Drowned Hopes (39 page)

“Okay, okay!”

“One word to
anybody
about ‘Gladys,’ and I run you down with the cab!”

“Okay, okay!”

Murch’s Mom released the bunch of Doug’s shirt she’d held clutched in her fist and stepped back, aiming her glare out the kitchen window instead. “If it doesn’t cloud up soon,” she said, “I may run you down anyway.”

His having called himself Jacques Cousteau with Edna and Edna’s new friend the other night had really brought the whole problem into focus. Myrtle had been feeling more and more depressed, not even noticing the change in herself, just sliding away into gloom; and all, of course, because she couldn’t make up her mind about Doug Berry. And he’d used that false name, she understood, because her mother refused to remember his real name, which she did because
she
didn’t trust him, either. And Edna was very often right about such things.

If Myrtle could be sure Doug wasn’t a fake — or at least not a fake about anything except his extravagant claims of desire for and obsession with her own self — they would have progressed beyond the get–acquainted stage long ago. The weather was perfect, for instance, for a nice picnic up on Hochawallaputtie Hill, overlooking the reservoir. But how could she go up there with him when her heart was so full of mistrust?

“Go down Oak Street,” Edna suddenly said, breaking their long silence.

Surprised, Myrtle glanced at her mother and then out the windshield toward Oak Street, still two blocks ahead. “But that’s out of our way,” she said.

“Some gypsies moved in there,” Edna told her. “They’ve got a wrecked old car out front and everything. We’re
all
calling and complaining. We’re going to get up a petition next. Can’t have gypsies here running down the neighborhood.”

“Gypsies,” Myrtle repeated with a laugh. “Oh, Mother, what makes you think they’re gypsies?”

“Mrs. Kresthaven found a tambourine in their garbage,” Edna said. “Go on, Myrtle, turn. I want to see if that awful car is still there. It’s in the second block.”

As they made the turn onto Oak Street, the world ahead suddenly grayed, losing color and tone. Myrtle leaned forward over the steering wheel to look up at the sky. “Cloud,” she reported.

“
Never
trust the weather report,” Edna commented. “Slow down, now, it’s up there on the right. See that blue car?”

“It looks perfectly ordinary to me,” Myrtle said, slowing as per instructions, looking at an ordinarily neat house with an ordinarily plain automobile parked beside it.

“They moved some of the junk,” Edna said with mixed satisfaction and regret. Clearly, she was both glad the small–town peer pressure had done its job and sorry she couldn’t keep exerting it. “But you can still see some by the fence,” she added hopefully.

“It’s hidden by the car,” Myrtle said, slowing more and more so she could look at the place as they went by.

As they came abreast of the house, its front door opened and people abruptly started to emerge. Lots of people. They came pouring out of the house as though it were on fire, except that their expressions were happy, delighted, surprised. Running down the stoop and onto the lawn, they pointed skyward, laughing and capering and patting one another on the back.

Astounded, Myrtle watched the people cavort in her rearview mirror. Beside her, Edna said in doubtful surprise, “Was that Gladys?” but Myrtle paid no attention. She had recognized others among that group of people.

Doug? And
Wally Knurr?
Together? Holding hands and dancing in a circle, like something in a Breughel painting? What’s going on?

“Couldn’t be Gladys,” Edna decided, and craned around to look back. “What are they doing out there?”

“Looking at the cloud,” Myrtle told her, distracted.

Back there, too far away for identification, an older man, who had probably been napping upstairs, came hurrying out of the house, looked up, and nodded in agreement with the sky.

“Maybe they’re farmers,” Edna said, but she sounded doubtful.

“I know you couldn’t,” Kelp said, zipping zippers. “It’s okay, John, don’t worry about it.”

“I just couldn’t do it.”

“It’s gonna be fine,” Kelp said. “Doug’s a real pro. We’ll be perfectly fine down there. And he’s right about one thing: even a total professional like he is shouldn’t make a dive like this by himself.”

“A dive,” Dortmunder echoed. Then he was sorry he’d said it, because maybe Kelp hadn’t thought about that part of it yet.

The fact is, this time into the reservoir was going to be different, unlike anything either Dortmunder or Kelp had ever done. On both previous attempts, they’d
walked
in. This time, Doug and Kelp were going to plop out of a boat in the middle of the reservoir and
sink
in. Only of course when a professional does it, the word for
sink
is
dive.

Sure.

Tiny came back in from the porch, having just finished shlepping out all the equipment. “The track’s here,” he said.

“All set,” Kelp told him. Carrying his flippers under his arm, he followed Tiny out of the living room, Dortmunder trailing, and all three went out to the porch, where May, Murch’s Mom, Wally, Tom, and Doug (he had also suited up for the dive) were watching Stan maneuver a large slat–sided open–topped truck backward up on to the driveway in the dark.

The
very
dark. Today’s single cloud had by now become a cloud cover stretching from horizon to horizon like an extra–thick icing on the birthday cake of the Earth. Not a glimmer of light reached the surface of the planet from the heavens. Stan’s only visual aid, in fact, beyond the truck’s own back–up lights, was a streetlight some little distance away; it was by that faint gleam he was doing his best to bring the rear of the truck reasonably close to the porch without either driving on the lawn (his Mom had warned him about that) or ramming the Lincoln he still hadn’t quite finished fixing up (she hadn’t bothered to warn him about that). The porch light would have helped, but it would also have attracted unwelcome attention if it were on with all this activity around it at one–thirty in the morning. Small–town people are so
nosy.

With confusing and at times contradictory advice from Tiny, Stan managed at last to place the truck where he wanted it, and then he climbed down from the cab to help load the equipment. Once all the gear was aboard, Stan got back into the cab, this time with Tom, while Dortmunder and Kelp and Doug and Tiny all clambered up into the back, which smelled faintly of several things: pine trees, possibly sheep, maybe one or two less pleasant things.

May and Murch’s Mom and Wally stood on the dark porch and watched the slat–sided truck bounce and jounce back to the street and drive away toward the reservoir. None of them waved, but all of them thought of it.

Once the truck was out of sight, May sighed and said, “I hope we know what we’re doing.”

“No, you don’t,” Murch’s Mom told her, and nodded after the truck. “You hope
they
know what they’re doing.”

Wally said, “The trouble with real life is, there’s no reset button.”

Myrtle couldn’t sleep. Her digital clock’s luminous numbers told her it was 01:34 in the morning, which would be later than she had ever been awake in her life. But the questions were so many, and so insistent, that they just wouldn’t let her go.

What did it all mean? First, a couple of months ago, Edna had seen a man she was sure was Tom Jimson ride by in a car. Then Wally Knurr had made himself known to Myrtle, in a way she now realized must have been planned and deliberate. Then Doug Berry had done the same thing and had made himself suspect to her as well by seeming to have some sort of hidden link to her father. And then Gladys had just happened to strike up an acquaintance with Edna.

Could all four of these be coincidence? Four people, apparently separate and having nothing to do with one another, but then three of them are suddenly together among a weird group dancing on a lawn, pointing at a cloud.

New Age cultists? The dawning of the age of … What comes after Aquarius? Pisces. Fish. A water sign, that’s why they were pointing at the cloud, waiting for rain.

No, her night thoughts were getting outlandish. She’d be seeing those people as aliens from another planet next, scheming against the human race.

Hmmmmm …

No.
More realistically, they could all be part of some giant conspiracy. James Bond, or Robert Ludlum? Neither seemed quite right. That big blubbery blue Lincoln in their driveway was no Aston Martin, nor could she imagine anyone in that crowd on the lawn playing baccarat or using a cigarette holder. On the other hand, Doug and Wally both lacked that manic manliness, that completely daft take–charge self–assurance of Ludlum characters. (The ultimate Robert Ludlum character, of course, being Al “I’m in charge here” Haig.)

The old man. The old man who’d come out of the house just before Myrtle and her mother had turned the corner, the old man just barely glimpsed in the rearview mirror … would that have been
her father?

This last thought agitated Myrtle right out of bed, but when she found herself standing on the floor in her white cotton knee–length nightgown, she was at a loss what to do next. Floundering, disoriented, she turned and looked out the window at the darkness of Dudson Center.

And saw lights in it. Over there, the next block over, seen past the shoulder of the Fleischbacker’s house, were lit rectangles of light. Upstairs windows, in rooms with lights on. Over on Oak Street.
That
house?

Quick, the bird–watching binoculars; where were they? It had been years since … moving swiftly, but silent as possible so as not to wake Edna in the next room, Myrtle felt in the dark through dresser drawers until her fingers closed on the remembered blunt weaponlike heaviness of the binoculars.

Now! Hurrying to the window, she put the binoculars to her eyes, adjusted the focus, and there, swimming into view, with its flat light and muted colors and foreshortening like a Hopper painting, astonishingly close, all of a sudden there was Wally!

What was he doing? He sat in that room very intently, bent forward, hands moving at … at a computer terminal. Look at the tension in that pudgy face! Look at the hobnails of perspiration on that broad low forehead!

Conspiracy. Was Wally the mastermind? Or was he even now in contact with the mastermind, either in an experimental laboratory concealed within Mount Shasta (Bond) or in an unknown cavern deep beneath the Pentagon (Ludlum)? Absorbed by Wally’s absorption, feeling that secret pleasure known to peeping Toms everywhere, Myrtle rested the front edge of the binoculars against the window and watched that round, gleaming, wet–eyed, passionate face. Aliens? SPECTRE? A conspiracy at the very highest levels of government?

Or could it, could it somehow be … the Mafia? Good God! Was she going to have to read
Jackie Collins?

All the way out from town, sitting in the back of the truck, Kelp and Doug went over the plans for the night, including their signal system. This time, their primary light sources would be underwater miner’s lamps worn on their foreheads, though they’d have regular flashlights hooked to their utility belts as well. The signals they’d use to communicate with each other underwater involved switching the forehead lamp off and on while facing the other guy: One off–and–on meant, “Come help me,” while two off–and–ons meant, “Ascend to the surface.” That was it; there wouldn’t be much by way of small talk at the bottom of the reservoir.

There was no traffic along this road at this hour. Stan stopped the slat–sided truck right on the one–lane bridge, and everything was off–loaded onto the weedy roadside. At this point, their boat was merely a bulky package looking something like extra blankets folded on a shelf in the closet, plus a bottle of compressed air. Guiding themselves by light spill from the truck’s head– and taillights, Doug and Tiny carried these components down beside the creek. Doug untied the boat package, inserted the bottle onto the nipple, and a low windy rushing sound started, soon joined by muffled
thaps
and
boops
as the boat uncreased itself, stretching and twisting like an Arabian Nights genie waking up.

Meantime, Stan took the empty truck away. Once it was gone, the overcast night was as dark as the inside jacket pocket of a suit that’s worn only at funerals. Doug put on his headlamp and lit it so they’d be able to see what they were doing.

The whoosh of wind inside the boat grew stronger, the
pops
and
whaps
louder, and before their eyes appeared the kind of rubber raft in which people survive miraculously for eighty–three days in the open sea. Or not.

The boat was pushed into the shallow rapid water and held in place by Tom while a number of long pieces of rope, the winch, the scuba tanks, the 10hp motor, and a lot of other stuff were piled inside. Then they headed toward the reservoir, Doug holding the boat by its rope like a large frisky dog on a leash, finding his way through the underbrush at the edge of the stream by aiming his forehead light almost straight down at his feet. The others, following, were a little less lucky in their illumination, and therefore frequently in their footing. Splashes, curses, stumblings, and anonymous thumps and
oofs
punctuated their way.

At the chain–link fence, Tiny went to work with the wire cutters, announcing, “I’m having déjà vu again.”

It took almost twenty minutes to cut away enough fence so that the boat could go through on the stream and the people could go through more or less on dry land. Once they were all past that obstacle, Dortmunder called softly, “Doug. Hold on a second.”

Doug turned his head, the forehead light flashing around the dark forest. “Yeah?”

“From here on,” Dortmunder told him, “we better go without light. We’re getting too close to the reservoir.”

Tom said, “Al? How do we
find
the reservoir, if we don’t have any light?”

“The boat knows the way,” Dortmunder explained. “Doug follows the boat, the rest of us follow Doug. We each hold on to the shirt of the guy in front of us.”

“Sounds good,” Kelp said.

It turned out to sound considerably better than it was. The level of splashing, thumping, cursing, and stumbling to one’s knees increased dramatically behind the boat as it bobbed along, happily in its element, followed by Doug, trying to hold on to the boat’s rope while not getting decapitated by tree branches he couldn’t see, followed by Kelp clutching the back of Doug’s wetsuit, followed by Tiny clutching both of Kelp’s shoulders, followed by Tom with a bony finger hooked into one of Tiny’s belt loops, followed by Dortmunder holding gingerly to the back of Tom’s collar.

Finally, in exasperation, Tiny called out, “Are we going the right way? Doug, where the hell’s the reservoir?”

“Uh,” Doug said, and splashed around a bit. “I think I’m in it.”

He was. For a minute or two, they all were, but then they got themselves sorted out once more and refound the land.

The shore here, where stream met reservoir, was very wet and soft and mucky. They had to range a ways off to the left before they found solid enough ground for Tiny to set up the winch and other equipment. The boat was emptied there, the motor attached at the stern, and at last the three seafarers — Doug, Kelp, and Dortmunder — prepared to set off. It was necessary for somebody to be in the boat while the other two were on their dive, and Dortmunder was the only one available for that job, unfortunately. Also, with Kelp volunteering to join Doug in the descent, there hadn’t been much Dortmunder could do to complain.

They got into the boat, which rocked and wriggled as though they were tickling it. But the thing was completely dry inside, to Dortmunder’s astonishment. The bottom was rubberized canvas that moved sluggishly with you, like a waterbed, but the bulbous sides, taut with air, gave a sense of real solidity.

Dortmunder sat on the bottom in the middle, feeling the water’s coldness seep upward, while Kelp sat in the front and Doug knelt beside the steering rod of the motor in back. Tiny gave them a little push away from shore, instantly disappearing back there, and Doug started the motor, which went
pock
–thrummmmm. Very quiet sound, really, after that explosive onset. You wouldn’t be able to hear it very far at all.

“Everybody set?” Doug asked.

It was so dark you couldn’t tell the difference between water and land. Dortmunder said, “I hope you can see where we’re going.”

“As a matter of fact,” Doug said, “I can’t see a damn thing.” And he accelerated the little thrumming motor, steering them somewhere.