Money for Nothing (21 page)

The look she gave him now was a keen one. "Josh, what do you know of our operation?"

"Everything," he said, and shrugged. What did anything matter? It was too much effort to go on lying.

Watching him, she said, "Everything?"

"I know what the honor guard is going to do at Yankee Stadium tomorrow. I know about Premier Mihommed-Sinn. And I know you're keeping Eve and Jeremy out at Mrs. Rheingold's. All right?"

She sat back, astonished. "But, my dear, you are amazing! You learned all this— Not from
me
. And I know not from Andrei."

Something kept him from mentioning Mr. Nimrin, though why he should go on thinking of Mr. Nimrin as being worthy of protection he couldn't think. Maybe it was just perversity, the gloomy pleasure of being able to say, "I'll keep my sources to myself, if you don't mind."

"Why should I mind?" She offered him one of her sunniest smiles. "You must know, I am not always absolutely completely open with you, either, my dear."

"I suspected that."

She laughed, then patted her knees with her long fingers. "So you see," she said, "you have no reason for these sad looks. You know everything that will occur, you know your own so-minor part in it, you know that your family are safe and well cared for in Mrs. Rheingold's very lovely estate, with its incomparable views of Long Island Sound. You even know when this will all be over, so that you may return to your normal life. Though I would suggest," she said, leaning forward, very confidential, "that you do something about getting cable. Particularly with a small child in the house, you do not want only these networks."

He couldn't help it; he laughed. "All right," he said. "I'll get cable. After all this is over."

"Tomorrow," she assured him. "It's just that little more, and then it's over, and you need never see any of us again. I know you'll like that."

"I'll like it more with Andrei than with you," he said.

She was delighted with him. 'Wow you're better," she said, and jumped to her feet. Gathering up her shopping bags, she said, "I will change and— It is an eight o'clock curtain?"

"Yes."

"Very good. I will change," she said, and stood there holding all those bag handles while she considered him. "And you will change also," she informed him. "Change into more festive garments, and into a more festive face."

"I'll try."

"We shall have a light snack in this neighborhood," she said, "but not too much, because we don't want to fall asleep in the theater. The actors would be
so
insulted."

"I'm sure they would."

"After the play we'll have our real dinner." Bright-eyed, she said, "Perhaps your friend Mitchell will join us."

"I wouldn't be surprised," Josh said.

TINA PAUSTO COULD CREATE A stir at the Academy Awards. At the Good Rep theater, she caused more than one patron to walk into a wall. So tall, so sleek, so slender, poured into a basic little black dress from which her completely admirable silvery legs emerged and emerged and emerged. Josh, next to her, felt it must be like this to walk your pet cheetah.

The cab, which they'd had no trouble capturing (those legs), debouched them in front of Good Rep at five to eight, to find a little cluster of smokers making a miasma in the forecourt. They went through, smokers staggering back from Tina's abrupt presence, and in the little black lobby they waited briefly while another patron had dealings with the young man now on duty at the sales window. That patron having cleared, Josh moved forward and said, 'Tickets are being held for me. Redmont."

The clerk riffled through several envelopes in a small wooden box whose tilted-back top said
recipes
. He riffled again. "Spell?"

Josh spelled his name. The clerk riffled again, looked at Josh, shook his head. "Not here."

"But Mitchell Robbie said they'd be here. He invited us."

"Not here."

Was this some sort of practical joke? Stymied, Josh just stood there and blinked at the clerk.

Tina leaned down past Josh's shoulder to say, in honeyed tones, "Look under
Tina
."

Josh said, disbelieving, 'Tina?"

"Here it is," the clerk said, and pushed the little envelope forward, his knuckles bumping painfully into Josh's knuckles because he was looking at Tina. "Enjoy the show," he told her.

Arms and the Man
is a comedy set in a small town in Bulgaria in 1885. There's a war going on, Bulgarians led by Austrian officers versus Serbs led by Russian officers. In the first act, a Serb soldier, who later turns out to be Swiss for some reason (Bluntschli, played by Harry), hides from Bulgarian troops in the bedroom of Raina, the daughter of a Bulgarian major. She finds him, but he and his pistol talk her into covering for him. She gives him a coat of her father's, who's away at the war, and he leaves. The next spring, out in the garden (an even more minimal set), there's some rustic comedy of the rural-lout sort, including the servant Nicola (Dick, with smudged cheeks). The father, Major Petkoff (Tom, with a pillow stomach), is back from the war, and so is his daughter's betrothed, the war hero Sergius (Robbie, looking not like just any doorman, but the doorman at Trump Tower). Sergius and Raina are both devotees of the higher emotions, full of melodramatic gestures and proud stances (a dig at romantic novels peers wanly out of the past).

Bluntschli, the Serb/Swiss, now that the war is over, shows up to return the coat It takes another act and a half for everybody to understand that Raina doesn't really want to be a romantic ninny and that she belongs with the realist Bluntschli rather than the preening hero, Sergius. A nice round of applause, and out to dinner.

Josh was not having a good time. He and Tina and the cast, plus some others of varying significance, trooped through the night-streets after the show, loud and boisterous, across portions of the Lower East Side, where most of them were known at the bar where they filled most of the tables at the back and demanded cheeseburgers and pitchers of beer. Everyone was having a good time, caught up in the exhilaration of another performance, except Josh, who knew he didn't belong here but was afraid to think where he
did
belong. No matter what he or anyone else did, and despite the best efforts of George Bernard Shaw, all he could think about was Yankee Stadium, tomorrow.
Tomorrow
.

Could they get other uniforms, at the last minute, that assassination team? Would they believe his denials? He couldn't just go off to the police, not with Eve and Jeremy out at Mrs. Rheingold's place. If he ran away, but didn't tell anybody anything, would that be enough to spare Eve and Jeremy?

Tina was describing to the enthralled group her own amateur acting experiences in the "gim-nah-sium," and they were all assuring her she was a natural, she could own the stage if she ever decided to turn her attentions in that direction. Not Tina, he wanted to tell them, her interests are rather gorier than the theater could provide. But he didn't say that, or anything else, until, at a lull in the conversation — or in Tina's part of it — he leaned over to her to say, "I have to go home."

"Oh, darling," she said, with great concern. "We are all so enjoying ourselves. Do stay."

"You stay," he said. "Why not? Have fun."

She wanted to, he could see that. She said, "Will you be all right?"

"Of course."

She pointed a nanny's admonishing finger at him. "Go straight home," she said, "and do not fret."

"I will," he promised, "and I won't."

"I'll be along after a while."

"Enjoy yourself," he told her, and left the bar and walked several blocks before he found a cab. He went straight home, as promised, but he did fret In his living room, laying the blanket once again on the floor, he stopped and said aloud, "What am I doing? She isn't coming back tonight."

So, for the first time since Monday, he slept in his own bed, fretful but exhausted, so that he did sleep, and she did not come back, and he was still asleep at nine the next morning when the phone rang, and it was Levrin: "Can you still be asleep? What nerves of steel you have!"

"Oh, God," he said. He could taste the beer
and
he could taste the cheeseburgers.

"I need you to drive me," Levrin said.

"Drive you."

"Yes, to the airport. Kennedy Airport."

Bewildered, still waking up, Josh said, "You want
me
to drive you to Kennedy Airport? Now?"

"Yes, of course, who else? I am going now to the place where you keep your car."

"My car?"

"On Eleventh Avenue. It is a Toyota Land Cruiser, very nice car. Surely you remember it. I will meet you there at ten."

TEN-FIFTEEN; BUT LEVRIN didn't seem to mind. He and Hugo and the nameless thug leaned comfortably against Josh's car, arms folded, gazing out over coastal New Jersey, enjoying the sunny warmth of the end of July. Hurrying toward them through the rows of parked cars, Josh called, "Sorry. I couldn't get moving this morning."

"Not a problem," Levrin assured him. He was in an amiable mood, probably because his plans for mass murder were about to come to fruition, in just a few hours, uptown. "As always with airports," he went on, "I have left us extra time."

"Good."

Josh unlocked the Land Cruiser and got into the front seat, which wasn't exactly an oven; more a crockpot. Leaving the door open, he quickly started the engine, and told Levrin, sliding in on the passenger seat next to him, "The air conditioner will kick in in a minute."

"Briefly, we shall open the windows," Levrin told him, and said something in that other language to the two thugs, who'd climbed into the back. Josh shut his door, they opened all the windows, and he drove out of there, pausing at the fare booth for the clerk to see his monthly pass on the dashboard and to lift the bar out of the way.

Walking hurriedly down from the apartment — it usually wasn't too far to walk — Josh had told himself that the good thing about this new assignment was that it meant he would be away from home around eleven or twelve, when the assassination team could be expected to arrive, in search of their uniforms. All in all, it would be better not to be there for that moment

In fact, if Levrin didn't need a round trip, if he wanted to be left at the airport, Josh might drive on up to Port Washington, just to see if it were at all possible to get into Mrs. Rheingold's estate, and possibly get Eve and Jeremy out. The assassination team would be gone from there, after all, and everybody's attention distracted by the planned events of the day. He wouldn't do anything dangerous — at least, he'd try not to — but just maybe he could get himself and his family out from under this thing at last.

Anonymous phone call to the authorities? Also a possibility.

As they drove east across Manhattan, headed for the Midtown Tunnel, Josh said, "Are we picking somebody up out there, or am I dropping you off?

"Well, both, in a way," Levrin told him, and apparently found that funny. Then he sobered and said, "Yes, we will be picking someone up."

So it would be a round trip. Well, there might still be time, afterward.

Saturday traffic was lighter in Manhattan, heavier east of it. It was 11:17 by the dashboard clock when they swept around the curving entrance to Kennedy Airport. Josh said, "Where am I headed?"

"You will want the long-term parking."

"Long-term parking? I thought we were picking someone up."

"That is where," Levrin told him, "we are going to meet the people we are going to meet." He was still pleasant, but somehow with Levrin there was always the sense that he expected full and immediate compliance with his instructions, without a lot of chitchat.

So if he wanted long-term parking, to pick someone up, that's what he would get. "Fine," Josh said, and followed the signs, and eventually got a claim ticket from the clerk on duty at the entrance there. As he drove out onto the pale concrete, he said, "Just anywhere?"

"No, no, we must go where the people we are going to meet will go. You will drive all the way back to the fence."

So he did, soon passing more and more empty spaces, then an area with almost no cars in it at all, and all of them empty. "Somewhere around here?"

Pointing, Levrin said, "At the fence there, go to the right a little, and then we will stop. Yes, like that. Yes, this is good, stop here. So. We open the windows, and then you turn the motor off, and we get out of the car."

"It's going to be hot out there," Josh said.

"We don't know how long we shall be waiting. Out you go."

They all got out of the car, Josh on the side next to the chain-link fence, with raw fields beyond it. Bus stops dotted the broad expanse of the parking area, and a bus far away could be seen moving slowly from stop to stop, but no one was anywhere near this place.

The nameless thug had gotten out on the same side as Josh. Now Levrin and Hugo came around the front of the car, Levrin smiling, saying, "And now, our very pleasant association must come to an end."

Josh didn't understand. The nameless thug was behind him, the other two in front. He was distracted by seeing Hugo pull from his pants pocket a pair of white rubberized gloves, the kind worn when cleaning the kitchen. He said, "What?"

As Hugo pulled the stretchy gloves onto his big hands, Levrin said, "You have been very helpful, Josh, and very useful, and I want you to know I appreciate it and I thank you for it. But now, you see, your helpfulness and your usefulness are over."

"But why come—" Josh started, and Hugo took from his other pants pocket a pistol. It was small, but looked efficient. He pointed it at Josh, who said, "No!"

"All relationships must end, Josh," Levrin said. "Hugo."

Hugo took a shooter's stance, knees bent, both hands on the pistol, almost hiding it with rubberized white plastic. Josh flinched uselessly away, realizing too late what a fool he'd been, how they'd played him from the beginning, how they'd always meant it to end this way, and then, astonishingly, the other thug pushed forward past Josh, saying something angry in their different language.