Money for Nothing

by Donald E. Westlake

  “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 bloodymindedness,” 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.”

  “The stadium!” Josh was horrified, his imagination filling with sprawled and bloodied sports enthusiasts. “Why?”

  “Easier to get close to your target in a crowd, easier to make your escape in mass confusion. Four uniforms, you say.” Mr. Nimrin nodded, considering the options. “How I would do it,” he said, “is insert those four substitutes into the honor guard that will fire off the salute. Everyone else in single-shot mode, armed with blanks, aimed at the sky. My four, in full automatic mode, armed with live ammunition, aimed at the last second at the target. Spray him and the entire reviewing stand, or wherever Freddy might be. Then spray the nearby honor guard members, release the blood packets within your own uniforms, and fall to the ground as though a victim rather than a perpetrator. Later, kill the ambulance attendants and make your getaway.” He nodded, satisfied with himself. “Yes, that's how I’d do it.”

  15

  THEY'D NEVER GET AWAY with it,” Josh said.

  “Oh, come now.” Mr. Nimrin was insulted. Glowering at Lincoln Center, he said, “Of course they'll get away with it. These are not some religious fanatics, determined to kill themselves and sail off to some matinee heaven. These are professionals. Do you think this is the first assassination I've been connected with, in thirty years of service?”

  “It's my first,” Josh said, “and I don't want it.”

  “Though it isn't mine, is it?” Mr. Nimrin said. “They're keeping me out of the loop on this, aren't they?” Then he offered a bitter laugh and said, “Oh, yes, we say ‘out of the loop,’ too. Everyone does now, though many have no idea what it means. Part of the Americanization we all so bravely struggle against is the Americanization of slang. It started many years ago with OK, which seemed to be all right, since OK didn't mean anything in English, either. But it was the thin end of the wedge. See? There's another.”

  “Mr. Nimrin,” Josh said, “I don't want to talk about slang with you. I want to talk about how I get out of this mess.”

  “Well, you don't,” Mr. Nimrin told him, “and we'll both be much safer if you simply accept the fact. You are in this now, through my bad luck and your own cupidity, and it would be—”

  “My what?”

  “Cupidity,” Mr. Nimrin repeated. “It's a word in your language. It means greed.”

  “I didn't know it,” Josh said, apologetic, but then bridled a bit: “A thousand dollars a month doesn't seem like an awful lot of greed.”

  “Enough greed to land you where you are now,” Mr. Nimrin reminded him. “And enough to leave Robert Van Bark hanging from a barn rafter.”

  “Ohhh.”

  “You should look on the bright side,” Mr. Nimrin suggested.

  “Bright side?” Josh stared wildly at the traffic thundering by. Maybe a bus would hit the bench and make all of this go away. “What's the bright side?”

  “Freddy Mihommed-Sinn,” Mr. Nimrin said, “is one of the most despicable persons on the planet. I doubt there are even three others who deserve to die more richly than he does. It's not as though the target were a Princess Diana or a rock-and-roll singer, although some of tho
se might make it onto a slightly longer list. Believe me, your own government will not be sorry to see Freddy go.”

  “They'll be sorry to see him go at Yankee Stadium,” Josh said. “With a whole lot of innocent bystanders along for the ride.”

  “Collateral damage is always a possibility,” Mr. Nimrin said comfortably.

  “No,” Josh said, “I'm beginning to get the idea. Collateral damage isn't a possibility, it's dessert. You may all be professionals, but you still have to have your fun.”

  “Poppycock,” Mr. Nimrin said. “We've risked security quite long enough, sitting here, pretending not to converse. They may not recognize me, but they'll certainly recognize you.”

  “I wanted to say,” Josh told him, “you are a master of disguise, I'll give you that—”

  “It's simple,” Mr. Nimrin told him. “Become someone people don't want to look at. Crippled, deformed, ill. Or a workman.”

  “Thank you, I'll remember that,” Josh said.

  “Come to Harriet Linde's office tomorrow at six,” Mr. Nimrin ordered. “I may have further news, or I may not.”

  “You'll be there?”

  “I will or I will not.” Mr. Nimrin shook his head at Lincoln Center. “Go home,” he said. “But, one word of advice.”

  Bitter, Josh said, “Only one?”

  “Do not drink with Tina Pausto.”

  Remembering that one glass of champagne, Josh said, “Okay.”

  16

  BUT IT WASN'T TINA PAUSTO waiting for him in the living room at home, it was Eve, and she was coldly furious. “What an elaborate liar you are,” she greeted him.

  Josh finished shutting the apartment door. “Eve? I told you don't come back.”

  “Yes, and now I know why,” Eve said. “I've seen her overnight bag.”

  “Over—”

  “On Jeremy's dresser. Jeremy's!” As though some really arcane blasphemy had just occurred.

  “Oh, for God's sake,” Josh said, realizing what it had to be and what conclusion Eve had jumped to, “that must be some bag of Tina's.”

  “Her name is Tina?” Frost lay thick on every syllable.

  “Tina Pausto, she just showed up today, she said she was being billeted here.”

  “That's a new word.”

  “Oh, come on, Eve. Is this the bankbook out of the graphics department again? Do you think I made everything up, so I could sleep with Tina Pausto? And am I sleeping with AK-47s, too?”

  She blinked at him. “With what?”

  “Oh, those you didn't notice,” he said. “Just come here and look.”

  And he marched off toward the bedroom, because he wanted to nip this idiotic misunderstanding in the bud, so they could go back to the serious job of keeping him out of a grave and out of jail. And off barn rafters. And out of the ocean.

  Halfway to the bedroom, Eve frowningly following, he had the horrible thought, What if they took everything out of here while I was gone? But no, there they were, those four wooden crates peeking modestly out from under the bed. “Look at this,” he said, and knelt to pull one of the heavy boxes partway out.

  She stared at it. “What is that?”

  “Assault rifles. Didn't you notice those boxes under Jeremy's crib?”

  “All I saw was that Prada bag with all those Victoria's Secret things in it.”

  “Well, those boxes are the ammunition for these babies,” Josh told her. “And the closet is full of uniforms. Kamastan army uniforms.”

  She shook her head, gave a very good impression of someone recovering slowly from a concussion, and went over to open the closet door. “Uniforms,” she said.

  “Believe me, honey,” Josh said, “I did not import all this stuff in here myself just so I could con you into thinking I'm not having an affair with Tina Pausto. In fact, I am not having an—wait a minute! We've got to get out of here! You've got to get out of here!”

  She looked ready to be offended. “Why?”

  “She's going to come back, Tina Pausto's gonna come back.” Saying her complete name seemed safer somehow, created more distance. “If she sees you here, she'll know security's been breached, you've seen all this, you know everything, and she'll make one phone call and we'll both be killed!”

  “But—”

  “Also,” he said, reaching for her arm, pulling her toward the doorway, “it's dinnertime. You're hungry, I'm hungry.”

  “But—”

  “We'll have the conversation,” he told her, as he shoved her at a half-trot through the apartment, “in the restaurant.”

  They did. He told her what he'd learned from television last night, and about his conversation with Mr. Nimrin, and about the appearance of Tina Pausto, who seemed prepared to either sleep with him or not, depending how things went. A flexible girl, you might say.

  Eve said, “You asked her if she was supposed to have sex with you?”

  “Well, I wanted to know.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Apparently, the question was in poor taste. She looked down her nose at me and said, ‘That was not discussed.’”

  “Ha,” she said. “That's funny, really,” and the waiter came, to take their order.

  After he left, Josh took the newspaper story from his pocket and handed it to her. “Mr. Nimrin gave me this.”

  She read it, saying, “Oh, that's awful. Oh, the poor wife.”

  “Well, the both of them, okay?”

  Holding the story, she frowned at him across the table. “But who is he?”

  “There were three of us that kept the money these last seven years, that they thought were their sleepers. He was one of them. It looks like, he gave a wrong answer when they woke him up.”

  Awed and horrified, voice hushed, she said, “This could have been you.”

  “Well, the barn is because it's upstate,” he said. “Mr. Nimrin said me they'd probably drown. After torture.”

  She gave him back the story, and as he put it in his pocket she said, “These are horrible people.”

  “Dangerous horrible people. Eve, I don't know what to do. They're going to assassinate this guy, he's supposed to be a very bad guy, but still.”

  “I could go to the FBI,” she said. “Maybe they're watching you, but they aren't watching me. They aren't watching everybody in the world.”

  “Okay,” Josh said. “Let's say you go to Foley Square, you get out of the taxi, in a car across the street is a guy with a rifle and a bunch of pictures of people they don't want talking to the FBI. Your picture is there. If they're that worried about betrayals, and they're using me to—what did Mr. Nimrin say?—host the assassination team, then, sure, they're keeping that much of an eye on you.”

  “You can't—” Eve said, and the food arrived. When they were alone again, Josh said, “I know I can't. I have to find some way to get clear of these people without setting off their paranoia. And you know, I'm already in this so deep. I am hosting the assassination team. I am storing their guns and their uniforms. I have had people staying in the apartment, though Tina Pausto's the first one I've seen.”

  “She's there to watch you,” Eve said.

  “Sure. In case the sleeper loses his nerve, or makes a mistake like Van Bark did.”

  She said, “I don't think I can stand this.”

  “Neither can I. One way or another, it's over Sunday, maybe Saturday. If they come in and do it and get away, then I'm probably okay, and I can say look, I did it, but it was too nerve-wracking so please don't use me anymore, don't send me any checks, take back the forty thousand from the Cayman Islands bank, and maybe they won't think I'm a security risk.”

  “Oh, Josh.”

  “But what if they get caught?” Josh stared down at the food he wasn't eating. “They get caught, that means I get caught. Up to now, when I didn't know anything, I could maybe get out from under with that diary in the laptop out on the island, but can I put this assassination plot in there? Mass murder at Yankee Stadium, and I never mentioned it to anybo
dy? Guns and uniforms in my apartment, and I never had any idea what they were for? Eve, if I try to get away from this thing, they're gonna kill me, but if I don't get away from it, I'm likely to spend an awful long time in a federal prison.”

  “Oh, Josh, there has to be a way, some way, something we can do. You have to get out of this.”

  “I took the money,” he said. “I keep thinking that. Money for nothing, and now look. There is no free lunch.” He shook his head at the food he wasn't eating. “I wonder…”

  Hopeful, wanting a straw to clutch at, she said, “What? You wonder what?”

  “Mr. Nimrin hasn't found the third guy yet, who took the money,” Josh told her. “Robert Van Bark, and me, and somebody named Mitchell Robbie. I wonder if it would do any good if I found him, talked to him, found out if they're using him, too. Maybe the two of us…” He shook his head. “No.”

  “No?” She acted as though this was a straw to cling to.

  “Why not?”

  “If Mr. Nimrin can't find him, how can I?”

  “Dick Welsh could find him, I bet,” she said, meaning their friends out on the island, who had Jeremy with them now.

  “Dick's something in insurance downtown,” she pointed out, “they have databases on everybody, I bet he could find him. Mitchell Robbie? How do you spell it?”

  “I dunno,” he said. “I guess like Robbie the Robot.”

  “Fine,” she said. “When we get home, I'll—”

  “You can't come home with me,” he said.

  “Oh.” She looked at him. “Because that woman's there.”

  “And if she knows you know,” Josh said, “we're in major trouble.”

  “Damn it!” she said. “We can't move.”

  “You'll have to take the late ferry back to Fair Harbor.”

  “I can't even stay in my own home,” she complained. “I know it isn't your fault, Josh, but—”

  “Well, it is my fault,” he said. “I took the money.”

  17

  TINA PAUSTO WAS IN THE LIVING ROOM, watching television. A laugh track could be heard. She had changed into voluminous maroon pants and a black scoop-neck blouse that revealed tan lines that were somehow very sexy. “You do not have HBO,” she said, by way of greeting.