Drowned Hopes d-7

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Wait a second,” Dortmunder said. “We’re friends of—”

  The truck lunged forward, suddenly in gear. Dortmunder automatically flinched back as the dirty aluminum side of the truck swept past his nose, about a quarter of an inch away.

  Kelp, behind Dortmunder a pace, cried out helpfully, “Hey! Dummy! Whadaya—!” But the truck was gone, rattling away down Ganesvoort Street, reeling past Florent, tumbling to the corner, swaying around to the right, and out of sight. “Well, now, what the hell was that for?” Kelp demanded.

  “I think he was a little nervous,” Dortmunder said, and a voice behind them growled, “Where’s my truck?”

  They turned and found themselves facing a bullet head on an ICBM body lumpily stuffed into a black shirt and a brown suit. It was as though King Kong were making a break for it, hoping to smuggle himself back to his island disguised as a human being. And, just to make the picture complete, this marvel carried over his shoulder half a cow; half a naked cow, without its fur or head.

  “Tiny!” Dortmunder said inaccurately. “We’re looking for you!”

  “I’m looking for my truck,” said Tiny, for that was indeed the name by which he was known. Tiny Bulcher, the blast furnace that walks like a man.

  Dortmunder, a bit abashed, said, “Your driver, uh, Tiny, he’s a very nervous guy.”

  Tiny frowned, which made his forehead like a children’s book drawing of the ocean. “You spooked him?”

  Kelp said, “Tiny, he was spooked long before we got here. Years before. He never said a word to us.”

  “That’s true,” Dortmunder said.

  Kelp went on, “We just told him we’re your friends, we’re looking for you, and zip, he’s gone.”

  Dortmunder said, “Tiny, I’m sorry if we made trouble.”

  “You’re right to be,” Tiny told him. “You called my place, huh? Talked to Josie?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And she just told you I was down here, huh?”

  “Sure.”

  Tiny looked discontented with this idea. “Somebody calls that girl on the phone, says, ‘Where’s Tiny,’ and she says, ‘Oh, Tiny’s downtown committing a felony right now.’ ”

  “She knows me, Tiny,” Dortmunder pointed out. “You and me met J. C. Taylor together, remember?”

  Kelp added, “We been through the wars together, Tiny, us and J.C. Rescued the nun and everything.”

  Tiny ignored Kelp, saying to Dortmunder, “Josie knows you, does she?” He was the only one in the known universe to call J. C. Taylor “Josie.” “On the phone, she knows you. Could be a cop calls, says, ‘Hello, J.C., this is John Dortmunder, your pal Tiny committing any felonies at this particular moment?’ ‘Oh, sure,’ says Josie.”

  “Come on, Tiny,” Dortmunder said, “J.C. recognized my voice. I didn’t say my name at all, she did. And I said I wanted to get in touch with you right away, so that’s when she told me you were down there. So she did the right thing, okay?”

  Tiny brooded about that. He shifted the half a cow from his right shoulder to the left. “Okay,” he decided. “I trust Josie’s judgment. But what about the truck?”

  Kelp said, “The guy ran off, Tiny. What are we supposed to do, come down here with tranquilizer darts? The guy was very spooked, that’s all. We show up and that’s it, he’s gone.”

  “Well, here’s the situation,” Tiny said. “The situation is, I agreed I’d come down here for a guy, with the guy’s truck and the guy’s driver, and I’d make my way in this place and pick up six sides a beef, on accounta I can do that quick and easy.”

  “You sure can, Tiny,” Kelp said admiringly.

  “And the further idea is,” Tiny said, glowering at the interruption, “I throw a seventh side in the truck and that one goes home with me. A side a beef for a half hour’s work.”

  “Pretty good,” Dortmunder admitted.

  “So the guy’s truck and the guy’s driver run off,” Tiny went on, “so that’s it for his six sides a beef. But”—and he whacked his open palm against the half a cow on his shoulder: spack! — “I got mine.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Dortmunder said. “You wanna get yours, Tiny.”

  “I always get mine,” Tiny told him. “That’s just the way it is. But now what do I do about taking this side home? Sooner or later, I make my way into some more populated parts a town, I’m gonna attract attention.”

  “Gee, Tiny,” Kelp said, “I see what you mean. That’s a real problem.”

  “And I think of it,” Tiny said, “as your problem.”

  Dortmunder and Kelp looked at each other. Kelp shrugged and spread his hands and turned to Tiny to say, “I could argue the point, Tiny, but let’s just say I feel like helping you out. Everybody wait right here.”

  He took a step away but stopped when Tiny said, “Andy.” He turned back and looked alert, and Tiny said, “None of your doctors’ cars, Andy.”

  “But doctors have the best cars around, Tiny,” Kelp explained. “They understand the transitoriness of life, doctors, and they’ve got the money to make things smooth and even along the way. I always put my faith in doctors.”

  “Not this time,” Tiny said, and whacked his cow again. “Me and Elsie here don’t want no cute Porsches and Jaguars. We don’t like that crowded feeling.”

  Kelp sighed, admitting defeat. Then he looked up and down the street, thinking, his eye drawn to the light spilling from Florent. His own eyes lit up, and he grinned at Tiny. “Okay, Tiny,” he said. “What would you and Elsie say to a stretch limo?”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  On the drive north, Kelp at the wheel of the silver Cadillac stretch limo with the New Jersey vanity plate—KOKAYIN—Dortmunder and Tiny on the deeply cushioned rear seats, the half a cow draped in front of them like the mob’s latest victim on top of the bar-and-TV console and the rear-facing plush seats, Dortmunder explained the job: “You remember Tom Jimson.”

  Tiny thought about that. “From inside?”

  “That’s the one,” Dortmunder agreed. “That’s where we both knew him. He was my cellmate awhile.”

  “Nasty poisonous old son of a bitch,” Tiny suggested.

  “You’ve got the right guy,” Dortmunder told him.

  “A snake with legs.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Charming as a weasel and gracious as a ferret.”

  “That’s Tom, okay.”

  “He’d eat his own young even if he wasn’t hungry.”

  “Well, he’s always hungry,” Dortmunder said.

  “That’s true.” Tiny shook his head. “Tom Jimson. He was the worst thing about stir.”

  Looking in the mirror, Kelp said, “Tiny, I never heard you talk like that before. Like there was a guy out there somewhere that worried you.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Tiny frowned massively at this suggestion that another human being might give him pause. “You’re lucky you don’t know the guy,” he said.

  “But I do,” Kelp corrected him. “John introduced me. And I’m with you a hundred percent.”

  “Introduced you?” Tiny was baffled. “How’d he do that?”

  Quietly, Dortmunder said, “They let him go.”

  Tiny switched his frown to Dortmunder. “Let him go where?”

  “Out.”

  “They wouldn’t. Even the law isn’t that stupid.”

  “They did, Tiny,” Dortmunder told him. “On accounta the overcrowding. For a seventieth birthday present.”

  Tiny stared at his cow as though to say do you believe this? He said, “Tom Jimson? He’s out right now? Walking around the streets?”

  “Probably,” Dortmunder said. “He usually comes home pretty late.”

  “Home? Where’s he living?”

  “Well,” Dortmunder said reluctantly, “with me at the moment.”

  Tiny was appalled. “Dortmunder! What does May say?”

  “Nothing good.”

  “The thing is, Tiny,” Kelp said from the front seat, �
��John’s agreed Tom can stay until after the job.”

  Tiny slowly shook his massive head. “This is a Tom Jimson job? Forget it. Stop the car, Andy, me and Elsie’ll walk.”

  “It isn’t like that, Tiny,” Dortmunder said.

  But Tiny was still being extremely negative. “Where Tom Jimson passes by,” he said, “nothing ever grows again.”

  Kelp said, “Tiny, let John tell you the story, okay? It isn’t the way you think. None of us would sign on a Tom Jimson job.”

  Tiny thought that over. “Okay,” he said, “I tell you what I’ll do. I won’t just automatic say no.”

  “Thank you, Tiny,” Dortmunder said.

  “I’ll listen,” Tiny said. “You’ll tell me the story. Then I’ll say no.”

  Dortmunder and Kelp exchanged a glance in the rearview mirror. But there was nothing to do but plow forward, so Dortmunder said, “What this is, it’s a buried stash.” And he went on to explain the background, the reservoir, the circumstances and the split, which should be around a hundred twenty thousand dollars for each of the three in this car.

  “Tom Jimson,” Tiny interjected at that juncture, “has a way of not having any partners left to split with.”

  “We know that about him,” Dortmunder pointed out. “We’ll watch him.”

  “Birds watch snakes,” Tiny said. “But okay, go ahead, tell me the rest of it.”

  So Dortmunder told him the rest of it, and Tiny didn’t interrupt again until the part about going underwater, when he reared around in astonishment and said, “Dortmunder? You’re gonna go diving?”

  “Not diving,” Kelp insisted from up front. “We’re not gonna dive. We’re gonna walk in.”

  “Into a reservoir,” Tiny said.

  Kelp shrugged that away. “We been taking lessons,” he said. “From a very professional guy.”

  “Tiny,” Dortmunder said, getting the narrative back on track, “the idea is, we’ll go down in there, we’ll walk in from the shore, and we’ll pull a rope along with us. And there’ll be a winch at the other end of the rope.”

  “And you,” Kelp explained, “at the other end of the winch.”

  Tiny grunted. Dortmunder said, “When we get to the right place, we dig up the casket, we tie the rope around one of the handles, we give it a tug so you know we’re ready, and then you winch it out. And we walk along with it to keep it from snagging on stuff.”

  Tiny shook his head. “There’s gotta be about ninety things wrong with that idea,” he said, “but let’s just stay with one: Tom Jimson.”

  “He’s seventy years old, Tiny,” Dortmunder said.

  “He could be seven hundred years old,” Tiny said, “and he’d still be God’s biggest design failure. He’d steal the teeth out of your mouth to bite you with.”

  Kelp said, “I gotta admit it, Tiny, you really do know Tom.”

  “Tiny,” Dortmunder said, “I’ll be honest with you.”

  “Don’t strain yourself, John,” Tiny said.

  “With me and Andy down there at the bottom of the reservoir,” Dortmunder told him, “and Tom Jimson up on the shore with the winch and the rope, I’d feel a lot more comfortable in my mind if you were up there with him. And not just to turn the winch.”

  “I think you should have the National Guard up there before you could feel really comfortable in your mind,” Tiny told him, “but I agree. You don’t want to go down in there without insurance.”

  “That’s right,” Dortmunder said. “Will you do it, Tiny?”

  “You can buy a lotta sides of beef with a hundred twenty thousand, Tiny,” Kelp chipped in.

  Tiny brooded, looking at his cow. The thing looked deader and nakeder than ever. “Every time I tie up with you, Dortmunder,” he said, “something turns weird. The last time, you had me dressed like a nun.”

  “We had to get through the cops, Tiny. And that one did work out, didn’t it? We wound up with most of the loot that time, didn’t we? And you wound up with J.C.”

  “And think of it this way,” Kelp said, sounding chipper and positive and gung ho, like a high school basketball coach. “It’s an adventure, kinda, and getting outta the city into the healthy country—”

  “Healthy,” Tiny echoed.

  “—and it’s like a real basic enterprise,” Kelp finished. “Man against the elements!”

  Tiny cocked an eyebrow at the back of Kelp’s head. “Tom Jimson’s an element?”

  “I was thinking of water,” Kelp explained.

  Dortmunder said, “Tiny? I could really use your help on this.”

  Tiny shook his head. “Something just tells me,” he said, “if I sign on to this cockamamie thing, I’m gonna wind up looking like Elsie here.”

  Dortmunder waited, saying nothing more. It was up to Tiny now, and he shouldn’t be pushed. Even Kelp kept quiet, though he looked in the mirror a lot more than he looked out the windshield.

  And finally Tiny sighed. “What the hell,” he said. “If I had any sense, I wouldn’t know you two in the first place.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Midnight. The Dodge Motor Home with the MD plates eased off the county road onto the gravel verge and cut its lights. A moon just rising over the Showangunks gave vague amber illumination, turning into copper the metal-pipe barrier across the dirt side road, glowing softly and almost confidentially on the sign beside that road: NO ADMITTANCE — VILBURGTOWN RESERVOIR AUTHORITY.

  The living room door of the motor home opened and Tiny Bulcher stepped down, carrying a large gimbaled metal cutter. He crossed to the barrier, snipped the padlocked chain holding it shut, lifted the horizontal bar out of its groove, and pivoted it out of the way. Then he waved the metal cutter at the motor home, which drove slowly through the opening onto the dirt road, rocking dangerously as it came. Once it was by and had come to a stop, its brake lights turning the scene briefly dramatic, Tiny put the barrier pipe back in place and reboarded the motor home.

  Inside, Kelp sat at the large bus-type wheel, while Dortmunder and Tom Jimson sat silent, facing each other in the dark living room area. Putting the metal cutter back with a clank on the other tools, Tiny sat in the swivel chair to Kelp’s right, looked out the windshield, and said, “Can you see anything?”

  “From time to time,” Kelp told him. “The moon helps a little.”

  Dortmunder, hearing this conversation, got up from the convertible sofa and moved forward as the motor home rocked like a boat in a heavy sea, inching along the rutted dirt road. Peering over Tiny’s shoulder at the darkness out front, Dortmunder said, “Andy? You can’t see a goddamn thing out there.”

  “I’m doing fine,” Kelp insisted. “If everybody’ll stop distracting me. And you don’t want me to use lights in here.”

  “Nothing against you, Andy,” Tiny said, “but why aren’t we using a driver on this job? Where’s Stan Murch?”

  “We don’t need a driver,” Dortmunder explained, “because we don’t expect to make any getaways. And the more men on the job, the smaller the split for each of us.”

  A cackle sounded from the back. Tiny and Dortmunder exchanged a glance.

  Kelp rolled his window down, letting in a lot of cool damp spring air. “There,” he said. “That’s better.”

  Tiny frowned at him. “What’s better about it?”

  “I can hear when we rub against the bushes,” Kelp explained. “Keeps us on the road.”

  Tiny swiveled slowly around to face Dortmunder. “Thirty thousand is what Stan Murch would cost me,” he said. “Right?”

  “About that,” Dortmunder agreed.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Tiny said, and swiveled front.

  The motor home rocked and swayed through the second-growth forest, Kelp listening to bushes, Tiny and Dortmunder squinting hard as they stared through the windshield, Tom sitting back in the dark by himself, thinking his own thoughts.

  Dortmunder said, “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?” Kelp asked.

  “Ju
st stop,” Tiny told him.

  “If you say so,” Kelp agreed nonchalantly, and stopped with the nose of the motor home half an inch from another metal-pipe barrier.

  Tiny said, “Okay? Do you see it now?”

  Kelp peered out the windshield, gazing too high and too far away. “See what?”

  “He can only hear it,” Dortmunder suggested.

  Tiny shook his head in disgust and got up out of the swivel chair to look for the metal cutter. Kelp leaned his head out the open window beside him, looked around, and at last saw the barbed-wire-topped chain-link fence sketched into the face of the forest, picking up scattered muted highlights from the moon, extending away into nothingness to left and right. “Well, look at that,” he said.

  “We already did,” Dortmunder told him.

  Tiny got out and dispatched this barrier the same way as the first, and the motor home steered slowly, majestically, with all the dignity of a great passenger liner, through the opening in the fence and onto Vilburgtown Reservoir property. Then it stopped and Tiny climbed aboard again, saying, “I could see a bit of it out there. Ahead of us.”

  “A bit of what?” Kelp asked him.

  “The reservoir.”

  “Don’t drive into it,” Dortmunder suggested.

  “He won’t,” Tiny said. “He’ll hear the splash.”

  Ahead, through the trees, as Kelp continued to ease them slowly-forward, tiny winks of gold and saffron showed where moonlight reflected from the restless water of the reservoir. About fifteen feet from the water’s edge they came to a dirt clearing, and Kelp stopped. “There you are,” he said. “Through doubt and scorn, I made my way.”

  Tiny said, “You couldn’t of done it without the bushes.”

  They all emerged from the motor home and went down to the water’s edge to look out across the quietly rippling surface. It looked deep. It didn’t look man-made at all. In the orangey light of the swollen moon just above the mountain-tops, the Vilburgtown Reservoir looked ancient, bottomless, black, menacing. Things must live down in there; long silent things with large eyes and sharp teeth and long bony white arms. “Hmmm,” Dortmunder said.