Money for Nothing

by Donald E. Westlake

  How could he have given his keys away, just like that, to a perfect stranger, in return for this bankbook that could so easily be a fraud? Probably a fraud.

  Well, not probably. He had seven years of checks to suggest that United States Agent was something, whether or not he could figure out exactly what, or even approximately what. Levrin had talked and acted with such assurance that Josh felt he had to believe him, even if he didn't know what it was he was supposed to believe. Safe house. People passing through. No fingerprints.

  “At the moment,” Levrin had said, “only a safe house.” At the moment? And then what?

  Bump—the ferry met the dock—and the passengers offloaded, and the smiling Eve folded him in her arms, his hands on the sleek curve of her waist. This summer vacation was good for her, freeing her from the ordinariness of ordinary life, making her more eager for enjoyment, for diversion.

  And this was what he was putting at risk. But what else could he do?

  “Jeremy's at Winchell's,” she whispered in his ear. “Until we go get him.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Good.” Though it wasn't good, not really.

  Mrs. Winchell was an older woman, whose weekend-only husband was something in New York City government and whose children were grown and gone away. She provided baby-sitting and day care in her home up by the beach, and Eve had taken to leaving Jeremy there before Josh's Friday arrivals, so they could, as she said, “get acquainted again.”

  Usually, his heart and so on leaped up at the idea of an hour or two alone with Eve, re-creating their pre-Jeremy relationship, but not today. Today he had too much on his mind.

  And one thing more to plague him: He couldn't tell Eve about this, either. Having hidden the checks from her all this time, how could he tell her about this? “I've loaned our apartment to some foreign spies or something, I don't know who they are or what they're doing.” He couldn't open that can of worms, not at this point, it was far too late. He was going to have to be a spy himself, for the weekend, protecting his secrets.

  Eve put an arm around his waist, her eyes sparkling, and they started the walk to the rental, a little two-bedroom bungalow half a block from the beach. As they walked, Eve told him the gossip of the week, and for the first time in his life Josh thought: Will I be able to perform?

  The weekend was not a disaster. He kept up his part, as it were, or so he thought. Everything seemed normal and fine. On Saturday, at the beach, he and Jeremy spent a few hours playing the game they seemed to have invented, in which first they made a village, by upending pails of wet sand and shaping their tops to be the houses and poking fingerholes into their sides to be windows and doors, and then watching as a giant—Jeremy—with many a, “Ho ho ho,” and, “Har har har,” tromped through the peaceful village, destroying it and, presumably, all of its peaceful villagers.

  Josh had never minded this game before, had known that other little boys up and down the beach were also taking the opportunity of summer in the sun to improve their skills as homicidal maniacs, but today, after United States Agent had made him “active,” he found himself regretting that it was too late to train Jeremy in the ways of pacifism.

  Not that Jeremy was at the outer extreme of homicidal mania among two-year-old boys. He was basically a sunny kid, agreeable and friendly except when tired, and from the beginning Josh had been amazed at the depth of the bond he felt with this new life. He looked for signs of himself in Jeremy's movements and reactions, and at times he thought he caught glimpses, but more often the boy reminded him most of Eve. Not in an effeminate way, of course, but in a kind of hurtling grace, an almost off-balance surge into life, that reminded him of certain things about Eve.

  So, what with playing one way with Eve, and another way with Jeremy, and seeing their friends out here in the evenings, and lazing Sunday away with the New York Times, it seemed to Josh he was behaving with his family exactly like someone who had not been made active. But then, Monday morning, as they walked toward the 11:10 ferry, Eve pushing Jeremy in the stroller their son was aching to grow out of, she said, “Phone me tonight.”

  “Sure,” he said. They always talked on the phone once or twice a week, but she hadn't ever made it a request before.

  “Call me every night,” she said. “Will you?” And then he realized he must not have been perfect this weekend after all. His distraction had been noticed. She's beginning to wonder, he thought with astonishment, if I'm having an affair, separated in New York with her stuck way out here.

  How to deal with that? The worst thing, he knew, would be to deny an accusation that had not been directly made. That would confirm her in her belief. He said, “Sure, I will. But, you know, you ought to do it.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “Do what?” “Make the call,” he said. “I wouldn't want to call, and Jeremy's just about to go to sleep, or something like that. You could call, any time after I get home. I'll always be there.” He grinned at her, stroking her shoulder. “I'd like you to call,” he said. “I miss you.”

  Her smile was sunnier. “You'd better miss me,” she said.

  The keys were waiting for him at the parking lot cashier's shack. When the woman handed them out to him through the window, he felt immediate almost astonished relief—Levrin had been telling the truth—followed by almost as immediate depression: Levrin had been telling the truth. “Tourists” had been in the apartment all weekend, not leaving fingerprints.

  In New York he kept a monthly outdoor parking space in a vast lot in the West Sixties where some day another huge building would rise, but not in the foreseeable future. It was an eight-block walk home, during which he tried to think of courses of action. Tell the police; phone his mother and father in Muncie, Indiana; grab the forty thousand dollars and Eve and Jeremy and run for Canada; plot to be here next weekend to catch the tourists, see who and what they were. But finally he realized that inaction was his only possible move. Wait and see. Hope things wouldn't turn very bad.

  His Monday routine this month was to have a sandwich and a cup of coffee at home, then get to the office by two-thirty, around the time everybody else would be getting back from lunch. But today, before going into the kitchen, he searched the apartment for signs. Had anybody been in here while he was gone? It wasn't really possible to stay in a residence and leave absolutely no trace at all, was it? But he searched the foyer, the living room, his and Eve's bedroom, Jeremy's tiny room, the bathroom, and there was nothing, just nothing, not an area rug scuffed, not a washcloth out of place.

  Had there been nobody in here? After all that mystery, all that tension—all that money—had this apartment not become a safe house?

  He went into the kitchen last, to make his lunch, and it was in the kitchen that he found it. He and Eve kept their cups and glasses upside down on the shelves, so their insides wouldn't get dusty. Two water glasses, on the shelf just above eye level, were precisely in their places, right side up.

  He didn't eat lunch that day.

  4

  FORTUNATELY THE AMERICANS don't go in much for torture, at least not when there's a public light on things.”

  Levrin's words never did say very much, as Josh remembered them, or tried to remember them, but they hinted at a great deal. A public light on things?

  After a sleepless night, he spent Tuesday morning not engaged in Sewell-McConnell's affairs, though he was using their computer, in the terminal at his desk. Nimrin. Was that the way it was spelled? No other combination looked right, so that was the name he inserted into data banks at the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times. Whatever it was that had shed a public light on things, presumably it had happened sometime in the last seven years, because, at least at the beginning, according to Levrin, Mr. Nimrin had been his “control,” another word from spy movies, all those glum Le Carré characters dragging themselves out of their Tartarean beds every morning. Or afternoon.

  He found it in the Washington Post, because it was in a
federal court in the District of Columbia that the public appearance had taken place, almost a full seven years ago, on August eighteenth. This Ellois Nimrin—surely Levrin's man—seemed to be nothing but a minor walk-on in an industrial espionage case. The question was, had or had not advanced computer technology been illegally exported by this agglomeration of beetle-browed moustachioed men with strange-sounding names lined up at the defendants’ table here?

  Ellois Nimrin didn't appear in the body of the news story, nor in any of the other items on the case Josh scanned, but was only a name in a photo caption: “Defendants”—and then three difficult names, and then—“Ellois Nimrin”—and four equally difficult names, under a photo of the eight seated at the defense table, bunched together shoulder to shoulder, almost moustache to moustache, and looking as glum as any character in Le Carré.

  Mr. Nimrin, as Josh still thought of him, following on Levrin's respectful references, should be fourth from the left. The photo wasn't that clear, and its reproduction on the computer screen didn't help much. Josh had an impression of a burly man, hawknosed above the moustache, with a high gleaming forehead and eyes that, even in this poor reproduction of a side-view medium-distance shot, seemed to glare in unrepentant rage and contempt in the general direction of the bench.

  All the other defendants, to one extent or another, seemed cowed by their circumstances. Mr. Nimrin seemed energized. It was hard to believe he wasn't a principal in the case, was just another spear-carrier, but judging from the news pieces that did seem to be the situation.

  As for the case, Josh couldn't make heads nor tails of it. Laboratory technicians had been bribed or coerced, allegedly. Secrets had been stolen, allegedly. Diagrams and other documents had been smuggled out of the country, allegedly. These eight defendants were somehow part of the plot, allegedly.

  But this was where it got tricky. The government lawyers, in presenting their case, asserted that national security was an issue here, and that much of the evidence against the defendants was too sensitive to be revealed in public; some was too sensitive to be revealed to a jury or to the defense attorneys; and some was so sensitive it couldn't even be revealed to the judge.

  What had brought these defendants from the “federal facility” where they were being held into this courtroom was not the trial, but a hearing as to whether a trial was even possible. The defense argued, and Josh could see the justice in the argument, that it was impossible for a person to defend himself against evidence he wasn't permitted to see or even hear described. The prosecution, speaking for the government, essentially argued that the defendants would get a fair trial because the government could be trusted—would they lie?

  Mr. Nimrin appeared by name only the one time, under that photo, but the story itself took up space in the Post for ten days, that space becoming briefer and briefer toward the end, then petering out before the judge had given his decision as to whether or not they could all, in a phrase Josh had grown used to in the coverage, “proceed to trial,” which made it sound like, after the cocktails, they would go in to dinner.

  Nothing else about the trial, or the case, or the defendants ever appeared again, so far as Josh could tell from the Post's records. So it seemed unlikely there had actually been a trial. Still, this was clearly what had ended Mr. Nimrin's career, whatever that career had been.

  What else had Levrin said about Mr. Nimrin? That he had not been tortured, and that he was not dead. “Just…away. You could say, in retirement.”

  By the time Josh had gone this far, it was time for lunch; today, an important one. Not in the world of Levrin and Mr. Nimrin, but in the somewhat more real world of Sewell-McConnell. A representative of Amalgamated Pulp, manufacturers of Cloudbank toilet paper, in objecting last week to a mock-up of a print ad, had described the clouds pictured there as looking “like white turds,” which, given the nature of the account, had led to some unfortunate wordplay, ruffling the rep's dignity before maturity was reimposed.

  As Josh had not himself been guilty of ribaldry on that occasion, and had spearheaded the forces of seriousness, so it had fallen to him to take the rep to lunch and smooth his feathers. It was a thing he was good at, which was one of the reasons he'd been hired by Sewell-McConnell in the first place, and he handled it as well as usual, though in fact he was distracted throughout the lunch by the questions to which he had no answers.

  What was the United States Agent? If Mr. Nimrin and Levrin were spies, whom did they work for? If people were being brought into New York because the “operation” had started, what was the operation? What did they want from Josh beyond the use of his apartment?

  But the most serious question, and the one that kept him most from concentrating on the job at lunch, was: Why him? Why had they chosen to send him all those checks? Why was he the one they were now activating? If Mr. Nimrin had been his control, back at the beginning, why is it he'd never met the man nor heard his name before in his entire life?

  If he'd ever been recruited as an undercover spy, he'd have remembered it. He was sure of that much.

  The lunch at last came to an end, with the rep's feathers once more in an unruffled state. They shook hands outside the restaurant, assured each other of their continuing unity in the pursuit of more consumers of Cloudbank, and Josh returned to the office where, apart from a memo about the lunch to Sid Graff, his immediate boss, he again did nothing for Sewell-McConnell but use their computer.

  This time, he wanted to know about Cayman Key Bank. He typed the name into a search engine and was somewhat surprised to find that the bank not only existed but had a website. He went there and found an airy world of white and pastels, mostly pale blue and pale green, and suggestions he buy himself a piece of the sun.

  Account Holders was one of the destinations he could click on. He did—and found a place that offered him an opportunity to type in his account number. He'd brought the bankbook along to the office, so he copied the number, which was mostly letters, into the space provided, and noticed that no matter what he typed, another x appeared in the box on the screen.

  He was then asked his mother's maiden name, which surprised him a lot. How would they know his mother's maiden name? All right; he typed in Hansforth, which became xxxxxxxxx, and then the screen segued to a place that said, “Welcome to Cayman Key Bank, Mr. Redmont. Please select from the menu below.”

  He had not given his name. The fourth item on the menu below was Account Balance. He clicked on it. The site considered the question, then numbers began to appear in the box to the right of where he'd clicked: $40,000.00.

  It was real.

  5

  THERE WERE DAYS WHEN Josh took the subway home from Sewell-McConnell at the end of the day. Some days, when the weather was good and his spirits were up, he walked. But on days when he felt harried or low or faintly sick or—like this Tuesday, after the Washington Post and Cayman Key Bank—all three, there was nothing for it, coming out of the office building on 3rd Avenue in the 40s, but to hail a cab.

  It was almost six by the time he came out, having finally done some work for his employer toward the end of the day. The late afternoon sun glared like a dormitory proctor down all the side streets, and the city was full. Since it was July, the city was full mostly of people who didn't speak English or, if they did, spoke it with one of those mashed-potatoes-in-the-mouth twangs. The sidewalks were full of people and the streets were full of vehicles of all sorts. It would surely take longer to get home by taxi than by subway, and would be more expensive as well (not that a man with a bank account in the Cayman Islands would care about that), but it would be soothing. And he felt a need for soothing right now.

  The only problem with getting a cab at 6 P.M. on a weekday, of course, was finding a cab. Josh marched to the curb, where other people stood and waved their arms at cabs, and he waved his own arm, and eventually his turn came and the yellow car angled to a stop in front of him. He opened the door, slid in, and somebody slid in right behind him. One of the othe
r people who'd been waving at taxis; got right in after him, shoved him over.

  “Hey!” Josh cried. “This is my cab.”

  “I am Mr. Nimrin,” the man said, low and fast, still pushing Josh leftward on the seat so he could bring his body in far enough to shut the door.

  Josh stared. Mr. Nimrin, now successfully aboard, flashed the profile Josh had been studying in the Washington Post, except without the moustache, as he leaned toward the driver to say, “137 Riverside Drive, near 86th Street.”

  “Wait a minute,” Josh said. “That isn't where I live.”

  “Your place is no doubt under surveillance,” Mr. Nimrin told him, and sat back as the cab started forward. “We will talk when we are alone. You will pay for the taxi.”

  Josh said, “I was told you were retired.”

  Mr. Nimrin gave a scornful snort. “We shall see,” he said. He raised a warning finger. “No talking now.”

  “My wife will be calling me,” Josh said.

  “You will call her back,” Mr. Nimrin said. “No talking.”

  So they didn't talk. Uptown and crosstown, through the park at 64th Street and then up Broadway, they were in the middle of heavy honking traffic all the way. This was one of those days when it might have been faster even to walk home.

  Though home wasn't where he was going—was it?

  He took the opportunity of the long ride to study Mr. Nimrin, at first covertly and then openly, as it became clear the man didn't care if he was stared at. That same glower he'd seen in the photo, aimed at the off-camera judge, was still visible in his large-headed sharp-featured profile, though damped down, as though Mr. Nimrin's disapproval of all he saw was so natural to him that he himself hardly remarked on it anymore. He had that eagle's nose, that high gleaming forehead, that powerful shock of black hair. He was older than fifty, perhaps younger than a hundred. He wore a lightweight black suit, white shirt, maroon tie with geometric figures. He didn't look diplomatic enough to be a diplomat, but he certainly had some kind of foreign-office air about him. His accent was quite noticeable, though it didn't interfere with Josh's understanding, and he couldn't tell what Mr. Nimrin's original language might be.