Drowned Hopes d-7

by Donald E. Westlake

  According to Wally’s calculations, the center of the buried casket would be thirty-seven feet out from the library wall, which meant they had to go through their slow underwater gavotte five times before they reached the second knot in the measuring cord, the one that said, Dig here.

  At last. Floating over the spot, heads close, haloed in sepia illumination, Kelp and Doug grinned around their mouthpieces at each other. Victory was in their grasp.

  What happens when the boat fills with rainwater? It can’t sink, can it? These doughnut sides are filled with air.

  But the damn thing can sure wallow, all right. In fact, with Dortmunder’s weight in it, the boat’s attitude seemed to be that if it filled with water it would be perfectly happy to loll around just a few inches below the surface, soaking Dortmunder to the bone and ruining the little 10hp motor.

  Number one, he wasn’t dressed for this crap. He’d known he was going to be outdoors, on the reservoir, in a boat, in the dark, in June, with the temperature fairly cool, so he’d worn solid thick-soled shoes and wool socks and black chinos and a zipper-front weatherproof jacket. But none of that was enough. Not in this rain. Not underwater.

  And that was number two. NO UNDERWATER. That was the deal this time, that’s why Dortmunder wasn’t suited up like Kelp and Doug. He would go along with everybody else, he would even go on the water if it would help, but in the water, no.

  Also, number three, the gas tank. A small red metal five-gallon tank attached to the motor by a black flexible hose, up till now it had been content to nestle in under the doughnut curve of the side of the boat, back near the rear, where the doughnut was replaced by a solid square piece of fabric-covered wood to which the motor was clamped.

  But gasoline is lighter than water, and as the interior of the boat turned itself inexorably into a wading pool the gas tank wanted to come out and play. Dortmunder had no bailing can, nothing to bail with except his cupped hands, and it was both annoying and painful to have those cupped hands constantly banging into a passing gas tank. He kept pushing it back into its corner, muttering at it as though it were a playful puppy being playful at the wrong time, but the damn thing just kept bobbing back out again.

  The boat was shipping water, that’s why it was sinking so fast. It was happening around the motor. The top of the flat piece the motor was clamped to was a little lower than the top of the doughnut anyway, and with the weight of the motor pulling that end down it was lower yet, so now, with the boat wallowing half submerged, water lapped in around the motor every time Dortmunder moved, and still did when Dortmunder didn’t move because the boat moved. The reservoir moved. The air moved. And the water chuckled in.

  He had to shift the weight somehow, get that goddamn flat rear of the boat higher than the rest. But how? There wasn’t much time left; the water inside the boat kept rising, and of course the higher it rose the lower the boat sank and the more rapidly more water came in at the back.

  He had shifted his own weight forward; it wasn’t enough. The gas tank moved all over the place, but didn’t seem to matter much. The only really heavy thing left, the thing that was causing all the trouble, was the motor. Move that, temporarily, move it to the front of the boat, and then the back would be higher and he could bail steadily for a while and maybe get ahead of this thing, at least until Doug and Kelp came back.

  The important thing, he told himself, is not to drop the goddamn motor over the side. That would be tough to explain to the divers. He’d watched Doug install the thing, however, and it seemed to him he could uninstall it without disaster, so he set to work, at once, before the boat sank any lower.

  First, release the gizmo on the side that permitted him to tilt the motor forward, bringing the propeller out of the water but, more importantly under these circumstances, also bringing some of the weight of the motor into the boat.

  Then remove the fuel hose from the motor, in the front, just under the housing, where it attached by sliding on over a kind of thick bright-metal needle.

  Then, one-handed, holding the motor with the other hand, very slowly and carefully loosen the two wing nuts holding the clamps on both sides.

  Then, gripping the wet metal of the motor housing as tightly as possible, lift the motor out of the groove, shift it forward into the boat, lose balance on the wobbly unreliable bottom of the god-damn-it-to-hell boat, lunge away from the back and toward the front with the damn motor grasped tightly in both of one’s arms to keep it inside the boat, and sprawl lengthwise on top of the motor as it lands heavily on the front part of the doughnut, fuel needle first. Fuel needle first.

  What’s that hissing noise?

  Things were going so well!

  Just as both Wally and Doug had said, from their different backgrounds and kinds of expertise, the bottom of the reservoir in the area of the field behind the library was so soft and mucky they didn’t need any heavy complicated tools to do their digging for them. All they had to do was not mind getting their hands a little dirty.

  And that’s the way it worked, all right. They got their hands very dirty, but the water in which they worked constantly washed them clean again; and besides, it was kind of fun.

  Floating just above the spot marked by the knot in the measuring cord, suspended on a slant with their heads lower than their feet, they kept reaching down into the muck, one hand after the other, and flinging the sludge backward like dogs preparing to bury a bone. The turbidity became intense, so that soon they could barely see what they were doing directly in front of themselves, even with both headlamps lit, but it hardly mattered. They could feel what they were doing: they were throwing mud, three feet worth of mud.

  Boom-boom. They both hit it at the same instant, their grasping fingers jabbing down through the muck and running straight into something solid. Heavy. Wood. Didn’t want to move.

  Their pleasure made them both forget themselves for an instant, and they started to drift away from the spot, but both immediately compensated, kicking with their flippers, nosing down toward the messy muddy hole they’d made, reaching down into the mire, one on either side. Their questing fingers slid along the wood, then found the coffin rails. They pulled themselves right down next to the hole and spent awhile removing more and more mud, until the whole top of the casket was more or less clear and they could slip the cord connecting them beneath it, pulling up the slack. Then they added air to their BCDs and gripped the rails. Slowly, reluctantly, after so many years alone and asleep in the deep, the casket began to lift.

  All they wanted to do at this point was get the casket up out of its hole and maybe drag it around to the firmer base of the steps or sidewalk in front of the library. Once they had it accessible, they’d tie to one of its handles the cord that linked them with the boat, and from there on it would all be easy.

  First, they’d go up to the surface, attach the marker cord to the monofilament, then run back to shore where Tiny and Tom were waiting. They’d get the fresh scuba tanks, pick up the extra BCD and take the end of the rope from the winch. Then they’d go back out to the monofilament, find the marker cord, and tie it to the rope from the winch. Then Kelp and Doug would go back down to the casket, wrap it in the extra BCD, fill the BCD with air, and as Tiny winched from the shore, ride herd on the buoyant casket. Simple.

  The first part was certainly simple, though not particularly easy. The casket was heavy, even with their buoyancy to help. They never did lift it clear of the mucky ground, so turbidity roiled and rolled in their wake, but they managed to haul it along as they followed the measuring cord back to the library, then worked their way around to the front of the building, where they put their burden down at last on the crumbling concrete between the old sidewalk and the library steps.

  Doug removed the marker cord from his wrist and tied it to the coffin rail, then drifted up beside Kelp. They both looked down at the box, just lying there. Captured. Tamed. With a leash on it. They looked at each other again, smiling, elated with what they’d done, and a s
hoe drifted slowly downward between them.

  A shoe? Naturally, they both looked down, following its descent, and so the shoe remained in the amber gleam of their lamps until it hit the casket, hesitated there, seemed to stumble over the box, and then fell slowly on down to the ground.

  Doug moved first, swooping downward, snagging the shoe on the way by, bringing it back up to where Kelp hovered. They hung there together in the water, half a dozen feet above the casket, and studied the shoe as Doug turned it slowly in his hands. Then they stared at each other again, wide-eyed.

  Dortmunder. His shoe. No question.

  “Taking them a long time,” Tom said.

  “Seems long cause we ain’t doing anything,” Tiny told him. “And because it’s raining.” Then he twisted around, seated on the damp ground in the rain-streaked dark, to peer into the sopping night and say, “How come you’re behind me?”

  Tom cackled. “You don’t have to worry about me, Tiny.”

  “I don’t worry about you,” Tiny promised him. “Just come around and sit down here beside me.”

  “Too wet to sit down there.”

  “It’s wet everywhere. Okay, I’ll come back and sit beside you.”

  “Naw, never mind, here I come,” Tom said, and Tiny heard the old bastard’s bones crack as he got to his feet. Sounded like rifles being cocked.

  In a minute, Tom slid out of the dripping darkness like a half-starved fox and sat down within Tiny’s range of vision but just out of reach of Tiny’s hands. “That better, Tiny?”

  “I like you, Tom,” Tiny lied. “I like to look at you.”

  Tom cackled, and then they were quiet awhile, the two of them sitting on the ground in the rather heavy rain beside Gulkill Creek, the reservoir spread out a murky gray-black in front of them, pebbled with a million raindrops.

  “Hope everything’s okay,” Tiny said.

  Now, here was a mess. Kelp and Doug followed the marker cord up to the surface, and when they got there, what did they find? A steady rain. The boat, deflated and empty, drooped down into the wet darkness of the reservoir, still attached to the monofilament but pulling it four or five feet lower below the surface than it had been before. The gas tank was floating around loose. The motor was gone. So was Dortmunder.

  With full buoyancy in the BCD, Kelp could pull the mouthpiece out and cry, “Where’s John?”

  “I dunno.” Doug was also at full buoyancy, paddling in a circle, trying to see in the dark.

  “Jeepers, Doug,” Kelp said, “what happened up here?”

  “Rain swamped the boat,” Doug told him. “I dunno what happened to the motor. Or John.”

  “He didn’t drown,” Kelp cried, staring all around, bobbing on the surface in his agitation, water from time to time lapping into his mouth. “We didn’t see him coming down, Doug. Only the shoe, that’s all.”

  “Well, no, he wouldn’t drown,” Doug said. “He’s got a line here, the monofilament. All he has to do is pull himself along that until he gets to shore.”

  “Hey, you’re right!” Kelp thrashed around in the water in his relief because, despite what he’d said, he’d been thinking privately that maybe John did drown.

  “We’ll catch up with him, help him,” Doug said. “He can’t have much of a start on us.”

  “Good idea!” Kelp looked left and right into two equally impenetrable darknesses. “Which way?”

  Doug considered the problem. “I tell you what,” he said. “You follow the line that way, I’ll go this way. Go underwater, it’ll be faster. And the light’ll show on the monofilament.”

  “Right,” Kelp said, and put his mouthpiece back in. Releasing a little air from the BCD, he sank a few feet below the surface, switched on the headlamp, and saw the gleaming silvery-white line stretch away through the black water. Kicking easily, he followed the line, really pleased at how good he was getting at this and looking forward to seeing John flounder along ahead of him like a wounded walrus.

  But no such luck. Kelp went almost all the way to shore, close enough to see the railroad tracks emerge along the slanted bottom, and still no John. When he was in near enough to stand on the railbed with his head and shoulders out of the water, he even risked a quick flash of his headlamp at the tangled brush along the bank. “John?” he called in a half whisper.

  Nothing. But John wouldn’t have had time to get this far anyway, not as slow as he’d have to travel and as fast as Kelp had sliced through the water. So Doug must have found him in the other direction.

  No. Doug was waiting again by the boat, head out of the water, and he was alone. When Kelp surfaced beside him, Doug said, “No?”

  “Oh, wow,” Kelp said.

  Oh! May, suddenly awake, stared at a gray rectangle in the wrong place in the dark, and listened to a toilet flushing and flushing and flushing. Jiggle that thing! And what’s the window doing over there?

  Shifting in the bed, she suddenly realized she was alone, remembered where she was (that’s why the window’s there instead of there), and understood that the sound she could hear through the window was rain falling. Oh, those poor guys, out there at the reservoir, they’re going to get soaked.

  Well, Andy and Doug were going to get soaked anyway, but now the rest of them— May sat up, suddenly wondering what time it was and what had awakened her. A bad dream? A thought about John? Some sound? Were they back? Had they finally succeeded in getting the money? What time was it?

  03:24.

  She listened, but other than the rush of rain she couldn’t hear a thing. Shouldn’t they be back by now? Or soon, anyway?

  In any event, she was absolutely wide awake. No chance to get back to sleep, not right away. Climbing out of bed, she found her robe in the dark, put it on, and stepped out to the hall, faintly illuminated by an ankle-height night light plugged into an outlet near the head of the stairs. She looked over the rail, but the downstairs was completely dark. She was about to start down when she noticed the line of light under the door of Andy and Wally’s room.

  Was Wally still up? May crossed the hall and knocked softly on the door. “Wally? You awake?”

  There were scraping, rustling noises within, and then the door opened and there was Wally, as short and round and moist as ever, and fully dressed. Blinking wetly up at May, he said, “Are they back?”

  “No. I just woke up, I thought I’d have a glass of warm milk. Want some?”

  Wally smiled. “Gee,” he said, “that sounds…” He looked around, at a loss for a simile. “That sounds like this house,” he decided. “Gosh, I would I’d like some warm milk, Miss May, thank you. I’ll just switch off the computer, and I’ll be right down.”

  He plays with that computer too much, May thought as she descended to the ground floor, switching on lights along the way. Then she thought, well, it could be worse. Then she thought: Wait. I’m not his mother.

  It is this house. It’s changing us. If we stay here much longer, we’ll start buying one another birthday cards.

  Before putting the milk on to warm, May opened the back door and looked out at the yard. Rain was steady, unrelenting, falling straight down through a world without wind. This isn’t going to let up for days and days, she thought. The poor guys. I hope everybody’s okay.

  Two mugs full of gently steaming milk were on the kitchen table when Wally came into the room, his wet smile gleaming in the overhead fluorescent light. “This is really nice, Miss May,” he said, and sat across from her to cup both hands around the mug. “I was just thinking,” he said, “how really nice this all is, everybody living together here like this. It’s almost like we’re a family.”

  “I was just thinking something like that, too,” May told him.

  “I’ll miss it when it’s over,” Wally said.

  May sipped milk in lieu of responding, and they sat in fairly companionable—but not familial, dammit—silence for a few minutes, until all at once Murch’s Mom walked in, wearing big gray furry slippers, a ratty long robe, and a
lot of green curlers in her hair. Squinting balefully in the light, she said, “I thought they were back.”

  “Not yet,” May said.

  “We’re just waiting here,” Wally told her happily. “We’re having warm milk.”

  “Oh, that’s what it is.”

  “I could warm you some,” May offered.

  “You’d waste it, then,” Murch’s Mom told her, and marched across the room to the refrigerator, where she got out a can of beer, popped the top, and took a deep swig. Wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her robe, turning to the table, she said, “Raining.”

  “I hope everybody’s okay,” May said.

  “Rain never hurt anybody,” Murch’s Mom decided. “A little water’s good for you.” She came over and sat at the table between them, saying, “Might as well stay up till they get back.”

  May watched Wally watching Murch’s Mom drink beer. She knew Wally was loving that, loved the two of them with their warm milk and the crotchety aunt—that would be Murch’s Mom’s role in the affiliation Wally was constructing—with her beer. If he says like a family, May promised herself, I’ll pour bourbon into this milk. A lot of bourbon.

  However, he didn’t.

  “I never did much like rain,” Tiny said.

  “Good for covering your tracks,” Tom said.

  Tiny wrung water out of his eyebrows. “What tracks?”

  “When the dogs are after you.”

  Tiny was feeling the need to put his hands around something and squeeze. “Been on this job too long,” he muttered.

  “—h—”

  Tiny frowned, making a lot of water cascade down his face. Wiping it away, he said, “You hear something?”

  “The motor, you mean? No.”