Drowned Hopes (43 page)

“Good for covering your tracks,” Tom said.

Tiny wrung water out of his eyebrows. “
What
tracks?”

“When the dogs are after you.”

Tiny was feeling the need to put his hands around something and squeeze. “Been on this job too long,” he muttered.

“ —
h
—”

Tiny frowned, making a lot of water cascade down his face. Wiping it away, he said, “You hear something?”

“The motor, you mean? No.”

“Not the motor,” Tiny told him. “Sounded like a voice.”

“ —
hehhh
—”

“You won’t hear any voice,” Tom said, “all you’ll hear is —”

“Shut up,” Tiny requested.

“What was that?”

Tiny was in no mood. “This ground’s wet, Tom,” he said. “Maybe I’ll sit on
you
for a while.”

“Well, we’re all getting testy,” Tom told him, forgiving him.

Tiny said, “Just be quiet, while I listen to this voice.”

“Joan of Arc,” Tom commented, sotto voce, but then he was quiet, and Tiny listened, and heard no voice.

Was it something he’d made up? Was it just something the rain did? But it had sounded like a voice out there in the water somewhere.

At last, restless and uneasy, Tiny lumbered to his feet and plodded down the soggy bank to the water’s edge, listening, not even caring that Tom was behind him.

“ —
eye
—”

By God, that
is
a voice. “Hey!” Tiny yelled.

“ —
eye?
—”

“Over here!” Tiny yelled, and saw a dim light out there on the water.

Tom had come down to stand beside him at the lip of the reservoir. At this moment, neither was being wary of the other. Tom said, “What the hell is that out there?”

“The boogie man.”

“No, it isn’t,” Tom said. “I’m the boogie man.”

“
Tiny!
”

“Over this way!” Tiny shouted, and the light out there bobbled and disappeared.

Tom said, “Which one is it?”

“Couldn’t tell. His voice was full of water.”

Splashing sounded out there, and then the voice called again: “Tiny! Where are you?”

“Over here! Come this way! Can you hear me! Hey, here I am! We’re both here! Can you —”

“They’re here,” Tom said quietly.

They were. Andy Kelp and Doug Berry came stumbling and wading out of the reservoir, still in their full diving gear. Berry said, gasping, “I thought we’d never find the right place.”

“Where’s the boat?” Tiny asked him. “Where’s Dortmunder?”

Kelp and Berry stood panting in front of him. Berry said, “We were hoping he was here.”

Finally.
Finally.
Finally, at quarter to five in the ayem, when Stan made yet another pass by the bridge over Gulkill Creek, Andy Kelp appeared at the side of the road and gave him the high sign, and Stan pulled to a stop just past the bridge.

Sliding over to the right side of the seat, he opened the passenger door, stuck his head out in the rain, and watched Tiny and the others come up out of the woods and climb into the rear of the slat–sided truck. Too bad it didn’t have a roof back there. He called back, “How’d it go?”

Andy came squidging forward through the rain. “Well, yes and no,” he said. “Good news and bad news, like they say.”

“You found the money?”

“That’s the good news,” Andy agreed. “It’s still down there, but we got it dug up and we got a rope on it.”

“Great,” Stan said. “So that’s the good news; you found the money. What’s the bad news?”

“We lost John.”

“Now, we’re not giving up hope,” was the first thing Stan said, when shortly after sunup he walked into the kitchen where May and Wally and Murch’s Mom were still sitting around, bleary–eyed and weaving but unwilling to go to sleep before the word came. And now the word was
this.

May said, “Stan? Not giving up hope about
what?
”

“Well, about John,” Stan said.

His Mom said, “Stanley, tell us this second.”

“Well, what happened, as I understand it —”

“This second!”

“The boat sank. John was the only one in it. Nobody knows where he is.”

May leaped to her feet, spilling cold milk. “At the bottom of the reservoir!” she cried. “That’s where he is!”

“Well, no,” Stan told her. “At least, that’s not the theory we’re working on. See, there was this line stretched across the reservoir over the railroad track, up by the top of the water, and that’s where John was, so the theory is, he held on to that line and followed it to the shore on one side or the other, and got out before Andy and Doug could catch up with him. So now Andy and Doug are going in along the railroad line from the road on one side, and Tiny and Tom are going in from the other side. And I come back to tell you.”

“I’m going there!” May said.

“We’ll all go,” Murch’s Mom said.

“Sure!” Wally cried, jumping up, eyes agleam.

“It’s raining, May,” Stan pointed out.

“I just hope it’s raining where John is,” May told him.

Bob was filing the
Ws,
taking his time, feeling the texture of each sheet of paper, enjoying the even rows of words across all the sheets of paper — look at all those letters, making up all those words, filling up all those pieces of paper — and he was all the way to the
Ws
when Kenny came by and said, “Hey, there, buddy, how you doin, pal, everything okay, Bob? Good, that’s good. Listen, it’s almost six and —”

BEEP.

Kenny jumped back, then nodded at Bob’s watch, laughing nervously as he said, “Time for another pill, huh?”

“Oh, yes,” Bob said. “We don’t know what would happen to me, Dr. Panchick and me, we don’t know what would happen to me if I didn’t take my pills.”

“You take a lot of them, huh?”

“Well, we’re going to taper off,” Bob explained. “But not yet,” he said, and went away to the bathroom for water and took his pill.

When he came back out to the office, it was after six o’clock and everybody was ready to go. “Here I am,” Bob said, smiling happily at all these nice fellas, really liking how they all were just good pals together, working together, having all these nice times together. “All ready, Kenny,” he said, and just beamed.

The crew went out to their cars, their usual exchanges of low humor with the day crew muffled a bit by the presence of this ethereal creature among them. Bob didn’t notice any of that; he was noticing how pretty the rain was. When he looked up at the sky, raindrops fell on his eyeballs and made him
blink.
Nice!

“Ready, Bob?”

“Oh, sure, Kenny, here I come.”

Chuck was in the passenger seat in front, so Bob got in the backseat with the naked man on the floor. “Hello,” he said.

The naked man on the floor — well, he wasn’t completely naked, he was wearing underpants and one sock — wasn’t as happy as Bob’s friends. In fact, he glared at Bob and shook his fist, and then he put his finger to his lips and pointed at himself with his other hand and emphatically shook his head.

Well, gee, all right. The naked man didn’t want Bob to talk about him being there. Well, gee, that’s okay. With the pill he’d just swallowed now stamping out every little brushfire of fear or excitement or panic in his entire neural network, Bob said, “Okay.”

Kenny was just then getting into the car, slipping in behind the wheel. Pausing before putting the key in the ignition, he looked in the rearview mirror at Bob and said, “What’s that, Bob?”

Giggling, Chuck said, “He’s talking to his imaginary playmate back there.”

Kenny gave Chuck a warning look. “Watch that.”

But the naked man on the floor was nodding emphatically, pointing now in the direction of Chuck. So that was the true explanation after all. “That’s right,” Bob said placidly. “I’m talking to my imaginary playmate.”

Kenny and Chuck exchanged another glance, Kenny exasperated and feeling his responsibility, Chuck guilty but vastly amused. Kenny shook his head, and irritably watched himself insert the key in the ignition. “Get well soon,” he muttered.

As they drove away from the dam toward Dudson Center, Bob sat way over on his side of the backseat, his smile kind of raggedy around the edges, his eyes shooting out very teeny tiny sparks. His fingertips trembled. He didn’t like looking at the naked man on the floor, but there he was, all the time, in the corner of Bob’s eye.

Gazing straight ahead as the scrub forest ran backward past the windows on both sides, Bob could see the firm back of Kenny’s head and a small segment of Chuck’s profile. Chuck was giggling and smirking and at times pressing his palm to his mouth. Kenny’s back radiated the lonely obligations of command.

Bob was very happy, of course, very placid, very content. All these little feathery feelings in his stomach and behind his eyes and in his throat and behind his knees didn’t matter at all. It would be easier, of course, if the naked man weren’t there on the floor next to him, but it wasn’t
important.
It didn’t change anything.

After a long period of silence in the car, Bob leaned forward a little and said, confidentially, to the back of Kenny’s authoritative head, “I never had an imaginary playmate before.”

This set Chuck off again, curling forward, collapsing against his door, various snorts and grunts squeezing out through the hands he held clamped over his mouth. Kenny, pretending Chuck didn’t exist (the same way Bob pretended the naked man didn’t exist), looked mildly in the rearview mirror and said, “Is that right, Bob?”

“Yes,” Bob said. He felt as though there was more he wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come.

Kenny smiled in a big–brotherly fashion: “I bet it’s fun,” he said. “To have an imaginary playmate.”

Bob smiled back at the face in the rearview mirror. Slowly he nodded. “Not really,” he said. (The naked man’s fist, in the corner of Bob’s eye, was shaking again. The naked man’s face, in the corner of Bob’s eye, was enraged.)

Kenny hadn’t actually heard Bob’s answer. He’d gone back to concentrating on his driving.

Bob wanted to turn his head away so he could look out his side window and not see anything in the car at all, but it was hard to do. His upper body was made of one solid block of wood; it was hard to make one part of it turn separately from the rest. Slowly, very slowly, strain lines standing out on the sides of his neck, Bob turned his face away. He looked out the window. The first houses of Dudson Center went by. Very interesting. Very nice.

In the middle of town, Kenny had to stop for a red light. Bob gazed fixedly at the windows of a hardware store. The other rear door slammed. Kenny said, sharply, “What was that?”

Bob swiveled his head on his painful neck. Chuck said, “Bob’s imaginary playmate just got out.”

“Goddammit, Chuck!”

“That’s right,” Bob said. “He went away.”

Chuck twisted around to grin at Bob. “He probably went on ahead to your house,” he said. “Waiting there for you now, with Tiffany.”

“Uh–huh,” said Bob.

Through clenched teeth, Kenny said, “Chuck, your job is on the line.”

Chuck gave Kenny an excessively innocent look. “Bob’s happy,” he said. But he faced front after that and didn’t say any more.

Five minutes later, they reached Bob’s house. “Here we are, Bob,” Kenny said.

Bob didn’t move. The lower half of his face smiled, but the upper half around the eyes had worry lines in it.

Kenny twisted around, frowning at him. “You’re home, Bob,” he said. “Come on, guy. I gotta get going.”

“I’d like to go back to the hospital now, please,” Bob said. And that was the last thing he said for three weeks.