Smoke

by Donald E. Westlake

  Five minutes later, Peg slowed again to take that exit from the Taconic onto the county road. Following its twists and hills, she at last, eight minutes later, turned in at their own little hideaway. They got out of the van and went into the house, which for both of them was already becoming home, familiar and comforting.

  While Peg looked in local phone books for used-car dealers, Freddie called information for the number of the Loomis-Heimhocker Research Facility, then called that number, and a young woman answered, saying, “Loomis-Heimhocker Research Facility,” so that part was okay.

  He said, “I’d like to talk to either one of the doctors.” Across the room, Peg, two local phone books under one arm, waved as she left, and Freddie waved back.

  “I’m sorry, the doctors have gone away for the weekend.”

  Trust doctors to take off early on a Friday. Yanking the hot Khomeini mask up off his head, Freddie said, “This is kind of an emergency.”

  “An emergency?” She sounded doubtful. “The doctors here are not in regular practice.”

  “No, no, I know that. You see, they gave me one of their experimental formulas, about a month ago—”

  “They did?” Absolute astonishment.

  “You didn’t know about that?”

  “As a matter of fact, I’ve—there’ve been certain things that—” With sudden suspicion, she said, “Did you have anything to do with our burglary?”

  “Uhh . . .” It was so unexpected an accusation he didn’t have a real answer at first, but then he said, “That’s part of what I’ve got to talk to the doctors about. Do you have someplace where I can get in touch with them?”

  “Give me your phone number, I’ll have them get in touch with you.”

  “Miss,” Freddie said, “I’m not gonna give you my phone number. But I promise you, if you give me a number where I can reach them, they’ll thank you. Honest to God.”

  There was a long pause, while the young woman thought that over, and then she said, “All right, I’ll take the chance.” And she gave him a number that started with the area code 518, which was the exact same area code as where he was calling from!

  It’s an omen, he thought, finally a good omen. “Thanks a lot,” he said. “I really appreciate this, and so will the doctors.”

  “Mm-hm,” she said.

  Freddie hung up, and called that number, and a man answered, saying, “Skeat residence.”

  “I’m looking,” Freddie said, “for Dr. Loomis or Dr. Heimhocker, either one. Makes no difference.”

  “Oh, they’re not here yet,” Skeat said, if that was his name. There were party sounds in the background. “They’re expected soon.”

  “Okay,” Freddie said. “I’ll call back.”

  “Why not give me your number, and they can call you when they get here?”

  “No, that’s okay, I’ll be kinda in and out. I’ll call back in, what? An hour?”

  “Oh, less, I should think. Half an hour.”

  “That’s what I’ll do then,” Freddie said.

  “Who shall I tell them called?”

  “Tell them—tell them Freddie, from last month.”

  “Freddie, from last month,” Robert repeated, intrigued. “I’ll tell them,” he said, and hung up, and went back to the rowdies in the front room.

  This group now were the stay-overs, the weekend guests. The actual party would begin at around five, when the first of the other guests would arrive, a mixed bag of straight and gay, New Yorkers mostly, though some West Coast film people as well, all with country places within an hour’s drive of here.

  Much frolicking would take place in the pool, and frivolity here and there, and drinking generally. Dinner would be served, buffet-style, at eight, cleared at ten, and the staff gone away to their own country homes—mostly mobile—by eleven. A few of these stay-overs, to judge by the way they were knocking it back now, would be unconscious long before dinner, and a few of the party guests would find friends, or at the very least soft places to lie down, and would still be here in the morning. The summertime Friday parties at Robert and Martin’s tended not to be over, not to be really over, until around seven Sunday evening, though Sunday afternoons did sometimes have about them something of the air of the roving bands of penitents in Europe during the plague, self-flagellating and doomed.

  Twenty minutes later, interrupting a general conversation about global warming—the consensus appeared to be guarded approval—Martin looked past Robert’s left ear toward the front windows and said, “This must be Peter and David now, at last.”

  Robert turned to look, out the window and past the four cars already here, and saw the red Ford Taurus inching in to join the herd. And yes, here came Peter and David out of the car, wearing their cute yachting caps and carrying their bags as they moved toward the house.

  Robert met them at the door. Cheeks were kissed, and then Robert said, “You just missed your friend, on the phone, but not to worry.”

  “Friend?” Peter said, and David said, “Who?”

  “He says he’s Freddie, from last month. He does sound like fun,” Robert said, and then stopped, astonished, as Peter went off into gales of hysterical laughter and David burst into tears.

  43

  Robert was Robert Skeat and Martin was Martin Snell, and they were something very important on Wall Street that involved them having a fax machine in their Land-Rover and a pied-à-terre in Paris and a private airstrip out beyond the barns on which small planes and sometimes helicopters landed, merely to bring Robert and Martin things they were to sign.

  Robert and Martin had been together forever, which was why they had the logo of entwined S’s on the archway over the drive leading to their house. It was a family joke that Robert always answered the phone, “Skeat residence,” while Martin always answered, “Snell residence,” and it was also true that they had never declared themselves openly on the Street. There were certainly rumors about them in their place of employment, had been for years, but, “Don’t ask, don’t tell” had been their byword since ages before those nervous Nellies in the Pentagon had stopped playing with their G.I. Joe dolls. And so long as they were so good at doing whatever it was they did, no one in their firm had the slightest desire to make trouble for Robert and Martin.

  Weekends, particularly in the summer, Robert and Martin let it all hang out up at S&S in North Dudley, twenty-eight acres of rolling wooded countryside up a blacktop private drive from a dirt county road off a two-lane blacktop county road just a snap of the fingers from the Taconic Parkway. The house was large and sprawling, with seven bedrooms, plus a three-bedroom apartment in one of the barns. The pool was large and heated. The tennis court was clay, and magnificently maintained, as was the wine cellar. Robert and Martin had many friends, from a variety of worlds, including a number of straight worlds, and their country weekend parties were, in a word, notorious.

  So that’s Robert and Martin; usually, as you might suppose, the center of all eyes. But not today, not just this minute. Just this minute Robert and Martin and the nine other people here in the big front room of the main house were all staring hungrily, avidly, at Peter and David, waiting for them to get themselves under control, so they could tell all.

  Both had been borne, had been half-carried, to this long sofa facing the fireplace with the brilliant flower arrangement in it, and both had been plied with drink, someone remembering that Peter liked vodka and grapefruit juice, and someone else remembering that David liked Campari and soda with a slice of lemon, and now everyone waited to find out what was going on.

  Peter recovered first, and in fact had settled down to gasps and hiccups even before his vodka arrived, but then everybody had to wait while Peter did a miserable job of helping David recover, snapping at him with such useful lines as, “Pull yourself together,” and, “Stop it, David, for God’s sake,” while David just kept on keening and sobbing in the most heartbroken manner you could imagine.

  “Oh, do shut up, Peter,” Martin finall
y said, and hunkered down beside the distraught David, holding up the cheery glass of red liquid and clear ice cubes and bright yellow lemon slice for David to see, saying, “David, come along, try to drink some of this, you’ll feel much better, I promise, listen to Nurse Martin, now.”

  That did make David laugh, or at least giggle or snicker or something, through his tears, but the tears kept flowing, and David remained far too unstrung to hold a full glass of anything in those trembling hands.

  Martin said, “David, we have the most wonderful new snorkel gear for the pool, it’s phosphorescent, you glow in the dark, it’s the most fantastic thing, you’ll have to see it for yourself and advise us on it, it’s probably madly carcinogenic, what do you think?”

  David looked at Martin. His eyes were welling with tears, but they were grateful, too, and even amused. He gasped a bit, struggling to catch his breath. “Don’t,” he managed.

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t . . .”

  “Yes? Yes?”

  “Smoke underwater!” David blurted out, and smiled through his tears, and looked up with comforted pleasure at his friends when they laughed, and the phone rang.

  Utter silence. All eyes turned to Robert, as he crossed toward the phone. “If this is Susan,” Robert said dangerously, “asking if she can bring dessert . . .” and left the threat unfinished, as he picked up the phone and said, in an amazingly normal tone of voice, “Skeat residence.”

  Pregnant pause.

  “Yes, he is. Hold on.” Robert turned and extended the phone toward Peter, at this point the more able-bodied of the two. “It’s Freddie.”

  Peter knocked back half his vodka and grapefruit juice at a swig, put the glass on the floor, got to his feet, and strode over to Robert. David took the Campari and soda from Martin and drank it all down, his eyes never leaving Peter, who took the phone, cleared his throat, and said, “Dr. Peter Heimhocker here.”

  Everybody waited. Peter pointedly turned his back on the room, as though he would be permitted privacy at this moment in the exercise. “Yes, I recognize your voice.” Accusingly, he added, “You took our things.”

  “Peter!” David hissed. “That hardly matters now!”

  Gesturing violently at David to shut up, Peter said, “So would we, of course. Naturally.” Then he seemed troubled, and said, “Well, that would be hard to say, we’d really have to examine you before we could do that sort of prognosis . . .”

  “Oh, God,” David said, brokenly, and handed his empty glass to Martin, who handed it to the canapé waiter, who knew what to do with it and went away and did.

  Peter was saying, “We’ll be back in the city Monday, we could—Well, if you don’t trust us, I don’t—oh, come now, you’re the untrustworthy one, aren’t you? I mean—” He took a deep calming breath, listening, and then apparently answered a question. “We’re upstate. North of the city. A hundred miles north.” Deeply troubled, Peter put a palm over the mouthpiece and turned to Robert. “He wants to know can he come up?”

  “Yes!” said everybody in the room, all at once, except David, who cried, “God, no!” but was ignored.

  Into the phone, Peter said, “If you really want to—all right, fine. Where are you now? I know you’re in New York City, I mean where in New York City? Freddie, I just want to know where I’m giving you directions from, all right? I swear to God, you’re the most paranoid heterosexual I ever met in my life.”

  “Pity,” Robert said.

  “All right, fine,” Peter said, making no effort to hide his exasperation. “Do you know where the Taconic Parkway is, north of the city?” To the others, he said, “He says he’ll find it.” Into the phone, he said, “Do not cross the Hudson River. Stay to the east, as though you were going to New England. Come up the Taconic to the North Dudley exit, then drive east toward North Dudley, oh, about half a mile. Then turn left on County Route Fourteen, take that to Quarantine Road, take a—I don’t know why it’s called Quarantine Road, they named it two hundred years ago, it’s perfectly safe. Freddie, the condition you’re in, I don’t think you need to worry about anybody else.”

  That made the other people in the room raise their eyebrows at one another. In the little silence, the canapé waiter gave David his new Campari and soda, and David wept quietly into it.

  “All right, you take a right on Quarantine Road, it’s a dirt road, and about three miles along on your left you’ll see a very tasteful wrought-iron archway with entwined S’s over a blacktop drive going—entwined S’s.” Peter exhaled, not calmly. “An S, Freddie, the letter S, and another letter S facing the other way, and they twine together, like vines. Freddie, it’s the only archway on Quarantine Road. You come in there, about a mile—”

  “Seven-tenths of a mile,” said Robert.

  “Seven-tenths of a mile,” Peter said, through gritted teeth, and showed his tension even more by adding, waspishly, “If you were to go a full mile, of course, you’d drive right through the house without noticing. What? Nothing, I’m just—” Peter closed his eyes, swayed slightly, clutched the phone, opened his eyes. “I apologize to everyone,” he said, into the phone and into the room. “I’ve merely been under something of a strain lately.”

  “Oh, God,” David moaned, in agreement, and slurped Campari.

  “It will take you—” Peter said, and broke off, and said, “Well, I don’t know where you are, do I? It will take you two to three hours to get here, depending where you’re coming from. Are you going to leave now?” Peter looked at his watch. “It’s twelve-thirty-five.”

  “I’m forgetting lunch,” Martin murmured, and beckoned again to the canapé waiter.

  “Let’s say,” Peter said, “you should get here sometime around three. All right? What are you driving? A van. I don’t suppose our lab equipment is still in it.”

  “Peter!” David hissed. “Don’t antagonize him!”

  “Yes, that’s what I thought,” Peter dryly told the phone. “You wouldn’t, would you, like to give me a number I could call, in case you don’t show up? No, I didn’t think so.”

  Peter hung up, and gazed sardonically across the room at David. “Don’t antagonize him?”

  “The time has come, boys and girls,” Robert said, “for class to hear today’s story.”

  Peter came back over to stand beside David, but didn’t take his seat on the sofa. David didn’t stand, but he did look up, and say, in a half-whisper, as though he thought he couldn’t be heard by everybody standing around, “What do we do?”

  “What timing,” Peter said.

  “Pee-ter!” David cried, and waved his nondrink hand around to indicate the entire bright-eyed crowd. “We can’t swear eleven people to secrecy!”

  Martin, kindly Martin, kindly as ever, said, “David, you can, when you think of the alternative.”

  David blinked at him. “Alternative? What alternative?”

  “There is none,” Martin said, and smiled in sympathy.

  44

  Of all times for Peg to be away with the van, unreachable, and who knew when she’d be back. Maps spread on the dining table, Freddie’s invisible finger moved along the colored road lines, but he couldn’t keep track of anything that way, so he got a spoon from the kitchen, and used the end of the spoon handle to follow the road lines.

  County Route 14, right up them, not far at all. Quarantine Road; gotcha, little black windy line goes over that way. Fifteen minutes from here, no more, north and a little east.

  Fifteen minutes in the van.

  What a pain. He could be there before one o’clock, could be there two hours before they expected him, could hang around, listen, watch, see what they were up to, if they were calling the cops, get the lay of the land. But, no.

  Freddie went to the kitchen and put on the Playtex gloves so he could make himself a quick sandwich. He’d found it was easier, working around the kitchen, if he could see his hands. Putting the sandwich together, pouring a glass of tomato juice, Freddie tried to think of what to d
o. Then he removed the gloves and, carrying his sandwich, went out to the two-car garage that had come with the house, and there, as he remembered it, was the 1979 white Cadillac convertible, and it was still up on blocks. A car, and no damn use at all.

  What? What? What?

  The sandwich appeared to float in the open garage doorway, slowly converting itself into sludge as it oozed two feet lower. At last the transition from sandwich to sludge was completed, and Freddie started to turn away, to shut the garage door and go back to the house, and then he saw the bicycle.

   

  * * *

   

  Peter, being the calmer of the two, was elected to tell the story. “You all know,” he began, “about Buffy and Muffy.”

  But then it turned out that, no, they did not all know about Buffy and Muffy. Seven of the eleven people in the room, including Robert and Martin, did know about the translucent cats and had seen them trotting around Peter and David’s private quarters on the top floor of the research facility, but the other four had not, and so Peter had to start from the very beginning, and explain what melanoma was, and what science was, and what research was, and even what tobacco public relations was, all before finally getting to Buffy and Muffy, which didn’t even begin to get them to Freddie.

   

  * * *

   

  It is very tricky for a naked man to ride a bicycle.

   

  * * *

   

  “He was a burglar,” Peter said; they’d gotten that far at last. “He seemed like the answer to our prayers.”

  “If only we’d known,” David said.

  “Yes, but we didn’t. And he did agree, we did have an agreement with the fellow.”

  “A crook,” Robert said.

  “Point taken,” Peter admitted. Much of the tension had left him, now that he was getting it all off his chest. “Now,” he said, “I’m afraid comes the difficult part, where I must say I do feel to some extent responsible. We both do. We share the blame.”