Robbie started walking again, and Josh kept pace with him. “I'll give you a couple, when we get back to town,” he said. “Then, tonight, you slip them to this Tina, but you stay awake.”
“No problem.”
“You can give me a set of keys to your place.”
Josh gave him a quizzical look. “Yeah?”
“About two in the morning, I'll come up there, and we'll steal the uniforms.”
Josh stared at him. “Do what?”
“Believe me,” Robbie assured him, “I could use them down at the theater.”
Josh couldn't believe this. “Steal the uniforms?”
“You get up Saturday morning,” Robbie told him, “they're gone, you have no idea what happened. You didn't take them, you're still there. The corps de ballet shows up, no costumes. They can't infiltrate any honor guard in green shorts.”
“No, they'll find some…There have to be more uniforms.”
“That they can get? On short notice? The motorcade's on the way, man, those guys are standing around in their jocks.”
Josh nodded, slowly, like a metronome. “Jesus, Mitch,” he said, “it is a crazy idea, and it just might work.”
“We'll give it a try, okay?” Robbie shrugged. “At least it's something to do. When we get back to the city, we'll do an exchange. Sleeping pills for apartment keys.”
“They'll be really mad,” Josh pointed out. “You know, they might want to kill me just out of meanness.”
Robbie stared at him in astonishment. “But you're as upset as they are!” Clutching Josh's forearm, he said, “Listen, Josh, the time has come for you to learn the Method. Think into the part. You wanted this caper to go down, you wanted to earn that forty G and more. You're so pissed off you can't think straight. You blame Levrin, he's the one you gave the keys to, he must have given copies to too many people, some double agent in their midst.”
Josh contemplated these histrionics. “You really think I could—”
“I know you could!” Robbie was increasingly excited, bobbing along on the balls of his feet. “You've got your sides now,” he said, “I just gave you your character, your story line. Think it through, between now and Saturday, believe in it, make it part of you. When it's showtime, hit your mark! You can do it. I've watched you, Josh, and you have talent.”
That was a secret belief of Josh's, but he'd never told anybody. He said, as though in disbelief, “I do?”
“Absolutely,” Robbie assured him. “Almost forty-eight hours to prepare? As smart as you are? You're gonna go out there, and you're gonna give an Obie-level performance. And you know why you are?”
“Why?”
“Because you're thinking about the alternative.”
That was a bucket of cold water. “Oh,” Josh said. “You're right.”
“Think about it,” Robbie told him. “Get into it. You can do it.”
Josh nodded and, as they walked along, he thought about it. What? The uniforms are stolen? What? The uniforms are stolen? What son of a bitch—It was Levrin! He's the one tossing around my keys like jellybeans!
They'd almost reached the intersection with Sands Point Road, Josh working himself ever deeper into the part, when a big old Marathon sedan, the onetime New York City taxicab with so much room in the back it had an extra pair of bucket seats, swerved to a stop beside them. At least thirty years old, this vehicle was black with a huge toothy chrome grill and a boxy look that was, in fact, coming back into style. The right front window slid down. They stooped to look in and Mr. Nimrin, alone in there, had leaned over from the wheel to turn the window crank. He was furious. “You two! Are you insane? Get into the car!”
32
WHY DO I FEEL GUILTY, Josh asked himself. I'm the innocent one! And yet, unable to help himself, he did feel like a wayward teenager caught roving by a stern father after he'd been grounded. For that reason, and because he was shaken and scared, and also because he had nothing to say, he said nothing, as Mr. Nimrin put the Marathon into gear and angrily accelerated.
Josh and Robbie had both slid into the big backseat (like naughty children!), Josh on the right, Robbie on the left with a couple of grocery sacks on the floor in front of him. Josh took the opportunity of his position to lean rightward against the window, so he'd be out of range of Mr. Nimrin's rearview mirror, and could study the man.
Well. He was oddly dressed, actually. He was in some sort of black formal suit, not a tux but something else, and a white shirt and black bowtie. The Marathon's labored air-conditioning was on, giving the interior of the car a frosty ambiance, but Mr. Nimrin still looked hot in that getup, and Josh wasted a minute trying to figure out what the man was disguised as this time when he realized, of course!
The guy at Mailboxes-R-Us had said Mrs. Rheingold's butler was the one servant to come out of the compound, to do the shopping at the Grand Union. And those grocery bags at Robbie's feet were emblazoned Grand Union.
That Mr. Nimrin was not merely posing as the butler, but for all intents and purposes actually was the butler, should have diminished him in Josh's eyes, but it did not. He understood now how Mr. Nimrin could be under what he had described as more or less house arrest, and yet be able to show up in the city any time he wanted. He'd spent the last seven years, obviously, being obsequious and devoted and circumspect, the perfect butler, so that when it was time to act, his watchers would have been lulled into inattention.
Mr. Nimrin had taken the first available right turn into Revenge Estates, and now drove northward through it, hunched over the wheel, glaring frequently at the rearview mirror; not at Josh and Robbie, but at his backtrail. He knew how dangerous his friends were.
The development sprawled like a casbah carpet across the land, ending at a chainlink fence, beyond which was rocky shoreline, Long Island Sound, and Connecticut up there to the north. Mr. Nimrin turned right, drove several blocks, and then turned left again, found an empty spot, and parked.
Ahead of them along the shore was the development's beach, a narrow sandy strip with a lifeguard on his high white chair and a hotdog stand where the path led to the sand from this parking area. The beach and shallow water were full of kids of all ages; their squeals penetrated the closed windows to make a disturbing background sound, as though a drive-in movie next door were showing a horror film.
Mr. Nimrin, leaving the engine on for the air conditioning, twisted himself around halfway on the seat to glare at them; mostly at Josh. “Mitchell,” he said, “move to the jumpseat in front of Josh, so I can see you without injuring my neck.”
“Sure.”
Josh got his feet out of the way as Robbie unfolded the seat and slid into it, resting a forearm on the front seatback as he smiled pleasantly at Mr. Nimrin and said, “Nice outfit.”
“We will dispense with the pleasantries,” Mr. Nimrin informed him. “We will discuss my not injuring my neck. No, we will discuss you not injuring my neck.”
“Ah, right,” Robbie said. He had become reflective all at once, a professor here to discuss situations in the abstract.
Mr. Nimrin glared from Robbie to Josh. “Why won't you two stay still?” he demanded.
Since he was glaring at Josh at this moment, Josh felt it was up to him to answer. “Because we're worried about our necks, too,” he said.
“Which you've informed us,” the academic Robbie added, “are in some serious danger.”
“But you make it worse,” Mr. Nimrin insisted. “If you persist in doing things that a committed and reliable mole would not do, you can only arouse suspicion. And to arouse suspicion, my friends, is to mark finis for all of us.”
“Whereas,” Robbie said, with such a slow nodding movement that Josh could almost see the pipe clenched in his teeth, “if we behave exclusively in anticipated and acceptable ways, only we are marked finis, while you get out free and clear.”
“But still without my money,” Mr. Nimrin said, sounding bitter.
“Well,” the judicious Robbie said, “that'
s hardly our concern.”
“But it is,” Josh said, because he'd suddenly, finally, got it.
Robbie gave him a surprised look, out of character. “What?”
“Mr. Nimrin,” Josh said, “we were both given Cayman Islands bankbooks when we were activated.”
“Yes, of course,” Mr. Nimrin said, as though indifferent; but he was watching Josh keenly. “That would have been part of the original agreement.”
“If we get out of this alive,” Josh told him, “and not under arrest, it will only be because you helped us. We'd have to show our gratitude.”
Robbie, his mobile face flickering with wild surmise, stared at Josh. He said, “Josh?”
Ignoring him, Josh said to Mr. Nimrin, “If, on Monday, all three of us are free and clear, we'll both sign over those bank accounts to you.”
Robbie, extremely dubious, said, “We will?” Then he turned to look at Mr. Nimrin, whose face was also undergoing several emotions, all of which he was trying to conceal, and smiled. “Of course we will!”
“We'll write out a paper now,” Josh offered, “the two of us, and sign it, saying, If nothing has changed on Monday, August 1st, we'll give you the eighty thousand. Now I know,” he added, “that's a long way from the couple million you set up the scheme for, but it's also eighty thousand more than you have now.”
“Yes, it is,” Mr. Nimrin said. He still sounded bitter. Looking away at the cavorting beachgoers, he said, “Seven years, and I have been unable to get even a farthing of the Rheingold wealth. The old woman's mad as a commissar, but she's surrounded by lawyers and accountants and guardians, a manpower larger than the Hungarian army. They're making a nice thing of it, I have no doubt of that, but there isn't a kopek in it for me.”
“I'm sorry,” Josh said.
Mr. Nimrin nodded at him. He seemed to have gotten over his earlier fury. “Thank you.” He was still bitter, though. “Even the tradespeople are no good to me,” he said.
Robbie, trying very hard to get on the same page as the other two, said, “Tradespeople?”
“An enterprising independent local grocer, for instance,” Mr. Nimrin explained, “I could deal with, pad the account a bit here, a bit there, split the difference. But the Grand Union!” he snorted, with an angry dismissive wave at the grocery sacks beside them. “They're all employees. Cowards to a man—and woman—and they wouldn't get the profit anyway, it would go to their corporate masters. Oh, why couldn't Marx have been right?”
Robbie, sounding honestly bewildered, said, “I don't know. Why?”
“Socialism, for a clever man,” Mr. Nimrin told him, “is a license to steal. Capitalism is a license for capitalists to steal. As the name suggests, you first need capital.”
“Eighty thousand dollars is a start,” Josh told him, to get the conversation back on track.
Mr. Nimrin considered him, and his proposition. “I will make an agreement with you,” he decided. “If you will stay in your places, if you will do nothing to cause suspicion and nothing to interfere with the mission, I will do my very best—now that you have so kindly motivated me—my very best to keep you both alive and unscathed through the operation and beyond. But, if you do one thing more to put me or yourselves or the mission at risk, I will simply take Mrs. Rheingold's silver, packed into this capacious vehicle, which has a surprising resale value for collectors, and disappear into the west, leaving you to explain to your friend Andrei Levrin why I departed and why you shouldn't be terminated at once.”
“It's a deal,” Josh said. “Mitch? Tell him it's a deal.”
“Oh, absolutely!” Robbie said, and stuck his hand out in Mr. Nimrin's direction. “It's a definite deal!”
Mr. Nimrin gazed on that hand as though he didn't want to guess where it had been. “This is not a handshake transaction,” he said. “A written statement was offered.”
“That's right,” Josh said, as Robbie withdrew the offending hand. Looking around, Josh said, “What do I write it on? One of these grocery bags?”
“If you will look into the grocery bags,” Mr. Nimrin told him, “you will find a package of stationery.”
“Oh. Okay.”
While Josh rooted around among onions and frozen orange juice cans, Robbie said, “Stationery? Why's that?”
“Mrs. Rheingold writes letters to the editor,” Mr. Nimrin said, “and prefers not to use letterhead, to appear more democratic.”
Josh came up with it, a plastic-wrapped package of lilac-colored stationery and matching envelopes, as Robbie said, “Do any of them get published?”
“As Mrs. Rheingold tends to write letters to no-longer-existing periodicals,” Mr. Nimrin said, “Collier's, the American Mercury, Godey's Lady's Book, the question of publication never actually arises.”
“Here it is,” Josh said.
“I have a pen,” Mr. Nimrin said, producing it from his inner jacket pocket.
Josh went first. It took a little while to agree on phrasing, but at last he finished writing it, having used half the packet of paper. He signed it and handed it to Robbie, who copied it over onto another lilac page, put his own name at the bottom, and both pages were handed to Mr. Nimrin, who studied them moodily before folding them and putting them and the pen away in the same pocket.
“You know,” Robbie said, “we'd like a lift back to the station, if that's okay.”
Mr. Nimrin glowered at him. “A lift?”
“I don't think you want us wandering around this neighborhood,” Robbie pointed out, “so it's better for everybody if you drive us there.”
Mr. Nimrin didn't like it, but clearly he could see Robbie's point. “Oh, very well,” he said, and faced front.
“Just let me get back to my seat,” Robbie said, but Mr. Nimrin didn't, jerking them forward on purpose, Josh was sure. He unpeeled Robbie from himself, Robbie made it to the left side of the seat, and Mr. Nimrin drove them back through the distressing development toward Sandy Road.
Along the way, Robbie said, “This is really a pretty good car. I'm not surprised collectors want it.”
Josh said, “They used to use them as taxis.”
“Apparently,” Mr. Nimrin said, “they still do.”
33
IN THE TRAIN, ROBBIE SAID, “That was brilliant of you.” Robbie had never complimented Josh before. Pleased, Josh said, “No, it wasn't. It was obvious, after a while.”
“To bribe him?”
“Sure. He got us all into this in the first place, remember, because he was trying to scam some extra profits for himself. And he sounds bitter every time he talks about money.”
“Well, I still think it was brilliant,” Robbie said. “I would never have thought of that in a million years. You know, once, a bunch of years ago, there was one city inspector, he kept coming around, coming around, driving me nuts, I couldn't figure out what he was all about. ‘Oh, dear, I'm afraid you got a problem here, Mitch.’ We were on a first name-last name basis. I was Mitch, he was Mr. Pomeraw. ‘Got a problem there, Mitch.’ Sprinklers, signs, wheelchair access, posted prices, you name it. ‘Got a problem there.’ And we never did, not one violation, because you can't work at the kind of margin we've got and afford to pay fines. But he was distracting me, taking up all my time, driving me crazy. And finally I told a friend of mine about it, and he said, ‘Give him twenty bucks,’ and I said, ‘No, that's not what he wants,’ and he said, ‘Sure it is,’ and I said, ‘I can't offer the man money, he'd be insulted,’ and he said, ‘Give me twenty bucks and let me talk to him,’ so I did, you know, just out of desperation, and a few days later my friend said, ‘Taken care of,’ and I never saw Mr. Pomeraw again. Years ago, never once.” Robbie shook his head. “Amazing what twenty dollars will buy.”
“Then think what eighty thousand dollars will buy,” Josh said. “I think Mr. Nimrin's good at scamming and scheming—”
“We better hope he is.”
“That's right. Because he's the only thing between us and a posthumous life of crime.”
“You know,” Robbie said, and turned away, apparently uneasy, to gaze out the train window at a section of Queens with lumps in it. He seemed awkward, almost embarrassed.
Josh said, “I know what?”
“Part of the deal is,” Robbie said, “we don't do anything else. We just mind our own business, let things go however they go. He made us put that in writing, too.”
Josh nodded, but quizzically. “So?”
“Stealing the uniforms,” Robbie said, “is doing something. In fact, it's trying to queer the deal. Abort the mission. Give the organization a black eye.”
“Mitch,” Josh said, “we can't let the mission happen. The mission is killing a lot of innocent people at Yankee Stadium.”
“I'm just pointing out,” Robbie said. “We made a deal with Nimrin, and from the beginning, we don't mean to keep our side of the bargain.”
“We can't, Mitch.”
“Fine,” Robbie said. “It just makes me wonder, you know, does Nimrin mean to keep his. Are we the only ones lying?”
“He wants the eighty thousand dollars.”
“He did seem eager,” Robbie admitted. “But I wish we had some other little way out. You know, in case old Nimrin's fooling with us, stringing us along.”
“I'd love to find another little way out,” Josh told him. “Any ideas?”
“Not at this particular instant, no.”
34
JOSH HAD LEARNED HE COULD never be sure what would be waiting for him in the apartment when he got home. This time, when he walked into the living room a little after six, a twist of tinfoil in his pocket holding two sleeping pills from Robbie, the place was absolutely full. Tina was there, as expected, leafing inevitably through a New Yorker, but so was Levrin, beside her on the sofa, doing a crossword puzzle in a crossword puzzle magazine in Russian; Cyrillic, anyway. And in the other two armchairs were a pair of thugs, guys with wide necks, wide shoulders, low foreheads and little mean eyes. Also stubble on their jaws you could strike a match on, if you felt suicidal.
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