Drowned Hopes (49 page)

“I’m afraid that’s true,” May agreed.

Murch’s Mom sniffed. “You don’t have to be a machine smarter than a human being to dope
that
out,” she said.

May said, “The guys out there with Tom know he’s got something in mind. They’ll keep an eye on him.”

“That’s right,” Murch’s Mom said. “They aren’t cream–puffs, you know. My boy Stanley can take care of himself.”

“And Tiny,” May said. “And Andy.”

Wally cleared his throat. “Just in case,” he said.

Murch’s Mom gave him an irritable look. “Are you talking against my boy Stanley?”

“What I’m saying is,” Wally assured her, “we ought to think about all the possibilities. That’s what the computer says we should do, and I agree with it.”

“You always agree with that computer,” Murch’s Mom told him. “You got a real mutual admiration society going there, that’s why you keep it around.”

May said, “Wally, what are you getting at? What possibilities?”

“Well,” Wally said, “let’s just say Tom does something really underhanded and nasty —”

“Sounds right,” Murch’s Mom said.

“And let’s just say,” Wally went on, “that he
wins.
He’s got the money and he’s, you know, harmed our friends.”

“Killed them, you mean,” May said.

“I don’t really like to
say
that.”

“But it’s what you mean.”

Wally looked pained. “Uh–huh.”

“Hmp,” said Murch’s Mom. But then she shook her head and said, “All right, go ahead, what then?”

“Well, that’s the question,” Wally told her. “Is Tom just going to take the money and run? Or is he going to say to himself, ‘I don’t want any witnesses left behind?’ ”

May looked at the storm–battered front windows. “You mean he might come back here.”

“The computer thinks so.”

Murch’s Mom said, “And you agree with it.”

“So do I,” May said. She looked very worried.

Wally said, “And then there’s Myrtle.”

Both women were taken aback by this abrupt change of subject. Murch’s Mom said, “Myrtle? That little ninny upstairs? What’s she got to do with anything?”

“Well, that’s just it,” Wally said. “Nothing.”

“That’s what I figured,” Murch’s Mom agreed.

“What I mean is,” Wally told her, “the rest of us got into this because we wanted to, we
chose
to be here. But Myrtle didn’t. And if her father comes back and —”

May said, “Who?”

“Tom’s her father,” Wally said. Nodding at Murch’s Mom, he said, “That lady Edna you play canasta with —”

“The girl’s mother. I know.”

“She worked in the library in Putkin’s Corners when Tom buried the casket behind it. She was the one told him they weren’t going to put in the parking lot after all. And her father was the town undertaker; it was from him that Tom got the casket.”

May said, “Why didn’t Tom
say
anything when Tiny caught her?”

“He doesn’t know. And I don’t think he’d care.”

Nodding thoughtfully, Murch’s Mom said, “Not a sentimental kind of guy, Tom.”

May said, “Wally? Do you and your computer have an idea what we should do?”

“Go to Myrtle’s house.”

They stared at him. May said, “For heaven’s sake, why?”

“It’s just one block over,” Wally explained. “We can
see
this house from there. If we turn off all these lights and go over there, then we can keep an eye on this house, and when the lights turn back on I’ll come over and look in the window and make sure everything’s okay.”

May said, “Doesn’t this mean letting Myrtle and her mother in on the whole thing?”

“Well, Myrtle’s already in on a lot of it,” Wally pointed out. “And her mother already knows Gladys, and —”

“I don’t particularly,” Murch’s Mom said through gritted teeth, “like that name.”

“Oh.” Wally blinked. “Okay, sorry. Anyway, you know Myrtle’s mother, and
she
knows Tom’s in town. She saw him go by in a car, and that’s what started Myrtle trying to find out things.”

May and Murch’s Mom looked at each other. Murch’s Mom said, “Well? What do you think?”

“I think I wish John was here,” May said.

“Something wrong?” Guffey’d been getting increasingly nervy over the course of the trip, which could only be partially explained by the miserable highway conditions and Dortmunder’s less than professional driving skills. He hadn’t offered any first names for Dortmunder to try since way down by exit 2 on the Palisades Parkway. (George: No.) And now he sat hunched beside Dortmunder, chin tucked in as he blinked out at the night and the rain and the old dark house. He looked like one of the three little pigs watching for the wolf; the straw–house pig.

“Well, I suppose something’s wrong,” Dortmunder answered. “Something’s
usually
wrong. So what we’re gonna do, you stick close to me, and we’re gonna go in there and
not
turn on any lights.”

“Uh–huh.”

“And we’ll see what we see.”

Guffey frowned. “With the lights off?”

“Yes,” Dortmunder said. “We’ll see what we see with the lights off. Out.”

They got out of the car into the downpour and ran to the comparative safety of the porch. Guffey shied at the sight of the glider swinging back and forth with nobody on it. Approaching the door, Dortmunder muttered, “
Last
time they left the place a hundred percent unlocked. Quiet, now.”

Guffey, who hadn’t been saying anything, remained quiet.

Dortmunder gently opened the screen door, gently turned the knob of the inner door, gently pushed, and the door yawned open. Dortmunder slid silently in, followed by Guffey, and they quietly closed both doors.

“Stick close to me,” Dortmunder mouthed into Guffey’s ear, and Guffey nodded, a movement barely visible in the faint glow that was all that could reach here through the rain from the nearest streetlight.

They moved through the house, found nothing, found nobody, and found no explanation. “I should have known this,” Dortmunder said aloud, back in the living room, Guffey still so close to his right elbow it was like wearing a sleeve guard.

“You should have?” Guffey asked. “Should have known what?”

“That I’d have to give that reservoir one more whack at me,” Dortmunder said.

“Well, hell,” Stan said. “Everybody out.”

“Hell it is,” Tiny agreed, and everybody but Stan climbed out into the rain and the dark and the mud and the mess and a kind of nasty little needle–tipped wind.

The station wagon was lighter now, but the boat was still heavy and all the wheels were still stuck. Kelp and Tiny pushed against the front of the wagon while Tom stood off to the side and observed. The wagon’s big engine wailed and whined in competition with the wailing and whining of the storm, but nothing happened except that the pushers got extremely muddy.

Finally, Stan put the wagon in neutral, opened his window, and called Kelp and Tiny over. They slogged around to talk to him, looking like the defensive line in the final quarter of a particularly hard–fought football game, and Stan said, “We aren’t getting anywhere.”

Tiny said, “You noticed that, too, huh?”

“What we gotta do,” Stan said, “is get up on dry land and start again.”

“There isn’t any dry land,” Kelp told him.

“Drier,” Stan explained. “A little more solid, I mean. If I get up there all the way to where the road comes in, up at the top of the clearing, then I can get up some speed, run it backward fast as I can, get some momentum on shoving that goddamn boat into the water.”

“Without jackknifing,” Kelp pointed out.

“I gotta give it the try,” Stan said.

“Very tricky on this messy surface,” Kelp suggested.

Tiny said, “I hate having ideas like this, because I know who they make work for, which is me, but I think maybe we oughta drag it up to the end of the clearing like you say, and then turn this blessed
car
around and put the trailer hitch on the front bumper instead of the back, so you can drive
frontward
in low–low.”

“Now
that
is an idea,” Stan told him.

“I was afraid it was,” Tiny agreed. “And now I got another one. Doug can get down off that boat and help push.”

Kelp grinned at the idea. “Doug’ll love that,” he said.

“We all will,” said Tiny.

They went around to the prow of the boat and yelled at Doug for a while, and after he gave up pretending he didn’t understand what they wanted, he very reluctantly came down off his high boat and helped.

At first the station wagon didn’t want to move forward either, but then its rear wheels came struggling up out of the holes they’d dug, and the hauler’s wheels grudgingly began to lumber along through the mire, and movement took place. At the top of the clearing, Stan brought the wagon and the boat to a stop. The
V
tongue on the hauler was removed from the trailer hitch, and then Tiny lay down in the mud and Kelp stood by to hand him tools while Tiny, his work illuminated by the station wagon’s back–up lights, with some difficulty removed the muddy hitch from the muddy bumper. Then Stan turned the wagon around and Tiny bent over the front bumper with the trailer hitch in his hands and studied the situation. “It doesn’t want to fit,” he decided.

“Make it fit,” Kelp advised.

“Yeah, that’s what I figured.”

Doug, sounding scared, his voice cutting through the ongoing roar of the storm, said, “Stan, turn off your lights!”

Stan didn’t ask questions. The heel of his hand slapped the headlight control on the dashboard. Their clearing became abruptly black, pitch black, and they all turned their heads to watch the bright lights approaching down the access road through the rain and the night and the sopping trees.

“Oh, I think they’ll take another hour, maybe even more,” Wally told her.

“Plenty of time,” Edna said, “to tell me what’s going on. Myrtle, you begin.”

He braked the car to a stop at the beginning of the clearing. It was hard to see anything at all through the sheets of rain, even with the headlights on; the zillion raindrops just bounced the light right back at you.

Guffey said, “What’s three thousand, seven hundred fifty dollars compounded at eight percent interest for forty–three years?”

“I give up,” Dortmunder said. “What is it?”

“Well,
I
don’t know.” Guffey sounded surprised. “That’s why I was asking you.”

“Oh,” Dortmunder said. “I thought it was one of those puzzle things.”

“It’s what Tim Jepson owes me,” Guffey said grimly. “So I figure a lot of that money you say is down there in that reservoir comes to me.”

“You can discuss that with Tom,” Dortmunder advised him. “And remember, half of it belongs to the rest of us.”

“Sure, sure. Sure.”

Dortmunder switched off the headlights. “Can’t see a goddamn thing,” he said.

“Sure you can’t,” Guffey said. “You turned the lights off.”

“I’m looking for
their
lights,” Dortmunder told him. “We better get out of the car.”

The interior light went on when they opened the doors, illuminating the inside of the car but nothing else, and only making the surrounding blackness all the blacker once the doors were shut.

Dortmunder and Guffey, two bulky huddled figures in the night, met at the front of their car, and Dortmunder pointed past Guffey’s nose, putting his hand up close so Guffey could see it. “The reservoir’s that way, and I thought I saw a car over there. That’s where we’ll look.”

“Uh,” Guffey said, and fell down.

“Uh?” Dortmunder turned, bending, to see what had happened to Guffey, and therefore spoiled Tiny’s aim. The sap merely brushed down the side of his head, not quite removing his ear, and bounded painfully off his shoulder. “Ow!” he yelled. “Goddammit, who is that?”

“Dortmunder?” came Tiny’s voice out of the dark. “Is that you?”

“Who the hell did you
expect?
”

“Well, we didn’t expect nobody, Dortmunder,” Tiny said, sounding aggrieved. “Who’s this with you?”

Out of the darkness, Tom’s voice said, “So you couldn’t keep away, huh, Al?”

“Looks like it,” Dortmunder admitted.

“Who
is
this guy?” Tiny wanted to know, prodding the fallen Guffey with his toe.

Aware of Guffey’s helplessness and of Tom’s presence, Dortmunder said, “Um. A hitchhiker.”

The others had gathered around now, and it was Kelp who said, “John? You brought a hitchhiker to the caper?”

“Well, I couldn’t leave the poor guy out there in the rain,” Dortmunder said. At the same time, he was inwardly furious with himself, thinking: Why did I say
hitchhiker?
Well, what else would I say? Aloud, he said, “It’s okay, Andy. Trust me, I know what I’m doing. You guys finished already?”

That
changed the subject, with a vengeance. Everybody vied to tell him how much fun they were having, even Tom. “Uh–huh, uh–huh,” Dortmunder said. “Let’s see this monster boat.”

After all the build–up, when he finally got face–to–face with the leviathan, it wasn’t really that big. On the other hand, it did look as though a person could survive a voyage on it. Looking at it in the splattered gleam of the station wagon’s headlights, while Tiny banged the trailer hitch into a shotgun wedding with the front bumper, Dortmunder said, “A lot of boats like this have funny names. Does this one?”

There was a brief awkward silence. Dortmunder turned to Kelp, who was nearest. “Yeah?”

“It has a name,” Kelp agreed.

“Yeah?”

Tom, on Dortmunder’s other side, did his cackle thing and said, “It’s called
Over My Head.
”

“Uh–huh,” Dortmunder said.

Doug came over and said, “Uh, John, that hitchhiker of yours.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, he isn’t dead.”

“Course not,” Tiny said. “I just gave him a lullaby.”

“But he is unconscious,” Doug said, “and I’m afraid he might drown.”

Dortmunder frowned at that. “In the water?”

“In the rain. What should we do with him?”

Kelp said, “Leave him. He’ll wake up.”

Tom said, “And go straight to the law before we can get finished and outta here. I don’t know about you sometimes, Al. Maybe we should just help him drown.”

“Aw, hey,” Doug said.

Dortmunder said, “He can come with us.”

Everybody hated that idea. Dortmunder listened to all the arguments,
wishing
he’d thought of some other explanation for Guffey, and when they were all finished yammering he said, “Put it this way. I don’t wanna kill him. We can’t leave him. So we’ll take him with us. I got reasons with this guy, and I’ll explain them later. Tiny, how you coming?”

“Done,” Tiny said, lumbering to his feet. “Dortmunder,” he commented, “you get weird notions sometimes.”

“Maybe so,” Dortmunder said. “We’ll put him in the boat now, with Doug.”

So Guffey’s limp light body was picked up by Tiny and handed up to Doug, who would ride the boat out into the water so they wouldn’t lose it once it was finally launched.

Which this time at long last happened. Dortmunder, Kelp, Tiny, and Tom all stood to one side; Doug braced himself against the wheel of the
Over My Head;
and Guffey lay like a bag of laundry on the floor around Doug’s feet. Stan put the station wagon into low–low, tromped the accelerator, and the double vehicle lunged down the slope. The hauler wobbled left and right, slowing down as it hit the muck, wanting to jackknife, but Stan kept correcting with tiny movements of the wheel, and steadily and inexorably the boat backed down through the mud and the ooze and into the reservoir.

Stan never let up on the accelerator till the headlights were underwater and wavelets were breaking on the hood, and the instant he lifted his foot the engine died; probably never to live again. But the
Over My Head
was, just barely, in water deep enough to float.

Now Doug went to work unattaching the straps that held the boat to the hauler, and Stan climbed through the foundered wagon to exit out the tailgate and go wait in Dortmunder’s car. At the same time, Kelp and Tiny and Tom waded out to climb aboard. Halfway there, Kelp looked back: “John? Aren’t you coming?”

The rain beat down. The nasty little wind pressed wet clothing against cold flesh. You couldn’t even
see
the reservoir out there. But a man’s gotta do — Well, you know.

“Shit,” said Dortmunder, and waded into the water.