, he thought, waiting for the buzz, how quickly you get used to an impossibility. A week ago, he would have said there was no such thing as an invisible man, that was old movie shit. But all he had to hear was that some serious people said there was an invisible man, and that they were willing to spend serious bread to find him, and doubt vanished like . . . well, like an invisible man. What it comes down to is, you don’t question the real world, right? Because if you do, they put you away where the walls are soft, right? Right.

  Buzz. Barney started his engine. But then, instead of the buzz getting fainter, as it would if the van moved away from him, it got louder, so Barney switched off his engine, and here came the van, Briscoe at the wheel. She stopped in front of her building, opened the van’s side door, and then proceeded to go between van and building several times, lugging heavy suitcases and liquor-store cartons.

  O-kay! Pay dirt! Barney sat and watched, grinning from ear to ear, and pretty soon Briscoe slid the side door shut, got behind the wheel, and took off. Barney waited till she was out of sight, then followed.

   

  * * *

   

  And now Rhinebeck, ninety miles north of the city beside the Hudson River, long ago a port town, when river traffic meant something. Peg Briscoe had driven straight here, like a homing pigeon, north out of the city, up the Taconic Parkway, then west to the river. The whole way, Barney hung back out of sight, listening to the transmitter buzz and watching the compass, and it wasn’t until they were in Rhinebeck itself that he saw the van again, five vehicles ahead at the town’s only traffic light. He considered dawdling here to get himself caught by the next red, but the hell with it. In town there was enough traffic to hide among, even if she was looking for a tail, and it was clear she wasn’t.

  They went on through Rhinebeck to its even smaller suburb, a steep village called Rhinecliff, where the Amtrak trains from New York, on their way to Albany and Buffalo and Montreal, pulled in a dozen times a day. The station building was midway down a steep slope, with a small full parking area above and a downhill entrance drive clogged with parked cars. The van drove down in there, found itself a niche in among the others, and Barney parked at the curb up top, where he could look down through the parked cars and just barely see the van.

  Nothing happened for about twenty minutes, and then a train must have come in, because people suddenly began emerging from the station building down there, maybe a couple dozen, lugging their luggage. Barney watched Briscoe get out of her van and open its side door and lean against the front passenger door like she was waiting for a Little League team. This was interesting; what was the woman up to?

  The last of the passengers came out of the station, to be greeted by friends or to climb into their cars or to take off in the two taxis that had showed up at the last minute. Briscoe waited a little longer, then shut the van’s sliding door, got behind the wheel, and drove off, back the way she’d come. Barney waited till she was out of sight, then U-turned and followed, to see where she was going.

  To have lunch. There was a cafeteria on the main street in Rhinebeck, and that was where she went, in no hurry at all, worried about nothing. Damn.

  Barney couldn’t find another lunch place
nearby, and since she knew his face he couldn’t go in where she was, so he stopped at the local supermarket to get himself a sandwich and coffee from their deli department, which he ate in the car. Do something, Peg, he thought. Do something.

  She did something. After lunch, she got in the van and drove back to the damn railroad station. This time, the wait was half an hour, then what looked like the same couple dozen ex-passengers appeared, did the same things as before, and left. And again Briscoe opened the van’s side door and waited. And again, once all the passengers were gone, she shut that door and got back into the van.

  But this time she didn’t drive away. Instead, she backed into a parking space that had just been vacated, and when Barney got out of the Impala to walk back to where he could see her, she was in there behind the wheel reading a magazine. Waiting for the next train, right? Had to be.

  There was another side street that went downhill behind the station, and when Barney walked down that way, out of sight of the parking area where Briscoe sat, he found, as he’d hoped, another entrance to the station. Going in there, he got a copy of the schedule and carried it back to the Impala, to study it and figure out what was going on.

  Okay. Judging from the times on this schedule, the first two trains she’d met had been northbound out of New York. And then Barney got it, all of it. The son of a bitch had been there yesterday! When he and Leethe had showed up. Noon had skipped out, invisible, and arranged with Briscoe to meet him here today. The Amtrak out of New York City was carrying an invisible man. Freeloading.

  I hope somebody sits on the son of a bitch.

  All right. All Barney had to do now was wait until Briscoe left here, and he’d know she had Freddie Noon inside that van. Then he’d follow, out of sight, to wherever they were hiding out, up here in the north country. High Sierra time, right? Too bad there wasn’t snow on the ground. That’d slow down your goddam invisible man.

  Barney looked at the schedule, and the next train out of New York wasn’t for another two hours and a half. Hell. Okay, he’d been on long stakeouts before. If Briscoe could do it, Barney could do it.

  But he didn’t have to stay here the whole damn time, did he? No, he didn’t. So he U-turned again, and went back to Rhinebeck, and had a second lunch there, at the place where Briscoe had eaten, and then used the pay phone and a charge card the shooflys didn’t know about to make some calls, square himself in his world. He called the Organized Crime Detail and said he was in Brooklyn following up some possibilities about the Paviola family. He called his wife and said he was calling from the office but was about to go on stakeout again, this time in a department car, so no phone, and he’d get in touch with her when he got in touch with her. He also made a couple more calls, concerning other matters he had cooking, and heard nothing too troublesome. Then he walked down to the drugstore on the corner, where he bought four magazines and two newspapers and two maps of the general area.

  Back at the railroad station, having double-checked that Briscoe and the van were still there, he U-turned and parked up the block, out of her sight, and spread out the maps on the steering wheel to see where he was and where they might all be headed.

  And the first thing he saw was a big bridge just a couple miles north, and no passenger service on the other side of the river. So Briscoe could be planning to cart Noon somewhere over there. But not too far, or this wouldn’t be the right train stop.

  Finished with the maps, he went through the two newspapers, and was about to turn to Playboy for the haberdashery tips when a disgorgement of cars up from the railroad station told him the next New York train had arrived. Dropping the magazine, he waited and watched, but after the last of the cars and taxis had come up and run off, the van had still not appeared.

  Barney got out of the Impala and walked back to where he could see down the driveway, and there it was, still there, Briscoe still at the wheel. Shit. He went back to the car to look at the schedule, and it would be another three hours before the next train. Dammit, the local people ought to complain, they really ought to, get themselves better service.

  Barney almost missed it. He was just picking up Playboy when a tiny movement in his rearview mirror caught his eye, and when he looked there was Briscoe, walking up out of the driveway, stopping at the top to look left and right, then turning right to walk along past the upper-level parking area.

  Now what? Barney watched in the mirror, and Briscoe took the same route he’d taken earlier, down to the next cross street, then right toward the rear entrance to the station.

  He had to know what was happening, but he also had to be very damn careful. Getting out of the Impala, he walked back toward the station, following her. He could see the top of her head far away on the cross street, past the cars parked in the upper area. He hung back until she’d disappeared past the corner of the building, then followed, and when he got to the corner she was well down the street, still going straight. Past the railroad station the street became some kind of overpass, leading to a low wall and a sharp left turn angling down. More cars were parked along there, on the right side; Briscoe walked down the middle of the street to the end, then made the left.

  Barney trotted forward once she was out of sight. He saw that this overpass went above the railroad tracks, and that the left turn carried the roadway, now a kind of bridge or ramp, down a long slope to a launching site at the river. A few vans and pickups were parked down there, with empty boat trailers hitched at their backs, and Briscoe was walking straight down to join them.

  Had Barney been wrong? Was she waiting for Noon to arrive by boat? Or, worse thought, had he arrived, and they were leaving by boat? That would be a true pain in the ass.

  But, no. After a minute, Barney saw what was happening. Briscoe was just killing time, that’s all, sightseeing while she waited for the next train. Barney couldn’t blame her.

  Just in case, though, he kept watching. Briscoe walked on down to the launching area, strolled around there a few minutes, looked out at the river and the green cliffs and white mansions over there on the other side, and Barney leaned against the wall at the top of the overpass, feeling warm in the sunshine in his dark jacket, watching her.

  She hung around down there maybe five minutes, and then turned and started the long trudge back up the slope, and Barney retreated all the way to the far corner, past the parking area, waiting there until she made the turn, then moving back again, holding at the head of the station driveway until her head would appear again, over there beyond the parked cars, and it didn’t.

  He waited. He frowned. He looked down into the blacktop area in front of the station, where the van was parked, and here she came, out of the building. She just hadn’t known ahead of time about that back entrance, that’s all.

  Okay. Time out for everybody. Barney walked back to his car, got behind the wheel, reached for Playboy, and the van drove by.

  What? The damn buzzer wasn’t working! What a hell of a time to break down! Knowing he’d have to do a visual tail, hating the idea of it, Barney quickly started the engine, shifted into drive, and the car went klomp forward klomp forward klomp forward. A mile an hour. Less. And shaking all over the place.

  Barney hit the brakes. The bastards. He already knew, but he got out of the Impala anyway, as the van disappeared around a curve far ahead.

  All four tires. Flat. Slashed. And a little later, when he lifted his maps and newspapers and magazines from the front seat, there under them lay the bug, almost as good as new.

  25

  “I don’t like that guy on our necks like that,” Freddie said.

  He was still dressing in the back of the van, so Peg kept her eyes firmly on Rhinebeck’s only traffic light, now red, two cars in front of her.

  She said, “He isn’t on our necks anymore, Freddie. You took care of that.”

  “Damn good thing those guys told you about him.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  Those guys were the guys in the firehouse, who had told
her, when she went to pick up the van this morning, about the cop who’d come in with a cockamamie story that nobody believed for a second, so everybody watched the cop when he was supposedly looking over a blue Toyota, and he was obviously taking too much of an interest in Freddie and Peg’s van, and maybe she ought to know about it. The guy, from their description, was the tough cop who’d come to the place yesterday with the lawyer, Leethe.

  Because the fire guys had given her that warning, she’d been extremely alert, looking in every direction at once on her way back to the apartment to pick up the stuff they were taking upstate, so that was why she spotted him, lurking in that big old Chevy, a faded green like an old shower curtain or something, parked half a block from her place. I’ll have to lose him somehow, she thought, and went on to load up the van.

  But then she didn’t see him again. Had he been that easy to lose? She drove all the way upstate on the Taconic, and over the local road to Rhinebeck, and never saw him at all. Until all at once, as she was stopped at this very light, there he was, just a few cars behind her.

  That was when she realized what he must have done at the firehouse yesterday: put some kind of bug on this car. Every new piece of police technology is immediately described to the citizenry via cop shows on TV, so Peg knew all about long-distance tailing of other cars with these radio bugs. What she didn’t know, now that she found the cop in his washed-out green Chevy behind her, was what to do about it. I’ll let Freddie decide, she decided, and ignored the cop and his car from that point on.

  It was a long wait, all in all—three trains—before at last she heard that whisper in her ear: “Hi, Peg.” Then the van sagged beside her, so he was aboard.

  Relieved, glad to be reunited, grinning like an idiot, Peg shut the van door, got around to the other side, slid in behind the wheel, got serious, and said, “Freddie, he followed me, he put something on the van.”