Money for Nothing (15 page)

They settled on one o'clock at the Tre Mafiosi, a good Italian place not far from his office, usually full of publishing and television people, and Josh tried to return his attention to his employer's concerns.

It was easier to keep his mind on the job, though it shouldn't have been. The night before he'd folded a winter blanket onto the living room floor as an additional layer of softness and pushed the coffee table even farther away from himself, so he wouldn't wake up with his head under it. Then, after a week and a half of troubled catnaps, he'd slept almost normally on that floor last night, and he'd awakened knowing that, more than the blanket underneath him, it was the dinner conversation with Tina Pausto that had eased his mind and let him relax into slumber.

Should it have? In two days, he had met three Tina Paustos, first the coolly seductive one, and then the impatient dismissive one, and now the pal, keeping his little secrets. As to which of those was the real Tina Pausto, obviously the answer was none. Everything she did was for calculation, and for her employer. If she'd decided that Josh's breach of security with Eve hadn't endangered the current mission, then she risked nothing if she kept her knowledge to herself. At the same time, she put Josh in her debt. Not for any specific payback at the moment, but for insurance on down the line.

Whatever; it had worked.

Here we were at Thursday, with Premier Mihommed-Sinn due to fly in from Kamastan tomorrow, the ceremony at Yankee Stadium scheduled the day after that, and what so far had Josh done about it all? He'd kept himself alive with Tina Pausto's help, but not much more. The bad things were on their way, thundering toward the point where all the evil would meet, in the innocent open air, and here he was, still immersed in Cloudbank.

Again Robbie had arrived first, now dressed, Josh guessed, from some production of
Death of a Salesman
, in a seedy beige suit too big for him, wrinkled white shirt with plowed ruts in the collar, and a narrow stained black necktie severely knotted at the throat, as though Robbie had been considering suicide.

But he wasn't. He was, in fact, pleased with himself. Pouring himself some more Pellegrino, he said, in a Texas twang, "Nice little place you got here."

"We like it," Josh said, doing his own attempt at Texas. "It may not be much, but we call it a restaurant."

Robbie gave him a surprised look. "What happened to gloom and doom?"

"Oh, they're still there," Josh said, "one on each shoulder. But last night Tina Pausto told me she knows I've told Eve what's happening, and she'll keep my secret, so Andrei Levrin won't crush me like a kitten."

"She's making an ally," Robbie commented. "Keeping side doors open."

"I'll take it," Josh said. "We don't inquire into motivations."

The usual stuff involving menus and waiters ensued, and after it Robbie said, "Well, while you were working your wiles on Pausto—"

"Sure."

"—I was on the commuter train to Port Washington."

A town on the north shore of Long Island, not very far out at all; from its heights, New York City could be seen. Josh said, "That's where Mr. Nimrin went?"

"Straight there. I was glad it wasn't one of the long commuter runs, to Montauk or Port Jefferson. I didn't know what his stop was, so I had to stay with him. I stayed on the train, past all those little stations, and of course he never piped me. End of the line, Port Wash, off he gets and into the men's room at the station, and never comes out."

"Disguising himself."

Robbie made a disgusted face. "I'm afraid you're probably right. I didn't really believe it of him, and whatever he does it's still a far cry from the thing
I
do, working from the inside, crea—"

"Mitch."

"You're right," Robbie said, and the food they'd ordered arrived, and the next tiling Robbie said was, "This is all really very good."

"Yeah, it's a good place."

"I'm astonished you don't weigh three hundred pounds."

'Tell me about Port Washington."

"Well," Robbie said, "I did have to get back to the city, I had a curtain to make, in fact barely made it, so I waited around until the next train was about to start the other way. Then I did a quick search of the men's room, and of course, no Nimrin. So home I went, and did my best for Mr. Shaw, then trained back
out
to Port Wash—"

"Late at night?"

"That's what it was, yes," Robbie agreed. "But I felt a certain urgency."

"Yes, sure."

"Now, Port Wash is mostly a high-end commuter town," Robbie said, "quite old, the newer stuff off somewhere. There are a few heights overlooking Long Island Sound, and a few estates up in there, and it seemed to me that's where the safe house would have to be, up in Gatsby territory, to give them the room and the privacy they'd need. I cabbed up and prowled around outside some of them, looking for I don't know what, a car with diplomatic plates maybe, or a helicopter launching pad. Or a Russian name on a mailbox. Or maybe even a sentry on patrol." He shook his head, chewed some cod, said, "Nada. We've gotta go out there by day."

Josh paused. "We?"

"Four eyes are better than two." Robbie waved his fork. "Remember, you're the one came to me, said we have this urgent problem, and we
do
have this urgent problem. Your girlfriend is keeping your secret right now, but for how long? At this moment, she thinks it's best to line up with you. Tomorrow, or later today, who knows. Josh, Mihommed-Sinn is flying in
tomorrow
."

"I know, I've been telling myself that."

"Do you have to call your office," Robbie asked him, "or can you just go?"

Josh hesitated, then shrugged. "I have to call my office. But we can't drive out there, they know my car."

"That," Robbie pointed out, "is why God gave us the trains."

"You're right. Yes," he told the waiter, "I'm done. No, no dessert."

"Coffee," Robbie said. "You should, too."

"Okay, coffee," Josh said. "Not that I'm likely to fall asleep."

ON THE TRAIN, JOSH WAS dressed as he'd been for lunch, lightweight jacket, tan chinos, pale blue short-sleeved dress shirt; the yellow tie was now rolled and in his jacket pocket. Robbie, it turned out, had checked a black backpack at Tre Mafiosi, into which, during the trainride, he'd stowed the
Death of a Salesman
suitcoat and shirt and garroting tie, and out of which he'd brought a khaki short-sleeved shirt with pocket flaps. Wearing both this and the backpack, he looked like the den leader of a previously unknown offshoot of the Boy Scouts.

Their train pulled into its end-of-the-line berth at ten minutes to three. They'd have another six hours of July daylight, plenty of time to search an area this small, a stubby peninsula jutting northward into Long Island Sound. Robbie had alerted a standby to take over, in case he didn't get back to the theater in time tonight, so all they had to do, until the sun went down, was look for Mr. Nimrin.

The town itself was all diagonals, some parts angling down toward the water and the view westward across to Kings Point and Great Neck, the Bronx beyond that, other parts twisting upward and eastward toward the heights over by the more affluent sections of Sea Cliff and Sands Point, where most of the estates and monasteries could be found.

Robbie paused at a bench on the station platform to delve into his backpack once more, bringing out a thick manila envelope scrawled with addresses and rubber stamps and postage stamps, all messily wrapped in thicknesses of clear tape, with bits of ragged envelope sticking hairily out at the corners. It looked to Josh, seeing it briefly and at an angle, that it was addressed to Ellois Nimrin at some incomprehensible location over which the ink had run or the paper worn away.

Nodding at the package, Josh said, "What are you going to do with that?"

"There's a Mailboxes-R-Us in town," Robbie said. "They'll know everybody." Slipping on the backpack, he stood and said, "Come along. I'll be in the part, so you'll have to listen to directions, and keep an eye out for anything funny."

Josh had no idea what Robbie meant by "anything funny," but didn't ask, since he suspected Robbie had no idea what he meant, either. It was simply a theatrical way to end the statement.

They walked away from the railroad station and into town, agreeing that Josh would go into the mailbox place first and stand filling out forms while Robbie came in and did his dance. The storefront itself, in squared-off red, white, and blue design, was midblock, between a video rental shop and a cellular phone place, so a generation ago all three of these stores would have been something else.

Josh went inside and found there a clean and cluttered space, with cartons piled up in stacks and a wall of mailboxes and pigeonholes behind a chest-high counter. Three young employees in white smocks cheerfully carried boxes around or studied manifests. They glanced smilingly at Josh, but then went back to what they were doing when they saw him turn toward the side-counter where the forms were.

This was a chain that provided any kind of mail-related service you could think of except the actual delivery of mail. They'd serve as a convenience address, they'd do packing (and gift wrapping), they'd sell empty cartons and packing materials, they would deliver to the post office, and they offered a variety of stationery and envelopes as well.

Josh bent over a form enlisting himself — or Matt Fairlough, the first name he came up with, not that good a friend — into the ranks of those who wanted to receive their mail at this location until further notice, and behind him Robbie bustled in, looking worried, energetic, and inept.

"Oh, boy," he told everybody. "Oh, Jesus, I hope you people can help me."

They hoped so, too. Two boys and a girl, they all approached Robbie as he hustled to the counter, dropping the package there like the sea captain dropping the wrapped black bird in Sam Spade's office; however, he did not fall dead immediately after.

"What is it?"

"What do you need, man?"

"Can we help?"

"I'm supposed to deliver — This is gonna cost me my job, I can't afford to lose my job in the
summer
, I can't—"

"Let's see."

"What is this?"

"Let's just take a look."

All three bent over the package on the counter. "Boy, this is a mess."

"The
name
I figured out," Robbie told them, pointing at it. "Eloise Nimrin. Only I think it's a guy, he's supposed to be someplace with a lot of Russians, or Polish, or Hungarian, I dunno, I just can't find the place, I don't
dare
bring this back to—"

"Russian?"

It was one of the boys who'd lit up at that clue, and now the other two plus Robbie looked at him in sudden hope while Josh reached for a second form.

"I bet," said the boy who'd worked it out, "it's one of the people up at Mrs. Rheingold's house."

"Rheingold?" The girl wasn't sure she knew the name. "Who's that?"

"You know," the boy told her. "The old lady up by—"

Then the other boy got it. "The hermit!"

"That's the one."

Robbie, full of doubt, said, "Hermit? No, this is a guy, Nimrin—"

"We don't have any dealings with her," the first boy explained, "because she never leaves her compound up there. But everybody knows about her, she—"

"Oh!" said the girl, catching up. "The old lady up north by Sands Point, with the great big wall!"

"That's the one," the first boy agreed, and told Robbie, while Josh wrote on the second form,
Mrs. Rheingold, hermit, north, Sands Point
, "I used to hear about her when I was a kid. Everybody was scared to go around there."

The second boy said, "She's got a bunch of staff up there, servants, you know, I think they're all Russian or something like that. They don't come to town either."

"Well, the butler does," the first boy said. "He comes down and does the shopping, I've seen him in the Grand Union. He's got some kind of accent, maybe he could be Russian."

The girl nodded, emphatically. "That'll be it," she said. "You go up there, they'll know. If this man isn't there, they'll know where he is."

"Just tell me how to find the place," Robbie begged them.

"Go out Sands Point Road through Manorhaven," the first boy told him, "and take a left on Sandy Drive," as Josh wrote it all down. "Not Sandy Road or Sandy Lane."

"Got it. Sandy Drive."

"If you get to Middle Neck Road," the girl told him, "you've gone too far." Josh didn't bother to write that down.

"Out Sandy Drive," the first boy said, as Josh crumpled and threw away his first form and pocketed the second, "you'll come to these brick gateposts and a closed gate and a big high wall and all kinds of keep out signs."

As Josh walked to and out the shop door, the second boy added, "Posted, No Trespassing, No Solicitors, all of—"

And so on, no doubt. Josh paused on the sidewalk to decide from the sun where north was, and turned in that direction as Robbie hurried out, shouting many thank-yous behind him.

"You got it," he told Josh.

"I got it," Josh agreed.

JOSH STARTED WALKING NORTH, but Robbie didn't. When Josh looked back, Robbie said, "What are you doing?"

"It's supposed to be up this way."

"We don't
walk
there," Robbie told him. "It's too far to walk. You're a rich guy, we'll take a cab." Turning away, he said, "We'll get one back at the railroad station."

Following in Robbie's wake, Josh said, "Why do
I
always have to pay for the cab?"

"Because you're a capitalist lackey," Robbie explained.

Josh was sure there was a perfect retort to that remark, but as they walked along, southward instead of northward, he didn't hear himself say it, so he never found out what it was.

There was one taxi waiting at the station, a big old gray Chrysler station wagon. The driver was a very fat woman of probably sixty, spread over much of the front seat like melting ice cream, dressed in a green plaid flannel shirt, tan chinos, and open-toed golden sandals. She had been reading
Elle Decor
, which she put onto the seat beside her as they approached.