Drowned Hopes (2 page)

“I suppose not,” Dortmunder said.

“So it happened,” Tom went on, “I happened to know this undertaker around that time. We did business together —”

Dortmunder and May exchanged a look.

“ — and he slipped me a box out of his inventory. Sunnyside Casket Company’s best, and worth every penny of it. It’s a crime to waste those boxes on dead people.”

“Uh–huh,” Dortmunder said.

“There was a little town up there,” Tom went on, “not far from the Thruway. Called Putkin’s Corners. I went in there one night and went out behind the library to a spot where you couldn’t be seen from any windows where anybody lived, and I dug a hole four feet deep, and I shoved the casket in and covered it up, and I drove away, and nobody in the entire world — except now you two — ever knew I was ever
in
a town called Putkin’s Corners in my entire life.”

“And that’s what you need help with?” Dortmunder asked. “Getting that casket full of money back out of Putkin’s Corners?”

“That’s where I need help, all right,” Tom agreed.

“It doesn’t sound like it should be that much trouble,” Dortmunder assured him, thinking Tom meant that, now he was seventy years old, he wasn’t up to all the digging and lifting required.

But Tom shook his head, saying, “A little harder than you might think, Al. You see, about four years after I went up, a while before you come in to be my cellmate, the state of New York condemned all that land and houses and four villages up there, including Putkin’s Corners, and made everybody move away. And then the city of New York bought up all that land, and they threw a dam across partway down the valley, and they made themselves another reservoir for all you people down here.”

“Oh,” Dortmunder said.

“So that’s why I need help,” Tom explained. “Because as it stands right now, that stash of mine is under three feet of dirt and fifty feet of water.”

“Ah,” Dortmunder said. “Not easy.”

“Not impossible,” Tom said. “So here’s the deal I’d like to offer. You got a head on your shoulders, Al —”

“Thanks,” Dortmunder said.

“So you come into this with me,” Tom finished. “We get that box of mine out of Putkin’s Corners, you and me and whoever else it takes, and when we get it we split down the middle. Half for me, and half for you, and you share your half how you like with whoever else you bring in. Three hundred fifty thousand. I can live to be an old man on that much, especially down in Mexico. What do you say?”

“Interesting,” Dortmunder said, thinking he’d like to know more about the problems that had afflicted Tom’s partners in the original robbery, leaving him sole possessor of the seven hundred thousand dollars. But thinking also that at seventy Tom was probably not quite as dangerous as he’d been at forty–three or forty–four, when the robbery had taken place. And thinking beyond that to the amount of money itself, and the hassle he’d just gone through tonight for petty cash out of a check–cashing place with a bad–tempered dog. He didn’t know exactly how you went about digging up a casket from fifty feet down in the bottom of a reservoir, but let’s just say he had to bring in two or three other guys, say three other guys; that still left nearly a hundred thousand apiece. And there are no dogs in a reservoir.

Tom was saying, “Now, you probably want to get some sleep —”

“Yeah, I’m due,” Dortmunder admitted.

“So maybe this afternoon, early afternoon, we could drive on up and I could show you the place. It’s about two hours up from the city.”

“This afternoon?” Dortmunder echoed, thinking he’d like to sleep a little longer than that. The check–cashing place’s dog had kind of taken it out of him.

“Well, the sooner the better, you know,” Tom said.

May said, “John? Are you going to do this?”

Dortmunder knew that May had taken an aversion to Tom Jimson — most human beings did — but on the other hand there were all those advantages he’d just been thinking about, so he said, “I’ll take a look at it anyway, May, see how it seems.”

“If you think you should,” May said. The air around her words vibrated with all the other words she wasn’t saying.

“I’ll just take a look,” Dortmunder assured her, and faced Tom again to say, “Where are you staying now?”

“Well,” Tom said, “until I get my stash out of Putkin’s Corners, that sofa you’re sitting on’s about as good a place as any.”

“Ah,” Dortmunder said, while beside him May’s cheekbones turned to concrete. “In that case,” Dortmunder said, “I guess we better drive up and take a look this afternoon.”

But the alternative, this time, was even worse. If Tom Jimson had ever known how to drive a car, and had ever cared enough about humanity to try to drive it in a nonlethal fashion, both the skill and the caring had disappeared completely in the course of his latest twenty–three–year visit inside. So Tom had rented the car — a
rental,
not even something borrowed from the street, another nervous–making element — and now Dortmunder was doing the driving, regardless.

At least the weather was good, April sun agleam on the white aluminum siding sheathed around all the quaint old houses that made North Dudson so scenic a place that a city boy could get a migraine just by looking at it. Particularly when he hadn’t had enough sleep. So Dortmunder concentrated on the few familiar reminders of civilization along the way — traffic lights, McDonald’s arches, Marlboro Man billboards — and just kept driving forward, knowing that sooner or later North Dudson would have to come to an end. Beside him, Tom looked around, smiled ironically without moving his lips, and said, “Well,
this
place is still the same piece of shit, anyway.”

“What do I do when I get out of town?”

“You keep driving,” Tom said.

A taco joint with a neon sign in its window advertising a German beer made in Texas was the last building in North Dudson, and then the fields and forests and farms took over. The road began to wobble and to climb, and here and there horses looked up from their grazing in rock–littered fields to give them the fish eye as they passed by.

About four miles out of town, Tom broke a fairly long silence by conversationally saying, “That was the road.”

Dortmunder slammed on the brakes, sluing to a stop on the highway and giving the old fart in the pickup truck tailgating him yet another infarction. “Where?” Dortmunder demanded, staring around, seeing no intersection, his question blotted out by the squawk of the pickup’s horn howling in outraged complaint as the truck swung on by and tore away down the road. “Where?” Dortmunder repeated.

“Back there,” Tom said, and gave him a look. “You can’t take it
now,
” he said. “Putkin’s Corners is gone, remember? That’s the whole problem here.”

“You mean the
old
road,” Dortmunder said. “Not any road I’m supposed to take now.”

“You can’t take it now,” Tom said. “It’s all overgrown. See it?”

Dortmunder still couldn’t see any road, so Tom must have been right about it being overgrown. “When you said, ‘That was the road,’ ” Dortmunder told him, “I thought you meant I was supposed to turn or something.”

“When you’re supposed to turn or something,” Tom said, “I’ll tell you so.”

“I thought you
did
tell me so,” Dortmunder explained.

“Well, I didn’t.”

“Well, it just
sounded
that way,” Dortmunder said, as a station wagon went by, yapping its horn at them for being stopped in the middle of the road. “When you said, ‘That was the road,’ it
sounded
like you meant that was the road.”

“It
was
the road. Twenty–three years ago it was the road.” Tom sounded snappish. “
Now
what it is is a lot of trees and bushes and hills.”

“It was just confusing, what you said, is all,” Dortmunder explained, as a big truck full of logs gave them the air horn on its way by.

Tom half turned to look full at Dortmunder. “I understand what you’re saying, Al,” he said. “So don’t say it anymore. Drive on, okay? I’m seventy years old. I don’t know how much longer I got.”

So Dortmunder drove on, and a mile or so later they came to a sign that said:
ENTERING VILBURGTOWN COUNTY.
“This is the county,” Tom said. “When they did the reservoir, they covered almost this whole county. There’s no towns left here at all. Putkin’s Corners was the county seat. There’s the road.”

A two–lane blacktop road went off to the right. Dortmunder nodded at it and kept going straight.

Tom said, “Hey!”

“What?”

“That was the road! What’s the matter with you?”

This time, Dortmunder pulled off onto the gravel verge before he stopped. Facing Tom, he said, “Do you mean I was supposed to turn there?”

“That’s what I said!” Tom was so agitated his lips were almost moving. “I told you, ‘There’s the road’!”

“The last time you told me ‘There’s the road,’ ” Dortmunder said icily, getting fed up with all this, “you didn’t
mean
‘There’s the road,’ you meant something else. A history lesson or some goddamn thing.”

Tom sighed. He frowned at the dashboard. He polished the tip of his nose with a bent knuckle. Then he nodded. “Okay, Al,” he said. “We been outta touch with each other awhile. We just got to get used to communicating with each other again.”

“Probably so,” Dortmunder agreed, ready to meet his old cellmate halfway.

“So
this
time,” Tom said, “what I meant was, ‘Turn here.’ In fact, I’m sorry that isn’t the way I phrased myself.”

“It would have helped,” Dortmunder admitted.

“So I tell you what you do,” Tom said. “You turn around, and we go back, and we’ll try all over again and see how it comes out. Okay?”

“Good.”

Dortmunder looked both ways, made the U–turn, and Tom said, “Turn here.”

“I already knew that, Tom,” Dortmunder said, and made the turn onto the new road.

“I just wanted to practice saying it right.”

“I’m wondering,” Dortmunder said as they drove through the forest along the new road, “if that’s some more of your famous humor.”

“Maybe so,” Tom said, looking out the windshield, watching the road unwind toward them out of the woods. “Or maybe it’s concealed rage,” he said. “One time, inside, a shrink took a whack at me, and he told me I had a lot of concealed rage, so maybe that’s some of it, coming out in disguised form.”

Dortmunder, surprised, gave him a look. “You got
concealed
rage?” he asked. “On top of all the rage you
show,
you got
more?
”

“According to this shrink,” Tom said, and shrugged, saying, “But what do they know? Shrinks are crazy, anyway, that’s why they take the job. Slow down a little now, we’re getting close.”

On the right, the forest was interrupted by a dirt road marked N
O
A
DMITTANCE
—
VILBURGTOWN RESERVOIR AUTHORITY
, with a simple metal–pipe barrier blocking the way. A little later, there was another dirt road on the same side, with the same sign and the same pipe barrier, and a little after that a fence came marching at an angle out of the woods and then ran along next to the road; an eight–foot–high chain–link fence with two strands of barbed wire angling outward at the top.

Dortmunder said, “They put barbed wire around the reservoir?”

“They did,” Tom agreed.

“Isn’t that more security than most reservoirs get?” Dortmunder waved a hand vaguely. “I thought, most reservoirs, you could go there and fish and stuff.”

“Well, yeah,” Tom said. “But back then, the time they put this one in, it was a very revolutionary moment in American history, you know. You had all these environment freaks and antiwar freaks and antigovernment freaks and like that …”

“Well, you still do.”

“But back then,” Tom said, “they were
crazed.
Blowing up college buildings and all this. And this reservoir became what you call your focal point of protest. You had these groups threatening that if this reservoir went in, they’d lace it with enough chemicals to blow every mind in New York City.”

“Gee, maybe they did,” Dortmunder said, thinking back to some people he knew down in the city.

“No, they didn’t,” Tom told him, “on account of this fence, and the cops on duty here, and the state law they passed to make this reservoir off limits to
everybody.
”

“But that was a long time ago,” Dortmunder objected. “Those chemicals are gone. The people that had them took them all themselves.”

“Al,” Tom said, “have you ever seen any government
give up
control, once they got it? Here’s the fence, here’s the cops, here’s the state law says everybody keep out, here’s the
job to be done.
So they do it. Otherwise, they wouldn’t feel right taking their paycheck every week.”

“Okay,” Dortmunder said. “Complicates things for you and me, but okay.”

“Not a real complication,” Tom said, but unfortunately at that point it didn’t occur to Dortmunder to follow through and ask him what he meant by that.

Besides, here came the reservoir. The fence continued on, and through it water gleamed. A great big lake appeared, smiling placidly in the afternoon sun, winking and rippling when little playful breezes skipped over it. Pine trees and oaks and maples and birch trees surrounded the reservoir, growing right down to the water’s edge. There were no houses around it, no boats on it, no people in sight anywhere. And the road ran right along beside it. On the other side of the road, past another fence, was a big drop–off, the land falling away to a deep valley far below.

“Stop along here somewheres,” Tom said.

There was a very narrow shoulder here, and then the fence. If Dortmunder pulled right up against the fence, Tom wouldn’t be able to open his door, and anyway the car would still be partly on the road. But there hadn’t been any traffic at all along this secondary road, so Dortmunder didn’t worry about it and just stopped where they were, and Tom said, “Good,” and got out, leaving his door open.

Dortmunder left the engine running, and also climbed out onto cement roadway, but shut his door against the possibility of traffic. He walked around the car and stood beside the fence with Tom, looking out at the serene water. Tom stuck his gnarly old tree–twig finger through the fence, pointing as he said, “Putkin’s Corners was right about there. Right about out there.”

“Be tough to get to,” Dortmunder commented.

“Just a little muddy, is all,” Tom said.

Dortmunder looked around. “Where’s the dam?”

Tom gave him a disbelieving look. “The dam? Where’s the dam?
This
is the dam. You’re standing on the dam.”

“I am?” Dortmunder looked left and right, and saw how the road came out of the woods behind them and then swung off in a long gentle curve, with the reservoir outside the curve on the right and the valley inside the curve on the left, all the way around to another hillside full of trees way over there, where it disappeared again in among the greenery. “This is the dam,” Dortmunder said, full of wonder. “And they put the road right on top of it.”

“Sure. What’d you think?”

“I didn’t expect it to be so big,” Dortmunder admitted. Being careful to look both ways, even though there had still been no traffic out here, Dortmunder crossed the road and looked down and saw how the dam also curved gently outward from top to bottom, its creamy gray concrete like a curtain that has billowed out slightly from a breeze blowing underneath. Beyond and below the concrete wall of the dam, a neat stream meandered away farther on down the valley, past a few farms, a village, another village, and at the far end of the valley what looked like a pretty big town, much bigger even than North Dudson. “So that,” Dortmunder said, pointing back toward the reservoir, “must have looked like this before they put the dam in.”

“If I’d known,” Tom said, “I would of buried the goddamn box in Dudson Center down there.”