Dortmunder gave her an offended look. “Yeah, we are,” he said. “Why would we want the stuff?”
“All right,” she said crisply, either giving him the benefit of the doubt or choosing brisk explanation as the quickest way to get rid of these noncustomers. “Clearly,” she said, “you don’t know anything about the world of diving.”
“We’re just starting out,” Dortmunder reminded her. “I told you that, remember?”
“You can’t do it without an instructor,” she said, “and it’s pretty clear you don’t have an instructor.”
Dortmunder said, “Why can’t we just read up on it in a book?”
“Because,” she told him, “there are only two ways you can dive. Either with an accredited instructor right there beside you, or with your certification that you’ve taken and passed the three-day introductory course.”
Kelp said, “You know, you’re not supposed to drive a car without a license, too, but I bet some people do.”
She gave him a severe look and shook her head. From a sunny happy healthy young woman she had segued with amazing suddenness into the world’s most disapproving Sunday School teacher. “It doesn’t work quite the same way,” she said, sounding pleased about that. Pointing at the display of tanks, she said, “I’ll sell you as many of those as you want. But they’re empty. And the only place you can get them filled is an accredited dive shop. And they won’t fill them unless you show your certification or agree to have an instructor go with you.” Her look of satisfaction was pretty galling. “Diving or walking, gentlemen,” she said, “you will not want to go very far underwater, or for very long, with empty tanks. If you’ll excuse me?” And she turned on her heel and went off to sell a $350 Dacor Seachute BCD to a deeply tanned Frenchman with offensively thick and glossy hair.
Leaving, slinking away, clumping morosely down the wide stairs toward Paragon’s street level with their tails between their legs, Dortmunder said, “Okay. We gotta getta guy.”
SIXTEEN
It was raining. Doug Berry, owner and proprietor and sole full-time employee of South Shore Dive Shop in Islip, Long Island, sat alone in his leaky shingle shed built out on its own wooden dock over the waters of the Great South Bay, and read travel brochures about the Caribbean. Steel drum calypso music chimed from the speakers tucked away on the top shelves behind the main counter, sharing space with the Henderson cold-water hoods and the mask-and-snorkel sets. The rickety side walls of the structure were decorated with posters distributed by various manufacturers in the diving field, all showing happy people boogieing along underwater with the assistance of that manufacturer’s products. From the fish net looped below the ceiling were hung shells, ship models and various pieces of diving equipment, either the real things or miniatures. In a front corner, facing the door, stood an old used store-window dummy dressed in every possible necessity and accessory the well-turned-out diver could possibly want.
Outside was more of Doug Berry’s empire. The dock, old and shaky, rotting planks nailed to rotting pilings, was three feet wider than the shed, which was built flush to the right edge of the dock, leaving the three feet on the left for an aisle back to the eighteen feet of additional dock extending out into the bay beyond the rear of the shed. Piled on this dock, under gray or green tarps, were spare air tanks and gasoline tanks and other equipment, all chained against thievery. Tied up on the left side of the dock, also under a tarp, was Doug Berry’s Boston Whaler, with its 235-horse Johnson outboard. The compressor from which air tanks were filled was also out there, under its own shiny blue plastic tarp.
On the landward side of Doug Berry’s domain was the gravel width of customer parking area, containing at the moment only Berry’s custom-packaged black (with blue and silver trim) Ford pickup, with the inevitable bumper sticker on the back: DIVERS GO DEEPER. Beyond the parking area was the potholed blacktop driveway leading out past the marine motor dealership and the wholesale fish company to Merrick Road. All of this was Doug Berry’s, and there he sat, in the middle of his realm, dreaming about the Caribbean.
Yeah, that was the place to be. No goddamn April showers down there. Just warm sun, warm air, warm sand, warm turquoise water. A fella with Doug Berry’s looks and training and skills could…
… rot on the beach.
There he went again, dammit. Doug Berry’s worst flaw, as far as he himself was concerned, was his inability to ignore reality. He’d like to be able to fantasize himself into the dive king of the Caribbean, the bronze god in flippers, slicing through the emerald waters, rescuing beautiful heiresses, discovering buried treasure, either joining pirates or foiling pirates, he’d like to sit here in this miserable shack on this rainy no-business day and dream himself two thousand miles south and twenty degrees warmer, but the reality bone in his head just wouldn’t ever give him a break.
The fact was, guys whose total assets were youth, health, good looks, and an advanced diving certificate were not in exactly short supply in the Caribbean basin. (The pestiferous phrase “dime a dozen” kept circling through Doug Berry’s irritated head, above the aborted fantasies.) And when, in addition, the fellow also already had a couple of clouds over his head—charged with (but not convicted of) receiving stolen goods, for instance—and when he’s already been ejected from the two largest and most prestigious licensing associations in the field, PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) and NAUI (National Association of Underwater Instructors), and when in fact he was now found acceptable only by DIPS (Diving Instructors Professional Society), the newest and smallest and least picky association around, his smart move—no, his only move—was to stay right here in Islip, do a moderate summertime business with college kids and Fire Islanders, do a miserable wintertime business selling equipment to people going away on vacations (there was no way to compete more directly with the big outfits, furnished with their own indoor swimming pools), supplement his livelihood with carpentry and clamming, stock his shelves as much as possible with goods that fell off the back of the delivery truck, and sit here in the rain trying to dream about the Caribbean.
Doug Berry, twenty-seven years old. He used to have a hobby; now, the hobby has him.
Movement beyond the rain-streaked front window made him look up from Aruba—tan sand, pale blue sky, aquamarine sea, no rain—to see a vaguely familiar car coming to a stop out there next to his pickup. It was a Chevy Impala, the color of a diseased lime. Its windshield wipers stopped, and then three of its four doors opened and three men wearing hats and raincoats climbed out, flinching as though water were poisonous.
Squinting through the streaky window, Doug finally recognized one of the three: the driver, a bent-nose type named Mikey Donelli. Or maybe Mikey Donnelly. Doug had never been certain if the accent was on the first syllable or the second, so he couldn’t be sure if Mikey were Irish or Italian. Not that it mattered, really; Doug and Mikey had a business-only relationship, and the business would be the same wherever Mikey’s forebears hailed from.
Mikey was, in fact, the provider of those stolen goods Doug was alleged to have received, and of a lot of other stolen goods as well. Given the realities of the South Shore Dive Shop, Mikey was just about the company’s most important supplier.
But who were the other two? Doug had never met any of Mikey’s associates and was just as glad of it. This pair walked with their hands in their raincoat pockets, chins tucked in low, hat brims pulled down over their eyes as though they were extras in a Prohibition movie. Mikey led the way from the car to the door as Doug got to his feet, closed the Caribbean brochure, and tried to put a ready-for-business expression on his face. But what was Mikey doing here? And who were the two guys with him?
Doug spent most of his life just slightly afraid. At the moment, it was up one notch above normal.
Mikey came into the shop first, followed by his friends. “Whadaya say, Dougie?” Mikey said.
“Hi, Mikey,” Doug said. No one else on Earth had ever even thought to call him Doug
ie. He hated it, but how can you tell somebody named Mikey—particularly a tough somebody named Mikey—that you don’t like to be called Dougie? You can’t.
All three of his visitors looked around at the shelves, the two strangers with the curiosity of people who’d never been in a dive shop in their lives before—which Doug could well believe—and Mikey with a kind of professional interest. “Gee, Dougie,” he said, “you haven’t moved much product, have you, kid?” He was probably the same age as Doug, within a year or two, but he called him Dougie and “kid.”
“It’s just the beginning of the season,” Doug explained. “Things’ll pick up.”
“You know, kid,” Mikey said, “it could be, what you could use is a nice burglary. You gotta be insured, huh?”
Oh, no. Doug was living on the edge of disaster as it was, and he knew it. False burglaries for the insurance were exactly the way to integrate a state prison, a goal Doug had never held for himself. “Not just yet, Mikey,” he said, trying to produce a cool and untroubled grin. “If I ever need anything like that, you’ll be the guy I call. You know that.”
“Sure, kid,” Mikey said and grinned, spreading his hands as though to say naturally you’ll come to me. With that round tough face and lumpy nose and curly black hair and those penetrating dark eyes, Mikey could be just as easily Italian or Irish, Irish or Italian. Doug had no idea why it mattered to him to know what Mikey was, but it did. Maybe because the question was essentially unanswerable.
Now Mikey turned to his companions, saying, “I wanna introduce you a couple guys. This is John and this is Andy. That’s Dougie. He runs this place.”
“How are you,” said Doug, nodding at them, not liking the flat emotionless way they both studied him.
“Fine,” said the one called John. “You got the certification, huh?”
That was a surprising question. “Sure,” Doug said. “I couldn’t run the dive shop unless I did.” And he gestured to the sticker in the bottom right of the front window: DIPS.
“Dips,” said the one called Andy in a thoughtful tone of voice. “I don’t think I know that one.”
Surprised that somebody like Andy would know any of diving’s professional associations, Doug said defensively, “It’s a new group, very lively, very forward-looking. The best, I think. That’s why I went with them.”
With a raucous laugh, Mikey said, “Also, Dougie, they’d take you, don’t forget.”
Doug was offended, and for the moment forgot his fear. Looking hard at Mikey, he said, “It wasn’t exactly that way, Mikey. What have you been telling these friends of yours, anyway?”
“Hey, take it easy, Dougie,” Mikey said, laughing again, but putting his hands up mock defensively. He’s afraid! Doug thought with astonishment, as Mikey went on, saying, “All I said to Andy and John, maybe you were the guy could help with a little problem they got. I’m not in it at all, okay? It’s strictly between you and them.”
Doug, pushing his unexpected advantage, said, “What’s between me and them?”
“Why don’t you guys talk it over?” Mikey said, backing toward the door, grinning at everybody. “I’m just John Alden here, right? Dougie, I can guarantee these guys, Andy and John’ll treat you straight. Guys, Dougie here is a hundred percent.” Waving generally, he said, “I gotta couple calls to make in the neighborhood. Be back in fifteen, twenty minutes, okay?”
“Sure, that’s good,” the one called John said. He nodded at Mikey, but his brooding eyes were on Doug.
“See you, guys,” Mikey said, and reached for the doorknob. But then he pointed playfully at Andy and said, “Remember, if it works out…”
Andy nodded as though this reminder was unnecessary. “Don’t worry, Mikey,” he said. “You’ve got your finder’s fee.”
“Great,” Mikey said. His grin was bigger and bigger. “I love to get friends together,” he said, and pulled open the door at last and left.
They all watched out through the window as Mikey slogged through the rain to his diseased-lime Impala and climbed in. After a few seconds, the windshield wipers started, and then the Impala backed away in a semicircle and drove out toward Merrick Road. And they were alone.
Doug looked at his unexpected visitors, wondering what this was all about. More stolen goods? He had to be very careful here, dealing with strangers; there was such a thing as entrapment.
My God, yes! Suppose the cops had the goods on Mikey for something or other—Doug had no idea what Mikey’s activities were beyond the finding of goods that had fallen off trucks, but he was sure those activities must be wide-ranging and far from legal—suppose Mikey had got himself caught, and the cops had offered him a deal if he’d turn somebody else in. Didn’t they do that all the time? They did.
Okay, in that case, who would Mikey choose to betray? Some other tough guy like himself, who’d grown up with him and knew all about him and knew where he lived? Or would he choose Doug Berry, a guy he barely knew, who wasn’t connected to anything that Mikey thought important?
These guys didn’t look like cops, But they wouldn’t, would they? Giving the pair a very critical and cautious look, Doug said, “You need some help with a diving problem?”
If he’d expected a no to that question—and he had—he was both disappointed and surprised, because the one called John turned and said, “That’s it, okay. A diving problem.”
“You do?”
“Yeah,” John said. “Andy and me, we got to go underwater, and we never did that before, and it turns out it’s not so simple like we thought.”
Doug just couldn’t get this straight. “You really do want to dive?”
“Walk,” Andy said. “We wanna walk in from the shore to where it’s fifty feet deep.”
Doug looked out the side window at the rain-pocked gray waters of the Great South Bay. “Around here?”
“Somewhere else,” John said.
“Where?”
But John spread his hands and said, “We got to talk first, you know? We got to know we’re all on the same team, then we’ll talk about where.”
Andy said, “You see, Dougie, John and—”
“Doug,” Doug said.
They both frowned at him. Andy said, “I thought Mikey said you were Dougie.”
“That’s what he calls me,” Doug agreed. “Everybody else calls me Doug.”
They looked at each other and came to some sort of decision. Nodding briskly, Andy said, “Got it. Okay, Doug, here’s the story. John and me, we got to go into a body of water, like a lake—”
“Freshwater, you mean,” Doug suggested.
“Yeah,” Andy said. “Down at the bottom of this lake, there’s a box we want. A big box. So we got to get to it, tie a rope on, pull it out.”
John said, “We thought it should be kind of simple. But then we went to a store to buy the stuff, and it turns out there’s this secret society or something, nobody gets to go underwater unless they know the password.”
“We have no fatalities in the sport in the United States,” Doug told him, “and that’s why. Safety first.”
“I believe in safety first,” John said. “I don’t want to go anywhere that it isn’t safety first. So maybe this is okay after all. We can’t pull the job without a pro.”
“Not if it’s underwater,” Doug agreed.
“But,” John said, “we need a very particular special pro. Not just any pro.”
“Not the pro in just any dive shop you see around,” Andy said, expanding on the idea.
Here comes the illegality, Doug thought. Entrapment. Temptation. They’re probably both wired. Be very careful about everything you say. “Mm,” he said.
“So we asked around,” John went on, “among people we know, particular people we know…”
“And I happened to know Mikey,” Andy said. “We’ve been in trade together a couple times. And he said you were exactly the guy we were looking for.”
“So here we are,” John said.
“Mm,” Doug
said.
They all looked at one another for a minute. Finally, Andy said, “Don’t you wanna know what we want?”
“I thought you were going to tell me,” Doug said, trying not to sound too eager to commit anything illegal.
Andy and John looked at each other again, and then John nodded and said, “Okay. Here’s what we want. We want the expertise and the equipment so we can go down into this res— this lake and get this box. That’s what we want.”
Doug said, “Mm.”
Again they all stood around gaping at one another, and this time Andy said, “You want to do it?”
Doug had to ask the question somehow, without suggesting he was open to criminal considerations. Tone flat, he said, “What’s illegal about it?”
They looked surprised. “Illegal?” John said. “Unless you’re gonna sell us stuff you got from Mikey, I don’t know what’s illegal about what we want here.”
“You’re the pro, that’s all,” Andy said.
Doug shook his head, bewildered, but still afraid to expose himself to risk. “Then why me?” he asked. “I mean, it’s not that I’m—that I do illegal things or anything. I’m not suggesting here that I’m open to uh, um, criminal enterprises or anything, but why did you need a special pro and all that?”
They stared at him, as bewildered as he was. John said, “Criminal enterprises?”
But then Andy laughed and clapped his hands together and said, “John, he’s afraid we’re wired!”
John looked surprised, then offended. “Wired? You mean like FBI men? Do we look like FBI men?”
“Well, you wouldn’t, would you?” Doug said. “Not that it matters, I’m not proposing any, uh…”
“Criminal enterprise,” John suggested.
Andy said, “Look, Doug, somebody’s gotta start by trusting somebody, so I’m gonna start by trusting you. You got an honest face. See, there’s a fella we know, a long time ago he went to jail, and he just got out now, and it turns out before he went inside he buried some money—”
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