Drowned Hopes (44 page)

He was feeling like biting his way through something, God knows. What a night! That reservoir was out to kill him, there was no question about that anymore. Every time he went near that evil body of water, it reached out damp fingers and dragged him down. If he so much as
thought
about that reservoir, waters began to close over his head. No more. He was through now. Three times and
out.

This last time had been the closest shave yet. The goddamn rubber boat suddenly shrinking and deflating and sinking beneath him, and him sitting there not knowing what to do, the goddamn little 10hp motor clutched in his arms, resting on his lap. It wasn’t till the boat had reduced itself to a two–dimensional gray rubber rag, dumping him into the reservoir, and he’d found himself heading straight for the bottom, that he finally got his wits about him enough to let go of the motor and let it proceed into eternity without him.

Then it was his own clothing that dragged him down. The shoes were pulled off first, one sock inadvertently going as well, then the jacket, then the trousers, then the shirt, taking the T–shirt with it.

By the time all that underwater undressing was done, he had no idea where he was, except in trouble; the boat, the line of monofilament, everything was gone. His head was above water, barely and only sometimes. Turning in ever more frantic circles, he’d finally seen the dim lights way over by the dam and had known that was his only hope. If he didn’t have some target to aim for, he’d just swim around in circles out here in the dark and the wet and the rain and the deep and the horrible until his strength gave out.

So he swam, and floated, and swam, and floundered, and flailed, and at last staggered ashore down at the end of the dam near the little stone official structure and its attendant parking lot. An unlocked car there — nobody locks
anything
out in the sticks — provided some small shelter from the storm, and Dortmunder even napped in there occasionally, cold and wet and scared and furious as he was.

He’d been asleep, in fact, when the weird kid with the poleaxed smile came in and sat beside him and gave him a completely drugged–out look and just said, “Hello.” He isn’t going to turn me in, Dortmunder had thought. He isn’t going to holler or get excited or do anything normal. He barely even knows I’m here.

And so he’d stuck tight, ignoring his first impulse to jump from the car and make a hopeless run for it, and the result was they’d given him a ride all the way back to Dudson Center. The last four blocks after he left the car, walking along almost completely naked, in daylight, with people on their way to work all around him, had not been easy. But anything was easier than being in the — (He wasn’t going to say the R word anymore, wasn’t even going to think it.)

But now here he was, home at last, and where was everybody? I don’t even get a sympathetic welcome, Dortmunder thought, feeling very sorry for himself as he padded with his one bare foot and one socked foot to the kitchen, opened a can of tomato soup, added milk (no water!), heated it, drank the whole thing serving after serving out of a coffee cup, and packed crackers in around it in his stomach for body. Then, beginning at last to feel warm and dry, and
knowing
how tired he was, he went back through the empty house and slumped upstairs one heavy foot at a time and got into bed without even bothering to take his sock off.

The return, hours later, of the other eight residents of the house, cold, wet, discouraged, shocked, unhappy, and bickering, didn’t wake him, but May’s scream when she opened the bedroom door and saw him there did. Briefly. “Later, May, okay?” Dortmunder said, and rolled over, and went back to sleep.

“You had us very worried, John,” May said, gently but seriously.

“I had myself a little worried, too,” Dortmunder answered.

His foghorn voice more fogbound than usual, Tiny said, “I think I got a little head cold out there, walkin around in the rain while you were asleep in your bed here.”

Murch’s Mom sneezed and looked at Dortmunder significantly, but didn’t say anything.

“Pretty dangerous,” her son commented, “driving that borrowed truck around in the daytime, hour after hour. And then for nothing.”

“You know, John,” Doug said, “it’s kind of hard to figure out how you missed that monofilament, that line stretching right across the lake, when it was right
there
and everything.”

“That’s right,” Kelp said. “
I
saw it, no trouble.”

Dortmunder lowered an eyebrow at him. “In the light from your headlamp?”

“Well, yeah.”

Wally said, “John, while you were asleep up there, I asked the computer, and
it
couldn’t predict you going to the dam either. That’s the one direction nobody thought of.”

“That’s where the lights were,” Dortmunder told him. “Mention that to your computer next time you run into each other.”

Tom cackled and said, “Looks like everybody’s sorry you made it, Al.”

Then they all changed their tune, and everybody reassured him how happy they all were to see him under any circumstances, even home safe in his bed when they’d expected him to be either dead in the reservoir or half–dead beside it. And that was the end of that conversation.

It was late afternoon now, Dortmunder having slept most of the day, and outside the windows the rain still poured down. The weather forecast, full of stalled lows and weak highs, promised this stage of storms would, at the very least, even the score for the weeks of sunny days and star–strewn nights preceding it, and maybe even throw a little extra rottenness in for good measure.

After everybody got over the desire to be crotchety with Dortmunder for having saved himself from a watery grave, the next topic on the agenda was Tom’s money, plucked at last from its own watery grave but not yet from the water. “From here on,” Doug told the assembled group, “it’s a snap. All we do is go back out to the res —”

“No,” Dortmunder said, and got to his feet.

May looked up at him in mild surprise. “John? Where are you going?”

“New York,” Dortmunder told her, and headed for the stairs.

“Wait a minute!”

“We got it beat now!”

“Piece of cake!”

“We know where the box is!”

“We got a rope on it!”

“We’re
winning,
John!”

But Dortmunder didn’t listen. He thudded upstairs, one foot after the other, and while he packed people kept coming up to try to change a mind made of concrete.

May was first. She came in and sat on the bed beside the suitcase Dortmunder was packing, and after a minute she said, “I understand how you feel, John.”

“Good,” Dortmunder said, his hands full of socks.

“But I just don’t feel as though I can leave here until this is all over and settled.”

“Uh–huh.”

“It wouldn’t be fair to Murch’s Mom.”

“Uh–huh.”

“And if we walk away now, Tom might
still
decide he’d rather use that dynamite of his.”

“Uh–huh.”

“So you can see, John,” May said, “why I feel I have to stay.”

Dortmunder paused with his hands in a dresser drawer. “I
can
see that, May,” he said. “And if you stop to think about it, you can see why I
can’t
stay. When you’re done up here, you’ll come home. I’ll be there.”

She looked at him, thought it over, and got to her feet. “Well,” she said, “I can see your mind is made up.”

“I’m glad you can see that, May,” Dortmunder said.

Tom was next. “Runnin out, eh, Al?”

“Yes,” Dortmunder said.

Wally followed a couple minutes later. “Gee, John,” he said, “I know you’re not the hero, you’re only the soldier, but even the soldier doesn’t leave in the middle of the
game.
”

“Game called,” Dortmunder told him, “on account of wet.”

Tiny and Stan and his Mom came together, like the farmhands welcoming Dorothy back from Oz. “Dortmunder,” Tiny rumbled, “I figure you’re the one got us this far.”

“I understand it’s a piece of cake from here on,” Dortmunder said, folding with great care his other pants.

Stan said, “You don’t want to drive to the city on a Wednesday, you know. Matinee day, there’s
no
good routes.”

“I’ll take the bus,” Dortmunder told him.

Murch’s Mom looked insulted. “I hate the bus,” she announced. “And so should you.”

Dortmunder nodded, taking the suggestion under advisement, but then said, “Will you drive me to the bus station?”

“Cabdrivers don’t get to have opinions about destinations,” Murch’s Mom snapped, which might have been a form of “yes,” and she marched out.

“Well, Dortmunder,” Tiny said, “I can’t a hundred percent blame you. Put her there.”

So Dortmunder shook his hand, and Tiny and Stan left, and Dortmunder’s hand was almost recovered enough to go on packing when Doug came in to say, “I hear you’re really going.”

“I’m really going,” Dortmunder agreed.

“Well,” Doug said, “tomorrow or the next day, sometime soon, I got to go back to Long Island anyway, see to my business, pick up the stuff we need for the next try. You could ride along.”

“I’m leaving today,” Dortmunder told him.

“What the heck, wait a day.”

“Well, Doug,” Dortmunder said, “let’s say I wait a day, a couple of days, everybody having these little talks with me. Then let’s say I get into that pickup with you and we head for the city, and you just can’t resist it, you gotta tell me the plan, the details, the equipment, you gotta talk about the res — the place there, and all that. And somewhere in there, Doug,” Dortmunder said, resting his aching hand in a friendly way on Doug’s arm, “somewhere in there, I just might be forced to see if I know how to do a three–sixty.”

Dortmunder was just locking his suitcase when Andy Kelp came in. Dortmunder looked at him and said, “Don’t even start.”

“I’ve heard the word,” Kelp told him. “And I know you, John, and I know when not to waste my breath. Come on over here.”

“Come on over where?”

“The window,” Kelp told him. “It’s okay, it’s closed.”

Wondering what Kelp was up to, Dortmunder went around the bed and over to the window, and when Kelp pointed outside he looked out, past the curtain and the rain–smeared window and the rain–dotted screen and the rain–filled air over the rain–soggy lawn and the rain–flowing sidewalk to the rain–slick curb, where a top–of–the–line Buick Pompous 88 stood there, black, gleaming in the rain.

“Cruise control,” Kelp said, with quiet pride. “Everything. You gotta go back in comfort.”

Dortmunder was touched. Not enough to reconsider, but touched. “Thank you, Andy,” he said.

“The truth is,” Kelp said, leaning forward, speaking confidentially, “I think you’re right. That reservoir
is
out to get you.”

On the other hand, when it came to discussing future plans, all at once Dortmunder’s absence from the table became less positive and pleasant, though that wasn’t obvious right at first, when Doug raised the subject over coffee, saying, “Well, it’s easy from here on. We’ve
touched
the box. We know where it is.”

“We’ve got a rope on it,” Kelp added.

Nodding, Doug said, “And the other end of the rope is tied to our monofilament, which nobody’s going to see.”

“Especially in this weather,” Tiny said, and sneezed.

“Another good thing,” Tom added. “This last time, you birds didn’t leave a lot of evidence around to alert the law.”

Wally said, “The computer says there’s a
million
ways to get it now. It’s so easy.”

Stan said, “Good. So let’s do it and get it over with.”

His Mom said, “I’ll go along with that. I want to get back to where driving’s a contact sport.”

“So we’ll just do it,” Doug said, and shrugged at how easy it was.

“Be glad to get it over with,” Kelp said.

Then there was a little silence, everybody drinking coffee or looking at the wall or drawing little fingertip circles on the tablecloth, nobody quite meeting anybody else’s eye. The light in the crowded little dining room seemed to get brighter, the tablecloth whiter, the walls shinier, the silence deeper and deeper, as though they were turning into an acrylic genre painting of themselves.

Finally, it was May who broke the silence, saying, “How?”

Then everybody was alive and animated again, all looking at her, all suddenly eager to answer the question. “It’s easy, May,” Kelp said. “We just winch it in.”

“We tie the rope to the rope,” Doug explained.

“Naturally,” Tiny added, “we gotta get a new winch.”

“Oh, yeah,” Kelp said, nodding. “And a rope.”

Stan said, “Don’t we need some kind of boat?”

“Not one that sinks in the rain,” Tiny suggested.

Wally asked, “Well, when do we do it? Do you want to wait for the rain to stop?”

“Yes,” Tiny said.

“Well, I don’t know,” Doug said. “Depends on how long that is. You know, the engineers in the dam put a little boat in the water every once in a while, run around the reservoir, take samples and so on, and if they ran over our line they’d cut it. Even if they didn’t foul their propeller, even if
they
didn’t find it, we’d lose the line.”

Tiny said, “They won’t do one of their jaunts in this weather, count on it.”

“That’s true,” Doug agreed.

May cleared her throat and said, “It seems to me, John would point out right here that the instant the rain stops the people in the dam might go right out in their boat so they can get caught up with their schedule.”

“That’s also true,” Doug agreed.

Wally said, “Miss May, what else would John point out?”

“I don’t know,” May said. “He isn’t here.”

Everybody thought about that. Stan said, “What it is, when John’s around, you don’t mind coming up with ideas, because he’ll tell you if they’re any good or not.”

“Dortmunder,” Tiny said, ponderously thoughtful, “is what you call your focal point.”

With his patented bloodless lipless cackle, Tom said, “Pity he tossed in his hand just before the payout.”

Everybody looked uncomfortable. May said, “I’m here to see to John’s interests.”

“Oh?” Tom asked mildly. “Does Al still have interests?”

Murch’s Mom gave him a beady look. “I don’t see what it matters to you,” she said. “It doesn’t come out of your half. You’re just a troublemaker for the fun of it, aren’t you?”

“As long as everybody’s happy,” Tom told her, “I’m happy.”

“The question is,” May insisted, “
when
are you going to do it, and
how
are you going to do it?”

“May,” Kelp said, “I’ve touched that box now, with this hand.” He showed it to her, palm out. “From here on, it’s
so easy.
”

“Fine,” May said. “Tell me about it.”

Kelp turned to Doug. “Explain it to her, okay?”

“Well,” Doug said. “We go out and tie the rope to the rope, and Tiny winches it in.”

Tiny said, “Don’t you have to do something to get the box lighter, so it’ll lift up over the tree stumps?”

“Oh, right,” Doug said. “I forgot that part.”

“And
when,
” May said. “And what kind of boat. And what are the
details?
”

“That’s what we need John for!” Kelp exclaimed, punching the table in his irritation.

“We don’t have John,” May pointed out. “So we’ll have to work out the details ourselves. And the first detail is, when do you want to do it?”

“As soon as possible,” Stan answered. Turning to Tiny, he explained, “I hate to say this, but I think we’re better off in the rain. As long as we get ourselves ready for it.”

“And the boat doesn’t sink,” Tiny said.

“Well, a new boat,” Doug said. “That’s gonna be expensive.”

Everybody looked at Tom, who gazed around mildly (for him) and said, “No.”

“Tom,” Kelp said, “we need a certain amount of —”

“No more dough from me,” Tom said. He sounded serious about it. To Doug he said, “Who’m I buying all this equipment from? You. So donate the stuff.”

“Well, not the boat,” Doug told him.

“Steal the fucking boat,” Tom advised.

Doug floundered a bit at that, but Stan rescued him, saying, “Okay, Doug, never mind, we’ll work out the boat.”

“Okay,” Doug said, but he was getting those little white spots on his cheeks again, like when he’d been in shock.

Stan turned to May. “We’ll work it
all
out, May. We’re just not used to doing this, that’s all.”

May surveyed the table. “I’ll make fresh coffee,” she decided, and went away to the kitchen. She could hear them bickering in there the whole time she was away.