Money for Nothing (17 page)

Josh waited a while, bearing most of Robbie's weight, seeing nothing but stone wall two inches from his nose, and then he said, "What do you see?"

"Well, not much. Let me down, you can take a look for yourself."

They switched positions, and when Josh rose up he saw a much messier landscape than that created by the Christian capitalists. Weedy scrub growth was everywhere, much of it old fallen trunks and branches from years of windstorms. Some distance away, a gray stone pile of a house was visible, its bay windows gleaming copper, its black roof sagging, the whole structure seeming to be in a long slow process of sinking completely into the ground. A small slice of driveway was visible leading away from the house, and here and there were cleared rectangles of land that might once have been gardens or vegetable patches, long overgrown but retaining something of their shapes. A look of abandonment and decay was everywhere, as though the house hadn't been lived in for more than a century.

Off to the left, northward toward the Sound, he could just make out some more stone wall, at right angles to this one, with more glinting of shards of glass. So the wall made a turn before the waterline in order to continue across the rear of the property, which meant the idea of wading a bit to get around the end of the wall was, as they'd supposed, too easy.

Josh was about to tell Robbie he was ready to come down when movement over by the house caught his eye. Some people had come out, and were moving through the scrubby woods in this direction, though not as though they'd seen the eavesdroppers. They seemed to have something else in mind.

Josh squinted, trying to see them, since even in full daylight there was a kind of evening vagueness inside there, and as the group came nearer he saw they were four men, young, with thick black hair and full black beards. They were dressed alike in elaborate sneakers, dark green shorts, and white T-shirts. They picked their way through the undergrowth at a diagonal to Josh until they reached one of the once-cleared sections. There they stopped, conferred briefly, and then formed a line, standing at attention side by side, shoulder to shoulder, their right profiles toward Josh.

"You're getting heavy up there."

"Hold on a second, there's people. I'll come right down."

Apparently, one of the four men gave orders, though quietly, so that Josh couldn't hear him. The four made a snappy left turn, then began to march, left arms swinging in an exaggerated manner, right arms held bent upward, forearms parallel to the ground, as though they carried rifles on their shoulders.

Josh stared, fascinated and appalled. They marched five paces across the semi-clearing, rigidly together, then one by one made a sharp left, then another.

"Josh. Enough already."

"Right. Here I come."

Josh lowered himself, then made a stirrup again and said, "You have to see them."

"Who are they?"

"The assassination team."

"Really?" Up he went, and studied the assassination team for a minute, then came down again and said, "They're rehearsing."

"They're drilling," Josh told him.

"It's the same thing." Robbie shook his head. "In any profession," he said, "to be good at it, you have to keep doing it. They don't want to look like rusty amateurs when they slip into that honor guard."

"Okay," Josh said. "Now that you've seen them, how do we stop them?"

"We'll talk on the way back," Robbie said.

Josh gestured at the wall. "You don't want to try to get in there?"

"Why? There's probably a door on the waterside, people always leave one exit to the sea, but it'll be locked solid. And we don't want to be in there anyway, Josh, not with those people."

"No, I don't," Josh agreed.

"Come on."

They walked back along the wall, headed for Sandy Drive. Josh said, "Do you suppose she has any idea what's going on?"

"Mrs. Rheingold? No," Robbie said. "Not for seventy years."

They made it back to the road, slid out of the Christian capitalists' property between low stone wall and high electric eye, and turned to walk back to town.

'Too bad we can't call a cab," Josh said, not meaning it.

Robbie gave him a look. "I'm surprised you don't carry a cellphone."

'Too many people reach me as it is."

They walked past the iron gates closed over the entrance to Mrs. Rheingold's property, and looked in at the same nothing as before. That moldy old pile of a house couldn't be seen from here, nor could the marching men. They walked on, Revenge Estates now on their left, schoolbuses stitching through it, returning the summer-schoolers to their cookie-cutter homes.

As they walked Josh shook his head. "I wish I'd brought a camera."

"Why?"

"To take pictures of those guys drilling."

Robbie frowned at him. "What good is that gonna do?"

"Well, look. There's nobody following us now. Nobody knows where we are. If we had something to
show
the police, we could go to them, and end this thing."

"Show them what? Pictures of four guys walking around in the woods?"

"Drilling."

"Who says?
We
say they're walking with pretend rifles. Prove it."

Josh shook his head. He felt hemmed-in on every side. "You know," he said, "our Fire Island rental is over on Monday, I was supposed to go out there tomorrow to help pack. Eve and I talked about it, and it seemed as though I should stay in the city, try to
do
something to make this horrible thing stop. But what am I accomplishing? What are
we
accomplishing? Nothing."

"We're working on it," Robbie said, but he sounded defensive.

Frustrated, Josh said, "God damn it, Mitch, it should be so
easy
. Just go to the police, that's what they're for."

"Sure," Robbie said. "Turn ourselves in as spies. Show the evidence, the checks over the years and the bank accounts down there, wherever it is."

"Cayman Islands."

"I don't really care. The point is, the only evidence we could show the police is evidence of
our
guilt. Nobody's plans to kill anybody, no nothing except us. Sleepers. Moles. Traitors, with the big T."

Frowning deeply, Josh walked along next to the rows of little anonymous houses, trying to think. "What if — what if, when we get back to town, I go to the police, tell them everything, tell them to go to my apartment, they'll find all those guns and uniforms there, and probably Tina Pausto, too."

"They'll kill your wife and child," Robbie told him. "And my old mother in Hartford, I have no doubt. Any security lapse, our families get killed."

"All right, all right, what if… What if, when we get to town, I first call Eve, I tell her to take Jeremy and go to her mother in New Jersey, and you—"

"That's a great hideout."

Josh stopped on the roadside, occasional traffic whipping by as he stared in agony into space. "There's no place to hide, is there?"

"Either we get the goods on these guys," Robbie said, "or they do their thing. And if they do their thing, it's our job to be the dead perps."

Josh moaned. "I thought you were somebody who thought outside the box."

"I do."

"And?"

"Well… I don't see anything out there yet."

They walked along in silence another minute, not companionable, and then Josh said, "What if…" and again, "What if…"

"Go ahead, Josh," Robbie encouraged him. "We can't know it's a bad idea until you come out with it."

"All right," Josh said. "What if I call Eve and tell her
not
to go to her parents, but to go someplace else and not tell me where."

"You've got a kid."

"I know," Josh said. "It wouldn't be easy."

"For my mother in Hartford," Robbie told him, "forget it. She won't even take the
train
."

Josh plodded along, hemmed in, confined, hopeless, doomed. "Mitch," he said.

"Yes, Josh?"

"It's all slipping away from us. Here we are, we know so much, we found out so much, and none of it means a thing."

"You're right," Robbie said.

"I don't want to be right," Josh told him.

They walked along another minute, ignoring the summer sun, the schoolbuses, the little houses. Then, abruptly, Robbie stopped and said, "All right, what about this?"

Josh stopped and looked back at him, waiting.

Robbie spread his hands, and offered a shaky grin. "It's a crazy idea," he said, "but it just might work."

Josh nodded. "Yeah?"

"Have you got sleeping pills at your place?"

"No. Lately, I wish I did."

Robbie started walking again, and Josh kept pace with him. "I'll give you a couple, when we get back to town," he said. "Then, tonight, you slip them to this Tina, but
you
stay awake."

"No problem."

"You can give me a set of keys to your place."

Josh gave him a quizzical look. "Yeah?"

"About two in the morning, I'll come up there, and we'll steal the uniforms."

Josh stared at him. "Do
what
?"

"Believe me," Robbie assured him, "I could use them down at the theater."

Josh couldn't believe this. "Steal the uniforms?"

"You get up Saturday morning," Robbie told him, "they're gone, you have no idea what happened.
You
didn't take them, you're still there. The corps de ballet shows up, no costumes. They can't infiltrate any honor guard in green shorts."

"No, they'll find some… There have to be more uniforms."

"That
they
can get? On short notice? The motorcade's on the
way
, man, those guys are standing around in their jocks."

Josh nodded, slowly, like a metronome. "Jesus, Mitch," he said, "it
is
a crazy idea, and it
just
might work."

"We'll give it a try, okay?" Robbie shrugged. "At least it's something to do. When we get back to the city, we'll do an exchange. Sleeping pills for apartment keys."

"They'll be really mad," Josh pointed out. "You know, they might want to kill me just out of meanness."

Robbie stared at him in astonishment. "But
you're
as upset as they are!" Clutching Josh's forearm, he said, "Listen, Josh, the time has come for you to learn the Method.
Think
into the part. You
wanted
this caper to go down, you
wanted
to earn that forty G and more. You're so pissed off you can't think straight. You blame
Levrin, he's
the one you gave the keys to, he must have given copies to too many people, some double agent in their midst."

Josh contemplated these histrionics. "You really think I could—"

"I
know
you could!" Robbie was increasingly excited, bobbing along on the balls of his feet. "You've got your sides now," he said, "I just gave you your character, your story line.
Think
it through, between now and Saturday,
believe
in it, make it
part
of you. When it's showtime,
hit
your mark! You can do it. I've watched you, Josh, and you have talent."

That was a secret belief of Josh's, but he'd never told anybody. He said, as though in disbelief, "I do?"

"Absolutely," Robbie assured him. "Almost forty-eight hours to prepare? As smart as you are? You're gonna go out there, and you're gonna give an Obie-level performance. And you know
why
you are?"

"Why?"

"Because you're thinking about the alternative."

That
was a bucket of cold water. "Oh," Josh said. "You're right."

"Think about it," Robbie told him. "Get into it. You can do it."

Josh nodded and, as they walked along, he thought about it.
What
? The
uniforms
are stolen? What? The uniforms are
stolen
? What son of a bitch — It was
Levrin! He's
the one tossing around my keys like jellybeans!

They'd almost reached the intersection with Sands Point Road, Josh working himself ever deeper into the part, when a big old Marathon sedan, the onetime New York City taxicab with so much room in the back it had an extra pair of bucket seats, swerved to a stop beside them. At least thirty years old, this vehicle was black with a huge toothy chrome grill and a boxy look that was, in fact, coming back into style. The right front window slid down. They stooped to look in and Mr. Nimrin, alone in there, had leaned over from the wheel to turn the window crank. He was furious. "
You
two! Are you insane? Get into the car!"

WHY DO I FEEL GUILTY, Josh asked himself.
I'm
the innocent one! And yet, unable to help himself, he did feel like a wayward teenager caught roving by a stern father after he'd been grounded. For that reason, and because he was shaken and scared, and also because he had nothing to say, he said nothing, as Mr. Nimrin put the Marathon into gear and angrily accelerated.

Josh and Robbie had both slid into the big backseat (like naughty children!), Josh on the right, Robbie on the left with a couple of grocery sacks on the floor in front of him. Josh took the opportunity of his position to lean rightward against the window, so he'd be out of range of Mr. Nimrin's rearview mirror, and could study the man.

Well. He was oddly dressed, actually. He was in some sort of black formal suit, not a tux but something else, and a white shirt and black bow tie. The Marathon's labored air-conditioning was on, giving the interior of the car a frosty ambiance, but Mr. Nimrin still looked hot in that getup, and Josh wasted a minute trying to figure out what the man was disguised as this time when he realized, of course!

The guy at Mailboxes-R-Us had said Mrs. Rheingold's butler was the one servant to come out of the compound, to do the shopping at the Grand Union. And those grocery bags at Robbie's feet were emblazoned
Grand Union
.

That Mr. Nimrin was not merely posing as the butler, but for all intents and purposes actually
was
the butler, should have diminished him in Josh's eyes, but it did not. He understood now how Mr. Nimrin could be under what he had described as more or less house arrest, and yet be able to show up in the city any time he wanted. He'd spent the last seven years, obviously, being obsequious and devoted and circumspect, the perfect butler, so that when it was time to act, his watchers would have been lulled into inattention.