Smoke Page 12

  “I didn’t like him anymore,” Freddie said, “so I went away from him.”

  “He’s really mad.”

  “That’s it,” Freddie told the kid. “He’s just got too excitable a personality, I get yelled into all the time, that’s why I left.”

  “What are you going to do now?” the kid asked.

  “I’m going to fly away,” Freddie said. Standing up, he held the phone in both hands, then opened and closed it, opened and closed it, which made it look like something with wings.

  Freddie left the dentist’s doorway and headed toward home, holding the phone in front of him at about wrist level, opening and closing, opening and closing; every time he looked back, the kid was still there, watching.

  Other people were watching, too, their attention caught by the vision of something weird flying by. Nobody tried to grab the phone, though, and Freddie made sure to steer himself so he never got too close to anybody.

  Moving like that, he made it to the corner, and turned away from the shopping street onto a residential side street, where maybe he could get a little peace and quiet. His idea was, he’d stash the phone under a bush or a rock or something, so he could come back and use it every day at lunchtime and solve his telephone problem for good and all.

  But when he looked back, an army of the curious was coming around the corner behind him, led by that damn kid, who was loudly explaining to anybody who’d listen that that was a magic flying telephone up ahead there, and that it didn’t want to be yelled into anymore.

  Freddie sped up, waggling the phone wings like mad. Behind him, the crowd also sped up, and some of them were considerably speedier than Freddie, mostly because they were wearing shoes and he was not.

  Too damn many people, that was the problem. You can distract a thousand of them, there’s still another hundred to give chase. The downside of city life.

  Freddie could see his plan was not going to work. If he didn’t abandon this telephone, before the end of this block somebody would catch up, reach for it, touch him, yell like mad, touch him some more, and then grab. And then a lot of people would grab.

  Come to think of it, since they wouldn’t be able to see him, they wouldn’t know what they were grabbing, or where they were grabbing it. They could knock him down onto the sidewalk and trample him and never even know it.

  Would they be able to see his blood, once it was outside him, all over the sidewalk?

  These were not comforting thoughts. At the moment, Freddie was running past narrow yellow-brick two-story houses, all alike, two feet apart from one another, built up a tiny slope and back from the sidewalk, with gray-brick steps and walks, and scrubby little plantings in front of their enclosed porches. As he ran on by them, the shouts behind him closer and closer, and as he came to understand at last how the fox feels when all those loudmouth hounds are in his near background, Freddie finally tossed the telephone up and away, toward the shrubbery in front of house number 261-23.

  Good-bye, telephone. Tomorrow we’ll work out something else.

  Freddie kept running, but the shouts behind him receded, and when he at last dared to look back the crowd had all run up the steps to 261-23 and were diving into the bushes there. More and more of them came, ripping greenery out by the roots in their frenzied search for the magic flying telephone.

  Freddie was winded. He stood where he was, panting, holding his side where the pain was, and watched people toss the phone into the air and leap to catch it and fight over it and toss it some more, trying to make it fly. A throng of people had gathered in front of 261-23 now, ballooning out onto the sidewalk and even to the street, and nobody even paid any attention when the lady of the house, outraged at this attack on her brushwork, came roaring out of her enclosed porch to stand on her top step with an Uzi in her hands, at port arms. She yelled a lot, but everybody else was also yelling, so what else was new?

  Would she shoot the damn gun? She looked mad enough. Meanwhile, the insurance salesman in his now-rumpled tan suit was way out at the periphery of the mob, jumping up and down and screaming that he wanted his phone back. And above it all, the sound of approaching police sirens.

  Enough. Figure out telephones some other time. Turning his back on the follies of the human race, Freddie trudged on home.

   

  * * *

   

  “I’m home!”

  “Did you go to the movies?”

  Peg wouldn’t come out of the bedroom, as Freddie well knew, but would shout to him from in there until he’d lunched and dressed.

  “No, I saw it yesterday,” he called back, and made his way toward the kitchen

  “What’d you do?” she shouted.

  “Went for a run,” he shouted, and entered the kitchen.

  His sandwich and coffee were on the table there. On one of the two chairs lay his clothing and all four masks, so he could make his own choice. He sat on the other chair, ate, considered his recent experiences in the outside world, and at the end of the sandwich he had no difficulty at all selecting the mask to put on.

  It was Frankenstein’s monster in a long-sleeved shirt and pink rubber gloves who at length sloped on into the living room, where Peg sat reading a paperback novel about a rich beautiful woman who owned her own successful perfume business but had trouble keeping a guy. She looked up from the deck of a yacht in the Med, anchored off Cannes at film festival time, to say, “Frankenstein? You haven’t wanted to be him before.”

  “Frankenstein’s monster,” Freddie corrected. “Frankenstein was the doctor. I don’t think the monster ever had a name.”

  Peg marked her place in the book with a twenty-dollar bill. “What’s the matter, Freddie? You seem depressed. Or is it just the head?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I think I’m probably kind of depressed all over. I was just chased by a mob. A Brooklyn mob. It made me kind of identify with this guy,” he explained, pointing at his head.

  “Chased by a mob? How could they even see you?”

  He began to relate his adventures, assuring her he didn’t blame her for his complex need to find a telephone (while making it clear in the subtext that he did blame her, for not trusting him to really leave the apartment), and he’d just reached the dentist’s doorway when the phone beside Peg rang. “If it’s the insurance guy,” Freddie said, “tell him I don’t need any.”

  “Oh, yes, you do,” she said, but picked up the phone and spoke and then said, “Yeah, he’s here now, hold on.” She extended the phone toward Frankenstein, or his monster. “It’s your brother.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Freddie crossed to take the phone, which felt strange with the rubber gloves on. Holding the phone to the side of the mask, he said, “Hey, Jimmy, what’s happening?”

  “Where are you, man, in a tunnel?”

  Jimmy was one of Freddie’s younger siblings, so Freddie didn’t have to take any shit. “No, I’m not in a tunnel,” he said. “Is that why you called?”

  “You sound like you’re on one of those speakerphones or something.”

  “Well, I’m not. This is how I sound these days, is all.” Through the eyeholes, he could see Peg wincing in sympathy, which made him feel a little better. He said, “I’ll tell you all about it sometime, Jimmy. What’s going on?”

  “Well, I’m calling from a pay phone,” Jimmy said.

  Ah-hah. The message in that was that Jimmy wanted to tell him something that the law might want to know about, and Jimmy’s own phone might be tapped, since Jimmy had also in the course of his life at times drawn himself to their attention. But, since Freddie’s phone likewise might have additional listeners, Jimmy’s comment was also a warning: Be careful what we both say here.

  “Okay,” Freddie said. “How’s the weather out there, by your pay phone?”

  “Not bad. You got one of those sting letters, sent to the folks’ place.”

  Whoops. Again Freddie knew exactly what his brother was talking about. Whe
never the cops wanted to round up a whole bunch of really stupid people who had warrants outstanding, they’d send out these letters, which had come to be known on the street as the Superbowl letters, because usually they told the recipient he’d won tickets to the Superbowl and all he had to do was come to such-and-such an address and pick them up. Instead of which, he was what would be picked up, by a lot of unfriendly cops. This was a real cull, sweeping the streets of the most boneheaded of the crooks, leaving a clearer field to everybody else.

  On the other hand, it was kind of an insult to be sent one of those letters. Voice dripping scorn, hoping his phone was tapped, Freddie said, “I got tickets to the Superbowl.”

  “It wasn’t exactly that,” his brother said, “but you got the idea. I don’t know what you been up to recently—”

  “Nothing! There’s no sheet out on me at all!”

  But even while he was saying that, and just for that moment believing it, Freddie was also thinking, Those damn doctors! Frankenstein and Frankenstein. They must have turned him in, and he must not have cleared away every last fingerprint from all the places he’d been in their damn house.

  Meantime, Jimmy was saying, “Well, the folks got the letter, and it gave them a start, you know what I mean?”

  “Tell them everything’s fine, Jimmy, okay?”

  “But is it? I mean, really? You know, just a yes or a no.”

  “Yes, Jimmy,” Freddie said, and hung up, and said to Peg, “Let’s get outta town for the summer.”

  18

  At the end of 1993, Congress passed an obscure amendment to the tax law declaring that employer-provided free parking garage space worth more than $155 a month was to be treated as taxable income. The purpose of this obscure amendment was to skim just a little more off a few rich businessmen in New York and Los Angeles and Chicago, it never occurring to the good burghers of Congress that they receive from their employer—us—free parking garage space worth considerably more than $155 a month; have you ever tried to park near the Capitol? This fact, however, did not escape the notice of the IRS, no respecter of persons, so we can assume it’s an amendment that won’t be on the books for long.

  In the meantime, however, the partners of Mordon Leethe’s law firm were faced with an agonizing choice. Either pay the tax on their convenient parking spaces in the basement of their office building, or remove the glass from the barred high windows of the basement garage area, thus making the parking area one “exposed to the elements,” thus presumably outdoors, thus worth less than $155 a month; whew, close one.

  In June, the breeze wafting through the basement garage where Mordon parked his Mercedes was sweet and soft, redolent of the islands, or at least of the Cajun restaurant half a block away. Mordon locked his car—he also locked it inside his own garage, attached to his own house, in Oyster Bay—and as he turned toward the elevator a nearby car door slammed and there was Barney Beuler, the corrupt cop, striding fatly toward him, smiling that smug smile of his. (The man, did he but know it, was far more credible as a maître d’ than a police officer.) “Good morning, Mr. Leethe,” Barney crowed, pleased with himself. “Long time no see.”

  This was why Mordon locked his car. “How did you get in here?” he snapped.

  Some men might have been insulted by such a greeting, but not Barney. “Are you kidding?” he said, and beamed more and more broadly in self-satisfaction. “I can get in anywhere I want.”

  “I thought you liked to be careful where you went,” Mordon said, sour because he hadn’t been looking forward to an encounter like this at the very beginning of the business day. “I thought you were worried about surveillance from—What do you call them? The police that police the police.”

  “Shooflys,” Barney said, and grinned again, and pointed a thumb upward. “At this very moment,” he said, “I am at my dentist’s, in this building.”

  “When did he become your dentist?”

  “Very recently.”

  The difference between Barney and me, Mordon told himself, and the reason I am automatically repelled by the man, is that when we meet, I am doing my job, but he is betraying his job. It makes all the difference. “What’s this about, Barney?” he asked, and made a point of looking at his watch. “If you have news about that fellow Noon, why not get to me the normal way?”

  “Because it isn’t normal news,” Barney said. Gesturing at Mordon’s Rolex, he said, “You got nothing that won’t keep. Come on and siddown a minute, lemme tell you a story.”

  Reluctant, but curious despite himself, Mordon followed Barney to a long black Lincoln, where Barney opened a rear door and gestured for Mordon to enter.

  Mordon reared back to study the car. Connecticut plates. Chauffeur’s cap on front passenger seat, on top of today’s New York Post. Extraspacious rear seat, with TV. “This isn’t your car.”

  “I never said it was. Get in, will ya?”

  Mordon couldn’t believe it. “It was unlocked?”

  “Not when I got here. Come on, we don’t wanna stand out here in the wind. You people oughta glass in those windows or something.”

  Mordon was not going to get into a discussion of tax law with Barney Beuler. Instead, he bowed forward and climbed into the Lincoln, sliding over on the black leather to make room. Barney settled in next to him, pulled the door shut, and leaned back with a sigh and a smile. “Not bad.”

  “Are you here to sell me this car?”

  “That’s one of the things I like about you, Mr. Leethe,” Barney told him. “You’re always a pistol, you never let up.”

  Mordon closed his mouth, observed Barney from a great distance, and waited.

  Barney got it; he was always quick. “Right,” he said, and looked out at the parking garage, then back to Mordon. “This fella Noon,” he said. “He’s an interesting guy.”

  “Just a little crook, you told me the other day.”

  “That’s his record,” Barney agreed. “Not even a blip on the old crime meter. But here you are taking an interest in him.”

  “My client is taking an interest in him.”

  “Even better. So this fella Noon, there’s more to him than meets the eye.”

  Mordon permitted himself a wintry smile. “That’s truer than you know.”

  “There’s been no answer to our letter,” Barney said.

  “Surely he’s gotten it by now.” Today was Tuesday, and the letter had been sent last Thursday.

  “Either he’s not gonna get it,” Barney said, “because his people don’t know where he is, or he’s too smart to fall for the stunt.”

  “This isn’t what you’re here to tell me.”

  “Last Wednesday,” Barney said, “there was a break-in at a fur storage place out in Astoria. Looks like an inside job, nothing busted to get in, alarms switched off, a bunch of valuable mink coats just up and walk off the property. But the Burglary Squad takes prints, just to see if there’s any strangers that the inside man let in, and there’s our friend Fredric Urban Noon.”

  “He stole the coats?”

  “You can’t prove it, not in a court of law,” Barney said. “Fingerprints will tell you where a guy was, but they can’t tell you when he was there. Anyway, the week before that, either Wednesday or Thursday, they can’t be sure, a bunch of diamonds went missing on West Forty-seventh Street. Again, looks like an inside job, no alarms touched, nobody suspicious around, just the diamonds are gone.”

  “And they found Noon’s fingerprints,” Mordon finished.

  Barney grinned at him. “You know they did.”

  “Of course,” Mordon said, realizing. “He can’t wear gloves.”

  Barney raised an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. Go on.”

  Barney thought about that, then shrugged and decided to let it go, to get back to his own flow of events. His smile when he looked at Mordon now was proprietary, the way he might smile at his restaurant. “Fredric Noon’s an interesting guy, isn’t he?”
/>   “You said that before.”

  “I’m saying it again. He’s an interesting guy. And you’re gonna tell me why.”

  “I don’t think so,” Mordon said, “but I’ll be happy to tell my client what you just said.” And he reached for the door handle.

  “Don’t be stupid, Mr. Leethe,” Barney said.

  Mordon looked at him in surprise, and Barney wasn’t smiling anymore. “Am I being stupid?”

  “Not yet. It’s true some of the shooflys would like to nail my nuts to a courthouse bench, but I also got friends here and there in the department, what with one thing and another.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “Now, if I was to go to those friends,” Barney said, “and tell them you tried to suborn me and bribe me to pass along classified NYPD information—”

  “They’d laugh at you,” Mordon said. “I’d laugh at you.”

  “You think so?” Barney’s eyes were now cold as ice. “You think I haven’t been wired with you, Mr. Leethe? You think I’m so stupid I don’t have selected tapes from our conversations that make you the heavy and me the virgin? Do you have tapes, Mr. Leethe?”

  It had never occurred to Mordon that he might need such items. He stared at Barney, unable to think of a thing to say.

  Barney could think of what to say. Patting Mordon’s knee, the gesture sympathetic, he said, “You got a partner now, Mr. Leethe. So tell me the story.”

  Mordon told him the story.

  19

  “The house is haunted, you know,” Mrs. Krutchfield said.

  The young woman signing the register looked less than overwhelmed. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Many of our guests have seen . . . strange things.”

  “I do too sometimes,” the young woman said, and extended her credit card.

  Dealing with the card, looking at the information the young woman had written on the register—Peg Briscoe, and an address in Brooklyn and the license number of that van outside—Mrs. Krutchfield was not at all surprised that this guest was a New Yorker.

  City people, they think they know it all. Mrs. Krutchfield, a buxom motherly woman rather beyond a certain age, was sorry, but she just couldn’t help it, New Yorkers rubbed her the wrong way, they always had. They were never impressed by anything. You can take your tourist families from faraway places like Osaka, Japan, and Ionia, Iowa, and Urbino, Italy, and Uyuni, Bolivia—and Mrs. Krutchfield could show you all of them in her visitors’ book with their very excellent comments—and you could show them your wonders of the Hudson River valley, and you could just happen to mention that this lovely old pre-Revolution farmhouse, now The Sewing Kit bed-and-breakfast outside Rhinebeck, was known to be haunted by a British cavalry officer slain under this very roof in 1778, and those people are, in two words, im pressed.