Drowned Hopes (35 page)

“No, I don’t mean that,” John said. “I’m simply trying to explain to you why I’m as stupid as I am.”

“Oh,” Wally said.

“Why I could never think about anybody going down into that goddamn water except
me,
” John went on, “and I knew damn well it wasn’t
about
to be me, not again, so that’s why I was stymied.”

“I see,” Wally said.

“But you took one look,” John told him, “once you got out from behind that machine of yours, you took one look at what
I
couldn’t see at all, and you said it’s obvious. And it is.”

Wally wasn’t sure exactly how far he was supposed to go in agreement with John’s self–insults, so he made a quick defensive move, shoving cheese and cracker in his mouth so he wouldn’t be able to do anything but nod and say, “Mm. Mm.”

Which was apparently enough. John sat back, his whole body a study in looseness and relief. Pointing over at the computer, he said, “Sell that thing, Wally. You don’t need it.”

Everybody in May’s new living room watched Dortmunder’s face as he listened yet again to that goddamn irrelevant infuriating
long
announcement. At the end, he snarled savagely into the phone, “Don’t you ever listen to your messages? You’re worse than Andy.”

“Aw, come on,” Kelp said from his perch on the sofa arm, beside May.

Ignoring him, Dortmunder told the phone, “This is John
again.
Call me, dammit. I’ve been out to your place, you’re never there. Time’s running out.”

“And that’s no lie,” Tom said happily, seated primly on the wooden chair in the corner that had become his favorite waiting place. Murch’s Mom gave him a dirty look, which he seemed not to notice.

Laboriously, Dortmunder stated May’s new phone number into Doug Berry’s machine, area code and all, then said, “Call
collect,
if you want, dammit. Just
call.
We’ve been trying to reach you for three days now.” And he slammed down the phone.

In the ensuing silence, Dortmunder, Kelp, May, Stan Murch, and Murch’s Mom — everybody but Tom — all sat or stood in the living room, thinking the same furious thought: Where
is
that waterlogged jerk?

The glider swayed on the front porch in bright daylight, moving rhythmically and suggestively with their movements, and when Myrtle opened her eyes, looking past his ear, past his wavy blond hair, her vision blurred and she could barely see Myrtle Street and the houses across the way and the glimpses beyond them of the houses fronting on Oak Street far away. The glider swayed in the somnolent day, no traffic at all moved on the street, and Myrtle felt again the flutter of a faint moan rise up through her throat, past his warm mouth, out her own trembling lips.

But this was supposed to be
safe!
Broad daylight! She had nothing to fear, she’d been sure of that, just sitting with him on this front porch in the middle of the day, in front of the world, with the sun beaming down. That’s why she’d agreed.

Suggested. Ohhhhhhhh …

Edna isn’t home.

The house loomed empty behind them. “Myrtle,” he murmured, lips moving against her throat, “Myrtle, Myrtle, Myrtle …”

She closed her eyes. The heat rose from them, rose around them, surrounded them like a sauna, an invisible ball with them inside, steaming. The strength flowed away, out of her shoulders and arms, out of her knees and legs, concentrating in her belly. Her head lolled against the silkiness of his hair, unable to sustain its own weight. Her breath flowed like jasmine through her parted mouth, her lips were swollen and red, her eyelids heavy.

“Doug …”

No. That was supposed to have been a warning, a protest, a command to them both to stop, but she could hear herself how it had come out wrong, how the syllable had stretched, had become languorous and welcoming, had beckoned him on instead of pushing him away. She was afraid to speak again, to say anything else, afraid her voice would betray her once more. But if she said nothing, did nothing, he’d just continue, his mouth, his hands …

“Myrtle, say yes.”

“Doug …”

“Say yes.”

“Doug …”

“Say yes.”

“Ououououououououghhh …”

“Say yesssssssssss …”

“Yesssssssssss …”

He was up on his feet, holding her hand in his, drawing her up beside him. His smile was gentle and loving, his body so strong. “Yes,” he said, and turned them both toward the front door.

“
There
you are, Doug, goddammit!”

They spun around, and Myrtle’s heart leaped with fear. An extremely angry man, a
stranger,
stood at the top of the stoop,
glaring
at Doug.

Who knew him.
“John!” he cried in absolute stunned astonishment.

“I hate your answering machine, Doug,” the angry man said. “I just want you to know that. I have a deep personal dislike for that answering machine of yours, and if I’m ever near it with a baseball bat in my hands, that’s
it.
”

“John, I, I, I …”

What is going
on?
But Myrtle couldn’t even ask the question, could only stand there, romance forgotten, her body forgotten, and stare from Doug’s ashen amazed face to the other man’s darker angrier unloving face.

“Never mind, ‘I, I, I,’ ” said this unloving face, and the man made a quick impatient sweeping gesture like a traffic cop. “Come on. We gotta talk.”

“John, I —
Now?
John, I can’t, I —”

“Yes, now! What’s so goddamn important that you can’t —”

“John,
will
ya?”

Oh! Face burning, Myrtle pulled her hand free from Doug’s, turned blindly, groped for the door, pulled it open, and flung herself into the house as behind her Doug said to the angry man, “John, I’ll never forgive you for this in my entire —”

Slam. Tottering, weaving, Myrtle staggered to the living room and dropped into the nearest chair. Through the front windows she could see them out there, both gesturing, the angry man not letting up, Doug finally assenting, shrugging, shaking his head, turning for one last lost look at the front door — Oh, Doug, how
could
you? How could you let us be interrupted, let
that moment
be broken? — before, with obvious reluctance, he followed the angry man off the stoop and across Myrtle Street and up the Fleischbacker’s driveway over there and on out of sight.

It wasn’t until twenty minutes later, when she was calmer, when she’d already had one cup of tea and was sipping a second, when she was already remembering that her involvement with Doug in the first place was because he was a mystery she was trying to solve, that the thought suddenly came to her:

I’ve seen that man somewhere before.

And to think how happy he’d been just instants before, in the arms of Myrtle Street, rounding the far turn and galloping for home at long, long last. What a wonderful distraction Myrtle had been from his search for John and Andy, from his watch on the Vilburgtown Reservoir; as an excuse to keep visiting Dudson Center she couldn’t be improved on.

In some ways, the pursuit of Myrtle Street had become as important to Doug as his pursuit of John and Andy and the seven hundred thousand dollars from the armored car robbery. And then, just as the one pursuit seemed to be coming to its warm and beautiful and successful close, the other pursuit had made a totally unexpected about–face, the pursued had become the pursuer, and at the worst possible moment in the history of the world,
there was John!

Particularly one mean–looking old guy in a chair in a corner. While everybody else was still shouting, this guy kept saying, quietly and dispassionately, “Kill him.”

Kill him? Kill
me?
Doug stared around at all these cold faces, swallowing compulsively, afraid that if he threw up it would only give them
more
reason to kill him.

It was Andy who responded to the mean old guy first, saying, “I almost agree with you this time, Tom.”

Oh, Andy! Doug cried in his mind, but he was too frightened and sick to say anything out loud, not even to save his life. Andy, Andy, Andy, he cried inside himself, I taught you to dive!

But John was saying, “We need him, Tom,” and thank God for that. Even though John didn’t sound at all happy to have to say it; no, nor did he sound entirely convinced that what he was saying was true.

And the mean old guy — Tom — said, “What’s he doing up in this neck of the woods? Long Island boy. He followed you, John, you and Andy. He’s on to the caper. He wants the dough for himself.”

Teeth chattering, Doug found voice at last, saying, “I, I, I, I got a girlfriend, she’s M–M–Myrtle St–St–Street.”

“That’s the next block over,” said a short blunt angry woman in a flannel shirt.

“No–no–no,” Doug stammered, “that’s her, that’s her —”

“His girlfriend can put flowers on his grave,” Tom said. Then he smiled very unpleasantly at Doug and said to the others, “He’s a diver, right? Let’s take him to the reservoir, see how he dives with weights around his neck.”

“We need him to get the money,” John said.

“
I
don’t,” Tom said.

The other woman in the room, taller, calmer, said, “Tom, you’re letting John do it his way, remember?”

Tom shrugged. “You like this diver?” he asked John. “You want this diver in our lives?”

The other fellow present, a red–haired jaunty guy who looked as though he’d be an excellent street fighter, said, “Let’s see if he likes the deal. Make him the offer, John.”

Offer? “I accept!” Doug cried.

They all stared at him, too surprised to be mad; even Tom looked nearly human for a second. Andy, nodding, said, “That’s what I call low sales resistance.”

John, sounding almost sympathetic, said, “Listen to the offer first, Doug.”

“Okay,” Doug said. He still had to keep swallowing, and pinwheels had started to dance in his peripheral vision. But he would listen to the offer first, if that’s what he was supposed to do. Listen to the offer first.

“You know what we’re going for in the reservoir,” John said.

Panic again! “Oh! Well, uh —”

“We
know
you know,” John told him, sounding more irritable. “Don’t waste our time.”

“Okay,” Doug said. “Okay.”

“Okay. So here’s the story.”

Then John made the offer, something about this and that, and percentages, and diving, and Doug nodded all the way through the whole thing, and when John finally stopped talking and looked at him for a reaction, he smiled big at everybody in the room, smiling through his nausea, and he said, “Okay. Fine. I agree. It’s a deal. Where do I sign? Sounds fair to me. Hey, no problem. I’m with you. By all means. Sure! With pleasure. What’s to argue? Shake on it! You got a —”

“Oh, shut up,” said the short woman in the flannel shirt.