Drowned Hopes (52 page)

So Tom made his move before they got ashore, did he? And did it work?

Whoever came out ahead out there, the winner or winners will want wheels. For themselves, and for the money. Not this station wagon, this heap will never go anywhere on its own again, but Dortmunder’s car, the Peugeot.

Just in case; okay? Just in case Tom managed to catch everybody by surprise out there, Stan should do something to defend himself. So he turned and walked upslope to the Peugeot, got behind the wheel, and started the engine. Better than half a tank of gas; good. He switched on the headlights, then got out of the car and splashed through the rain over to the right side of the clearing and in among the trees.

There were no dry places out here, not after two days and nights of steady rain. Wet and cold but unwilling to make a sitting duck of himself, Stan hunkered down against a tree where he could see the Peugeot’s lights, the clearing, even a bit of the station wagon.

Hell of a position for a driver.

Dortmunder and Kelp heaved on the rope. The other end of it was tied around Tiny under the armpits, and Tiny was lying half on and half off the platform at the rear of the
Over My Head.
He’d been reaching farther and farther down under the boat, trying to find an end of rope or — for preference — monofilament, and now at last he’d done it, and once Dortmunder and Kelp’s combined efforts got him completely back up on the platform he rose and held up a jumble of monofilament in his left hand like a serving of angel hair pasta.

“Beautiful stuff,” Kelp prayed.

Tiny tied the monofilament to the rail, then climbed over onto the deck and removed the rope from around himself.

“Tiny, I’m sorry,” Dortmunder said.

Tiny pointed a fat finger at him. “Dortmunder,” he said, “I want this to be a lesson to you. This is what happens to a person that’s rude. You break off a little discussion before it’s finished, before everybody’s done talking, maybe there’s something you oughta know that you
don’t
know.”

“I just didn’t like,” Dortmunder explained, “the idea of being on a sinking ship.”

“How about,” Tiny asked him, “being on a sinking ship that can’t go nowhere?”

“That’s worse,” Dortmunder admitted.

Kelp said, “But we’ll go now, won’t we? We got the monofilament, right?”

“
I
got the monofilament,” Tiny reminded him.

“That’s what I meant,” Kelp agreed. “And the other end of it’s tied to the railroad track in by shore, right? Over where we tried the first time. So now all we do is just tow ourselves in.”

“If it doesn’t break,” Tiny pointed out. “It’s awful skinny stuff.”

“It’s supposed to be very strong,” Dortmunder suggested. He was feeling unusually humble. “For bringing in big fish like tunas and marlins and things,” he said.

“Well, let’s see.” Tiny reached over the side, lifted the monofilament, wrapped it once around his fist, and tugged gently. Then he stopped. “Not bare–handed,” he said. “This stuff’ll take my fingers off.”

“I’ll get you a rag or something, Tiny,” Dortmunder offered, and went away to the cabin, where the water was almost knee deep now, despite the laborings of the boat’s automatic pump. Ignoring that, or trying to, Dortmunder searched around and found two oven mitts hanging from hooks beside the stove. He waded back up on deck and offered the mitts. “Try these.”

With some difficulty, Tiny jammed his hands partway into the mitts, then picked up the monofilament and pulled with a slow and even pressure. “Much better, Dortmunder,” he said.

“Thank you, Tiny.”

A sound of sloshing was heard from the cabin. Sounding surprised, Kelp said, “I think we’re moving.”

“So far,” Tiny said. Hand over hand, he reeled in the monofilament.

Kelp looked over the side. “You’d think Doug would of come up by now,” he said.

His turns, in fact, were slower now, less coordinated, as the strain of constant underwater exertion began to take its toll. These are signs he would normally have heeded, but at this moment there was no room in his brain for anything but this:

I saw the casket full of money, I saw it tonight, I swam down to it, just a little while ago. I held the rope in my hand. I have to be able to get it all back. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise. I have to get it all back.

No tree stumps. Doug in his weariness almost flew on over the spot, but then his laggard brain caught up with his eyes and be reversed, awkwardly, like a manatee, and shone his light on the spot again, and it was true. A clear swath cut through the forest of decayed stumps.

A road; it must have been a road. So it has to lead somewhere, and once there I can orient myself.

This way, or that way? I think it should be that way. Doug set off along the faint line of road, kicking doggedly.

Maybe the law
did
have the reservoir staked out, after all. Cautious, doubtful, apprehensive, Stan straightened stiffly from his hunkered–down position and stalked the people moving around out there in the clearing. Who were they? What were they up to?

It was Tiny’s shape he recognized first, and right after that the sound of John’s complaining voice: “Now, where the
hell
is Stan?”

“Here,” Stan said, stepping forward into their midst and causing all three to jump like little kids in a haunted house. “What’s going on?” Stan asked them. “Where’s the boat?”

“Down there by the railroad tracks,” Andy told him, pointing vaguely away along the shoreline. “We walked here from there.”

“
Waded
here,” Tiny corrected. He was holding his hands in his armpits, pressing his arms against his sides as though the hands were cold or sore or something.

John said, “Can we go now?”

“Go?” Stan looked around. “Aren’t we missing a couple people?”

“
And
seven hundred thousand dollars,” Tiny said.

Andy said, “It’s a long story.”

John said, “Let’s tell it tomorrow, okay? Today is finished.”

So then Wally crept over to see what was happening, and after that everybody including Myrtle and Edna had to go over to Oak Street, and the whole long story did have to be told tonight, after all. But at least they were all indoors and warm, and the stay–at–homes were willing to wait until the returnees had changed into dry clothes. By then, May had made soup, Myrtle had made toast, and Edna had made a pitcher of what she called “Bloody Marys that’ll iron your socks.” Under those conditions, it was possible to recount the night’s events without too many qualms or expressions of disgust. Kelp did most of the talking, with amplifications by Tiny and occasional color reportage from Dortmunder.

Tom Jimson’s lady friend and daughter bore up very well under the news of his death. “Well,
that
was overdue,” Edna commented. “I thought I was done with that man years ago, and now I am.”

“I so wanted to meet my father,” Myrtle said with a little shiver, “and then I did. He’ll be much better as a memory.”

The news about Doug was a little harder to take. “Well, I don’t hold much brief for that young man,” Edna said, “as Myrtle well knows —”

“Mother!”

“ —
but
I certainly don’t wish him ill.”

“Doug’s a pro,” Dortmunder said for about the thousandth time. “He’ll be okay. But there was no point our hanging around. He wouldn’t of found us anyway.”

“That’s really true,” Kelp said.

“And John did get back by himself last time,” May said doubtfully.

“Darn right I did,” Dortmunder said. “Without wetsuits and air tanks and
all
of that.”

“We’ll hope for the best,” Edna said.

“
I
hope for the best,” Myrtle agreed.

“We all do,” Wally said, but his eyes were on Myrtle.

“The thing is, Dortmunder,” Tiny said, “we invested so much in this already.”

“Including,” Dortmunder pointed out, “two, maybe three people. I’m in no hurry to go with them.”

Kelp said, “I’ve touched that box with these hands. That’s what gets me.”

“And,” Stan said, “we don’t have Tom to worry about anymore.”

Dortmunder said, “We don’t have anything else, either. Doug lost the rope that leads down to the casket, and
I
lost the monofilament. Also, we don’t have a boat. Also, we don’t have a professional diver anymore.”

“He could still show up,” Murch’s Mom said.

“Even so.” Dortmunder spread his hands. “The only reason I got into this was to keep Tom from blowing up the dam and drowning everybody —”

“
So
like him,” Edna said.

“Well, that danger’s past,” Dortmunder said. “It’s Tom’s money. He’s down there with it. Let them stay together.
I’m
going to sleep. And then I’m going to New York. And then I’m gonna think about something else for the rest of my life.”

In air or ground. In water, who knows?

In the course of the morning, only three cars passed by on the road over the dam, and Doug opened his eyes in time to see the third go by just above him. I’m alive, he thought, lying there on the rocks at the east end of the dam, barely clear of the water and a little below the roadway, and he was amazed.

He was right to be amazed. His last clear memory from the night before was that exhilarating moment when he had
seen the railroad tracks!
Exhilarating in part because, he now realized, his brain had already begun to suffer oxygen starvation. But exhilarating anyway, after all his desperate searching, when the road he’d been following had suddenly crossed those two rusty black lines leading toward seven hundred thousand dollars.

And death.

He’d actually started to follow the tracks, he remembered that now. Even though in some still–rational corner of his brain he’d realized he was running out of air, that he didn’t dare stay down one second longer, he had turned and obstinately kicked himself not upward but downward at a long slant, closer to the tracks.

That’s all he could remember. Somewhere in there, he must have blacked out, or partially blacked out, and once his greedy stupid conscious mind had gotten out of the way his professional knowledge and diver’s instincts had taken over and, at long last, he had started doing the right thing.

A diver out of air is only out of air at his current depth. Ascending alters pressure, and more air becomes available; not much, but every little bit helps.

Still, at some point Doug must have done an emergency ascent, because he no longer had either his weight belt nor his air tank. In an emergency ascent, the diver simply tries to get to the surface as rapidly as possible, slowly exhaling into the water along the way to prevent injuries caused by his lungs expanding too rapidly with the decreasing pressure. The partly inflated BCD would have helped speed his ascent, and would have kept him afloat and alive once he’d made it all the way up to air. And some remaining flicker of intelligence had made him swim toward the dam’s lights (as John had done the last time), and had helped him drag himself up above the water line, where he’d been lying ever since.

The wetsuit had kept him from hypothermia, but he was incredibly weary and achy and hungry and cold and, now that he stopped to think about it, scared. I could have died down there!

I
should
have died down there. How could I have been so dumb?

Slowly Doug sat up, moaning in pain. Every joint and muscle in his body ached. Despite the wetsuit, he felt cold, chilled to the bone. Warmth, he thought. Warmth, food, bed. Too bad he’d never really connected with Myrtle; bed with a woman right now would be
exactly
what the doctor ordered.

Moving as stiffly as the Tin Woodman when he needed oil, Doug bent down over his knees and removed the flippers from his feet. Then he crawled up the rocks and boulders to the parking area beside the dam entrance. After a couple of minutes of limbering–up exercises there, bending and twisting and kicking (all the time hoping a car would come by so he could thumb a ride), he started walking along the road. Too bad he didn’t have Andy Kelp’s skill at commandeering cars.

At least with movement he wasn’t so cold. On the other hand, his bare feet didn’t like the rough road surface at all. Still, he was alive, and that counted.

He’d walked a bit more than half a mile when he heard the car coming along behind him. Turning, trying his best to smile like a friendly and innocent hitchhiker, he stuck his thumb out and was quite surprised when the car, a Chevy Chamois, actually came to a stop.

His surprise was doubled when he opened the passenger door to climb in and saw that the driver was a good–looking girl. A
very
good–looking girl. “Thanks a lot,” he told her, shutting the door. “Pretty bad out there.”

“Well, you’re dressed for it,” she commented, giving his wetsuit a crooked grin as she shifted into gear and the car rolled forward.

Oh, it was nice to watch the countryside go by at forty miles an hour instead of four. Doug said, “
Nobody
should be out in this stuff.”

“You bet,” she said. “I wouldn’t be out here, believe me, if I wasn’t such a good little wifey.”

The word
wifey
sent one signal to Doug, but the ironic tone sent another. Looking at her more closely, he said, “Your husband sent you out in this weather? For what? Get him a sixpack?”

“He didn’t
send
me,” she said. “He doesn’t send anybody anywhere, believe me. I was just visiting him in the hospital.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“The bug hospital,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “He’s wiggy, you know?”

“That’s terrible,” Doug said. “A good–looking girl like you, stuck with a nutcase?”

She gave him a gratified smile. “You think I’m good–looking?”

“You
know
you are.”

“Would you believe I’m pregnant?”

“No! Really?”

“I don’t show, do I?”

“Not a bit,” Doug told her truthfully, wondering if he dared pat her belly. Probably not. A ride was more important than anything else at this point.

The gift sighed theatrically. “I should have listened to my mother,” she said. “
She
knew there was something wrong with him from the beginning, but I just never listened.”

“Why not?”

Another sigh. “I guess I just like sex too much,” the poor girl said.

“Mmm,” said Doug, in sympathetic understanding. “Uh, what’s your name?”