Smoke

'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, impressed.

But not New Yorkers. It was such a pity, then, since The Sewing Kit was a mere 100 miles straight north of Manhattan, into the most scenic countryside, that New Yorkers were so much more important to her operation than all the Osakians and Ionians and Urbinos and Uyunis put together. Mrs. Krutchfield just bit her lip and kept her own counsel and tried not to look at the 'wives'' ring fingers, and did her level best to treat the New Yorkers just like everybody else.

Including this Briscoe snip. Handing over the large iron key dangling from an even larger wooden representation of the sort of drum that goes with a fife, Mrs. Krutchfield smiled maternally and said, 'You'll be in General Burgoyne.'

The snip frowned, hefting the heavy key and drum. 'Is that usual?'