Drowned Hopes d-7

by Donald E. Westlake

  Which wasn’t rational. The Impala was at least eighteen years old, probably the most ancient vehicle on the lot. The side panels were half rusted out, deep rust pits circled the headlights, and the antenna was a wire coat hanger. It was also one of the biggest cars still in existence, a mastodon, a huge heavy gas guzzler, one third hood, one third trunk, and one third passenger space.

  But the two young mustachios loved it. They stopped looking out at the street so both could examine this beauty at the same time. While one went around to the front, poking and prodding at the bumper to be sure it was solid, the other had Max open the trunk so he could bring a tape measure out of his pocket and confirm the vastness of the interior.

  When Max started the engine and let them take turns behind the wheel—they cared about the steering, that’s all, doing little runs forward and back in the lot, whipping the wheel left and right—Stan decided it was time to interfere. Obviously, Max was prepared to sell these clowns a car, which it would be better if he didn’t do.

  First, Stan went back over to the connecting door, opened it, leaned his head in, and said, “Harriet, would you call the precinct and ask them to run a car by here? Not to stop, just drift by.”

  “Right,” Harriet said, without asking questions, and reached for the phone.

  Stan shut the door, recrossed the room, went out into the sunlight, and gave his Mom a little stick-tight wave as he walked over toward Max and his customers, who were out of the Impala now, standing on the blacktop, nodding impatiently as Max went through the rest of his spiel, the double talk about guarantees and stuff he always rushed through once the sale was secure. Approaching him, Stan said, “Max, I want to—”

  “In a minute,” Max said, glowering in surprise at Stan, who after all should know the etiquette of never interrupting a sale.

  But Stan went blithely on, as though he’d never heard of etiquette. “The precinct just called,” he said.

  Max glowered even more at that news, while the customers gave each other a quick startled look. Max said, “The law? Now what do they want from my life’s blood?”

  “I dunno,” Stan said. “Something about being on the lookout for terrorists or some damn thing.”

  “Terrorists?” Max demanded. “In a car lot?”

  The customers were getting less swarthy. Ignoring them, being open and innocent, Stan said, “I think it’s something about car bombs. You know?”

  “No, I don’t know,” Max said, trying to turn away.

  But Stan wouldn’t let him get back to his spiel. “I mean those suicide car bomb things,” he said, “where one of them just drives into a place and blows everything up. Usually, you know, they use some old clunker, a big car, something with a lot of power under the hood, something tough that can crash a barricade, good steering to go around the obstacles, lots of room in the trunk for the dynamite.” As though just noticing the Impala, Stan gave it a careless wave and said, “This kinda car, like.”

  Max didn’t say a word. The customers again looked at each other, and then turned to watch a police car prowl slowly past, both cops gazing toward the lot. The customers spoke to each other in a language.

  Max licked his lips. He said, “Stan, you’ll be so good, you’ll wait in my office.” Turning, he said, “Gentlemen, excuse the inter—”

  But the gentlemen were leaving, walking away between the rows of hopeless wrecks in the Ultraspecial department of Maximilian’s Used Cars, moving unhurriedly but steadily until Max raised his voice, calling, “Gentlemen, don’t you want this car?” Then they walked faster, not looking back.

  Stan said, “They were gonna pay cash, right?”

  “You’re goddamn right they were,” Max said. “Until you come along.”

  “Max,” Stan said, “don’t you still get it? Don’t you know what those guys were?”

  “Customers,” Max said. Then, before Stan could speak, Max raised a grimy-knuckled and nail-bitten hand, showed Stan its callused palm, and said, “But even if you’re right, so what? If you’re right, you know what I got? The perfect customer. Not only do they give me cash, so there’s no problem with the paper, the credit line, discounting with the bank, having to eat the damn car when they repossess, none of that, but these are customers who will never bring the car back to argue the way they always do. The transmission, the brakes, all this stuff they bitch about. These customers weren’t like that. Even saying you’re right, Stan, and I don’t say you’re right, these customers were the best kind of customers you could get. They’re like the army. They buy the product, they blow it up, everybody’s happy.”

  “Except you,” Stan said.

  Max glowered at him. “The sun is baking your brains,” he decided. “Come into the office, explain me this favor you did.”

  “Be right there,” Stan told him, and walked over to Mom’s cab, where Mom looked up at him out her open window and said, “This is taking long.”

  “There was a little complication,” Stan told her. “I’ll tell you on the way home.”

  “You’re done? He said yes?”

  “A few minutes,” Stan promised, and went back over to the office, where Max was seated behind his desk, chewing an imaginary cigar, the only kind the doctor would let him have.

  “Good,” Max said, looking at him as though he’d believed Stan might run away rather than face him. “The expressman with the downside. Deliver.”

  “The FBI,” Stan said.

  Max shifted the imaginary cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. “The FBI? Whadda they gotta do with me?”

  “Your customers,” Stan explained, “your perfect customers out there, they go away with that heap, and a week or two from now some embassy blows up, maybe some airline office, maybe even a police station, the UN Building.”

  “Good,” Max said. “The car is out of my inventory and out of my inventory.”

  “But there’s enough of it left,” Stan said, “for identification, registration, history of the car. The FBI likes to say it checks out every lead, and that car’s a lead, and it leads here.”

  “So what?” Max demanded, taking the imaginary cigar from his mouth and waving it in his hand. “This happens to be a time I’m innocent! I don’t know those people! I sold them a car! That’s what I do!”

  “Max, Max,” Stan said, “don’t use the word innocent, okay? I look out the window here, I see half a dozen cars I sold you, and I know where I got them. You want police attention, Max? For any reason at all?”

  Max didn’t answer. He gazed at Stan wide-eyed. The imaginary cigar had gone out.

  Stan said, “The FBI comes in here looking for evidence on crime number one, checking you out, going through the records, studying the paper. But there isn’t any evidence on crime number one, because you’re innocent, you aren’t involved. So do they go away? Do they just ignore all the evidence they pick up on crimes number two through twenty-eight? Or do they turn over this big thick report to the local cops?”

  “You’re right,” Max said. He sounded stunned. Shaking his head, dropping the imaginary cigar in an imaginary ashtray, he said, “I’m not used to innocence, it clouded my judgment. You saved me, Stan,” he went on, his agitation pushing him up onto his feet. “I owe you on that. I owe you a big one.”

  Stan looked interested. “You do?”

  Max spread his hands. “Name it. I know you come here to sell me a vehicle, but that—”

  “Well, kinda, yeah,” Stan said, shifting gears, moving straight into plan B. “A beauty, actually, better than—”

  “But that can wait,” Max said firmly. “I can see you got something in mind. What is it?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, Max,” Stan said, “I was gonna ask your advice.”

  “Ask.”

  “You see, I need a car, and—”

  “You need a car?”

  “This is a special car,” Stan explained, “with special kinds of modifications on it. I was thinking, the guys in your body shop—” />
  “Can do anything,” Max finished. “So long as you don’t need a vehicle more than, say, two, three weeks, my boys can give you whatever you want.”

  “This is short-term,” Stan promised.

  “Everything I do here is short-term,” Max said. “That’s what the customers refuse to accept. Whadda they want for fifteen ninety-five? Would they buy a TV set as old as these cars?”

  “A good point,” Stan said. “Maybe you should put it in the advertising.”

  “There are fine points of business, Stanley,” Max told him, “you’ll never understand. Tell me about this car you need. Fix up the engine? High speed?”

  “Well, no,” Stan said. “The fact is, one thing we need is the engine taken out.”

  Max looked at him. “Is this humor?” he asked. “Harriet keeps telling me about this stuff, humor; is that what this is?”

  “Absolutely not,” Stan told him, and took the specifications out of his pocket. “Now, the most important thing is, the dimension side-to-side between the tires has got to be four feet, eight and a half inches, from the middle of the tread to the middle of the tread. The front tires got to be that wide apart, and the back tires.”

  “Sure,” Max said.

  “Then,” Stan said, “no engine. And either a convertible, or we cut the top off the car.”

  “Cut the top off the car,” Max said.

  “Well, here’s the list,” Stan said, and gave it to him. “You want to see the creampuff I brought?”

  “In a minute.” Max studied the list, nodding slowly. “My boys are gonna laugh and laugh,” he said.

  “But can they do it?”

  “They can do anything,” Max repeated. “When do you need it?”

  “In a hurry,” Stan said.

  “How did I know?” Max put the list in his pocket. “So let’s see this creampuff you brought me.”

  “And in appreciation for what you and your boys are doing,” Stan said as they went through Harriet’s office and out the back to go look at the Aston Martin, “I’m gonna let you call your own price on this one. Max, I’m almost giving it away!”

  FORTY-TWO

  “What time is it?” Judy murmured in his ear.

  Doug Berry reared up on his elbows, rested his wrist on Judy’s nose, and looked at his waterproof, shockproof, glow-in-the-dark watch/compass/calendar. “Five to three,” he said.

  “Oh!” she cried, suddenly moving beneath him on the life jackets spread on the bottom of his Boston Whaler much more enthusiastically than at any point before this. “Damn! The lesson’s over! Let’s go!”

  “Judy Judy Judy,” Doug said, holding on to her bare shoulders. “I didn’t know I was finished.”

  “It doesn’t matter when you’re finished,” she told him. “I pay for the lessons. And I have a waxing appointment this afternoon. Off, big boy.”

  “Wait a second!” Doug stared around; all he needed was half a minute, less, he was sure of it. “Your hair’s stuck!” he announced, leaning his weight back down on her, lowering his face beside hers as though to help. “Stuck in this buckle here, be careful, you’ll h-h-h-hurt yourself, I’ll just get it-it-it-it loose, and you’re all-l-l-l-l-l-l, oh, buhbuhbuhbuh, AH!”

  When the shivering stopped, he raised himself onto his elbows again, grinned down into her skeptical eyes, and said, “There. It’s loose now.”

  He rolled off her, and they both sat up in the sunlight, Doug looking off toward the distant shore of Long Island, out across the Great South Bay, as Judy said caustically, “Are you satisfied now?”

  “If you are, Judy,” he told her, grinning, not giving a shit anymore. “You’re paying for the lessons.”

  She was. Judy was the wife of an ophthalmologist in Syosset, and this was the third year she’d come to Doug for diving lessons. All kinds of diving lessons. Each May first she’d appear, regular as clockwork, and would help pay his rent and divert his hours three days a week until the fifteenth of July, when she and her husband would go off for their month on St. Croix.

  She was a good-looking woman in her late thirties, Judy, whose hard body was severely kept in trim with aerobics, jogging, Nautilus machines, and pitiless diets. The ruthlessness showed in her face, though, in the sharpness of her nose and the coldness of her dark eyes and the thinness of her lips, so it was unlikely anyone other than the ophthalmologist—who had no choice—would have willingly hung out with her over an extended period without something more than her companionship to be gotten out of it. Who salted her restless tail the rest of the year Doug had no idea, but his annual two-and-a-half months of the pleasure of her company was just about all he’d be able to stand.

  May was still a little early for most water traffic on the bay, especially in midweek, except for the ubiquitous clammers and the occasional ferries over to Fire Island. It was easy at this time of year to find an anchorage in the shallow water of the bay away from other boaters, dive a bit, screw a bit, and thus while away the two hours of each lesson. Doug would have been happy to give her extra time today for free, since he had nothing else at all on his plate this afternoon, but, as usual, Judy’s self-maintenance program came first. Leg waxing. Right.

  Doug started the motor and steered the small boat toward Islip, soon making out his own shack and dock straight ahead. Judy wasn’t much given to small talk, particularly over the roar of a 235 horse Johnson outboard, so they rode in silence—not particularly companionable—all the way to shore, and were almost there when Doug spotted, beyond the shack, a silver Jaguar V12 in his parking area, next to Judy’s black Porsche.

  A customer! And a rich one, at that, judging from the car. So Judy’s wax job was a blessing in disguise, after all, and Doug was feeling almost kindly toward the bitch as he tied up at his dock and offered his hand to help her ashore. “See you Wednesday,” he said, smiling his professional smile.

  “Mm,” she said, already thinking of other things. Off she marched while Doug finished tying up and removed the spent tanks from the boat.

  She was already gone, in a cloud of dust, when Doug walked around to the front of the shack and looked at the two customers he’d least expected ever to see again. And particularly driving a car like that Jag.

  Oh; MD plates.

  “There you are,” said Andy.

  John pointed accusingly at the door. “Your note says back by three.”

  “And here I am,” Doug said as he unlocked his shop door. Leading the way inside, he said, “You two decided not to make the dive?”

  “Oh, we made it,” John said, sounding disgusted, while Andy shut the door.

  Doug was astonished. “You did?” He’d taken it for granted these two, no matter how much expert professional training he’d given them, would never survive a real dive in the actual world under uncontrolled conditions. But they’d done it, by golly, and they’d lived through it.

  And now what? Hoping they weren’t here to try to sell the equipment back, Doug said, “Everything worked out real good, huh?”

  “Not entirely,” Andy said, with a grin and a shrug. “Unexpected little problems.”

  “Turbidity,” John said, as though it were the filthiest word he knew. And maybe it was.

  “Oh, turbidity,” Doug said, nodding, seeing the problem now, saying, “I’m a saltwater man, deep-water man, so I don’t run into that too much. But in a reservoir, sure, I suppose you would. Screwed things up, huh?”

  “You sum up good,” John told him.

  “If you came to me for advice,” Doug said, “I’m sorry, but I’m the wrong guy. Like I say, turbidi—”

  “We already got advice,” Andy told him. “From a famous writer that’s an expert on these things. You know the big ship called the Normandie?”

  “That’s not the point,” John interrupted. “The point is, we think we know how to do it right this time—”

  “Go in from above,” Doug suggested. “I know that much. Take a boat out—”

  “Can’t,” John said. “B
ut we still got an idea. What we don’t got is air.”

  “Ah,” Doug said. “I get it.”

  “We figure,” Andy said, “you could fill our tanks just like you did last time.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Doug said, wondering how much extra he could charge.

  Andy told him, “We’ll pay double, for two tanks.”

  “You know,” Doug said slowly, thinking vaguely there might be something extra in this for him somewhere, “what you probably need is a pro along, somebody to deal with the problems right there, when they happen.”

  “No, we don’t,” John said.

  “Thanks a lot, Doug,” Andy said, grinning at him and shaking his head. “I appreciate the thought behind the offer. But we think we got it pretty well doped out this time.”

  “We hope,” John said.

  “We’re pretty confident,” Andy reminded his partner, and turned back to Doug to say, “So all we need is air.”

  “Then that’s what you’ll get,” Doug said, but as he led the way out of the shop and around to the compressor under its shiny blue tarp on the dock behind the shack, he kept thinking, There’s got to be something in this for me. Something. For me.

  FORTY-THREE

  The thing is, the railroad doesn’t have handcars anymore. Those terrific old handcars with the seesaw type of double handle so one guy would push down while the other guy facing him pulled up, and then vice versa, and the handcar would go zipping along the track, that old kind of handcar that guys like Buster Keaton used to travel on, they don’t have them anymore. All the good things are gone: wood Monopoly houses, Red Ryder, handcars.

  Which is why the big sixteen-wheeler that Stan Murch airbraked to a coughing stop at the railway crossing on the old road west of Vilburgtown Reservoir at one A.M. on that cloudless but moonless night did not contain a handcar. What it contained instead, in addition to diving gear and a winch and other equipment, was a weird hybrid vehicle that had mostly been, before the surgical procedures began, a 1976 American Motors Hornet. A green Hornet, in fact; so not everything is gone.