Smoke

ordered by a competent authority and blessed by a judge.

Still, Barney had friends on the force who were experts in this sort of thing, who for a fee would provide him with the off-the-record man-hours and the borrowed official equipment and the expertise to set it all up, and then, with the wonders of modern technology, he didn't even have to go personally to the bugging locations to retrieve whatever phone conversations the tapes might have picked up. It was as easy as collecting your answering machine's messages when you're away from home.

The trickiest part, in fact, was finding a safe phone. Once he had one — a pay phone in an unexpected neighborhood, the home phone of an unsuspecting citizen away at work — he would attach to it his small portable digital recorder, then call his well-hidden little bugaroos in their locations all over town, and the voice-activated little darlings would give him, with no dead air, everything that had been said on that line by everybody using it since his last call, erasing themselves as they went. If there'd been no activity since his last harvest, the bugaroo would say so with a double beep and hang up.

All in all, the seven bugaroos were a grand toy, and frequently of great use, and Barney's only regret at the moment was that they were not yet eight. He'd spoken to his friends about adding Drs. Loomis and Heimhocker to his radio theater, and it would happen eventually, but these things always took time. He'd put in his request on Wednesday, after leaving Mordon Leethe and the doctors over at their research facility, and his contacts now told him the bugs would probably go in sometime over the weekend — weekends are the easiest times to fool with telephone equipment — and be operational no later than Monday morning. So all he could do was hope the doctors didn't say anything really interesting this week, and meanwhile continue on with the seven bugs he did have in place.

Two of the seven were, and had been for some time, inactive, or damn near to it, and one of those two was the bug on the phone of Peg Briscoe, in Bay Ridge. Would she ever come back? She still had the lease on the apartment, she still had the phone and the electric in her name, but did that mean anything? Maybe not, but if she did one day return, Barney wanted to be the first to know. So, three times a week, whenever he made the rounds among his bugaroos, he always included Peg Briscoe, listened to the double beep, and moved on.

But not today. Today, Friday, July 7, at eleven in the morning, Barney worked his way through his taps, recording everything (he culled it all down to the most useful stuff later, at his leisure), and when he reached the Peg Briscoe number he got: 'Dr. Lopakne's office.'

Barney sat up straight at the desk. He had settled today into the office of an insurance salesman in Woodside, Queens, a man who had announced on his street-facing office door that he would be away for these two weeks on vacation. Barney, his elbows splayed over the insurance man's application forms, listened avidly for the next voice, and bingo:

'This is Peg Briscoe. Is the doctor there?'

'He is with a patient right now.'

'I used to be his dental technician, and—'

'Yes, I know. This is Hilda.'

'Oh, Hilda, hi! I didn't recognize your voice.'

'I recognized yours.'

'Well, I told you my name. Anyway, what I was calling about, do you think the doctor might need me again?'

'We've got a part-timer that's not so—'

'Part-time would be fine.'

'Starting when?'

'Next week, whenever.'

'Can the doctor get back to you?'

'No, I'll be in and out. I tell you what, I'll call back Monday morning. Is that good?'

'Fine. Be nice to have you back with us, Peg.'

'Thanks, Hilda, be nice to be back.'

Then the robot voice, male, vaguely southwestern: 'Friday, July seven, nine-oh-four A.M.'

beep beep

Two hours ago.

'May I ask who's calling, please?'

'Barney.'

'Mr. Barney, may I ask what your call is in reference to?'

'No, you may not. You may just tell Mr. Leethe that Mr. Barney is on the line. He'll want to know.'

A long silence, dreadfully long, three minutes, four minutes on hold. Rotten bitch. Barney's fingernails tap- tap-tapped on the insurance man's forms, leaving little scimitar-shaped indentations.

'Barney?'

'There you are!'

'What on earth did you say to my girl?'

'I told her I'd sew shut every opening in her body if she didn't put you on the phone.'

'I almost believe you.'

'Write down this number. Seven one eight, seven nine seven, seven, nine, three, three. Go to a pay phone. Call me. Fast.'

Barney hung up. He stood and paced the floor between the filing cabinets and the blinds over the windows concealing the view of — and from — Roosevelt Boulevard.

The phone rang. Barney leaped to catch it on the first ring, before the insurance man's answering machine could come into play. 'Yes!'

'Barney, I hope this is worth the—'

'Briscoe's back.'

Satisfying silence from the pay phone.

Barney smiled. 'I thought that would get your attention. She made a phone call from the Bay Ridge apartment two hours ago, trying to get her old job back. Do you tobacco people have goons?'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Tough guys. Muscle. What do you college-educated boys call such people?'

'All right, all right, I understand.'

'We don't want him slipping by us. We gotta go in and cover everything, fast and hard. You come along, and two, three, four—'

'Me? Barney, I'm not—'

'You're not clean, Leethe, don't hold your skirts up. You be there with as many soldiers as the tobacco company can give you. It's — shit, it's twenty after eleven. Can you be there at one? At the corner where the bodega is.'

'We'll be there,' Leethe promised.

Muscle in suits; will wonders never cease. Lightweight summer suits, and light summer ties, and short- sleeved white shirts. Barney looked at the three guys Leethe had brought along, and all of them had, when you looked past the Little Lord Fauntleroy uniforms, necks wider than their ears, foreheads with shelves, and hands and arms that looked like fence posts. Barney laughed. 'I like your style, guys,' he said, and turned to Leethe. 'Do they know the story?'

'I'm not sure I know the story.'

'Do they know he's invisible?' Barney demanded, getting impatient.

One of the tough guys said, 'Yes. We don't believe it, but we know it.'

'Believe it,' Barney told him. 'What we're going to do, we're going to bust straight in. It's the third-floor rear, with an air shaft that doesn't help anybody, but windows at the back. We go in, we quick shut the door behind us, Leethe, you sit on the floor with your back against the door, you holler if anything happens.'

'I'm sure I will.'

'The rest of us, we secure the windows. We make sure nobody leaves when we come in, not out through anything you can use for an exit. Once we've got the place secure, we will find Mr. Invisible Man.'

'Sounds good,' said the skeptic.

'No time like the present,' Barney said, and led the charge.