Smoke

'Oh, yeah?' The cop opened his warrant and studied it, as though for the first time. 'Are you,' he said, frowning over the document, 'Margaret Elizabeth Briscoe?'

Hard to believe; oh, well. 'Sure,' Peg said.

'Then we're in the right place,' the cop said, and some ghostly stew came floating across the room; it looked something like chicken а  la king.

Uck — she hadn't known about that. 'Let me see that paper,' she demanded, to distract both the cops and herself.

The cop held it up, so she could see but not touch, then frowned and said, 'What are you standin there with the door open?'

'This all of you?' Peg made a production out of leaning out to look up and down the hall. A voice whispered in her ear, 'Train, tomorrow, Rhinebeck.' Ghostly lips touched her cheek. She grinned at the air, winked, and turned back, saying, 'The way you came in, I thought you had like an army with you.'

The tough cop ignored all that. 'Where is he?'

'I don't know. I haven't seen him in weeks,' Peg said, which was, of course, the literal truth. 'I threw him out, I didn't like the way he carried on.'

The tough cop said to his partner, 'Keep an eye on her, I'll toss the place.'

'Right,' said the other one.

The tough cop left, to thud through the other rooms of the apartment, and Peg now took a closer look at his partner, and was surprised by what she saw. An older guy, sour-looking, deeply lined face, sloping shoulders. Not in good physical shape at all, but not in bad shape in that beer-and-weightlifting way that cops get. There's something weird about this guy, Peg thought. She said, 'What did Freddie do this time?'

The guy shook his head. He seemed faintly embarrassed. 'We don't have to have a conversation,' he said.

What? Cops always want to have a conversation, particularly when they've got the upper hand. Now Peg was really leery of these guys. 'I want to see that warrant,' she said.

'Oh, it's real,' the guy told her.

Meaning you're not, Peg thought, and the tough cop came back into the living room. 'The bedroom's full of some guy's stuff,' he said. 'Freddie Noon's stuff, right?'

Peg said, 'Don't you see the suitcases on the bed? I'm packing that crap up, taking it to the Good Will.'

'He left without his things?'

'I threw him out, I told you. Let me see that warrant.'

The tough cop laughed, fished it out, handed it to her. 'Always happy to help a citizen,' he said. 'Especially if the citizen's gonna help us.'

Peg looked at the warrant. It seemed real, but what did she know? 'I think,' she said, looking at the tough cop, 'I think this is legitimate, and I think you're a cop, but who's this other guy?'

'Detective Leethe,' said the tough cop.

The other one, 'Detective Leethe' bullshit, said, 'Let me handle this, Barney.'

So this is the power, he's letting the cop march around and be tough out in front. Peg said to him, 'You're no cop.'

'I want to talk to Freddie Noon,' the guy said, and took a little leather case from his inner pocket. From it, he withdrew a business card, extended it toward her. 'I mean him no harm. It's to his advantage to talk to me.'

Peg took the card. Leethe, that part was right. Mordon Leethe. The guy was a lawyer! Wishing she had a crucifix to hold up, Peg said, 'You still came to the wrong place.' She held the card out, wanting him to take it back. 'You'll have to get the message to him some other way.'

The tough cop wasn't finished. 'Don't waste our time with all this shit, okay, Peg?' he said.

The lawyer wouldn't take his card back. Still holding it, Peg said to the cop, 'I won't be seeing Freddie, all right? I guarantee it.'

The lawyer said, 'Is that some sort of joke, Miss Briscoe?'

Peg was so startled that she let him see she was startled, which was of course stupid. He knows! she thought, as she saw the look of satisfaction touch his sour face. Trying to save the situation, even though they both knew it was too late, she said, 'Whaddaya mean, a joke? Freddie Noon's the joke, that's why I threw him out.'

'If you have the opportunity to speak with him,' the lawyer said, 'would you tell him I represent the doctors?'

Peg shut down. This lawyer already knew too much. 'I'm not going to see him,' she said.

The lawyer offered a wrinkled kind of little smile, as though he didn't use those muscles often. He nodded at Peg, nodded at the card she still held, then looked at the cop. 'Come on, Barney,' he said. Once more, he nodded at Peg. 'Sorry to disturb you,' he said.

After they left, Peg went back to the kitchen to try to concentrate on what she'd been doing before those two had come crashing in here. But it was hard not to be distracted. And she couldn't bring herself to throw away the lawyer's card.

23

'Frankly,' the attorney said, 'I believe you've been avoiding me.'

Well, of course Mordon had been avoiding the fellow. It was sufficient reason merely that this attorney, one Bradley Cummingford, had left a series of messages over the past week describing himself as representing the doctors Loomis and Heimhocker, and leaving a number at Sachs, Fried, one of the most prestigious old-time law firms in New York. However, had Mordon known that Cummingford was also someone who said 'frankly,' he would have gone on avoiding him forever.

Anyway, so far as Mordon was concerned, Loomis and Heimhocker were cut out of this matter, no longer involved. Besides which he was their attorney, through the beneficent goodwill of NAABOR; the idea that the doctors might feel the need for outside counsel — independent counsel, if you will — was aggravating, but no more.

At least, not until today's phone memo, which had been waiting on Mordon's desk when he'd arrived this morning. He hadn't returned to the office after yesterday's unsettling session with Miss Peg Briscoe, a self- possessed tart with rather a quicker brain than Mordon had expected. After they'd left Miss Briscoe's residence yesterday afternoon, with a pretty good idea that Fredric Noon had been somewhere in the vicinity, but was no more, Barney had said, 'Leave it to me from here,' and Mordon had been happy to agree. He knew his own uses for an invisible Fredric Noon were essentially benign — NAABOR would pay the fellow well, for what amounted to no more than industrial espionage — and he suspected that Barney's ideas were cruder and probably more dangerous and less legal, but they could work out their differences later, once they actually had their hands on the man.

In the meantime, Loomis and Heimhocker were no more than irrelevancies, if irritating ones. But now, this morning, the latest message from their 'attorney,' Bradley Cummingford, was: The doctors intend to go public.

Go public? With what? To whom? How? Nevertheless the threat was enough to force Mordon at last to return Cummingford's call, only to hear him say 'frankly.'

Twice. 'Frankly,' Bradley Cummingford said, 'I had expected more courtesy from a firm of your standing.'

Had you. 'What surprises me,' Mordon said, 'is that you represent yourself as attorney for my clients.'

'I believe,' Cummingford said, 'your client is NAABOR.'

'I represent Drs. Loomis and Heimhocker,' Mordon said, 'in matters concerning their employment by the American Tobacco Research Institute. Any invention, discovery, product, commodity, or theorem they produce as employees of the institute naturally belongs to the institute. It is my job to protect the interests of both the institute and the doctors in any matter concerning or relating to that employment.'

'And if the interests conflict?'

'How can they?'

'Frankly,' Cummingford said, doing it again, 'I was thinking of the invisible man.'

Mordon blinked rapidly, several times. 'I'm not sure I—'

'Frankly, Mr. Leethe, my clients are afraid you have it in mind to make off with their invisible man.'