Smoke

Barney's smile, she busied herself with her coffee cup, which had been empty for a while.

Mordon said, 'I received permission from Barney, Miss Briscoe, to ask you these questions first.'

'Uh-huh,' she said. She was studying the empty interior of her cup, as though looking for tea leaves to read.

'If you don't answer me,' Mordon said, 'Barney will ask you the questions himself, and you won't say to him, 'No idea.' I'm doing my best to make it easier for you here.'

'That's nice,' she said. She put the cup down and crossed her legs and clasped her hands around the upper knee and looked at Mordon. He could see her willing her face to be blank.

He shook his head. 'I'll ask you once more,' he said, 'and please consider your answer very caref—'

'No idea.'

'Oh, Miss Briscoe, if you would only—'

'My turn,' Barney said, getting to his feet. 'You guys hold her,' he said to the thugs, and took a black handle out of his pocket. He did something, and a long knife blade popped out of the handle.

The thugs stood, alert, but didn't immediately approach Peg Briscoe, who sat up straight, staring at the knife. Barney turned the knife this way and that in his hands, admiring it, and then he said, 'All I need from you is a mailing address, that's all. A box number, whatever it could be. Just someplace I can send the finger.'

Her eyes widened. 'I don't know where he is.'

'What a waste that's gonna be, then,' Barney told her. 'See, what's gonna happen is, every day I'm gonna cut off one of your fingers and mail it to our friend Freddie, with a note with a phone number where he could call me if he felt like it. Now, if I don't have an address to send the finger it's a real shame and a waste, cause you're still gonna lose the finger. Hold her steady, guys. Better put a hand over her mouth.'

'I don't know where he is!'

As the thugs closed on Briscoe, Mordon also got to his feet, saying, 'Barney, we don't have to—'

'Sit down, Counselor,' Barney said, and looked at Mordon, and the look all by itself knocked Mordon back into his chair. 'Hold her, now,' Barney said, turning again toward Briscoe.

'Waitwaitwaitwaitwaitmmmpmmmpmmmpmmmp—'

'Oh, all right,' Barney said, weary, the knife poised over her left hand. 'Let go her mouth, let's see what she's trying to say.'

'I know where he is!'

'Well, yeah, sure you do, I know that. Hold steady, now.'

'I'll tell you where he is!'

'Where I send the finger, that's right. Otherwise, it's a shame, right?'

'No no no, I'll tell you where he is right now, you don't have to mail him any—'

'Peg, Peg, Peg,' Barney said, 'I don't want to make you betray your best friend, you know what I mean? Let him come to me, of his own free will, after he gets a couple fingers in the mail. Hold steady now, I don't wanna take more than one.'

'You don't have to!'

Barney paused. He seemed genuinely perplexed. He said, 'What do you mean, I don't have to?'

'I can tell you exactly where he is, exactly how to find him!'

Barney chuckled. 'And we leave here and we go to this location, and he isn't there. And then we come back here and guess what? You didn't wait for us. Hold the hand steady, guys.'

'I'll take you there!'

Again Barney paused. He thought that one over. 'I dunno,' he said. 'You probably had plans for today, this'd use up hours and hours of your time—'

'It's all right! It's a free day, I got a free day!'

Barney shook his head. 'The finger in the mail, you know,' he said, 'it's a pretty surefire system.'

'I'll take you there,' she promised. 'I'll take you right to him.'

Barney sighed. He looked at the knife as though at an old friend, then turned to look at Mordon. 'I don't know, Counselor,' he said. 'Traveling with her for hours, and then maybe she's planning something—'

'I'm not! I'm not!'

'— and then we still got her on our hands at the end of the day.' Barney shook his head, troubled by the complications. 'What's your opinion, Counselor?'

There was no way to tell to what extent Barney Beuler was bluffing, or to what extent Barney Beuler was insane. Mordon judged it safest to go along with the insane part of Barney, so he said, in his most sober legal- counselor manner, 'There might be some advantage to it, Barney, to have her with us. If we use her van, with all the rest of us in the back . . .'

'Hmmm,' Barney said. 'Trojan horse, like.'

'Exactly. Then we let her talk to him, let him see we have her under our control.'

'If we have her under our control.' Barney turned back to the girl, who was following the conversation very intently. 'Do we have you under our control?'

'Yes! Yes!'

Mordon licked dry lips. He said, 'If things don't work out, Barney, we can always fall back on the finger option later.'

'That's true.' Deciding, Barney smiled and pressed the knife between his hands, and the blade disappeared back into the handle. Pocketing the handle, he shook his head and said, 'You're makin a softie outta me, Counselor.'

50

When Geoff Wheedabyx saw the van, he was on his way home from this morning's emergency, a barn that had caught fire out on Swope Road. His was one of four fire companies that had responded and, as usual, all they'd managed to save was the foundation. You get one of these old barns, that old dry wood with all its nooks and crannies packed full of dry old straw and sawdust and crap — literally crap; the stuff they use for fuel in the Middle East — and when the fire starts, there's really nothing to do but break out the marshmallows. Well, and make sure the fire doesn't spread to the house or the fields or anything else. But once a flame takes hold in a barn, you can be sure that barn is gone.

The reason for this fire, as for most of the outside-of-town fires Geoff and his people responded to, could be summed up in one word that has yet to appear under 'Cause' on any insurance report form: Farmer.

The problem is, your farmer will never call a mechanic, no matter what the job. Your farmer is his own carpenter, and he isn't a good carpenter. He's his own plumber, electrician, mason, roofer, auto mechanic, and midwife, and he's pretty bad at all of them. Geoff had seen wiring in some of these old farmhouses and barns that would give you nightmares; in the one that burned down this morning, for instance. If you ever see anything that's built to Code, you know a farmer didn't build it.

The farmers will tell you the reason they do everything themselves, instead of calling in somebody who knows what the hell he's doing, is because they're poor, which isn't exactly true. Oh, they're poor, all right, but that isn't the reason they do everything themselves. The reason is, they're proud; and we know what pride goeth before, don't we?

Geoff, in his ruminations, was just at the point of brooding on pride and its aftermath when he saw the van, definitely that selfsame gray van, owned by one Margaret Briscoe of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York, and last seen zipping away down Market Street out of town with Margaret Briscoe at the wheel and an invisible man named Freddie as the passenger.

And now the van was parked in front of Geoff's house. Geoff, in his pickup and still wearing his smoke- permeated firefighting gear, drove on by his house and reached first for his police radio, switching it over to the frequency it shared with Cliff's Service & Auto Repair out on County 14, Cliff being one of his two part-time deputies. 'Cliff,' he said into the mike. 'Tell me you're there.'

Geoff drove to the end of Dudley, made a U-turn, and parked behind his police cruiser. 'Come on, Cliff,' he said into the mike. 'Be there.'

'I was under a car, dammit. What's up?'

'Cliff, get your badge and your gun and go on down to my house. Out front, you'll see a van, gray. Do not let