Smoke

Barney had long since acquired keys that would fit the Briscoe building's front door and the Briscoe apartment. If you could ease in quietly, surround your subject before your subject knew what's what, why not? Why go crash-bang, if you didn't have to? Why not leave that stuff to the feds?

Of course, these thugs in suits weren't exactly quiet, not even just walking up the stairs. They did sound as though demolition was going on somewhere in the neighborhood. Barney, leading the way, had the two keys in his hand, and had both locks of the apartment door unlocked when the thugs arrived, so they didn't even have to break stride.

Barney pushed open the door and moved fast, looking neither left nor right, running like the fat man he was straight into the bedroom and across to stand with his back pressed against one of the two closed windows there. One of the thugs took the other window. Leethe had presumably obeyed orders and was now seated on the floor in the living room, his back against the closed front door. The windows in the living room looked out on the useless air shaft — no way up, no exit below — and the other two goons would be at the other two windows, one each in the kitchen and bathroom.

And Briscoe wasn't here. Barney hadn't concerned himself at first with anything but securing the apartment, but now, having accomplished that part, he could consider the fact he hadn't seen Briscoe on the way in, and didn't hear her yelling in either the kitchen or bathroom. So she wasn't here.

Gone to lunch? Both these windows, in the July heat, were closed, though the room wasn't very stuffy. Been here, recently, like the phone tap said. Gone again? Freddie Noon still here?

Moving away from his window, Barney told the thug at the other one, 'Go get that chair. If either of these windows starts to open, swing the chair at the space in front of it, and give me a holler.'

'Right.'

Barney left the bedroom, stuck his head in the bathroom, and saw the goon there standing in the tub, which was the way to cover that window, which was also closed. 'Good,' he said to the goon, who looked faintly embarrassed, like an elephant with its foot stuck in a bucket.

Barney went on to the kitchen. Window closed. Refrigerator turned on, but nothing in it. Ice-cube trays in the freezer, slushy water, not ice yet. He picked up a wrinkled dish towel with deep long vertical pleats in it from the counter beside the refrigerator, and knew what that meant. They'd turned the refrigerator off, expecting to be gone a long time. They'd propped the door open, then kept the freezer open by tying the handles of both refrigerator and freezer doors together with this towel. Then, this morning, Peg Briscoe filled the ice-cube trays, switched on the refrigerator, and tossed the towel on the counter.

Barney tossed the towel on the counter. She had been here. She was gone now. She would come back.

The kitchen goon leaned his back against the kitchen window, folded his arms, and watched Barney at work. This was the skeptic, and nothing so far had dimmed his skepticism. Which Barney couldn't care less about. 'Okay,' Barney told him, 'let's us go outa here arm in arm.'

The goon obediently linked his arm with Barney's, and they moved to the kitchen door, both with their other hands out to the side walls. 'He isn't here,' Barney decided, and shut the kitchen door.

'I guess not,' said the skeptic.

Barney grunted. 'Wait in the bedroom.'

The skeptic raised an eyebrow, but went away to the bedroom while Barney collected the elephant from the bathtub, the two of them exiting the bathroom in such a way that nobody invisible could slide past them.

Once outside, Barney shut that door as well, then he and the elephant went into the bedroom, where first Barney searched the nearly empty closet while one of the goons made sure by swinging a broom handle that there wasn't anybody under the bed, and then the four of them scanned the room and came back out to the living room, where Leethe sat slumped on the floor like an earthquake victim trying to decide who to sue.

'One room to go,' Barney said, shutting the bedroom door behind himself.

From where he sat, Leethe would be able to see all the closed doors, while Barney and the three goons did a modified version through the living room of the World Famous Radio City Music Hall Rockettes, at the end of which they were all gathered around the crumpled Leethe as though they were the cowboys and he the fire.

Leethe looked up, his expression as skeptical as that of the skeptical goon. 'Having fun, Barney?'

'She was here this morning,' Barney said.

'She isn't here now.'

'Neither's the guy,' said the skeptic.

Barney said, 'She told the place where she wants her job back, she'll call Monday morning. She just started up the refrigerator here, she'd had it off for a while. She's coming back. Where's she going to make that call from, Monday morning? Here. Where are we gonna be, Monday morning, Mr. Leethe? Three guesses.'

42

Two cars drove north out of New York City, even as Barney and his friends prepared to toss the Peg Briscoe apartment. One of them was Peg's van, driven by Peg, with Freddie beside her, completely dressed. He'd decided to be the Ayatollah Khomeini today, God knew why. Or maybe Allah knew. The other car was a Hertz rental, obtained at the deep discount offered executives of NAABOR, and driven by Dr. Peter Heimhocker, with Dr. David Loomis in the passenger seat beside him.

Living in New York, Peter and David had no need of an automobile of their own. In the normal course of events, an automobile would merely be a constant hassle and expense, with garaging and insurance and repairs and all the rest of it. On those rare occasions, mostly in the summer, when they had need of a car, they simply ordered up a shiny clean air-conditioned sedan from Hertz, using the deep discount arranged for them by Dr. Archer Amory. (So much would be lost if they severed their relationship with NAABOR; it didn't bear enumeration.)

Peg and Freddie and the van left Bay Ridge not long after ten on Friday morning, maneuvering through city streets over to the Brooklyn — Queens Expressway, then taking that road all the way up through Brooklyn and Queens to the Triborough Bridge, avoiding Manhattan entirely. Just as their van was crossing from Brooklyn to Queens, David received a phone call from Martin, of Robert and Martin, saying, since they hadn't been able to come up last weekend because of that ridiculous funeral, about which Martin wished to hear everything, why not come up this weekend instead, to which David said yes, without even consulting Peter, and then called Hertz. Then he told Peter, who was delighted as he was, and they both passed the good news on to Shanana, giving her the phone number where they'd be over the weekend, and telling her she could shut up shop and send home the two lab assistants — borrowed from NYU Medical Center, after a generous contribution to that worthy health-care institution from NAABOR — at the same time. Then they phoned their cat-sitter person, packed their ditty bags, and cabbed up to their nearest East Side office of Hertz, where today's magic carpet was a bright red Ford Taurus, with a sunroof, which turned out later to be a mistake, since the opaque sliding panel to shield them from the sun was broken; fortunately, they'd both brought caps. In any event, by eleven they were in their shiny newish car, and they were headed north on the FDR Drive up the eastern shore of Manhattan Island when Peg was paying the toll on the Triborough Bridge to a toll- keeper who kept trying to look past her at the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Shortly afterward, Peter and David passed the exit for the Triborough Bridge, but they weren't going that way, and continued on up the Harlem River Drive, did a jog east on the Cross Bronx Expressway, then headed north again on the New York State Thruway. Peg and Freddie, somewhat farther north and a bit to the east, had taken the Bruckner Expressway to the Bronx River Parkway, and left the actual City of New York, crossing the invisible line from the Bronx into the city of Yonkers, about fifteen minutes before Peter and David had a similar experience on the Thruway, just a bit to the west.

With Yonkers to the left of them and Mount Vernon to the right of them, Peg and Freddie drove north, and the Bronx River Parkway became the Sprain Brook Parkway with no discernible change in the road at all. The Sprain, however, at first angled northwest, and soon tangentially touched the Thruway, before curving northward again. Ten minutes later — Peter and the Ford traveled slightly more rapidly than Peg and the van — Peter and David reached the same tangent, where they switched from the Thruway, which would soon cross the Hudson River and be of no further use to them, to the Sprain Brook, and now both cars were on the same road, heading in the same direction.

Peg waited until they were on the Sprain, where the traffic was lighter, now that they were well beyond the city, to start the dread conversation. 'Freddie,' she said, 'we have to talk.'