Smoke

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, Josh 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.'