Authors: Donald E Westlake
Rolling onto his stomach, Josh stuck his legs behind him through the open window and snake-crawled backward until he could drop into the basement. He paused to shut and latch the window, so it would look normal from outside, then turned to study where he was.
This was not the entire basement, but a very large room in it, extended from back to front at this end of the house, with a plaster interior wall to the right, creating a space forty feet wide and thirty feet deep. Much of the area was empty, but in the front corner were many wooden crates and cardboard boxes piled high.
Josh went over, to see if the boxes might contain anything of use, and they were all guns and hand grenades and ammunition and even small hand-launched rockets. Ordnance, this was called. Ordnance, two or three truck-loads of it, all delivered through that basement window. What a lot of plans Levrin and his friends must have.
Josh turned away, wanting none of this stuff. The Beretta was more weapon than he'd ever had before, except for his rifle in the army, that he'd mostly ignored, occasionally cleaned, sometimes had to march with, and only twice (on the range) fired.
A closed door in the plaster wall led to another room, almost as large, this one containing a lot of stored stuff that probably should have been thrown away; old trunks, old armchairs and lamps, old television sets. In the middle of this room, an open wooden staircase led up. At the top, a closed wooden door was not locked. Josh listened, his ear at the door, then turned the knob and pushed it slowly open.
A hall. Extending left and right, it had a dark runner carpet, dark photos and prints on the walls, sconces with pink glass shades shaped like tulips. At the left end, it stopped at closed dark wood double doors. At the right end, a corner of kitchen could be seen. There were a few other doorways on both sides.
Josh moved leftward, wanting to know what was behind the closed double doors, but then he became aware of a voice, somewhere ahead of him.
Levrin? Low, conversational, coming from a room ahead on the right. Levrin and then, suddenly interrupting, Tina, much louder, angrier. Talking that other language of theirs. Tina's harangue abruptly ended, with the sound of a slap, and Levrin began again, just as calm and conversational as before.
Josh tiptoed forward, Beretta again in his hand. The first door on the right was closed, the voices coming from farther on. The second door was open. As Levrin talked, his voice seemed to move around the room. Clutching the Beretta to his chest, Josh inched forward until he could see around the door frame and into the room.
Just the two of them in there. Her left profile to Josh and the door, Tina Pausto was seated on a wooden chair without arms, her own handcuffed arms behind the chair's back, so she was trapped there. Her traveling clothes had been removed from her, so that she was now barefoot, in bra and panties. Her expression was very angry, but even in that first second, Josh could see that the anger was a failed attempt to hide terror.
This was a small sitting room, with a few divans and overstuffed chairs and end tables. Levrin roamed among them, not bothering to look at Tina as he talked. His back was to Josh at this moment as he moved, waving languidly a box of wooden matches in his left hand. Josh could see on Tina's arm and leg where he'd been burning her.
Fortunately, this time he did think before he acted, because his initial impulse was to step into the doorway and shoot Levrin in the back. But that was the wrong thing to do. The house was full of dangerous enemies, who would be alerted by a pistol shot. In any event, he was not here to rescue Tina Pausto, he was here to find Eve and Jeremy.
In his strolling, Levrin turned, bringing himself closer to Tina and angling so he would in an instant see the doorway. His right hand was reaching for the box of matches in his left.
Josh ducked back out of the doorway. As he heard the scratch of match on striker, he turned to go the other way, past the basement door again. He needed to find Eve and Jeremy, and very soon.
If they were alive, where would they be?
BEFORE THIS HALL REACHED the kitchen, a second hall led to the left, broad at first, then narrower, and beyond the narrow section was visible the front door. The narrow section was a staircase, facing the front of the house. Josh was halfway up the stairs before he thought to wonder why he believed Eve and Jeremy would be on the second or even the third floor; he simply did. They wouldn't stash people downstairs, they'd stash them upstairs, he just knew that.
At the top of the stairs a hall went left and right, but straight ahead was a broad arched doorway to another sitting room, this one with a line of windows across the far wall and a distant view over the scrub to Long Island Sound. Closed doors were along both lengths of hall, and he'd decided to start with those on the left when a cracked old voice said, "Oh, Charles, I'm glad you're here."
He jumped, frightened out of his wits, and saw the withered old lady come out of the sitting room, smiling, gripping her ivory-handled black cane, holding a lorgnette to eyes like oysters. She was shriveled to shorter than five feet, surely less than a hundred pounds, in a long-sleeve black dress too large for her. Maroon slippers on her feet seemed as old as she was.
The Beretta! Quickly half-turning away from her, he pocketed the gun as he said, "Oh, hello. Mrs. Rheingold, yes, hello."
"Oh, don't be formal with me, Charles," she said, with a ghastly little playful smile. "We've been first names with one another for ever so long." That gesture must be what she remembered of how to curtsey, or as much of it as she could still do. "Charles, Miriam," she said, lilting, with what was probably not supposed to be a smirk, "Miriam, Charles."
"Miriam, of course," Josh said. "Lovely to see you again."
"Come in, come in," she said, waving the lorgnette at the sitting room behind her. "I do hate to stand, you know. Come in."
No choice. "Well," he said, "just for a minute."
The style of the sitting room was even older than Mrs. Rheingold. Fabric balls dangled from amber lampshades, faces were carved into the leading edges of chair arms, a Persian carpet was casually tossed over a side table, and dark footstools were scattered everywhere, like markers in a boardgame.
Miriam Rheingold tottered toward a peacock-tail-backed throne near the windows, while jabbing with her cane toward a lesser armchair nearby and saying, "Sit there, sit there, dear Charles." She dropped like a bag of kindling into the throne, with a great whooshing sigh, then leaned forward to poke at something on the carpeted floor with her cane, saying, "
Do
sit down. Ah, there it is." And she leaned back, smiling more or less in Josh's direction.
Seating himself, looking nervously toward the hall, Josh said, "Well, just for a minute."
"I do love this room in summer," she said, and waved her lorgnette at the windows, or the view. "North, you know. It never gets too hot in here."
It was in fact very hot, though dry. Josh said, "Beautiful view."
"Fewer sails than in my day," she said. 'Terrible little motors, so unattractive."
"Yes. Well, I should—"
"We'll just have tea. So refreshing."
"I really should—"
"You rang, muddum?"
The voice was familiar.
That's
what she'd been poking at on the floor with her cane! Wishing the Beretta were in his hand now, no matter what the old lady might think of it — worse than motorboats, probably, pistols would be — Josh half-turned, and approaching from the doorway was, of course, Mr. Nimrin, obsequiously round-shouldered. His eyes never looked away from Mrs. Rheingold, but Josh could feel them burning into his own eyes just the same.
"Yes, Roderick," the old lady said. "See who's come to visit. Young Charles. It's been ever so long."
"Yuss, muddum," Mr. Nimrin said. The hands clasped before his crotch didn't tremble a bit.
"We'll just have tea, I think, Roderick," Mrs. Rheingold announced. "And ask cook if she has any of those cucumber sandwiches."
Josh said, "I really can't—"
"Muddum," Mr. Nimrin said, "I was in fact looking for young Charles when I received your summons." Now gazing at Josh, those eyes as blank as fresh-laid tiles, he said, "You're wanted on the telephone, sir. I'll be happy to show you where the instrument is."
"Thank you, uh, Roderick," Josh said, rising. He felt a formal bow was the proper leave-taking ritual with Mrs. Rheingold; presenting it, he said, "It was lovely to chat with you again, Miriam. But duty calls."
"Don't be a stranger," she said gaily, waving her lorgnette, as Josh followed Mr. Nimrin into the hall and around the corner out of sight of the sitting room, where both spun and stuck their pistols into each other's bellies.
"TO BE SHOT IN THE STOMACH is a terrible thing," Mr. Nimrin whispered.
"But not immediately fatal," Josh whispered. "If one of us gets shot, so does the other."
"You should not be here!" Mr. Nimrin was so furious the gun in Josh's stomach trembled with his anger.
"Where are my wife and child?"
"Sssh! Come back away from the doorway, she has better hearing than you think."
They sidled together down the corridor, each with a lefthanded grip on the other's right elbow, both pressing the pistol tight against flesh. They moved fifteen feet along the hall that way, like students of a very peculiar form of ballroom dancing, and then Mr. Nimrin stopped and released Josh's elbow long enough to push open the door beside him. "In here, we can talk."
They two-stepped their way in, both holding the position, and Josh pushed the door shut behind him with his heel. A guestroom, unmade bed, hunting prints on walls.
"You don't want to shoot, young Charles," Mr. Nimrin said, low and angry, with nothing of Roderick at all about him. "The noise would bring them all."
"I should think," Josh said, jabbing the Beretta a little harder into the other man's midsection, "you have enough stomach there to muffle the sound, if I have to do it."
Mr. Nimrin's brows beetled, they actually did; astonishing, seen from this close. "This experience, Josh," he snarled, "has not improved you."
'Toss your gun on the bed," Josh told him, "or I'll find out for myself how sound-deadening your stomach can be."
Instead of obeying, Mr. Nimrin tried to rear back so he could look down at the Beretta; but Josh stayed with him. Exasperated, Mr. Nimrin said, "Where did you
get
that ridiculous toy, to begin with?"
"From the guy I killed in the apartment over the garage."
That stopped Mr. Nimrin. All else forgotten, he stared into Josh's eyes, the two of them as close as the Smith Bros, Mr. Nimrin trying to read if Josh were lying. His own eyes widened. "And what have we awakened here?" he asked; of himself, presumably.
"Now," Josh suggested.
Without further argument, Mr. Nimrin swung his right arm wide and released his own small revolver, which bounced with a dull thud on the mattress on the bed.
Josh stepped quickly to the bed, grabbed the revolver with his left hand, put it in his left pocket, felt the weight of it tug downward on his pants, and turned back to the scowling Mr. Nimrin. "Why don't you sit in that chair," he said, "and maybe put your hands in your lap."
"'Keep your hands where I can see them,' is the cliche," Mr. Nimrin told him sourly; but he sat on the wooden chair next to the elegant ancient marble-topped dresser, and he did place his hands, palm up, in his lap.
Josh said, "Where's my wife and child?"
"Upstairs."
"I knew it!"
It irritated Mr. Nimrin to be confused. "What?"
"Nothing. How do I get there?"
"You don't," Mr. Nimrin told him. "You told me to earn my money, and I am attempting to do so."
Josh took a step backward, sat on the bed, and said, "How?"
"You're all still alive," Mr. Nimrin pointed out. "I am doing my best to arrange things, but this is a delicate moment. The operation, as you well know, is in a shambles."
"I don't care about the operation," Josh told him. "How do I get to my family?"
"They are upstairs," Mr. Nimrin repeated, "in a room, with the door locked, and with Hugo on guard outside." He made a contemptuous flicking gesture at the Beretta. "You wouldn't want to confront Hugo with that firecracker."
"I'll use your gun," Josh told him. "Maybe I'll use both. They've got to be more effective than firing blanks." Looking around, he said, "Is there a key to this room? So I can lock you in instead of shooting you."
"Don't get
too
impetuous," Mr. Nimrin advised. "Hugo is seated in a chair at the top of the stairs. He is a marksman, and I suspect you are not. If he sees you, he will shoot you dead long before you get close enough to harm him with
either
of those guns."
Josh thought about that, and saw that, up to a point, Mr. Nimrin was right. He said, 'This is a big house. There's got to be more than one staircase up."
"Oh, come," Mr. Nimrin said, aggravated again. "You're going to
sneak up
on Hugo? A man who has infiltrated armies, gone through the lines while a major battle raged all around him, killed a general in his villa while surrounded by four thousand enemy troops?"
Josh said, "What's
your
idea?"
"Andrei Levrin," Mr. Nimrin said, "as you and I both know all too well, is an idiot and a buffoon. Nevertheless, he is in charge in this house at this moment. None of us will accomplish a thing without his cooperation."
"Cooperation!"
"Would you
listen
to me? Once Andrei gets those miserable uniforms back—"
"What? Get them
back
?"
"It turns out," Mr. Nimrin said, 'Tina Pausto took them."
This so astonished Josh that he nearly blurted out the truth. Stopping himself, slamming the brakes on his tongue, he merely shook his head; then, when he felt it safe to open his mouth, he said, "That's crazy. She's one
of you
."
"A mercenary, no more." Mr. Nimrin shrugged. "Well, most of us are, I suppose. Idealism doesn't last long in this business. But loyalty to your group, to your mission, to your comrades, that
is
supposed to last."