Money for Nothing by Donald E. Westlake Read Free Book Online

came to see me this week, and told me about it, and it's
big
trouble. So I have to tell you about it."
    She turned the bankbook this way and that. "What do they want you to do?"
    "I'm not sure yet. Last weekend, they had people staying in our apartment, I don't know who, I never saw them. And right now there's a bag with ten thousand dollars in cash under my pillow, that's supposed to be gone by the time I get back. And—"
    "Under your
pillow
?"
    "That's where he told me to put it."
    "The man that started the scam."
    "No, there's two of them."
    "I'm not getting this," she said.
    "The man that gave me the bankbook is my control," Josh explained. "His name is Levrin. The other one, that started the scam, is Mr. Nimrin. And
he
says, if Levrin finds out I was never really a sleeper at all, his people will kill us both, Mr. Nimrin and me, him for punishment and me for security."
    He watched her, expecting a reaction, astonishment, fear,
something
, but all she did was watch him back, as she took another bite out of that Fig Newton. Slowly, she lowered her frown to the bankbook in her hand. She turned it over. She riffled its pages. She read every word and every number on every page. She raised her frown to focus on him. "Did you have the graphics people put this together, at the agency?"
    "What?" He couldn't believe it. "No! For what?"
    "As a joke."
    The finger he pointed at the bankbook trembled. "That's no joke," he said. "Go on their website. Read the
Washington Post
."
    "I could, you know."
    "Do! Do!"
    She considered him, considered the bankbook, then said, "These people are real."
    "Yes. Yes."
    "And there were people in our apartment last weekend."
    "Yes."
    "And you put a bag of money under your pillow."
    "I suppose it's still there," Josh said.
    She thought about it. For quite some time, she communed with the clapboard. Then she sighed and faced him and said, "You can't have anything to do with those people."
    "But if I don't," he told her, "they'll kill me. I mean, Mr. Nimrin was very clear on that."
    Stubbornly, she shook her head. "I believe you, you somehow got into this mess—"
    "Just stupid, I was just stupid."
    "You wouldn't do anything
this
elaborate, just for a joke."
    "Of course not!"
    "But you can't do it," she said. "They can make threats all they want. You just can't help them."
    "That's what I've been trying to think about," he said. "What are my choices? What can I do? I thought, maybe take the forty thousand dollars out of that account, and the three of us go to Canada and change our names. I bet I could get an ad agency job in Toronto."
    "No, Josh," she said. "You're not somebody who lives on the run. You're not a fugitive, you're not the type."
    "Then what else do I do?"
    "Go to the police. The FBI."
    "Mr. Nimrin says I'm being watched, so they'd probably grab me before I could get to the police, or the FBI. And if I
do
go to them, what do I say? There are spies in New York. Everybody knows there's spies in New York. What are they doing? I don't know. Mr. Nimrin says the FBI would probably think I'm just a turncoat trying to turn back, lost my nerve after I was activated."
    "But you can tell them the truth!"
    "What's the truth?" he asked her. "I cashed the checks for seven years. Are they going to believe I never found out who was paying me, never worried about it, just cashed the checks?"
    "It really wasn't very smart," she said.
    "It was the easiest thing to do," he said. "For seven years, it was easy. Money for nothing."
    She shook her head. "But why
you
? Why did they pick you?"
    "I have no idea," he said, because the one thing he couldn't tell her was his early history as a loudmouth barroom radical. "Just the luck of the draw," he said.
    She thought about it Now she, too, studied the white clapboard across the way, while Josh studied her face, realizing how important that face was to him, how important their life together was, how little he'd really needed that thousand dollars a month over the