Free Money for Nothing by Donald E. Westlake

know he will not fail me now, no matter what unimaginable perils he must go through to return to Elgadaare.' And even as she spoke, in the forests of Mahrsohn on faroff Hilvet V, Gahorn himself urged his fleet Silverdart onward. 'Hi!' he cried. 'The portal, Silverdart! We must not fail!' And the powerful six-legged steed galloped up the quegs."
    By this point, Josh was regretting the lack of a laugh-track almost as much as the lack of Mr. Nimrin. Looking around for the thirtieth time, the only one in this little isolated group, this separate world, not mesmerized by Volume VII, he saw, shambling down an aisle in his direction, then slowly and painfully turning off, a fat elderly woman with a walker. As she turned leftward into a side aisle, the right forefinger on the walker twitched.
    Poor woman. Josh looked back at David L. Fogware, for whom the implications of wedding Arthurian romance with Buck Rogers in the twenty-fifth century would never exhaust themselves.
    He thought, That was Mr. Nimrin.
     
14
     
    SINCE HE WAS ALREADY AT THE outer edge of the enchanted forest, Josh didn't disturb anybody when he rose and sidled away, in cautious pursuit of the old lady with the walker. He reached the aisle where she'd turned off, and there she was, straight ahead, bumping along, just reaching the far end of the aisle, where an empty armchair stood beside a small round table. Making the turn, she/he glanced back at him, then dropped a sheet of paper on the table and continued on out of sight.
    Josh hurried down the aisle, slid into the seat, and looked at the sheet of paper. It was a copy of a newspaper item, datelined July 25, yesterday, apparently from a small-town paper:
     
HANGING DEATH LABELED SUSPICIOUS
    by Edward Tassel
    Moore, Jul 25 — The discovery of the hanged body of Robert Van Bark, 34, of Moore and New York City, suspended from the rafters of a barn adjacent to his property on Wiggins Road, has been labeled suspicious by state police investigators.
    The body of Van Bark, a weekend resident of the area the last four years and a computer technician in New York City, was discovered by his wife, Wendy, 31, at six-thirty P.M., when she could not find him in or near their home when it was time to return to their apartment in New York City.
     
    The piece went on for another three paragraphs of incidental detail and fuzzy speculation. Josh read it all, wondering
why
he was reading it all, then sat there for a few minutes, watching the other customers and wondering when the old lady would come back. Surely that was why he'd been directed to stay here.
    But it wasn't the old lady who came back. It was an overweight workman in paint-spattered bib overalls, a full black beard, thick black hair, a black canvas backpack, and a Benjamin Moore cap worn backward, carrying a short metal ladder on his right shoulder, who paused for one significant second in front of Josh and then moved on.
    Startled, Josh almost forgot to grab the copy of the clipping before he stood to follow the workman down the maze of aisles. Along the way, he realized the ladder was made from the same pieces that had once been the walker. And the old lady's dress and wig would be in that backpack.
    The workman took the down escalator, Josh trailing, and went out to Broadway. He turned right, Josh well behind him, and they made their way into the pocket park where Broadway crosses Columbus Avenue. There the workman found an empty bench and settled wearily onto the far end of it, leaning his ladder against the armrest.
    As Josh approached, the workman made a quick moving-away gesture while looking elsewhere. When Josh paused, not sure what he meant by that, he impatiently pointed down at the seat, then did the move-away again.
    Oh; sit on the bench, but at the other end. Josh did so, and Mr. Nimrin looked out at all the noisy traffic and the big blocky buildings of Lincoln Center and said, "You wished to see me. But I wished to see you. And so we are