Whatever; it had worked.
Here we were at Thursday, with Premier Mihommed-Sinn due to fly in from Kamastan tomorrow, the ceremony at Yankee Stadium scheduled the day after that, and what so far had Josh done about it all? He'd kept himself alive with Tina Pausto's help, but not much more. The bad things were on their way, thundering toward the point where all the evil would meet, in the innocent open air, and here he was, still immersed in Cloudbank.
Again Robbie had arrived first, now dressed, Josh guessed, from some production of Death of a Salesman, in a seedy beige suit too big for him, wrinkled white shirt with plowed ruts in the collar, and a narrow stained black necktie severely knotted at the throat, as though Robbie had been considering suicide. But he wasn't. He was, in fact, pleased with himself. Pouring himself some more Pellegrino, he said, in a Texas twang, “Nice little place you got here.”
“We like it,” Josh said, doing his own attempt at Texas. “It may not be much, but we call it a restaurant.”
Robbie gave him a surprised look. “What happened to gloom and doom?”
“Oh, they're still there,” Josh said, “one on each shoulder. But last night Tina Pausto told me she knows I've told Eve what's happening, and she'll keep my secret, so Andrei Levrin won't crush me like a kitten.”
“She's making an ally,” Robbie commented. “Keeping side doors open.”
“I'll take it,” Josh said. “We don't inquire into motivations.”
The usual stuff involving menus and waiters ensued, and after it Robbie said, “Well, while you were working your wiles on Pausto—”
“Sure.”
“—I was on the commuter train to Port Washington.”
A town on the north shore of Long Island, not very far out at all; from its heights, New York City could be seen. Josh said, “That's where Mr. Nimrin went?”
“Straight there. I was glad it wasn't one of the long commuter runs, to Montauk or Port Jefferson. I didn't know what his stop was, so I had to stay with him. I stayed on the train, past all those little stations, and of course he never piped me. End of the line, Port Wash, off he gets and into the men's room at the station, and never comes out.”
“Disguising himself.”
Robbie made a disgusted face. “I'm afraid you're probably right. I didn't really believe it of him, and whatever he does it's still a far cry from the thing I do, working from the inside, crea—”
“Mitch.”
“You're right,” Robbie said, and the food they'd ordered arrived, and the next thing Robbie said was, “This is all really very good.”
“Yeah, it's a good place.”
“I'm astonished you don't weigh three hundred pounds.”
“Tell me about Port Washington.”
“Well,” Robbie said, “I did have to get back to the city, I had a curtain to make, in fact barely made it, so I waited around until the next train was about to start the other way. Then I did a quick search of the men's room, and of course, no Nimrin. So home I went, and did my best for Mr. Shaw, then trained back out to Port Wash—”
“Late at night?”
“That's what it was, yes,” Robbie agreed. “But I felt a certain urgency.”
“Yes, sure.”
“Now, Port Wash is mostly a high-end commuter town,” Robbie said, “quite old, the newer stuff off somewhere. There are a few heights overlooking Long Island Sound, and a few estates up in there, and it seemed to me that's where the safe house would have to be, up in Gatsby territory, to give them the room and the privacy they'd need. I cabbed up and prowled around outside some of them, looking for I don't know what, a car with diplomatic plates maybe, or a helicopter launching pad. Or a Russian name on a mailbox. Or maybe even a sentry on patrol.” He shook his head, chewed some cod, said, “Nada. We've gotta go out there by day.”
Josh paused. “We?”
“Four eyes are better than two.” Robbie waved his fork. “Remember, you're the one came to me, said we have this urgent problem, and we do have this urgent problem. Your girlfriend is keeping your secret right now, but for how long? At this moment, she thinks it's best to line up with you. Tomorrow, or later today, who knows. Josh, Mihommed-Sinn is flying in tomorrow.”
“I know, I've been telling myself that.”
“Do you have to call your office,” Robbie asked him, “or can you just go?”
Josh hesitated, then shrugged. “I have to call my office. But we can't drive out there, they know my car.”
“That,” Robbie pointed out, “is why God gave us the trains.”
“You're right. Yes,” he told the waiter, “I'm done. No, no dessert.”
“Coffee,” Robbie said. “You should, too.”
“Okay, coffee,” Josh said. “Not that I'm likely to fall asleep.”
28
ON THE TRAIN, JOSH WAS dressed as he'd been for lunch, lightweight jacket, tan chinos, pale blue short-sleeved dress shirt; the yellow tie was now rolled and in his jacket pocket. Robbie, it turned out, had checked a black backpack at Tre Mafiosi, into which, during the trainride, he'd stowed the Death of a Salesman suitcoat and shirt and garroting tie, and out of which he'd brought a khaki short-sleeved shirt with pocket flaps. Wearing both this and the backpack, he looked like the den leader of a previously unknown offshoot of the Boy Scouts.
Their train pulled into its end-of-the-line berth at ten minutes to three. They'd have another six hours of July daylight, plenty of time to search an area this small, a stubby peninsula jutting northward into Long Island Sound. Robbie had alerted a standby to take over, in case he didn't get back to the theater in time tonight, so all they had to do, until the sun went down, was look for Mr. Nimrin.
The town itself was all diagonals, some parts angling down toward the water and the view westward across to Kings Point and Great Neck, the Bronx beyond that, other parts twisting upward and eastward toward the heights over by the more affluent sections of Sea Cliff and Sands Point, where most of the estates and monasteries could be found.
Robbie paused at a bench on the station platform to delve into his backpack once more, bringing out a thick manila envelope scrawled with addresses and rubber stamps and postage stamps, all messily wrapped in thicknesses of clear tape, with bits of ragged envelope sticking hairily out at the corners. It looked to Josh, seeing it briefly and at an angle, that it was addressed to Ellois Nimrin at some incomprehensible location over which the ink had run or the paper worn away.
Nodding at the package, Josh said, “What are you going to do with that?”
“There's a Mailboxes-R-Us in town,” Robbie said. “They'll know everybody.” Slipping on the backpack, he stood and said, “Come along. I'll be in the part, so you'll have to listen to directions, and keep an eye out for anything funny.”
Josh had no idea what Robbie meant by “anything funny,” but didn't ask, since he suspected Robbie had no idea what he meant, either. It was simply a theatrical way to end the statement.
They walked away from the railroad station and into town, agreeing that Josh would go into the mailbox place first and stand filling out forms while Robbie came in and did his dance. The storefront itself, in squared-off red, white and blue design, was midblock, between a video rental shop and a cellular phone place, so a generation ago all three of these stores would have been something else.
Josh went inside and found there a clean and cluttered space, with cartons piled up in stacks and a wall of mailboxes and pigeonholes behind a chest-high counter. Three young employees in white smocks cheerfully carried boxes around or studied manifests. They glanced smilingly at Josh, but then went back to what they were doing when they saw him turn toward the side-counter where the forms were.
This was a chain that provided any kind of mail-related service you could think of except the actual delivery of mail. They'd serve as a convenience address, they'd do packing (and gift wrapping), they'd sell empty cartons and packing materials, they would deliver to the post office, and they offered a variety of statio
nery and envelopes as well.
Josh bent over a form enlisting himself—or Matt Fair-lough, the first name he came up with, not that good a friend—into the ranks of those who wanted to receive their mail at this location until further notice, and behind him Robbie bustled in, looking worried, energetic, and inept.
“Oh, boy,” he told everybody. “Oh, Jesus, I hope you people can help me.”
They hoped so, too. Two boys and a girl, they all approached Robbie as he hustled to the counter, dropping the package there like the sea captain dropping the wrapped black bird in Sam Spade's office; however, he did not fall dead immediately after.
“What is it?”
“What do you need, man?”
“Can we help?”
“I'm supposed to deliver—This is gonna cost me my job, I can't afford to lose my job in the summer, I can't—”
“Let's see.”
“What is this?”
“Let's just take a look.”
All three bent over the package on the counter. “Boy, this is a mess.”
“The name I figured out,” Robbie told them, pointing at it. “Eloise Nimrin. Only I think it's a guy, he's supposed to be someplace with a lot of Russians, or Polish, or Hungarian, I dunno, I just can't find the place, I don't dare bring this back to—”
“Russian?”
It was one of the boys who'd lit up at that clue, and now the other two plus Robbie looked at him in sudden hope while Josh reached for a second form.
“I bet,” said the boy who'd worked it out, “it's one of the people up at Mrs. Rheingold's house.”
“Rheingold?” The girl wasn't sure she knew the name. “Who's that?”
“You know,” the boy told her. “The old lady up by—”
Then the other boy got it. “The hermit!”
“That's the one.”
Robbie, full of doubt, said, “Hermit? No, this is a guy, Nimrin—”
“We don't have any dealings with her,” the first boy explained, “because she never leaves her compound up there. But everybody knows about her, she—”
“Oh!” said the girl, catching up. “The old lady up north by Sands Point, with the great big wall!”
“That's the one,” the first boy agreed, and told Robbie, while Josh wrote on the second form, Mrs. Rheingold, hermit, north, Sands Point, “I used to hear about her when I was a kid. Everybody was scared to go around there.”
The second boy said, “She's got a bunch of staff up there, servants, you know, I think they're all Russian or something like that. They don't come to town either.”
“Well, the butler does,” the first boy said. “He comes down and does the shopping, I've seen him in the Grand Union. He's got some kind of accent, maybe he could be Russian.”
The girl nodded, emphatically. “That'll be it,” she said. “You go up there, they'll know. If this man isn't there, they'll know where he is.”
“Just tell me how to find the place,” Robbie begged them.
“Go out Sands Point Road through Manorhaven,” the first boy told him, “and take a left on Sandy Drive,” as Josh wrote it all down. “Not Sandy Road or Sandy Lane.”
“Got it. Sandy Drive.”
“If you get to Middle Neck Road,” the girl told him, “you've gone too far.” Josh didn't bother to write that down.
“Out Sandy Drive,” the first boy said, as Josh crumpled and threw away his first form and pocketed the second, “you'll come to these brick gateposts and a closed gate and a big high wall and all kinds of keep out signs.”
As Josh walked to and out the shop door, the second boy added, “Posted, No Trespassing, No Solicitors, all of—”
And so on, no doubt. Josh paused on the sidewalk to decide from the sun where north was, and turned in that direction as Robbie hurried out, shouting many thank-yous behind him.
“You got it,” he told Josh.
“I got it,” Josh agreed.
29
JOSH STARTED WALKING NORTH, but Robbie didn't. When Josh looked back, Robbie said, “What are you doing?”
“It's supposed to be up this way.”
“We don't walk there,” Robbie told him. “It's too far to walk. You're a rich guy, we'll take a cab.” Turning away, he said, “We'll get one back at the railroad station.”
Following in Robbie's wake, Josh said, “Why do I always have to pay for the cab?”
“Because you're a capitalist lackey,” Robbie explained.
Josh was sure there was a perfect retort to that remark, but as they walked along, southward instead of northward, he didn't hear himself say it, so he never found out what it was.
There was one taxi waiting at the station, a big old gray Chrysler stationwagon. The driver was a very fat woman of probably sixty, spread over much of the front seat like melting ice cream, dressed in a green plaid flannel shirt, tan chinos, and open-toed golden sandals. She had been reading Elle Decor, which she put onto the seat beside her as they approached.
“Hi,” Josh said. “You free?”
“Well, I'm reasonable,” she said. “Hop in.”
They did, and Robbie said, “We'd like Sandy Drive off Sands Point Road the other side of Manorhaven. Not Sandy Road or Sandy Lane.” So why had Josh made all those notes?
“Sandy Drive, I know exactly where you mean.” There was no meter in the cab. “That's seven dollars,” she said.
Josh bet it wasn't seven dollars, not really, not for a local, but Robbie said, “Fine,” and the woman started the Chrysler engine, which coughed a lot.
As they drove through town, stopping at a red light, the woman said, “What you boys doin’ up there?”
Josh was trying to think of some story to make up, but Robbie said, “We're going up to Mrs. Rheingold's place.”
Interested, the woman looked at them in her rearview mirror, then drove forward through the green light, saying, “Really? They hirin’ again up there? Been quite a while. Got all those foreigners up there.”
Robbie said, “You know the place, do you?”
“Oh, that's just the saddest story,” she said.
Robbie slid forward to rest his forearms on the front seat-back, near her large head with all the fuzzy gray hair. “Really?” he said. “I love sad stories. Tell.”
“Well, old Mrs. Rheingold,” the cabby said, “she must be ninety, maybe even more. She was one of the Caissens, old-time family around here, you know. Early settlers. Daughtered out.”
“That's tough,” Robbie said.
“She was the last. Miriam? Something like that. Her mom and dad both died in the 1917 flu epidemic, when she was just a little girl. She was brought up, in the big estate there, by some old aunts and people, kept dying off.”
“Wow,” Robbie said.
“They saw to it she had her schooling, though,” the cabby assured them. “Bryn Mawr and all that. Then she met him.”
Robbie said, “I thought it was gonna be like that.”
“Just like that,” the cabby said. “Jock Rheingold. A Dartmouth man, but it seemed as though it might be all right.”
“Oh oh,” Robbie said.
“Well, they got married,” the cabby said, “just around the time the last of her aunts expired, leaving her the absolute last Caissen, and not even a Caissen anymore but a Rheingold.”
“Daughtered out,” Robbie said, and Josh suspected Robbie had repeated that because he'd just now figured out what it meant.
“But that wasn't the worst,” the cabby said. “There were rumors about Jock Rheingold from the beginning—”
“But she was in love,” Robbie said.
“You know it. He claimed he was a bond salesman down in New York, but there were rumors about dealings in New Jersey, whispers that bonds weren't where he made his living at all.”
“He wasn't a”—Robbie was twitching all over in his excitement—“wasn't a bootlegger, was he?”
“No no, nothing like that,” the cabby said, and Josh knew he and Robbie had both leaped ahe
ad to a Gatsby finish. But it was to be something else.
“Well, then what?” Robbie asked her.
“A developer,” she said. “Over there in Jersey, he was putting up all those little houses you see, all look alike, one right after the other, no idea who lives in those places.”
“Exactly,” Robbie said.
“Well, he wasn't doing it around here,” she said, “you could say that much for him. But others were. You see what we're driving through.”
Josh said, “I think the town planners call it ‘mixed use.’”
“Very mixed, you ask me,” the cabby said. “Anyway, when the truth came out, it just broke Miriam Caissen's heart, or Mrs. Rheingold, as she knew she had to be known the rest of her life. How could she hold her head up ever again in the community she was born into, sharing her bed with a developer? A fellow bringing in who knows who, everybody cheek by jowl, no discrimination at all.”
“Exactly,” Robbie said.
“She had no choice, really,” the cabby said. “She had to divorce him.”
“Absolutely,” Robbie said.
“But he brought in some very slick lawyers from New York,” she said, “or maybe even from New Jersey.”
“Wow,” Robbie said.
“At the end of the day,” the cabby said, turning left onto Sandy Drive, “Jock Rheingold wound up with a huge settlement.”
“The cad,” Robbie said.
“That's right,” the cabby agreed. “She got to keep the big house, and the antiques, and most of the cash, but he got half the property.” Pointing off to the right, she said, “You see what he did with it.”
Boxy Cape Cod houses in pastels marched away in rows to the right, on a squared-off grid of blacktop, like a minimum security prison. The development was old, and had not aged well. Over the years, people had put additions onto the original tiny boxes on their tiny lots, filling the eye with planned uniformity overlaid by unplanned clutter.
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