The Nicotine Chronicles

by Lee Child

  They probably smoked cloves like Ike’s cheating, thieving wife.

  Anyway, Father Mann said that there were angels living in the Abbey Mountains. Singing angels.

  “Why do you think they’re called the Abbey Mountains? There was once a community of monks who lived up in those mountains. Monks live in an abbey.

  “It’s still up there,” Father Mann had added. “I imagine it’s in ruins, of course. The monks are all gone, gone off to heaven, but they visit every autumn as angels, and they sing the Lord’s praises loud enough for all of Annunciation to hear.”

  Father Mann smoked a pipe. Wise men smoked pipes. Good, wise men smoked pipes. Fox’s grandfather had smoked a pipe and he was the nicest, kindest, and wisest man Fox had ever known. Fox remembered that Abraham Lincoln had smoked a pipe. He believed Lincoln had been a wise and kind man, too kind for his own good, so kind he’d ripped the country apart by ending slavery. Fox supposed no man was perfect.

  * * *

  He pulled the pack of L&M cigarettes from his pocket and stared at it. He really needed to have a smoke. Fuck this cold or this flu or whatever it was.

  He had been a lifelong Lucky Strikes man before he switched to L&M Filters. He’d made the change at the behest of his doctor, who had claimed that L&M Filters were better for him. Healthier.

  Days later, when he was in the body shop waiting for Jeffrey Maddox to buff scratches off the hood of his pickup truck, Fox had picked up a battered copy of Reader’s Digest and right there on the fifth page was an advertisement for L&M Filters. The ad had a photo of the Academy Award–winning actor Fredric March. Beneath the photo was March’s very own testimony about the health benefits of smoking L&M Filters.

  Well, Fox couldn’t say why exactly, but it made him feel special that he and an Academy Award–winning actor both smoked the same brand.

  * * *

  He looked at GiGi. “Do you mind?” he asked.

  GiGi shook her head. “No, go ’head.” And then she whispered, “Can I bum one?”

  “Sure.” Fox handed her the near-empty pack.

  He lit his own cigarette and sucked on the filter until the smoke clogged in his throat. “’Scuse me,” he gagged, turning and stumbling through the door. After a few racking coughs, Fox spat a glob of phlegm onto the ground. Cussing under his breath, he dropped the lit cigarette into the rheumy pool.

  Yeah, he thought as he cleared his throat, it was the flu for sure.

  Fox stepped back into the trailer just as GiGi pulled her stringy blond hair atop her head and wrangled it into a loose knot. With her face thoroughly exposed, her cheekbones stuck out more severely.

  He gazed upon her used-to-be-pretty face and imagined that before life sunk its teeth into GiGi Stamford, single mother of two, she was probably as beautiful as her missing daughter.

  What a shame, he thought, what a downright shame.

  GiGi Stamford took one last pull on the filter and stubbed the cigarette out in a gold tin ashtray. When she did so, the glass nesting table wobbled on its uneven legs.

  Fox figured she was saving the rest of the cigarette for later when he wouldn’t be there to give her another. He might just leave the rest of the pack with her, seeing as he was the one who had taken her daughter in the first place. Plus, his flu-like symptoms weren’t going to allow him to enjoy a decent smoke.

  Fox sighed.

  His eyes traveled around the trailer. It was untidy. The carpet on the floor was stained and bald in places. The walls needed a fresh coat of paint and perhaps some new screens on the windows. The ones that hung haphazardly in the metal frames had holes and gashes large enough for a child’s hand to push through. With openings that big, he couldn’t imagine why the trailer wasn’t filled with flies, especially with the pile of dirty dishes in the sink.

  Fox looked back at his notes. The remaining daughter was . . . Fox flipped through the pages of his notepad . . . twelve years old. “What’s your name again, sweetheart?”

  “Elvia,” the young girl sitting alongside her mother mumbled down to the filthy carpet. She hadn’t raised her head the entire time he’d been there.

  Fox scribbled: L-via.

  GiGi patted the girl’s back.

  “Mrs. Stamford—”

  “Ms.,” GiGi corrected him. “I’m not married,” she whispered.

  Fox already knew this, but it was important to pretend he didn’t.

  She had two children by two different men, townies who cycled in and out of jail on minor offenses. They weren’t bad guys, just men who didn’t want to leave their childhoods behind.

  Fox supposed if he hadn’t gone into the military for four years, he too might have ended up just like them. The military and Jesus Christ had saved his life, no doubt in his mind.

  Now, those boys smoked Newport 100s. He was surprised by that because Newports were mostly smoked by Negroes, both the Negro men and the Negro women. In fact, the father of the Chantrelle girl smoked Newports. He remembered seeing the pack on the kitchen table when he went to talk to them about their missing daughter. Fox supposed that white boys smoked Newports because they thought it made them seem cool. Like soul-brother cool. Fox didn’t know why any white man would want to emulate a black man, but he also didn’t know why people put peanuts in their Coca-Cola. He supposed to each his own.

  Elvia excused herself and disappeared into the back of the trailer.

  Fox wrote: Single mother.

  And then: Meth-head??

  From what Fox had observed, GiGi had at least three missing teeth. The ones that remained were stained a shade of brown that suggested she was doing more than smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.

  Meth was a problem in Annunciation.

  “Amanda, she’s, uhm . . . she’s special, you know?” GiGi sputtered.

  Most mothers believed their children were special.

  “Of course she is,” Fox said, his smile brightening a bit.

  “No, no, not like that. She’s special to me, of course, but I mean she’s . . . she’s retarded.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  In the back of the trailer Elvia flushed the toilet.

  He wrote on his pad: Retarded.

  He hadn’t thought Amanda Stamford was retarded—maybe a little simple, very agreeable, trusting to a fault, but not retarded. Retarded, he decided, was too harsh a label. He struck two lines through the word.

  Amanda had been an easy catch. No, correction—Amanda Stamford had been an easy lure. Fox had pulled up alongside her early that morning just as she rounded the bend in the road that was as blind as a blind spot in a trucker’s side-view mirror. He’d rolled down his window and said, “Hop in, Amanda, I’ll take you all the way to school.”

  Amanda had climbed into his cruiser without hesitation because everyone in town knew Officer Fox.

  Friendly Officer Fox. That very nice and helpful Officer Fox. That Officer Fox is such a nice policeman. What a good husband that Officer Fox is, and a fine Christian to boot!

  “Can you turn on the siren?” she’d asked, blinking her pretty green eyes.

  “Of course,” he’d said.

  No one could accuse Fox of being a small man. He liked his strawberry pie, cheeseburgers, and beer, and it showed. Fox might not have been the tallest man in Annunciation, but he was a respectable five feet seven inches. So, he was caught off guard by the amount of fight the ten-year-old Amanda Stamford had in her when he brought the chloroform-soaked cloth over her face.

  His eyes glided over the thin red scratches on the back of his hand. These acts of mercy were necessary; Father Mann had said so. He had assured Fox that they were sending the little girls to loving homes, to loving people who could not have children of their own. “Like you, Fox, like you and Janine.”

  Fox blinked, and then wrote: Barren.

  He and Janine had been married for eight years, and to tell the truth, they were happy; but a space had developed between them and it grew bigger each month when Ja
nine’s period made an appearance.

  The doctors had said they were both fine, both healthy. It was just going to take a little longer for them.

  “How long?”

  The doctor couldn’t predict that.

  With what the priest was paying him for snatching the children, Fox would have enough money to grease the palms of those people who could bypass the bureaucratic crimson tape and deliver unto him, unto him and Janine, the baby they so desperately wanted. Or, maybe they could pay someone to carry a child for them. People were doing that too, he’d read.

  The idea of having a child of his own was nice, but this wasn’t just about what he wanted. He wasn’t a selfish man, after all. He was saving lives. He was doing God’s work.

  * * *

  A year before Fox snatched the first child, Father Mann had invited him to the rectory for a Cuban cigar and a snifter of fine cognac.

  Up until that day Fox had smoked only two cigars in his life, the first one at his wedding reception and the second in celebration of the birth of his brother’s first child.

  Those cigars had been cheap White Owls that could be purchased at any convenience store. The Cuban, however, was as smooth as the cognac.

  Fox remembered that it had felt spooky in the room because the rectory walls were covered in shadows. Father Mann preferred candlelight or lamplight. That night the room was awash in both.

  “We would be saving them from themselves, you know,” said Father Mann in between sips of cognac and puffs on his cigar. “This is a fine town; not the best town, it has its problems, as you well know.” Father Mann had paused, his hazel eyes searching Fox’s face before he leaned in and lowered his voice to a whisper. “There’s no perfect place, Fox, but there are plenty of places better than here. Look at it like this: we’re giving these little girls a chance at a better life, with a better family.”

  Fox had nodded in agreement before draining his glass.

  “There are so many desperate people in this country, good, God-fearing desperate people who are able and willing to donate exorbitant amounts of money to make their dream of having a family a reality.”

  Father Mann called them donations. Not payments, donations.

  * * *

  Fox was perspiring. In the far corner of the trailer, the standing fan was silent and still.

  It was August, for Chrissakes, he raged in his mind, swiping at the sweat beading across his forehead. Who in the world just resigns themselves to this type of heat? It was torture.

  He thought to ask GiGi Stamford to turn the fan on, but then he spied the clumps of gray dust clinging to the plastic grill and knew that as soon as the blades began to spin, the entire trailer would fill with flying bits of filth.

  Elvia was back at her mother’s side. She seemed to be studying him. Well, not him, but the scratches on the back of his hand. When Fox saw her staring, the sympathetic look on his face cooled and Elvia quickly lowered her eyes.

  Fox wrote on his pad: Nosy, busybody. Careful or you’ll be next . . .

  Menthol

  by Jerry Stahl

  I started smoking at six and a half months. Negative six and a half.

  More or less.

  My mother, Floss, used to call herself a “working girl.” And she liked to smoke when she worked. At the time of my conception, Mom was, as she liked to say, “a three-pack-a-day gal.” Strictly menthol.

  So Kool.

  So Salems.

  So Marlboro Green.

  What she breathed, we breathed. Me. And by me, I mean me the fetus, cured for months in her menthol cloud. I like to think, when they yanked me out of the womb and spanked me, I didn’t cry, I coughed, a puff of minty-fresh smoke wafting from between my baby-blue lips. Blue because I arrived so ahead of schedule. Three and three-quarters pounds. Sweet as a sick Chihuahua in a cup.

  Not that I’m mad about it. Cough, cough. It’s not like I was born with a harelip. I mean I was, but still . . . Nicotine does that sometimes. One of the side effects, along with that teensy birth-weight, and tendency to be born premature. (Did I mention the six and a half months?) Since the beginning, I’ve been early for everything. But things work out. One of Mom’s regulars was a cosmetic surgeon. Dr. Ono. So he fixed me up when I was five. Not that he wanted to. He had to. He knew we had pictures. And I knew. Because I took them. That was my job. Mom called it insurance. But I just liked holding the Polaroid.

  Peek through the viewfinder. Press the magic button. Pull out and hold under armpit—it’s always warm—for a few fun seconds while Mom beams at me over the client’s pillowed behind, bound hands, whatever’s going on, between us. Without saying a word, my mother taught me my first lesson: Never get done, always do.

  I watched, and learned, from my perch at the foot of the Murphy bed.

  The Spank and Burn, the Filter Tip, the Brown on Top, and my personal favorite, the move that Mom invented, the one Dr. Ono loved: the Bottle Rocket.

  Floss talked as she worked.

  “You see the pee-hole, doctor?”

  “Mmmf . . . Yes, mistress.”

  “I’m going to take this match . . .”

  “Uh-huh, uh-huh . . .”

  Floss produces the wooden match, clutches the doctor’s thing like a roll of Play-Doh, squeezes—just at the tip, where it’s got the army helmet—and his purple snake mouth just kind of gawps, like it’s hungry. Like it’s eager. Like—

  “Now!” Mom’s voice goes low. “Are you ready?”

  She tells the doctor what she’s going to do. But she’s also, this comes to me later, also telling me how to do it. “We put the stick in the wee-wee. We twist. No squirming!”

  And all the while, Dr. Ono, Dr. Ono, lashed to the iron bars at the head and foot of the bed with bright-red rope so that he reminds me of Gulliver, in the story, if Gulliver were gift wrapped, Dr. Ono on whose hairless chest Mom has written words in lipstick I can’t read, Dr. Ono’s mouth twists in an expression I only recall—nothing fancy here—as happy. He even purrs. He mewls. Wet-lipped, eyes crinkled to slits. The weird thing, through it all, the doctor wears a hat, a goofy sailor’s cap, like Gilligan, which somehow stays on his head while my mother, this tiny lady, holds his rancid dumbness (that’s what she calls it) now stiff and at, as they say, attention, in her two doll-hands.

  “Oh, my haha, my haha!” Dr. Ono’s eyes roll back, shoulders hunching.

  Floss barks, “Shush!” Looks my way. Whispers: “Japanese for mommy.” Continues, very calmly, “Okay, like we practiced, count to ten, and shoot.” And I do! I do! Aiming straight at eight, finger on the button at nine. At ten, pressing down, then—whoosh—like a magic trick, the matchstick’s lit, Dr. Ono’s rancid dumbness spitting flame.

  Even now, I can’t figure how she did it. The mechanics.

  I just watch. Keep snapping. Pull Polaroids.

  Shoot Dr. Ono, blubbering. Shoot happy Dr. Ono, who swings his fiery unit side to side. Who singes his silky seagrass pubes. Shrieks, “Haroo! Haroo! Sooo happyyyy!” Then stares straight at me, so white-eyed I forget the camera.

  I think, He can see me! though I know he can’t. Because I’m inside the cabinet, with the built-in hiding space, and the missing panel. Just big enough for little girl me.

  “Please, lady, now!” The doctor’s voice all squealy, “Now, now, now!”

  And Mom, I don’t know how she does it, goes from tiny to tall, like that, in front of my five-year-old eyes.

  A woman engorged, like Dr. Ono himself. Because she is not having it.

  “What’s this?” Mom asks, icy soft. “Did someone forget who gives the orders?”

  The doctor only quivers. “Please! Please! Please, pleasey, please!”

  “Begging? That’s what we’re doing?”

  “No, no, no! No begging. I want—”

  “You what? You want?”

  Doctor Ono burbles. Mommy Floss says nothing. Silent now. She snaps her wrist. Another trick! Cigarettes materialize. Newport shorts. In a box. Mom sn
aps again, the top pops open, and out—just an inch, no more than a filter tip—slides one cigarette. Like that, it’s in her mouth.

  “Watch and learn,” my mother says, “watch and learn!”

  And Dr. Ono, who by now beams, whose eyeballs would probably glow in the dark, stares at her with something like love, something like happy terror, as she reaches for that red rope, and pulls. It was never a real knot; just there for show, and the doctor wriggles out.

  Another life lesson: If you really want control, you don’t need ropes. Don’t need cuffs and chains. All you need is obedience.

  O-be-di-ence.

  It’s obedience that has Dr. Ono still flaming as he begins to move. (Mom gets her matches from magic shops, so even if you blow them they won’t go out. Fun at birthdays!) Dr. Ono gets up and kind of waddle-walks. He’s not fat. Not fat-fat. But he’s fleshy, and soft. And he shivers. Staring down at the fire between his thighs. Because he believes, from prior waddles, in prior sessions, that his waddle will keep the flame from going out. Even if we know—Mommy and me—that he could kneel down in front of an electric fan and the flame would only flutter.

  “Get over here and light me!”

  “Yes, yes, yes! I will light you, mistress.”

  The doc waddle-walks straight to Mom.

  Ever breathed burning pubic hairs? They don’t smell like roses.

  The menthol helps. When Dr. Ono shimmy-shammied his way to Mom’s throne, I thought he might combust. But wait—have I mentioned her throne? It’s a love seat really, beside the bed. Paisley quilt, on which Mom sits, in the lotus position, lipping her Newport so the doctor has to bend forward to get the flame just right, tip of her cigarette touching tip of him.

  Mom lights up, inhales, blows out a billowing cloud. “Get that thing out of here.” Now she licks her fingers, wets them good, and tamps out the penile match.

  When Dr. Ono, deflamed—but still at eye level—tries to move closer, Floss swats at his member as if it were an errant bat, or a fly, trying to land on her face.

  Ah, memories!

  There were many versions of Dr. Ono. I can reach in the photo box right now. Pull out—oh my God!—another Polaroid. Reich Marshal Malcolm. Who came to the door dressed in uniform, complete with epaulettes and Iron Cross on his chest, and worked at City National Bank. He helped Mom with the mortgage, though I’m not sure how. Reich Marshal (he insisted Mom call him that, and paid extra) liked the Roman Candle. So Mom kept a box of fat wax candles in the kitchen drawer. Reich Marshal, in my mind, seemed like a giant. He always brought Salems, by the carton. Mom would tell him to assume the position the second he entered.