Money for Nothing

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Oh, God.”

  “You can show them the file. So they can see for themselves the fix you were in. That should count for something”

  “So I should write it all down,” he said, “and I should go along with those people unless they want me to do something really bad.”

  “And,” she said, “we should have a glass of wine before we go to the Welshes. To calm us down.” Gesturing at the glass in front of herself, she said, “This is no time for tea.”

  “I'll bring it out,” he said, rising.

  “Take your bankbook,” she said, extending it toward him.

  He took it, reluctantly. “For the first time in my life,” he said, “I don't really want money.”

  In the kitchen, he got the wine bottle from the refrigerator and glasses from the shelf, and was pouring the wine when it occurred to him he hadn't told her about the “matériel” he was allegedly going to be storing next week.

  Well, enough for today. He could tell her about the matériel later, when he knew what it was.

  10

  GUNS. UNDER THE BED WERE four long wooden boxes, about the right size to carry a pair of ski poles each. Numbers and letters were stenciled in black on the boxes, and when he pulled one out from under the bed it had a square of paper glued to the top, containing several lines of words or numbers, the most important of which were AUTOMATKALASHNIKOVA and AK-47.

  Josh sat heavily on the floor in front of the box he'd pulled out. Assault rifles. He was storing in his bedroom, under his bed, the favorite weapon of terrorists and guerillas and revolutionaries all around the world. Four of them.

  And what else? No bombs, Levrin had assured him; but AK-47s? What else?

  Under Jeremy's crib, four cardboard boxes, heavily taped, which had markings and words on them Josh couldn't understand, but also one drawing he understood completely: The curved metal magazine that would contain the AK-47’s bullets. Many of the consumers of these products around the world would be illiterate, of course, or would only speak some obscure local language, so the picture was meant to be helpful to the customer, and Josh was sure it was appreciated.

  And what else? In the closet in his bedroom, hanging in black plastic garment bags, four uniforms, a very dark green-brown, with black-and-red boards on the shoulders and silver lightning-bolt pins on the lapels and red chevrons on the sleeves. On the floor in the closet, a box of tall black lace-up boots. On the shelf in the closet, four white cardboard boxes, each containing an officer-type military hat, with a longer hard brim and higher front peak than usual, so that the hats all by themselves, without uniforms or people or anything underneath them, already looked evil.

  He couldn't have this. He still hadn't actually done anything, hadn't participated in anything bad, but these things were not here for the staff picnic. He couldn't let this go on.

  But what to do? Make a run for the FBI, downtown? Or maybe even phone them from here.

  No. Even if they weren't watching him every second, they were surely tapping his phone and no doubt had people around Foley Square, looking to see who approached the FBI offices.

  He couldn't go back to Fair Harbor to discuss this with Eve. She'd be horrified, and she'd have to blame him for this mess, and besides, he'd just come to town. He was supposed to have lunch now and after that go into the office. He was supposed to be thinking about Cloudbank toilet paper, not AK-47s.

  Well, he couldn't go to the office today, he was sure of that much. He'd have a hysterical fit in the elevator, he'd faint at his desk, he'd blurt out his problems to everybody in the place.

  He did have to go out now, but it wouldn't have anything to do with lunch. Food would lie like cannonballs in his stomach, he couldn't even think about it.

  But before he left here, he had to deal with the office. He phoned, and Martha the receptionist answered, and he said, “Martha, hi, it's Josh. Listen, I can't come in today, I think I got food poisoning or something.”

  “You're still out on the island?” If there was an accusation in that, she hid it well, with a flat delivery.

  “No, I came back to town this morning,” he told her, “but I just keep feeling worse. Maybe it's the clams I had.”

  “Seafood,” she said. “That can be the worst.”

  “I'm gonna nap, and maybe see a doctor. I'm sure I'll be all right tomorrow.”

  “You don't sound good,” she admitted.

  “I'm not good.”

  “I'll tell Mr. Grimsby,” she said.

  “Thanks,” he said, and left the arsenal his apartment had become.

  Riverside Drive was still windy, as he crossed the sidewalk from the departing cab to the doorman opening the entrance. “Hi,” he said, being unable to ignore people as totally as Mr. Nimrin could.

  “Sir,” the doorman said.

  Josh crossed to that inner door, with the marble steps and the wrought iron railing. If the door's locked, he thought, if she isn't there, I won't know what to do. I don't know her name, I don't know anything.

  The door wasn't locked. He opened it, and heard that distant bell sound, and again when he shut the door. He walked over to stand beside the coffee table and look at the interior door, through which, as Mr. Nimrin had pointed out last time, she would come.

  She did. She looked at Josh in mild surprise, without recognition. “Yes?”

  “I was here with Mr. Nimrin. I need to see him again.”

  “I am with a patient,” she said. “Do sit down, it won't be long.”

  She nodded, maybe to encourage him, and withdrew, shutting her door. He sat, fidgeting, on the same sofa as last time, and looked over at the magazines on the coffee table. But he couldn't read, he couldn't do anything but sit and feel his nerves unstring.

  It was nearly half an hour before a stunning redhead of about thirty came out, gave him a cool look she might have offered to a caged parakeet, and left, her little pink summer skirt twitching around her thighs.

  “You wanted to see me?”

  Oh—he'd been staring at the redhead. He turned and the older woman was in the interior doorway, giving him a somewhat skeptical smile. “Sorry,” he said, and stood.

  “That's all right,” she assured him. “Even matters of life and death must take a back seat to sex. Come in.”

  The next room was like an antique shop, crowded with armoires, desks, hutches, sofas, armchairs. Two windows would look out on Riverside Drive through vertical iron bars, except that they were so heavily swathed in drapes.

  The woman gestured to a maroon empire settee, saying, “Sit there,” while she sat in a bulky black leather armchair at right angles to it. Handy to her right hand, he noticed, was a round table with notepad and pen. And handy to his own settee was a small table with a box of tissues on it.

  He said, “I have to get in touch with Mr. Nimrin. Right away.”

  “Yes, I understand,” she said. “I don't know your name.”

  “Josh Redmont. I don't know yours, either.”

  She smiled at that. “I am Harriet Linde,” she said. “Elwah didn't tell you much about me, I see.”

  Elwah? Then he remembered, from the Washington Post, that Mr. Nimrin's first name was Ellois; so that's how it was pronounced. He said, “I think there's a lot Mr. Nimrin doesn't tell people.”

  “I have never asked him his business,” she said, “and he has never volunteered. But he is something sub rosa, that much is obvious.”

  “Can you help me talk to him?”

  “Perhaps.” She studied him, and he struggled to contain his impatience. “You are not,” she decided, “the sort of person I usually see with Ellois.”

  Probably not. Josh said, “If he doesn't tell you his business, maybe I shouldn't tell you his business, either.”

  She laughed at that, and said, “No, I wouldn't ask. But let me tell you how we met.”

  Any other time, Josh would have been happy to hear how Harriet Linde and Ellois Nimrin met, but not now. “It's kind of urgent,” he said.
<
br />   “No, I don't believe it is,” she told him. “I can see that you are in deep distress, but if your problem were urgent you wouldn't be here, going all ’round Robin Hood's barn. You are here because you want to maintain secrecy, not because your problem is urgent.”

  “All right,” he said, and tried to calm himself.

  “Take deep breaths,” she suggested, “and I will tell you the story. This was, oh, almost thirty-five years ago. I was in Vienna for the first time, at a conference. It was very cold, but beautifully sunny, and I was walking by myself in the park, because I was very young and knew no one at the conference. Then suddenly a man was beside me, grasping my arm, and very urgently—this was urgency—he said, ‘Pretend you know me.’”

  “No,” Josh said.

  Again she laughed. “Exactly,” she said. “My reaction exactly. I thought, immediately, has any man ever in the whole long history of the world actually used that as a pickup line? Impossible.”

  “It wasn't a pickup line,” Josh said.

  “Well, it was,” she said, and he could see that all at once she was very nearly blushing. “Not primarily, no, but yes, it was that, too.”

  “And I guess it worked.”

  “He said he would buy me a torte. We went to a cafe, and he wanted to sit inside, of course. He asked me where I was from, and when I said New York he said he was often in New York and asked for my phone number, which of course I gave him. I asked where he was from, and he said, ‘I am a man of the world.’”

  Now Josh laughed. “He gets all the good lines,” he said.

  “But spoken with such conviction,” she said, “that they lose their absurdity. I believe Ellois is a man of the world, if that is another way to say no fixed abode.”

  “Okay,” Josh said.

  “We spent a little while in the cafe,” she went on, “and slowly he relaxed. Then he paid our bill, and said he'd no doubt call me in New York, and asked me to stay at the table a little longer, and he went away to the back of the cafe. I took it for granted I'd never see him again.”

  “But you did.”

  “The next day,” she said, “at my hotel. And from time to time, over the years. Sometimes here in New York, sometimes places where I'd be at a conference, San Francisco, for instance, or once Sao Paulo. Once, years ago, he asked if he might use my waiting room on occasion, if he had a private conversation he needed to keep private, and I said of course. Over the years, I would guess he's done that fewer than half a dozen times, and I must say, you were the first reputable-looking person I've seen him with.”

  Josh said, “Aren't you curious?”

  “Of course,” she said. “But curiosity would kill more than the cat in this case. Whatever Ellois is involved in must have some sordid elements I wouldn't want to know about. And if he found me expressing curiosity about him, I know I would never see him again. For instance, something changed with him seven or eight years ago—”

  “Seven,” Josh said.

  She paused to give him a bright-eyed look. “Thank you,” she said. “But do not tell me things I don't want to know.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Seven years ago, as you say,” she said, “something changed in Ellois's life. He doesn't travel the way he used to. His spirit is not broken, but is more…defensive. May I ask what your trade is?”

  “I'm an advertising copywriter.”

  “Ah.” She nodded. “There's a great deal of self-hatred in that occupation, I understand.”

  “I don't hate myself,” Josh told her.

  “Good. To be associated with Ellois suggests self-destructive behavior.”

  “I'm trying to save myself,” he promised her. “That's why I need to talk to Mr. Nimrin.”

  “Good,” she said. “I can reach him, but indirectly, and not at once. I will let him know that you feel the need to meet with him, and then it's up to him.”

  “Oh,” Josh said.

  “I'm sorry, that's all I can do.”

  “Okay.” He looked around, at the overstuffed but somehow comforting room. “So I guess I should…go home.”

  “Or to your work. Work can be a great solace.”

  “If it doesn't make us self-destructive,” Josh suggested.

  Laughing, she said, “I'm glad Ellois's grade of associates has risen. Nice to meet you, Mr. Redmont.”

  “And you, Ms. Linde,” Josh said, all at once realizing she'd told him that story because he'd come in here hysterical, and it was the way to calm him down. He hadn't known he was hysterical, but he could feel the difference in himself. Maybe he would go to work this afternoon. Food poisoning all gone.

  As he got to his feet he said, “Thank you. I hope I haven't taken time from a patient.”

  “This is my lunchtime,” she said. “And for you, too.”

  “Lunch and work,” he said. “Thank you for the prescription.”

  11

  THEY'D NEVER GOTTEN MORE THAN the standard TV channels for the apartment in New York—out in Fair Harbor these days, Eve wallowed in the luxury of a dish—because they'd never thought of themselves as people who stayed indoors to watch television. Once Jeremy came along, it looked as though they might have to rethink that, but inertia had so far won the battle, so these evenings, alone with his AK-47s, he didn't have much choice in his TV-watching.

  But he really did want to watch TV In the first place, if he didn't fill his evenings with moving pictures, no matter of what, he'd get bored out of his mind, alone here in this little apartment. And in the second place, waiting for Mr. Nimrin to make contact—and knowing he might never make contact—would be completely unbearable if he didn't have something to distract himself.

  Which is why, at ten that evening, still having no word from Mr. Nimrin, he roamed restlessly among the channels available to him and at last settled on a news-magazine program, mostly because it seemed to be the only thing on offer without a laughtrack. The first segment was about advances in geriatric health care, which, along with the attendant commercials for denture glue and worse, made it pretty clear what demographic he had now fallen among. All right, go ahead; those earnest white-coated people speaking to somebody just off Josh's right shoulder were at least soothing.

  Harriet Linde had been soothing today, hadn't she? He guessed she must be a very good psychoanalyst, the way she almost casually diagnosed his immediate problem and went about treating it. And she was exactly the kind of very strong person that Mr. Nimrin needed, who would never invade his privacy and who would never ask more of him than he was capable of giving. And he would treat her with the same distant respect.

  Sooner or later, I guess, he told himself, we all find the right person out of the five billion. Or most of us do. Like Eve and me.

  I am being, he next told himself, bored into philosophy. Cut it out.

  So he focused on the television set, where they had gone into the second segment of their program, this one concerning the upcoming visit to New York City of someone called Fyeddr Mihommed-Sinn, the premier of Kamastan, one of the smaller shards created when the Soviet Union got smashed, yet another Stan in among the Stans. It seemed that Premier Mihommed-Sinn would be leaving Kamastan for the first time in his life, as a result of the Olympic gold medal won by its ace sprinter, Drogdrd Ozak, the first Kamastanian athlete ever to compete in the Olympics, much less win. Footage was shown, with the sprinter's name superimposed on the screen as Ozak sprinted by.

  It had now turned out that Premier Mihommed-Sinn was a mad sports fan, who had almost died with elation when young Ozak had won the sprint. In the footage of the premier going about his official duties at home, he looked in fact very little like a man who would die with elation and very much like a man who would kill with impunity. Short, muscular, glowering, he looked mostly like the kind of super who disapproves of the way you handle your garbage.

  A man who had never before seen a reason to leave Kamastan, the premier would fly to New York City now because his first-ever Olympic gold winner would
be receiving a special United Nations medal at a ceremony in Yankee Stadium. Athletes and politicians from around the globe would be present at the event.

  It was hoped, the announcer explained, that this trip would be the beginning of a thawing process between Premier Mihommed-Sinn and the rest of the world. He was considered the most despotic of the despots who ran the Stans, and was roundly hated both inside his country and without. That sports had been the way to melt his icy heart was considered a wonderfully hopeful sign all over the place.

  Premier Mihommed-Sinn had received other invitations for his stay in America, to visit the White House and the United Nations and Universal Studios, but had turned them all down. He would fly in Kamastan Air Force One into JFK, with a planeload of bodyguards right behind him. He would spend a night at the Kamastan Mission to the United Nations on York Avenue, he would autocade to Yankee Stadium, he would take part in the ceremonies there, he would spend a second night at the Mission, and then he would sky homeward. Taking with him, it was hoped, a clearer gentler understanding of the outside world.

  All of this would occur over this coming weekend. The premier would fly in on Friday the twenty-ninth of this month, spend that night at the Mission on York Avenue, attend the ceremony promptly at two on Saturday afternoon, and would then sky back to his lesser Heaven on Sunday. The Saturday afternoon events would be shown live on this channel beginning at one-thirty Various sporting exhibitions would be a part of the festivities.

  File footage was also shown of Premier Mihommed-Sinn reviewing some of the troops of his giant army. Apart from sports, his giant army was the only thing in the world the premier was known to love. These troops wore uniforms of a very dark green-brown, with black-and-red boards on the shoulders and red chevrons on the sleeves. Their military hats, with a longer hard brim and higher front peak than usual, made the tough faces under them look even tougher.