Drowned Hopes d-7

by Donald E. Westlake

  It was late afternoon now, Dortmunder having slept most of the day, and outside the windows the rain still poured down. The weather forecast, full of stalled lows and weak highs, promised this stage of storms would, at the very least, even the score for the weeks of sunny days and star-strewn nights preceding it, and maybe even throw a little extra rottenness in for good measure.

  After everybody got over the desire to be crotchety with Dortmunder for having saved himself from a watery grave, the next topic on the agenda was Tom’s money, plucked at last from its own watery grave but not yet from the water. “From here on,” Doug told the assembled group, “it’s a snap. All we do is go back out to the res—”

  “No,” Dortmunder said, and got to his feet.

  May looked up at him in mild surprise. “John? Where are you going?”

  “New York,” Dortmunder told her, and headed for the stairs.

  “Wait a minute!”

  “We got it beat now!”

  “Piece of cake!”

  “We know where the box is!”

  “We got a rope on it!”

  “We’re winning, John!”

  But Dortmunder didn’t listen. He thudded upstairs, one foot after the other, and while he packed people kept coming up to try to change a mind made of concrete.

  May was first. She came in and sat on the bed beside the suitcase Dortmunder was packing, and after a minute she said, “I understand how you feel, John.”

  “Good,” Dortmunder said, his hands full of socks.

  “But I just don’t feel as though I can leave here until this is all over and settled.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It wouldn’t be fair to Murch’s Mom.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And if we walk away now, Tom might still decide he’d rather use that dynamite of his.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So you can see, John,” May said, “why I feel I have to stay.”

  Dortmunder paused with his hands in a dresser drawer. “I can see that, May,” he said. “And if you stop to think about it, you can see why I can’t stay. When you’re done up here, you’ll come home. I’ll be there.”

  She looked at him, thought it over, and got to her feet. “Well,” she said, “I can see your mind is made up.”

  “I’m glad you can see that, May,” Dortmunder said.

  Tom was next. “Runnin out, eh, Al?”

  “Yes,” Dortmunder said.

  Wally followed a couple minutes later. “Gee, John,” he said, “I know you’re not the hero, you’re only the soldier, but even the soldier doesn’t leave in the middle of the game.”

  “Game called,” Dortmunder told him, “on account of wet.”

  Tiny and Stan and his Mom came together, like the farmhands welcoming Dorothy back from Oz. “Dortmunder,” Tiny rumbled, “I figure you’re the one got us this far.”

  “I understand it’s a piece of cake from here on,” Dortmunder said, folding with great care his other pants.

  Stan said, “You don’t want to drive to the city on a Wednesday, you know. Matinee day, there’s no good routes.”

  “I’ll take the bus,” Dortmunder told him.

  Murch’s Mom looked insulted. “I hate the bus,” she announced. “And so should you.”

  Dortmunder nodded, taking the suggestion under advisement, but then said, “Will you drive me to the bus station?”

  “Cabdrivers don’t get to have opinions about destinations,” Murch’s Mom snapped, which might have been a form of “yes,” and she marched out.

  “Well, Dortmunder,” Tiny said, “I can’t a hundred percent blame you. Put her there.”

  So Dortmunder shook his hand, and Tiny and Stan left, and Dortmunder’s hand was almost recovered enough to go on packing when Doug came in to say, “I hear you’re really going.”

  “I’m really going,” Dortmunder agreed.

  “Well,” Doug said, “tomorrow or the next day, sometime soon, I got to go back to Long Island anyway, see to my business, pick up the stuff we need for the next try. You could ride along.”

  “I’m leaving today,” Dortmunder told him.

  “What the heck, wait a day.”

  “Well, Doug,” Dortmunder said, “let’s say I wait a day, a couple of days, everybody having these little talks with me. Then let’s say I get into that pickup with you and we head for the city, and you just can’t resist it, you gotta tell me the plan, the details, the equipment, you gotta talk about the res— the place there, and all that. And somewhere in there, Doug,” Dortmunder said, resting his aching hand in a friendly way on Doug’s arm, “somewhere in there, I just might be forced to see if I know how to do a three-sixty.”

  Dortmunder was just locking his suitcase when Andy Kelp came in. Dortmunder looked at him and said, “Don’t even start.”

  “I’ve heard the word,” Kelp told him. “And I know you, John, and I know when not to waste my breath. Come on over here.”

  “Come on over where?”

  “The window,” Kelp told him. “It’s okay, it’s closed.”

  Wondering what Kelp was up to, Dortmunder went around the bed and over to the window, and when Kelp pointed outside he looked out, past the curtain and the rain-smeared window and the rain-dotted screen and the rain-filled air over the rain-soggy lawn and the rain-flowing sidewalk to the rain-slick curb, where a top-of-the-line Buick Pompous 88 stood there, black, gleaming in the rain.

  “Cruise control,” Kelp said, with quiet pride. “Everything. You gotta go back in comfort.”

  Dortmunder was touched. Not enough to reconsider, but touched. “Thank you, Andy,” he said.

  “The truth is,” Kelp said, leaning forward, speaking confidentially, “I think you’re right. That reservoir is out to get you.”

  SIXTY-TWO

  Well, at least there was a little more room at the dinner table, though no one said that out loud in case of hurting May’s feelings. But it was nice, just the same, to have that extra inch or two for the elbow when bringing a forkful of turkey loaf mouthward.

  On the other hand, when it came to discussing future plans, all at once Dortmunder’s absence from the table became less positive and pleasant, though that wasn’t obvious right at first, when Doug raised the subject over coffee, saying, “Well, it’s easy from here on. We’ve touched the box. We know where it is.”

  “We’ve got a rope on it,” Kelp added.

  Nodding, Doug said, “And the other end of the rope is tied to our monofilament, which nobody’s going to see.”

  “Especially in this weather,” Tiny said, and sneezed.

  “Another good thing,” Tom added. “This last time, you birds didn’t leave a lot of evidence around to alert the law.”

  Wally said, “The computer says there’s a million ways to get it now. It’s so easy.”

  Stan said, “Good. So let’s do it and get it over with.”

  His Mom said, “I’ll go along with that. I want to get back to where driving’s a contact sport.”

  “So we’ll just do it,” Doug said, and shrugged at how easy it was.

  “Be glad to get it over with,” Kelp said.

  Then there was a little silence, everybody drinking coffee or looking at the wall or drawing little fingertip circles on the tablecloth, nobody quite meeting anybody else’s eye. The light in the crowded little dining room seemed to get brighter, the tablecloth whiter, the walls shinier, the silence deeper and deeper, as though they were turning into an acrylic genre painting of themselves.

  Finally, it was May who broke the silence, saying, “How?”

  Then everybody was alive and animated again, all looking at her, all suddenly eager to answer the question. “It’s easy, May,” Kelp said. “We just winch it in.”

  “We tie the rope to the rope,” Doug explained.

  “Naturally,” Tiny added, “we gotta get a new winch.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Kelp said, nodding. “And a rope.”

  Stan said, “Don�
�t we need some kind of boat?”

  “Not one that sinks in the rain,” Tiny suggested.

  Wally asked, “Well, when do we do it? Do you want to wait for the rain to stop?”

  “Yes,” Tiny said.

  “Well, I don’t know,” Doug said. “Depends on how long that is. You know, the engineers in the dam put a little boat in the water every once in a while, run around the reservoir, take samples and so on, and if they ran over our line they’d cut it. Even if they didn’t foul their propeller, even if they didn’t find it, we’d lose the line.”

  Tiny said, “They won’t do one of their jaunts in this weather, count on it.”

  “That’s true,” Doug agreed.

  May cleared her throat and said, “It seems to me, John would point out right here that the instant the rain stops the people in the dam might go right out in their boat so they can get caught up with their schedule.”

  “That’s also true,” Doug agreed.

  Wally said, “Miss May, what else would John point out?”

  “I don’t know,” May said. “He isn’t here.”

  Everybody thought about that. Stan said, “What it is, when John’s around, you don’t mind coming up with ideas, because he’ll tell you if they’re any good or not.”

  “Dortmunder,” Tiny said, ponderously thoughtful, “is what you call your focal point.”

  With his patented bloodless lipless cackle, Tom said, “Pity he tossed in his hand just before the payout.”

  Everybody looked uncomfortable. May said, “I’m here to see to John’s interests.”

  “Oh?” Tom asked mildly. “Does Al still have interests?”

  Murch’s Mom gave him a beady look. “I don’t see what it matters to you,” she said. “It doesn’t come out of your half. You’re just a troublemaker for the fun of it, aren’t you?”

  “As long as everybody’s happy,” Tom told her, “I’m happy.”

  “The question is,” May insisted, “when are you going to do it, and how are you going to do it?”

  “May,” Kelp said, “I’ve touched that box now, with this hand.” He showed it to her, palm out. “From here on, it’s so easy.”

  “Fine,” May said. “Tell me about it.”

  Kelp turned to Doug. “Explain it to her, okay?”

  “Well,” Doug said. “We go out and tie the rope to the rope, and Tiny winches it in.”

  Tiny said, “Don’t you have to do something to get the box lighter, so it’ll lift up over the tree stumps?”

  “Oh, right,” Doug said. “I forgot that part.”

  “And when,” May said. “And what kind of boat. And what are the details?”

  “That’s what we need John for!” Kelp exclaimed, punching the table in his irritation.

  “We don’t have John,” May pointed out. “So we’ll have to work out the details ourselves. And the first detail is, when do you want to do it?”

  “As soon as possible,” Stan answered. Turning to Tiny, he explained, “I hate to say this, but I think we’re better off in the rain. As long as we get ourselves ready for it.”

  “And the boat doesn’t sink,” Tiny said.

  “Well, a new boat,” Doug said. “That’s gonna be expensive.”

  Everybody looked at Tom, who gazed around mildly (for him) and said, “No.”

  “Tom,” Kelp said, “we need a certain amount of—”

  “No more dough from me,” Tom said. He sounded serious about it. To Doug he said, “Who’m I buying all this equipment from? You. So donate the stuff.”

  “Well, not the boat,” Doug told him.

  “Steal the fucking boat,” Tom advised.

  Doug floundered a bit at that, but Stan rescued him, saying, “Okay, Doug, never mind, we’ll work out the boat.”

  “Okay,” Doug said, but he was getting those little white spots on his cheeks again, like when he’d been in shock.

  Stan turned to May. “We’ll work it all out, May. We’re just not used to doing this, that’s all.”

  May surveyed the table. “I’ll make fresh coffee,” she decided, and went away to the kitchen. She could hear them bickering in there the whole time she was away.

  SIXTY-THREE

  Dortmunder did not sleep like a baby, home in his own bed at last. He slept like a grown-up who’d been through a lot. He slept leadenly, at times noisily, mouth open, limbs sprawled any which way, bedclothes tangled around ankles. He had good dreams (sunlight, money, good-looking cars, and fast women) and bad dreams (water), and periods of sleep so heavy an alligator would have envied him.

  It was during a somewhat shallower stretch that Dortmunder was slightly disturbed by the scratchings and plinkings of someone picking the lock on the apartment door, opening it, creeping in (these old floors creak, no matter what you do) and closing the door with that telltale little snick. Dortmunder almost came all the way to the surface of consciousness at that instant, but instead, his brain decided the noises were just Tom returning from one of his late-night filling-the-pockets forays, and so the tiny sounds from the hallway were converted in his dream factory into the shushings and plinkings of wavelets, and in that dream Tom was a giant fish with teeth, from whom Dortmunder swam and swam and swam, never quite escaping.

  Normally, the interloper would have had trouble finding his way around the dark and almost windowless apartment, but Dortmunder’s recent underwater experiences had led him to leave a light burning in the bathroom, by which illumination it was possible for the interloper to make his way all through the place, to reassure himself that the sleeping Dortmunder was the only current resident, and then to go on and make himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the kitchen. (The clinking of knife inside peanut butter jar became, in Dortmunder’s dreams, the oars in the oarlocks of Charon’s boat.)

  The interloper was quiet for a long time after ingesting his sandwich and one of Dortmunder’s beers; in fact, he napped a little, at the kitchen table. But then, along around sunup, he moved into the bedroom and threw all Dortmunder’s clothing onto the floor from the chair beside the door so he could sit there, just beyond the foot of the bed, and watch Dortmunder sleep.

  The faint metallic click as the interloper cocked his rifle caused Dortmunder to frown in his sleep and make disgusting smacking sounds with his mouth, and to dream briefly of being deep underwater and having his air tank suddenly fall off his back and separate from the mouthpiece hose with a faint metallic click just before his mouth and stomach and brain filled with water; but then that dream floated away and he dreamed instead about playing poker with some long-ago cellmates in the good old days, and being dealt a royal flush—in spades—which caused him to settle back down in contentment, deeper and deeper into sleep, so that it was almost two hours later when he finally opened his eyes and rubbed his nose and did that sound with his mouth and sat up and stretched and looked at the rifle aimed at his eye.

  “GL!” Dortmunder cried, swallowing his tongue.

  Rifle. Gnarled old hands holding the rifle. Wrinkly old eye staring down the rifle’s sights. The last resident of Cronley, Oklahoma, seated in a chair in Dortmunder’s bedroom.

  “Now, Mr. Department of Recovery,” said the hermit, “you can just tell me where Tim Jepson is. And this time, ain’t nobody behind me with no bottle.”

  SIXTY-FOUR

  No bottle…

  When dawn’s sharp stiletto poked its orange tip into Guffey’s eye through the windowless opening in the Hotel Cronley’s bar’s front wall, he awakened to a splitting headache and a conundrum. Either the infrastructure man’s partner had hit him on the head with three bottles, which seemed excessive, or something funny was going on.

  Three bottles. All broken and smashed on the bar floor, all with their corks still jammed tight in their cracked-off necks. And all absolutely stinking. They were dry inside, so it wasn’t merely that the wine had gone bad after all these years; and in any event, the stench seemed to come more from the crusted gunk on the bottles’ o
utside.

  Plumbing. The second invader had gone to the basement to look at the plumbing. So did Guffey, reeling a bit from the aftereffects of the blow on the head, and when he found the dismantled trap he knew. By God, it was Tim Jepson after all! Come back for his fourteen thousand dollars, just as Mitch Lynch had said he would. Fourteen thousand dollars hidden all these years in those wine bottles in this dreadful muck river; wasn’t that just like Jepson?

  In my hands, Guffey thought inaccurately, and I let him get away. But perhaps all hope was not yet lost. There was still one slender thread in Guffey’s hand: the license plate of that little white automobile. Could he follow that thread? He could but try.

  Before noon on that same day, Cronley became at last what it had for so long appeared to be: deserted. Guffey, freshly shaved, garbed in the best of the professors’ stolen clothing, dismantled rifle and more clothing stowed in the knapsack on his back, marched out of Cronley and across the rock-strewn desert toward his long-deferred destiny.

  By early evening, he’d walked and hitchhiked as far as a town with a state police barracks, where he reported the hit-and-run driver, offering a description of the car and its license number, plus the welt on the back of his head for evidence. They took the license number and description and ran them through their computer, and they took the welt on the back of his head and ran him through the hospital, giving him the softest night’s sleep and the best food of his entire life, and almost making him give up the quest right there. All a fella had to do, after all, to live in the lap of luxury like this, was step out in front of a bus seven or eight times a year.

  But duty called, particularly when the cops came around the hospital next morning to say they knew who’d hit him but there wasn’t much to be done about it. (He’d been counting on this official indifference.) The car, it seemed, was a rental, picked up at the Oklahoma City airport the same day it hit Guffey and turned back in the next day. The miscreants—“New Yorkers: you might know”—were long gone. There wasn’t the slightest mark on the car, nor were there any witnesses, nor had the hospital found anything at all seriously wrong with Guffey (amazingly enough), so there simply wasn’t enough of a case to warrant an interstate inquiry.