Money for Nothing (8 page)

It was not quite seven P.M., and half the chairs were occupied, none of them by Mr. Nimrin, unless he was even more a master of disguise than he claimed. Anyway, nobody here looked either like Mr. Nimrin or a bartender, so Josh took the last chair on the right in the last row and looked around to see who
was
here.

Strange people. There appeared to be some sixties flower children who'd been cryogenically stored for thirty years and then imperfectly thawed. Scruffy round-shouldered baggily dressed people of both sexes — or indeterminate sex — carried an unmistakable aura of homelessness about them. Others looked like people who'd lost their luggage, but decided to come anyway. And down front were half a dozen burly guys in dark-toned T-shirts and light-toned windbreakers and ponytails and scraggly beards and bent eyeglasses in either tortoise-shell or black. Josh originally assumed those guys must be a group, but then he saw nobody here knew anybody else, though most people, including the ponytails up front, were amiable about it.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the store's loudspeaker informed them, "best-selling author David L. Fogware is about to read from
Enchantress of Nyin
from his best-selling Farbender series in our author area on 3. The reading will begin in just a minute at seven o'clock in our author's area on 3."

This announcement produced another half-dozen people, smiling, glad not to be late, scuttling in to take up more of the chairs, giving more of a sense of a full house. Then a slim bespectacled man with a black moustache, white shirt, penguard and pens in shirt pocket, and black slacks, stood at the lectern and spoke into the microphone there:

"We are very proud to present," he began, and read David L. Fogware's press release with a certain enthusiasm, while Josh suddenly came to the conclusion that David L. Fogware would turn out to
be
Mr. Nimrin.

But no. Introduction finished, the spectacled store employee smilingly made his exit, and a fellow carrying a book came out to take his place at the lectern.
He
was David L. Fogware, and he looked exactly like the half-dozen fellows in the front row, who gave him the most enthusiastic applause of all, the rattle of hand-clapping that greeted his presence. He, too, was a burly guy with specs and beard and ponytail and windbreaker over T-shirt over baggy jeans over L.L. Bean boots, and he accepted the acclaim with becoming modesty.

Josh hadn't had occasion to notice this before, but there are in this world two kinds of burliness. There's the burliness of muscle and brawn and large bone, and there's the burliness of beer. These fellows, applauders and applaudee alike, represented the burliness of beer.

When the group quieted down, David L. Fogware opened his book, which was hardcover and very tall and thick, and briefly studied its first page. Then he looked up and said, "You know, when I first started the Farbender Netherbender series, I had no idea it would take me this far. In those early days, I used to say I was at work on a trilogy."

He chuckled at himself, shook his head at his earlier innocence and the vagaries of fate, and then said, "But what happened was, the deeper I got into the history of the Netherbenders, the richness of those worlds, the tapestry of it all, the implications just kept coming on. Folks would say to me, 'David, what about this implication? What about that implication?' And I could see just what they were talking about. Every road I took, in this journey through the Netherbender epos, every road I took left who knew how many roads
un
taken? Unexplored. Unrealized. It became clear" — here he chuckled again, nodding at his audience — "that three wasn't going to be my lucky number after all. We left trilogy behind us in the Lind of Lirt!"

His audience, who must all be his readers, did their own chuckle at this in-joke, and they had a moment of everybody smiling around at everybody else in comfortable in-group companionship, while Josh looked around in increasing desperation. Where was Mr. Nimrin?

"Well, now, we've reached volume seven of the trilogy," Fogware announced, stretching his joke a bit beyond capacity, "and we're all about to meet the Enchantress of Nyin." He lowered his head toward his book. "It was Finwards Day, and the princess Li-Whon would birth, all the scholars said so. But where was Gahorn? 'He has never failed me before,' Li-Whon told the faithful Muglurk, 'and I know he will not fail me now, no matter what unimaginable perils he must go through to return to Elgadaare.' And even as she spoke, in the forests of Mahrsohn on faroff Hilvet V, Gahorn himself urged his fleet Silverdart onward. 'Hi!' he cried. 'The portal, Silverdart! We must not fail!' And the powerful six-legged steed galloped up the quegs."

By this point, Josh was regretting the lack of a laugh-track almost as much as the lack of Mr. Nimrin. Looking around for the thirtieth time, the only one in this little isolated group, this separate world, not mesmerized by Volume VII, he saw, shambling down an aisle in his direction, then slowly and painfully turning off, a fat elderly woman with a walker. As she turned leftward into a side aisle, the right forefinger on the walker twitched.

Poor woman. Josh looked back at David L. Fogware, for whom the implications of wedding Arthurian romance with Buck Rogers in the twenty-fifth century would never exhaust themselves.

He thought, That was Mr. Nimrin.

SINCE HE WAS ALREADY AT THE outer edge of the enchanted forest, Josh didn't disturb anybody when he rose and sidled away, in cautious pursuit of the old lady with the walker. He reached the aisle where she'd turned off, and there she was, straight ahead, bumping along, just reaching the far end of the aisle, where an empty armchair stood beside a small round table. Making the turn, she/he glanced back at him, then dropped a sheet of paper on the table and continued on out of sight.

Josh hurried down the aisle, slid into the seat, and looked at the sheet of paper. It was a copy of a newspaper item, datelined July 25, yesterday, apparently from a small-town paper:

HANGING DEATH LABELED SUSPICIOUS

by Edward Tassel

Moore, Jul 25 — The discovery of the hanged body of Robert Van Bark, 34, of Moore and New York City, suspended from the rafters of a barn adjacent to his property on Wiggins Road, has been labeled suspicious by state police investigators.

The body of Van Bark, a weekend resident of the area the last four years and a computer technician in New York City, was discovered by his wife, Wendy, 31, at six-thirty P.M., when she could not find him in or near their home when it was time to return to their apartment in New York City.

The piece went on for another three paragraphs of incidental detail and fuzzy speculation. Josh read it all, wondering
why
he was reading it all, then sat there for a few minutes, watching the other customers and wondering when the old lady would come back. Surely that was why he'd been directed to stay here.

But it wasn't the old lady who came back. It was an overweight workman in paint-spattered bib overalls, a full black beard, thick black hair, a black canvas backpack, and a Benjamin Moore cap worn backward, carrying a short metal ladder on his right shoulder, who paused for one significant second in front of Josh and then moved on.

Startled, Josh almost forgot to grab the copy of the clipping before he stood to follow the workman down the maze of aisles. Along the way, he realized the ladder was made from the same pieces that had once been the walker. And the old lady's dress and wig would be in that backpack.

The workman took the down escalator, Josh trailing, and went out to Broadway. He turned right, Josh well behind him, and they made their way into the pocket park where Broadway crosses Columbus Avenue. There the workman found an empty bench and settled wearily onto the far end of it, leaning his ladder against the armrest.

As Josh approached, the workman made a quick moving-away gesture while looking elsewhere. When Josh paused, not sure what he meant by that, he impatiently pointed down at the seat, then did the move-away again.

Oh; sit on the bench, but at the other end. Josh did so, and Mr. Nimrin looked out at all the noisy traffic and the big blocky buildings of Lincoln Center and said, "You wished to see me. But I wished to see you. And so we are together."

"What they're—" Josh said.

"One moment. You read the news item."

"I never heard of him," Josh said.

"I did," Mr. Nimrin told him. "There were three of you taking my money these last seven years. He was the second."

"Oh," Josh said.

"Clearly," Mr. Nimrin said, "he did not behave as wisely as you. They felt their security was threatened. They act swiftly, these people."

"Hanged him," Josh said. He felt nauseous.

"That was handiest, where he was. You they might drown. After torture, of course."

"Good God," Josh said.

"If you are to be helped," Mr. Nimrin told him, "you must look elsewhere than the Almighty. And
I
must look for Mitchell Robbie. You don't know him by any chance, do you?"

"Mitchell Robbie? No. Is he number three?"

"Yes, of course." Mr. Nimrin was very irritated. "I need to get to him before he makes the same sort of mistake Van Bark made. If
two
of my sleepers turn out to be rotten, they'll come for
me
in a trice. Frankly, your cooperation with them is the only thing at this moment that allays their suspicions."

"I can't go on with this," Josh said.

Mr. Nimrin snorted. "You want to finish like Van Bark?"

"There's guns in my apartment," Josh said. "AK-47s. There's uniforms, ammunition. There's a slinky woman called Tina Pausto."

"Tina? She's here?" Mr. Nimrin gazed skyward over Lincoln Center. "She had barely begun when I was taken out of the action," he said. "I imagine she's fairly something by now."

"Yes, she is," Josh said.

"Then," Mr. Nimrin told Lincoln Center, "whatever their operation, it must be of top importance."

"I know what their operation is," Josh said. "That's why I can't go on with it."

Mr. Nimrin actually looked directly at Josh, one withering instant of scorn, before addressing Lincoln Center again: "You? How could
you
possibly know?"

"There was a thing on television last night," Josh told him, "about the premier of Kamastan."

"Freddy?" Surprised, Mr. Nimrin said, "What about him?"

"Mihommed-Sinn, they said his name was."

"Yes, yes," Mr. Nimrin snapped, more impatient than ever. "Fyeddr Mihommed-Sinn, Freddy to those who know him. An animal. A beast. Exactly what those tribesmen deserve."

"They're going to kill him," Josh said.

Mr. Nimrin frowned mightily in the direction of the Metropolitan Opera. "Who?
My
people?"

"That's what it's all about."

"Nonsense." Mr. Nimrin was always certain about everything, but he'd never been as certain as
this
before. "They'll never get a team across the border."

"They're going to kill him
here
," Josh said. "In New York."

"Impossible." Mr. Nimrin's certainty had not been dented. "He won't leave that rubbish tip of a country, it's well known. Never."

"He's leaving," Josh said. "He's coming here Friday. It seems, he's a sports fan."

"Oh, please." Mr. Nimrin shook his head, now very nearly laughing openly at him. "Freddy Mihommed-Sinn is coming to the United States to attend a
sports
event?"

"At Yankee Stadium."

"A baseball game? I know Freddy, young man, I haven't seen him for years, but I know him, and Freddy Mihommed-Sinn knows
nothing
about baseball."

"They won a gold medal in the—"

"The runner!" Now it was Mr. Nimrin's turn to be astonished. "Freddy's coming to New York because of the
runner
?"

"There's a big ceremony," Josh told him. "Thousands of politicians and sports stars. He's a big sports fan. Maybe not baseball, but—"

"For baseball," Mr. Nimrin said, "you need a larger flat expanse than exists in Kamastan. But why would he go against the curse?"

Feeling all at once that he'd somehow slipped into some other segment of the Farbender Netherbender Series, Josh said, 'The curse?"

"When Freddy was born," Mr. Nimrin said, "an old gypsy woman told his mother that Freddy would never die so long as he stayed within the borders of his own country. It's very well-known."

"So that's why he never left before."

"That and his own provincial bloody-mindedness," Mr. Nimrin commented. "But he must be going soft. He
knows
if he leaves Kamastan he risks death. Has he stopped believing in gypsy curses?"

"In my apartment," Josh said, "are four uniforms of the Kamastan army. And four AK-47s."

"Tell me his itinerary," Mr. Nimrin said, "and routes."

"I don't know the routes," Josh said. "He's flying in on Friday, with a second plane full of bodyguards—"

"Sensible. And probably no one will know which of the two planes he's on."

"I don't know about that. Anyway, he's staying Friday night at the country's United Nations Mission—"

"On York Avenue. Yes, yes. And?"

"Saturday, the autocade takes him up to Yankee Stadium, then back to York Avenue, then Sunday he flies back to Kamastan."

"If still alive."

"Yes."

"Well," Mr. Nimrin corrected himself, "in either case. If we succeed in dispatching him, they'll ship the body home for the state funeral."

"We!"

Mr. Nimrin gave him another lightning disgusted glance, then told Lincoln Center, "Where do you think the staging area is? Who do you think is hosting the assassination team?"

"Oh, goddam it!" Josh cried. "I can't tell you how much I'd like to just give the money
back
."

"We're beyond that." Mr. Nimrin pondered. "There are two possible venues. Not the autocades, to and fro, they'll have doubles in dummy cars, New York Police Department protection, far too much. So either in the building on York Avenue before or after the ceremony, or at Yankee Stadium during the event. If it were my operation, of course, I would choose the stadium."