Drowned Hopes (24 page)

“Point that light at the floor!”

Dortmunder pointed the light at the floor.

“Come on around me and walk out to the lobby.”

Dortmunder did that, too. What the hell, that’s where he’d been going, anyway.

The sudden western twilight had come and been and gone, leaving a faint but clear silvery greenish–gray illumination at every exterior rectangle, returning to these former windows and former doors a bit of their one–time dignity.

“Shine the light over to the left.”

Dortmunder did so and saw another doorway, leading into what had once been the hotel bar (members only). “You want me to go over there?”

“Sssh!”

Dortmunder nodded.

Something — probably not the old guy’s finger — prodded Dortmunder’s back, and the old guy’s hoarse harsh voice, nearly a whisper, said, “Where’s your partner?” He pronounced it “pardner.”

“Downstairs,” Dortmunder answered in the same near whisper. “In the basement. Looking at the, uh, plumbing.”

“Plumbing?” That seemed to bewilder the old guy but only for a second because, with another prod in Dortmunder’s back, he said, “Go on in over there.”

So Dortmunder did that, too, entering one of the most completely stripped rooms in the hotel. Tables, chairs, banquettes, barstools, bar, back bar, mirrors, cabinets, sinks, refrigerators, carpets, light fixtures, light
switches,
imitation Remington prints, window shades and curtains, cash register, glasses, ash trays, tap levers, duckboard floor behind the bar, both clocks, and the sawed–off baseball bat; all were gone.

Dortmunder’s flashlight picked out the peeling rotting plywood floor, the brick walls, and in the middle of the floor a black box, three feet tall and about one foot square. Pointing the light beam directly at it, Dortmunder saw it was a speaker cabinet from some old sound system, not looted because somebody at one time had kicked it in the mouth, ripping the black–and–silver front cloth and puncturing the speaker’s diaphragm. Maybe somebody who’d heard “Rock Around the Clock” once too often.

“Sit down,” said the raspy rusty voice.

“On that?”

For answer, he got another poke from the non–finger. So he went over to the speaker and turned around and sat on it, being careful to point the flashlight beam downward and not directly toward his captor. “Here I am,” he said.

“Shine the light on your face.”

He did, which made him squint. Resting the butt of the flashlight on his knee, he pointed the business end at his nose and said, “This kinda makes it tough.”

“Point it to the
side
a little,” the voice said out of the darkness, sounding petulant all at once. “This ain’t the third degree.”

“It isn’t?” Dortmunder pointed the light beam over his right shoulder, which was better.

“I just gotta see your face,” the old guy explained, “so I can see if you’re telling the truth.”

“I always tell the truth,” Dortmunder lied, and gave the old guy a good clear view of his face while doing so to see how things could be expected to go.

Pretty well. “You better be sure you do,” the old guy said, having just failed the test. “What do you know about …” Portentous pause, that. “… Tim Jepson?”

Ah–
hah.
With the lightning speed of a main–frame computer, in nano–fractions of a nanosecond, Dortmunder got the picture. “Tim Jepson” = “Tom Jimson.” Old guy with rifle = ex–partner left in elevator. Long–term revenge from a loony. A loony with a rifle. A loony with a rifle and a legitimate grievance against the guy he’d already referred to as “your pardner.” Face held unflinchingly into the light, “Never heard of him,” Dortmunder said.

“He didn’t send you two here for … anything?”

“Not us,” Dortmunder said, knowing it was the fourteen thousand dollars the old guy was hinting around about, knowing — old computer brain still clicking along at top speed — this old guy would have searched high and low for that money, but not low enough. Tom had been right about that; fourteen grand wasn’t enough to get most people to go down into that trap in the large intestine of the Cronley Hotel.

Just how long was it going to take Tom to finish down there? And when he came up, what would happen then? This old guy hadn’t recognized Tom yet, but wouldn’t he sooner or later?

“If Jepson didn’t send you,” the querulous voice said out of the darkness, “what are you doing here?”

Oh, good question. “Inspection,” Dortmunder said, floundering a bit, the old computer brain beginning to hiccup. What
was
he doing here? “We were told there wasn’t anybody living in, uh, Cronley,” he said, filling time, being innocent, waiting for the computer to come through.

“
Who
told you?”

“Well, the state,” Dortmunder said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “The State, uh, Department of Recovery.”

“Department of Recovery?”

“You never heard of the D.O.R.?” Dortmunder shook his head, astonished at such unworldliness. “You gotta know about the housing shortage, right?”

“You mean …” The old guy’s voice quavered. “
Here?
”

He’s buying it! Dortmunder kept his face innocently blank and earnest as he said, “Well, that’s what we’re here to check out. To see if the, uh, you know, the, uh, infra, infra, infra …”

What
was
that word? Knowing he was losing his audience, knowing his right hand and therefore the flashlight beam was beginning to tremble, knowing his look of simple honesty was falling apart only because he couldn’t remember one single
word,
realizing that hotshot computer inside his head was
down,
Dortmunder gaped in the light, struggled — infra, infra, infra
something
— and gave it up. “Well,” he said pleasantly, “bye now,” and switched off the flashlight as he dove for the floor.

“Infrastructure!” he shouted, the goddamn word blazing across his brain too late, his voice drowned out by the roar of the rifle.

So Guffey’d missed him, dang it. Aiming at where he thought the voice had come from — hard to tell in this enclosed space, though, with the
brang
of his first shot still echoing in his ears — Guffey fired again.

“Infrastructure! Infrastructure!”

What was that, some new word for
I surrender?
Lowing his rifle, Guffey peered angrily into the darkness. He was getting confused, and he
hated
that. What was going on? Why had this state inspector — if that’s what he was — suddenly switched off his flashlight and started running around the darkness shouting out foreign words?

And if he and his partner
weren’t
state inspectors from the Department of Recovery, then who were they? Would Tim Jepson send other people to get his fourteen thousand dollars, or would he come himself? If Guffey knew Tim Jepson, and he thought he did by now, Tim Jepson wasn’t a man who trusted other people a whole lot. Not enough to tell some other people where he’d hidden a stash of money. And certainly not enough to send those other people out here by
themselves
to get it.

Could one of these two interlopers be Tim Jepson in disguise? The features of the man who had ruined his life were seared permanently into Guffey’s brain, undimmed by the more than forty years that had passed since he’d last laid eyes on that devil in human shape. Slick black hair parted in the middle and pasted flat to his skull with Vitalis. Piercing dark eyes under thin eyebrows of midnight black. A cruel hard smile showing big white teeth. A kind of loping walk, shoulders loose. A big–framed but skinny body. There was no way Tim Jepson could disguise himself that Guffey wouldn’t recognize him.

So these were just looters, weren’t they? Not officials from state government, looking to move people back into this old town. And not people connected with Tim Jepson. Simple looters, looking for
plumbing fixtures
at this late date! Dumb as they looked, in other words.

“Infrastructure!”

“Oh, shut up,” Guffey said, trying to think.

Surprisingly, the idiot shut up. He also stopped running back and forth and stood still. Guffey knew that because the fellow had stopped in front of a window, not realizing he was outlined against the starlight outside. And therefore he had no idea Guffey could now drop him with one shot, simple as pie.

But Guffey no longer wanted to shoot him. The way he saw it, he was already in so much trouble just having shot
at
this idiot that he’d probably have to hide out in the woods for a
year
before the state cops stopped looking for him. If he actually killed himself a couple plumbing–fixture thieves, the state cops wouldn’t give up looking until they found him.

And if they ever did find him, he knew what they’d do next. They’d put him back inside. Back inside
there.
The thought made Guffey’s hands tremble so hard he almost dropped the rifle. “Turn the flashlight back on, will you?” he asked, hating the quaver he couldn’t keep out of his voice.

“What, and get shot?”

“You’re standing in front of a
window,
” Guffey told him, forgetting his fear in his exasperation. “If I wanted to shoot you, you’d be shot by now.”

He saw the shadowy figure spin around to stare at the window, heard the shadowy figure gasp, and then the flashlight came on again, pointing at the window, illuminating the street out front and their little car parked there.

Little car. Hmmmm …

“Wait a minute,” Guffey said, and the flashlight swung around to point in his direction. Ignoring the light, Guffey said, “People who come here to steal toilets and sinks, they don’t drive little cars like that.”

“I told you,” the interloper said, “we’re from the State Department of Recovery, checking on the
infrastructure
so we can report —”

“Cow doody,” Guffey told him. “People from the government come around here sometimes. They’re in big Ford LTDs with air, with a big state seal on the side. Or Chrysler LeBarons. People from the government don’t drive dinky little Jap cars like that.”

“We’re, uh, outside consultants,” the interloper said.

Dealing with other human beings was so aggravating. They constantly made Guffey angry, or scared, or confused, or sad. “Goddammit,” Guffey said to this one, “you just stop lying to me right now, or I don’t care what happens, I’ll shoot you anyway.”

“Why would I lie to you?” the interloper demanded, foolishly, and pointed the flashlight up at his own face again. A dumb and completely untrustworthy smile was crookedly attached to it now, like a sign half knocked down by a hurricane.

“That’s what I wanna know,” Guffey told him, and brought the rifle butt up to his shoulder as he pointed the business end at that insulting smile. Aiming dead at that face down the length of the rifle barrel, Guffey said, “You ain’t looters, and you ain’t from the government. I know you’re nothing to do with Tim Jepson, I know I still got longer to wait till he shows up, but he
will,
and I’m gonna be here, and you and your partner ain’t gonna make trouble for me. By God, I will shoot you, shoot the both of you, and bury you where they’ll never find you, and drive that little car of yours into the river, and won’t nobody ever know a thing about it. So you better tell me the truth.”

There was a little silence then, while the half–attached smile fell off the interloper’s face and he blinked a lot; but his wavering hand kept the flashlight pointed toward his own face, accepting Guffey’s dominance. And there was a bad smell in the air all of a sudden. Was the fellow that scared? Good; he’d tell the truth sooner.

“Come on, you,” Guffey snapped, trying to sound as gruff as some of the really bad fellas back in prison. “Talk!”

The interloper stared over Guffey’s shoulder. “Hit him, Tom,” he said.

“You’re trying my patience,” Guffey told him.

“Hit him with the
bottle.
”

“That’s the oldest trick in the”