Smoke

by Donald E. Westlake

  “You’ll destroy it all, won’t you? Or give it to me, so I can.”

  “Oh, there’s no need for that,” Merrill said. “It’s safe with me. And so are you, Mordon. The upstate activities of yesterday are being treated as a simple failed bank robbery, Beuler’s smearing of so many of his betters is being quite properly ignored, and we are all of us home and dry. Now let us talk about the invisible man.”

  Mordon slightly lifted his head. “Did he get away again?”

  “For good this time, I think.” Merrill’s smile seemed quite savage for a moment. “It seems, those two blithering-idiot researchers managed not only to find the fellow and chat with him but, before they lost him again, they let him know there’s no hope of his ever returning to his former self. He has no more reason to contact them, nor can any of us contact him. So he’s gone.”

  “Too bad,” Mordon said.

  “Agreed. Also, after that one experiment, it would seem we can’t replace him, either.”

  “Apparently not.”

  “So we must lean on our doctors more firmly than I had at first intended, Mordon, you and I.”

  Mordon squinted at his benefactor in the harsh bright air. “Me?”

  “Think of that as your assignment from now on, Mordon,” Merrill said. “Project director, we’ll call it. The Human Genome Project. You will see to it the doctors don’t dawdle or stall or waste their time on that ridiculous research they were doing. You will see to it that they concentrate on the genome project, that they make it their business to meet and grow friendly with the researchers in the field, that they themselves become an official part of the project within, oh, I know we can’t rush these things, say eighteen months.”

  “Eighteen months.”

  “Do you think I’m being too generous? Well, if they can do it more quickly, more power to them. And to you.” Merrill’s mad eyes glittered in all that light reflecting from the sea. “What a future we’re going to have, Mordon, what a future, you and I.”

  57

  Elizabeth Louise Noon had lived in this little house in Ozone Park, under the flight path for the big jets coming in from Europe or heading out for anywhere, all of her married life. Long ago she’d stopped hearing the thunder of the jets as they slid down their invisible chute over her house toward JFK or climbed the invisible ramp from JFK to the world. Long ago she’d stopped noticing the dark shadows of the wide bodies cross her lawn and house and yard.

  Betty she was called by most people, but Louise by her husband, Norm, who in the first flush of their romance had wanted a private name for her and couldn’t think of anything else. In her own mind, unknown to anybody, she was always Elizabeth Louise. She and Norm, a sanitation worker with the City of New York, had raised nine kids in this little house, all of them grown now, all of them living elsewhere, but most of them would come back from time to time to shout their hellos under the passing jets.

  When you’ve got nine kids, you’re going to have variety. Elizabeth Louise didn’t believe she had any bad kids, not mean or nasty, but she did admit to having a few scamps in the mix. She also had proper kids who’d grown up to be proper citizens, one nurse, one bus driver, one third-grade teacher, one Wal-Mart stock clerk.

  She liked it when the kids came by, and she missed the ones who didn’t, fretted over them in a small way, not making a big deal of it. Lately, the one she’d been fretting about most was Freddie, who was maybe the worst scamp in the bunch. He’d already been in jail, and she suspected he’d done drugs at one point in his life, and she was pretty sure he didn’t have any regular job. Then, last month, that fake official letter had come, claiming the state of New York owed Freddie money for some cockamamie reason, and she could see that meant somebody was trying to find Freddie for no good reason—not good for Freddie, that is—so she lit a few candles for him, and hoped that if she ever did hear from him again, at least it wouldn’t be bad news.

  When the doorbell rang, Tuesday, the eleventh of July, around three in the afternoon, it wasn’t Freddie who Elizabeth Louise was thinking about at all. She had a pregnant daughter-in-law, and that was who was on her mind as she walked through the house, unaware of the vibration as another big jet went over, and opened the front door.

  A pretty girl was on the stoop. I hope she isn’t a Jehovah’s Witness, Elizabeth Louise thought, and said, “Yes?”

  “Hi, Mrs. Noon,” the girl said. “I’m Peg Briscoe. I’ve been living with your son Freddie for a while.”

  Elizabeth Louise had heard the name, from Freddie and from his brother Jimmy (another scamp), and Peg Briscoe seemed calm and cheerful here on the stoop, but nevertheless Elizabeth Louise’s first thought was that Freddie was in trouble again. “What is it?” she said. “Does he need bail money?”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” the girl said, laughing. “Freddie’s fine.”

  “That’s a relief. Come in, come in.”

  So she came in, leaning against the open door for a second as though she’d lost her balance, but then righting herself and moving out of the way so Elizabeth Louise could shut the door.

  “Iced tea?”

  “That’d be nice,” Peg Briscoe said, and uninvited she walked back to the kitchen with Elizabeth Louise, saying, “What a nice house. Freddie’s told me about it.”

  “Has he?” Pouring iced tea for them both, she said, “Where is Freddie these days? Keeping himself out of trouble?”

  Peg laughed again; she was clearly an easygoing girl, the right type for Freddie. “Keeping himself out of sight, anyway,” she said.

  “Probably the best we can hope for. Let’s sit in the living room.”

  They sat in the living room, and sipped their iced tea, and the shadows went over the house, and Peg said, “Freddie wanted to come see you, but he’s in a complicated situation now—”

  “Trouble?”

  “No, not at all. That’s what he wanted me to come tell you. The situation he’s in is really awfully difficult to explain.”

  “Is he sick?”

  “No. He isn’t sick, and he isn’t in jail, and he isn’t wanted for any crime, he’s just in a . . . a complicated situation. So that he has to go away and he has to be kind of alone. Mostly alone.”

  “You mean, a quarantine?” Elizabeth Louise was getting scared.

  “No, honest,” the girl said. “He’s not sick. It’s kind of a problem, but it isn’t terrible. It took me a while to adjust, but it’s gonna be okay now. He came and helped me when I was in trouble, and he didn’t have to, and I realize we need each other, we’ve got to be together. So I want you to know I’m gonna stick with him, he can count on me.”

  She’d said that with such assurance and sincerity that it was as though she were saying it to Freddie himself. Elizabeth Louise found herself feeling reassured, even though everything Peg Briscoe had said so far was so vague and incomprehensible that she shouldn’t be feeling reassured at all. She said, “Where’s Freddie now?”

  “Waiting for me, not far from here.” A jet went over, and when it was gone Peg gestured upward and said, “We’re gonna take a plane. Haven’t decided where yet.”

  “He’s on the run?”

  “No, Mrs. Noon,” Peg said, and laughed at her. “You keep thinking Freddie’s in trouble.”

  “He usually is.”

  “Not this time. Not ever again.” Peg got to her feet. “I’d better go. He’s waiting for me, he just wanted me to tell you not to worry, even though you won’t be seeing him anymore. And please tell the same to his brothers and sisters, especially Jimmy.”

  Elizabeth Louise also rose. “Well, give him my love,” she said. “And I hope things work out for him. And if he gets the chance, he should come say hello himself.”

  “When we get where we’re going,” Peg said, “I’ll make him write you a letter. Or at least a postcard.”

  They walked back to the front door, and as Elizabeth Louise opened it she felt something, some movement of air, some aura, some weird exp
erience that frightened her all over again, and she said to Peg Briscoe, in the open doorway, “He isn’t dead, is he?”

  “I’m alive, Ma.”

  Peg Briscoe smiled a slightly nervous smile, said, “He’s fine. ’Bye,” and pulled the door shut.

  Did I hear that? What was it?

  Elizabeth Louise opened the door and watched Peg Briscoe cross the sidewalk to a little old green car. As Peg opened the driver’s door, the passenger door opened by itself. She got in and shut the driver’s door and the passenger door shut by itself. She waved and smiled, and drove away, and another wide-body jet’s shadow crossed over Elizabeth Louise and the house.

  This one she noticed. She looked up, as the shadow went by. One of those would be Freddie, with his nice girlfriend. From now on, it could be any one of them, going over. One of those shadows is Freddie.