Drowned Hopes d-7

by Donald E. Westlake

  The dog, half German shepherd and half crocodile, came trotting out from under a large boat as Andy started picking the first of the padlocks. He didn’t bark, but simply looked at Andy and Doug the way heavyweight boxers look at each other. “Nice doggy,” Andy said, and took the aluminum foil package from his pocket. “Here’s a nice gift for you from Mickey Finn,” he said, opening the foil. Putting it on the pavement and using his boot-shod foot, he nudged the hamburger patty on its foil bed under the bottom of the gate and into the dog’s realm.

  The dog sniffed once, chomped once, and the meat and half the aluminum foil disappeared.

  Doug winced. “How can he do that?” he said, “D’jever get aluminum foil on your teeth? It’s terrible.”

  “You know what’s worse than that?” Andy asked, returning to the padlock. “Eating a grapefruit and drinking milk at the same time.”

  Oog; that was worse. Doug decided not to try to outgross Andy, and so the lock-picking was finished in silence, during which the dog wandered unsteadily back under the large boat and went to sleep.

  What a complex moment it was for Doug when at last Andy pulled open the swinging gates! Mad elation swirled in tandem with redoubled terror in his brain, leaving him so shaken he almost lost his balance and fell when he stepped onto the boat dealer’s property. But he clutched at the breached gate for support, regained control, and went on to study the available boats while Andy put the stepladder back in the bed of the pickup, which Murch then backed into the yard.

  “This one,” Doug had decided when Andy rejoined him.

  Andy looked up at it. “Gee, Doug, we don’t wanna go to Europe.”

  “This boat won’t sink in the rain,” Doug told him. “It’s quieter than an outboard. We can do the winching right on it.”

  Andy said, “You mean, bring the box up and put it on the boat?”

  “Yes. Much easier, Andy.”

  “Gee, Doug, I think you’re right,” Andy said. “At night, in the rain, nobody’s gonna see us anyway. So why not be comfortable, right?”

  “Sleeps two,” Doug told him, and couldn’t repress a giggle. The mad elation combined with a completely unexpected exhilaration were beginning at last to conquer his fear.

  “Is that right? Sleeps two?” Andy stepped back and surveyed the boat with a kind of proprietary pride. “Pretty good, Doug,” he agreed. “Pretty good.”

  And it was. The boat Doug had selected, already swapped to a three-wheel hauler, was a twenty-four-foot Benjamin inboard cabin cruiser with a Fiberglas top and Lucite sides around the wheelhouse amidships, an open deck at the rear, and a narrow cabin below in front containing two single-person sleeping sofas, minimal kitchen facilities, and a very basic head. In comparison with the QEII, say, it was merely a tiny pleasure craft for weekend fishermen, but in comparison with their previous rubber raft it was the QEII.

  Nodding happily in the rain, Andy said, “Stan’s gonna have a lot of fun towing this upstate.”

  Startled, Doug said, “Andy? Stan, he won’t, uh, my truck…”

  Andy reassuringly patted him on the arm. “Don’t worry, Doug,” he said. “Stan’ll be good. I’ll tell him to be good.”

  “Uh,” said Doug.

  SEVENTY-ONE

  Myrtle awoke to a scratching sound. She opened her eyes and saw that it hadn’t been just a bad dream, after all. It had been true and real. The monster called Tiny, the tough gang members, her own icy-eyed father, all real, and she in their grasp, imprisoned here on this narrow old canvas cot in the attic of the house on Oak Street, under one holey sheet and one threadbare blanket, with a lumpy pillow under her head and a lock on the door.

  It was amazing, really, that she’d been able to sleep at all. The cot was so lumpy, with one giant hard bump in particular, in the small of her back, that she just hadn’t been able to either prod out of the canvas or ignore. And there was also her situation, of course, as desperate as it could be, with the gang downstairs including among its members two people—Doug and Wally—that she’d thought of at one time as her friends, in their very different ways. Friendly, in any case.

  So the fact that sleep had come to her at any time in the course of this night was just a proof of her exhaustion in the face of all this peril. And now, some sort of scratching noise had awakened her. Rats? Ooo!

  Staring around at the bare wide-planked floor, Myrtle saw no rats, saw nothing alive or moving at all. Then she realized what it must be: rain. Very dim light showed at the one window in the end wall, meaning it must now be very shortly after dawn, and in that gray light she watched the raindrops pelt the window glass as hard and unceasing as ever.

  So it was the rain, that’s all; too early to wake up. Myrtle closed her eyes again, and listened, and heard the scratching sound once more, and it came from the other direction. Not from the window at all. From the other way.

  Reluctantly, Myrtle opened her eyes and looked the other way. Down there was the unfinished interior wall, closing off this room at the end of the attic. Centered in the wall was the old wooden door with its old worn brass round knob.

  Skritch. Skritch. Someone was at the door.

  Myrtle sat up on the creaky old cot. Though she’d slept in all her clothes—wouldn’t you? — she held the ragged sheet and blanket up to her throat as she stared wide-eyed toward the door.

  Who is it? She whispered that: “Who is it?”

  Skritch. Skritch.

  Well, she hadn’t slept in all her clothes. Tentatively putting her legs over the side of the cot, she felt around with her toes, found her shoes, slipped them on, and now was completely dressed. As armored as possible under the circumstances, she crept across the rough wood floor and bent her ear to the door. “Hello?”

  “Myrtle!” An excited but unidentifiable whisper.

  “Who is it?”

  “Wally!”

  She recoiled. The mastermind! Her own whisper became increasingly sibilant, with falsetto breakthroughs: “What do you want?”

  “I don’t dare rescue you yet!”

  She frowned at the wood panel of the door: “What?”

  “Tonight,” his faint whisper came, “when they’ve all gone— Myrtle?”

  “Yesss?”

  “Can you hear me?”

  “I think so,” she whispered.

  “Get down by the keyhole!”

  Poison gas. Pygmy dart in her eye. Bending nearer the keyhole but not all the way in front of it, she whispered, “I can hear you.”

  “Tonight,” came that rustle of his whisper, “they’ll all be going to the reservoir.”

  Devil cults, black masses. Mass poisonings. “Why?”

  He ignored that (of course!). “Only May and Murch’s Mom and I will be here. The compu—”

  “Who?”

  “The two ladies.” Then, his whisper somehow closer, more insinuating, as though his astral person had shinnied through the keyhole and up onto her shoulder, he asked, “Is her name really Gladys?”

  “I don’t know anything anymore,” Myrtle wailed, half whispered and half in that screechy falsetto. “I don’t know what anybody’s doing, I don’t know anybody’s real name—”

  “You know my real name.”

  “Do I?”

  “And I know yours.”

  That brought her up short. She leaned her palm against the door, its wooden surface surprisingly warm and comforting to her touch. Her mind ran like watercolors.

  “Myrtle?”

  Nobody can be trusted, she thought hopelessly. Not even me. Bending closer to the keyhole, she whispered, “No, you don’t.”

  “I don’t what?”

  “Know my real name. My real name is Myrtle Street.”

  “That’s where you live.”

  “That’s partly why I lied. And partly, just before I met you, I just found out Tom Jimson’s my, my, my… father.”

  “You just found out?”

  “You’re the only person I ever said that name to. And now that I’ve s
een Tom Jimson…”

  His whisper awash in sympathy, Wally told her, “I guess he’s not much what people think of when they think ‘father.’ ”

  “I sure hope not,” Myrtle whispered back.

  “Well, listen. The computer says we can rescue each other!”

  “Wally,” she whispered, bending closer and closer to the keyhole (oh, chink!), “who do you talk to when you use the computer?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Where is it connected?”

  “It’s just plugged in,” he whispered, sounding baffled. “Like any computer.”

  “You aren’t giving orders to a gang? Or getting orders from a boss? Or anything like that?”

  “Well, gee, no. Myrtle, it isn’t a VDT, not like your terminal at the library, it isn’t connected to a mainframe anywhere.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No, honest. It’s my personal personal computer.”

  Could she believe him? What could she believe? What could she believe? And, given her present circumstances, what did it matter what she did or did not believe? She whispered, “Wally, I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “I’ll tell you,” he promised. “Tonight, they’re all going out to the reservoir to get some money that’s hidden there. I think Tom’s going to try to cheat everybody once they get the money.”

  Well, that sounded believable. Myrtle whispered, “Then what?”

  “Tom might come back here to, uh, make trouble.”

  Myrtle had the feeling she knew what he meant. She had a quick vision of herself pleading for mercy—I’m your daughter! — and she pressed herself closer to the door, imagining the little, squat, round, moist, reliable form of Wally Knurr on its other side. “What should I do?”

  “After everybody else leaves,” he whispered, “I’ll get you out of there and we’ll go over to your house. We’ll be able to see what happens from there.”

  My house. My house. No other part of the plan mattered. “That’s wonderful, Wally,” Myrtle whispered, patting the door. “I’ll be waiting, whenever you say. I’ll be right here.”

  SEVENTY-TWO

  “More coffee?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Another English muffin?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Marmalade again?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Okay? Yeah!”

  “Fine, fine, fine. Listen, try Frank.”

  “Frank? You think so? Okay: Hey, Frank! I always want marmalade on my English muffin, Frank! Hey, Frank Guffey, you got that?”

  Guffey, watching the English muffins in the toaster oven little by little turn brown, like Larry Talbot becoming the wolfman, pondered and pondered and then shook his head. “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t be a Frank.”

  “I didn’t think so, either,” Dortmunder admitted.

  “I might of been better off if I was a Frank,” Guffey decided, taking out the English muffins and going to work on them with the marmalade. “More self-assertive. Not so much of a patsy.”

  “Hey, Patsy!” Dortmunder called. “Give me more marmalade, Patsy! Hey, Patsy Guffey, bring that English muffin over here.”

  “Could be my sister,” Guffey said, bringing the plates over to the kitchen table, where Dortmunder sat hunched over his planted elbows, contemplating his hangover. Guffey went back to the counter for the coffee cups, brought them over, and placed them on the Formica with two loud ticks that made Dortmunder flinch.

  They sat in silence together while the kitchen clock moved from three-twenty P.M. to three-forty P.M. without anybody noticing or caring. Then, Dortmunder, lifting his head and his eyes while draining the last of his now lukewarm coffee, noticed the clock and found himself thinking about what was or was not going on upstate. Putting down his cup (tick, flinch), he said, “I think I’m gonna phone them.”

  Guffey looked semialert. “Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah?”

  “You make more coffee,” Dortmunder told him. “I go to the living room and make my phone call.”

  “Hey, come on, Dortmunder,” Guffey said. (He wouldn’t use Dortmunder’s first name, he’d announced, until he found his own.) “That isn’t fair.”

  “I’m not trying to be fair,” Dortmunder said, getting with some difficulty to his feet. “I’m trying to protect my interests.”

  “Well, I got interests, too,” Guffey exclaimed.

  “Not that I am trying to protect,” Dortmunder told him. “I don’t want you listening when I make my call.” Then, seeing Guffey try to be surreptitious about looking around the kitchen, he smirked a little, as much as his hangover would permit, and said, “No, there aren’t any extensions, though a particular friend of mine keeps trying to load them on me. I always said no, I didn’t want the goddamn things, and now I’m gonna be very happy to tell him I know why.”

  Sitting at the table, Guffey shook his head and said, “Somehow or other, I lost the advantage around here. I mean, I had it. I had the rifle in my hands, I had the drop on you, I had you scared shitless, I had—”

  “Well.”

  “Never mind ‘well,’ ” Guffey told him. “I had you scared shitless, admit it.”

  “You had me worried for a while,” Dortmunder allowed. “But we’re both reasonable men, so we worked things out. Or we’re working things out. Like right now, I’m gonna make my phone call and you’re gonna make more coffee.”

  “It isn’t that I’m reasonable,” Guffey was saying, as Dortmunder left the room, “it’s that it always happens that way. I always lose the advantage. It’s a hell of a thing to live with.”

  In the living room, Dortmunder called the number up in Dudson Center, hoping May would answer, and astonishingly enough it was May who answered. Recognizing her voice, he said, “May, it’s me.”

  “John! Where are you?”

  “Home, like I said I’d be.”

  “Safe at home,” she said, sounding wistful.

  Looking at the rifle, which still leaned against the wall beside the television set, Dortmunder said, “Well, kinda safe. Safer now, anyway. What’s happening up there?”

  “John,” May said, all at once sounding excited, even admiring, “Stan and Andy and Doug came back with a boat! It’s huge! You wouldn’t believe how big it is!”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “John, it sleeps two!”

  “Sleeps two!” Dortmunder, visualizing the QEII, said, “What are they gonna do with it? Is it gonna go in the reservoir?”

  “John,” May said, “it’s going to look like a toy boat in a bathtub. But Doug says it’s better, it’s quieter than an outboard motor and they can put the winch right on the boat and winch the box straight up out of the water and take it to shore on the boat.”

  “Well, that part sounds okay,” Dortmunder admitted.

  “On the other hand,” May said, lowering her voice, “we’ve had a little trouble around here.”

  “Tom?”

  “Not yet. He will be trouble, but not yet.”

  “What, then?”

  “There’s a girl,” May said. “Tiny found her peeking in the kitchen window. Turns out, she’s the girl Doug’s been seeing up here, and she was spying, and she knows a lot about us. And her mother’s the one Murch’s Mom’s been playing canasta with. John, did you know Murch’s Mom’s name was Gladys?”

  “Go on.”

  “No, it really is. Anyway, that’s what she told this girl’s mother that she plays canasta with.”

  Dortmunder said, “Wait a minute. Tiny found the daughter spying?”

  “Looking in the kitchen window.”

  “Then what?”

  “Well, one thing led to another, and now she’s locked in the attic until we’re finished.”

  “And then what?”

  “Well, we say we let her go. I don’t know what Tom says.”

  Dortmunder could guess. He said, “What about her mother? Won’t she call the cops when her daughter doesn’t come home? Won’t they first look around the neighborhood?”

&n
bsp; “We made her call home last night,” May said, “and say she was going away overnight with Doug. I listened on the extension, and—”

  “Huh,” Dortmunder said.

  “What?”

  “Never mind, something I’ll tell you later about extensions. What happened next?”

  “Well, John, I was astonished at that mother, let me tell you. The daughter—her name’s Myrtle Street, would you believe it?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she lives on Myrtle Street.”

  “Oh. No kidding.”

  “Anyway, her mother said, ‘Good. About time you got your blood moving.’ Did you ever hear such a thing?”

  “Weird,” Dortmunder agreed.

  “Then she wanted to talk to Doug. The mother did. So Doug got on, expecting to have to say how he was going to respect the daughter and all that, and the mother wanted to talk to him about condoms.”

  “Ah,” Dortmunder said.

  “I don’t know who was more embarrassed, the girl or Doug. Particularly since, you know, nothing like that was going on anyway. Apparently, Doug hasn’t been too successful with this girl. So she wasn’t even spending the night with him, she was spending the night locked in the attic.”

  “I don’t know, May,” Dortmunder said. “That doesn’t sound to me like a good situation up there.”

  “Well, it’ll be over soon,” May said. “And John, I do understand your feelings about all this, I’m not going to argue with you or try to change your mind or anything, but we sure could use you up here.”

  “What I think is,” Dortmunder said, “I think everybody should just walk away from it right now.”

  “That’s impossible, John, you know that. Besides, they’re going to go do it tonight, and then it’ll be all over with. One way or the other.”

  “It’s the other that bothers me,” Dortmunder said. “You keep your back against the wall, May.”

  “I will. And I’ll see you tomorrow, John.”

  Dortmunder was very thoughtful when he went back to the kitchen, where Guffey offered him a fresh cup of coffee, plus two more names to try: Harry and Jim. Neither did the trick, and then Dortmunder said, “Guffey, I’m gonna have to go up there.”