Drowned Hopes Part 28

"Sure, May," Tiny said, his voice like a far-off earthquake. "All you gotta do is ask."

May smiled at him. "Thank you, Tiny." To Mom, she said, "And thanks for letting me use your cab."

"My pleasure," Mom snarled, blatting her horn at a tourist from Maryland, sightseeing out the window of his Acura Silly.

"The problem is," May said, "John still won't even talk about it. Not even talk. So we couldn't meet at my place. If he knew I was-"

Andy said, "May, believe me, I understand John's position on this. I was trapped inside that car, too. Now, I'm not one of your broody kind of pessimistic guys, you know me, but I got to tell you, May, I had a minute or two there, down in there, when I was seriously rethinking the various choices of my life. 'What could I have done instead,' I was saying to myself. 'What could I have done different, maybe in third grade, maybe last year, that would have me now at the VCR store putting To Catch a Thief in my armpit instead of where I am?' A situation like that can give you those kinds of thoughts."

"I know that," May said. "I know you and John went through a terrible experience. But it's been two weeks, Andy, and you've gotten over it."

"Well, not entirely, May," Andy said. "The fact is, I still have to carry a flashlight when I open my closet door. But at least I'm was.h.i.+ng my face again, so there's been some improvement."

"John washes his face, all right," May said, "but he will not talk about the reservoir, or the money, or Tom's plan to blow up the dam."

"I think," Andy said carefully, "I think he's trying to restrict his involvement with the situation."

"When Tom moved out," May told them, "I made him promise to let me know where to get in touch with him, just in case John came up with a new idea. Tom was going away to East St. Louis, Illinois, to pick up another of those money caches of his, and he told me when he'd be back, and he promised he'd call me as soon as he was in New York again, and that's tomorrow. If I don't have anything to tell him tomorrow, he's going to find a couple of people to help him, which won't take long-"

"Not for that money," Tiny agreed. "Take him an hour, maybe, unless he's picky. Then it'll take two hours."

"By the end of this week," May said, "he could have that dam blown up and that entire valley destroyed and everybody in it dead."

"You know," Stan said thoughtfully, "I looked over that terrain while we were up there, and I'm not sure Tom could get outta there if he goes the dynamite method. The way the roads are, the way the hills are, he might not have an escape. I mean, he'd get the money, drive down in there in a tractor or an ATV or something, maybe a backhoe, yank the casket up outta the ground, drive back up out of the mud, but when he gets to the road I think he's screwed. I could study the terrain some more, but that's my first impression."

"Tom won't listen to that," May said. "He'll go ahead and do it anyway, and he'll get caught, and they'll put him back in prison where they should never have let him out in the first place, but all those people in the valley will be dead. It won't matter then if Tom says, 'Gee, Stan, I guess you were right.' "

"That's true," Stan admitted.

"We need another plan," May told them. "We need some other way to get to that money that isn't dynamite and that Tom Jimson will go along with. But John won't even talk about it, and he absolutely won't think about it. So what I was hoping from this meeting, I was hoping one of us would come up with something I could tell Tom, something that would at least slow him down, some kind of plan, or even an idea for a plan. Something."

There was a little uncomfortable silence in the cab, punctuated by Mom's maledictions against the world of drivers and pedestrians and New York City traffic conditions generally. At last Tiny spread his catcher's-mitt hands and said, "May, that ain't my field. I pick up heavy things, I move them, I put them down, that's what I do. Sometimes I persuade people to change their minds about certain things. I'm a specialist, May, and that's my specialty."

Stan said, "I'm a driver. I'm the best in the business-"

"He is," his Mom said, as she swerved around a wallowing stretch limo driven by a Middle Eastern refugee who'd cleared Customs & Immigration earlier that morning. "I'm his mother, but I've got to admit it, my boy Stan is a good driver."

"The best," Stan corrected. "But, May, I don't do plans. Getaways I can do. Vehicles I can drive; there isn't a thing in the world with wheels and a motor I can't drive. I could give Tom Jimson very professional advice on how he'll never get away from that county if he blows the dam, but that's about it from me."

May said, "Andy? What about you? You have millions of ideas."

"I sure do," Andy agreed. "But one at a time. And not connected with each other. A plan, now, a plan is a bunch of ideas in a row, and, May, I'm sorry, I've never been good at that."

"G.o.d d.a.m.n the State of New York!" Mom cried, sideslipping past a pipe-smoking psychiatrist in a Mercury Macabre. "They give anybody a license to drive a car!"

"They also released Tom Jimson," May pointed out.

Tiny cleared his throat. "Usually," he said, "what I'd do at this point is go to the guy that's the problem and give him a little vacation in the hospital for maybe three months. But the truth is, Tom Jimson-I don't care if he's seventy hundred years old-he's the nastiest guy I ever met. I wouldn't say this about almost anybody else, but I'm not absolutely one hundred percent sure he's the one would wind up in the hospital. And then you'd never change his mind. He'd go ahead out of spite."

May frowned, saying, "Tiny, how can he be that dangerous?"

"He doesn't care," Tiny said. "That's what it comes down to. He knows everything there is to know about doing the other guy and not getting done yourself. He's the only guy I knew, when we were in stir, that could sleep with a twenty-dollar bill stickin out of his hand. See, me," he went on earnestly, "if I gotta do a little pressure somewhere, I do what I do and that's it. I mean, unless you really annoy me, I don't break bones I don't haveta break. But Tom, he likes to go too far. It's tough for a normal human being to gear up to that kind of viciousness right away."

May sighed. "What are we going to do?"

"Well," Stan said, "I think maybe we shouldn't watch the TV news much the next few weeks."

They were all abruptly flung forward when Mom had to slam both feet onto the brake to keep from creaming two bicycle messengers snaking through the traffic with big flat square packages strapped to their backs. One of them looked around over his shoulder through his goggles and surgical mask and rode one-handed long enough to give Mom the finger. Mom stuck her head out the window to give him the verbal finger back, and then turned to glare at May and say, "You want a vacation?"

May blinked at her. "A vacation? No, I want-"

"It's the same thing," Mom snapped. "You want to take care of this problem with the dam. I want a vacation. If you've got a brain in your head, May, you want a vacation, too."

Spreading her hands, wondering if traffic conditions had finally driven Murch's Mom over the brink, May said, "I don't know what you mean. What's the connection?"

"I'll tell you the connection," Mom snarled. "I've got the idea. I know how to stop Tom Jimson."

FORTY-FIVE.

When Dortmunder opened the apartment door and stepped inside to call, "May! I'm home!" and a voice from the living room called back, "In here, John," that would have been perfectly all right except for two problems: 1) It wasn't May's voice. 2) It wasn't even a woman.

Warily, Dortmunder moved forward to the living room doorway, where he looked in at Stan Murch, seated on the sofa, holding a beer can, his expression troubled. "I don't want to talk about it," Dortmunder said.

"I understand that," Stan told him, "but things have changed."

"I haven't changed."

"Maybe you ought to get yourself a beer," Stan suggested.

Dortmunder studied him. Stan the driver's personality usually matched his carrot-colored hair; optimistic, straightforward, a little aggressive. At this moment, though, he was subdued, troubled, almost gloomy; a new Stan, but not an improved one. "I'll get myself a beer," Dortmunder decided, and did so, and came back from the kitchen to sit in his normal chair, take a drink from his beer can, wipe his chin, and say, "Okay. You might as well tell me."

"May moved out," Stan said.

This was the last thing Dortmunder had expected. He'd been braced for more pressure about that G.o.dd.a.m.n reservoir, for Stan having been set up to talk to Dortmunder about it by May, but- May? Moved out? Impossible. "Impossible," Dortmunder said.

"Well, she did," Stan insisted without satisfaction. "The cab left about twenty minutes ago. Take a look in the closet, if you want. Look in the dresser."

"But-" Dortmunder couldn't bend his mind around this idea. "She left me? May left me?"

"Nah," Stan said. "She says you can come live with her all you want. Her and Mom both."

No matter how closely Dortmunder listened, none of this made the slightest, tiniest, least bit of sense. "Your Mom?" he demanded. "What's your Mom got to do with it?"

"They're living together," Stan said. "That was the cab May went in; Mom's last fare." Sounding bitter, he said, "It was even Mom's idea. She got a leave of absence from the cab company on account of traffic burnout, and May said she was due a sabbatical from the supermarket, so they did it. They say we can both go live with them any time we want."

Dortmunder was on his feet, slopping beer. "Where?" He was ready to go, wherever it was. Go there now, get an explanation he could understand, bring May home again. "Where, Stan?"

"Dudson Center," Stan told him. With a long sigh, he shook his head and said, "In front of the dam. That's where they're living now."

FORTY-SIX.

It's amazing how many reservoirs there are in upstate New York, all piping their water south. New York City doesn't look particularly clean, so they must be drinking all that water down there. Or mixing it with something. Or maybe they just leave the faucets on.

Anyway, in addition to the number of reservoirs, there was also the complication of Doug Berry's regular job and life. It had been tough to get enough time free and clear so he could take several days off from the normal routine, close the dive shop, get into his customized pickup every morning, and barrel north to check out the reservoirs of the Berks.h.i.+res and the Catskills and the Shaw.a.n.gunks and the Adirondacks and the Helderbergs. So it wasn't until now, almost two weeks after refilling John and Andy's air tanks, that Doug at last arrived at North Dudson to check out the Vilburgtown Reservoir.

Was he already too late? Had John and Andy and their unknown friend already reclaimed the drowned and buried loot? They'd had a long time since he'd refilled their tanks. But even so, even if they were ahead of him, if he could just find the right reservoir, find the right trail, he firmly believed he could somehow or other manage to deal himself into whatever was going on. But first he had to figure out which of New York's myriad reservoirs the loot was or had been under.

This is how his thinking went on that: if you steal a lot of money (something he'd fantasized himself doing more than once in his life), you will either hide it or carry it, but not both; therefore the robbery would probably have taken place somewhere in the general vicinity of the reservoir, but must have happened before the reservoir existed.

So, in each case, he first found out how old the reservoir was, and if it was older than fifty years he immediately crossed it off, because how long ago could the original robbery have been? Then, he would look in the local paper for some big robbery to have occurred in that area not too many years before the reservoir was born. Major robberies are not that common in the kinds of rural areas that succ.u.mb to reservoirs, which meant that so far he had only two faint possibilities, both of them extremely unlikely, though he'd go back to both if nothing better showed up.

In the meantime, here he was in North Dudson, pulling to a stop in the parking lot behind the library, ready to do his Vilburgtown Reservoir research. Climbing out of the s.h.i.+ny black pickup in the warm June sunlight, he made a handsome picture, a fine complement to the day. With his tall and well-built frame, in his casual khaki slacks, soft blue polo s.h.i.+rt, and aviator-style sungla.s.ses, with his weathered tan and carelessly wavy dark blond hair, the only thing wrong with the picture was that he didn't look at all like somebody who would be going to the library, not on such a beautiful day. Nevertheless, that's where he headed, bounding up the steps with athletic grace, pus.h.i.+ng the sungla.s.ses up into the hair on top of his head as he entered the cool dim interior.

The girl at the counter was pretty enough, though not as pretty as he, which he knew without gloating about it; his good looks were simply a fact of nature, a part of who he was. (Pretty men feel differently about their beauty from pretty women, are less proud of it and protective toward it and prepared to display it. Their att.i.tude toward their looks is rather like the att.i.tude of the old rich toward their money: they're pleased to have it but consider mentioning it vulgar, even in their thoughts.) Doug approached the pretty-enough girl, smiling a winning smile, and said, "Hi."

"Hi," she answered. As women tended to do, she perked up in his presence. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm interested in two things," he told her, then grinned at himself and shook his head and said, "Let me rephrase that. Right now, there's two things I'm interested in."

"Two library things," she amplified, flirting with him just slightly.

"That's the key," he agreed. "I'm interested in your local reservoir-"

"Vilburgtown."

"Right. And I'm interested in your local paper. Do you have microfilm?"

"Well, that depends how far back you want to go," she told him. "Before about 1920, we really don't have much at all."

"No, that's fine." He grinned, showing his white teeth. "I want to read about the building of the dam to begin with, so I need to find out from you how long ago that was."

"Eighteen years," she said promptly. "I know because I was in second grade. It was a big deal around here."

"Eighteen years ago?" He pantomimed thinking hard. "I would have been in fourth grade," he decided. "So I've got two years seniority on you."

"Yes, sir," she said, and gave him a mock salute.

"At ease," he told her, and said, "I'll want the local paper for the year the dam was built, and for about ten years before that."

She gave him a suddenly watchful look, saying, "That's a funny thing to ask for."

The curiosity of small-town librarians knew no limits. Doug had long since had to come up with a cover story for his interest in local histories prior to the construction of dams. "I'm with the Environment Protection Alliance," he explained. "You probably heard of us?"

"Nnnooooo." She looked doubtful.

"We're small, but we're growing," Doug a.s.sured her with his broadest grin. "A volunteer group, concerned with the environment."

"Uh-huh."

"What we're trying to do," Doug went on, embroidering the bushwah with a little eye sparkle and tooth gleam, "is help communities avoid getting taken over for things like reservoirs. So I look for local factors that might be a common denominator before the town was lost. Employment, local elections, all of that."

Doug's story, if considered with a cold clear eye, made no sense at all, but where is there a cold clear eye in this old world? The present girl, like the victims before her, distracted by his good looks and winning manner and open honest smile, simply heard the buzzwords-environment, volunteer, common denominator, communities, employment-and nodded, returning his smile, saying, "Well, I wish you luck. It was a real trauma around here when all those towns got taken over."

"I'm sure it was," Doug agreed. "That's what we're trying to help prevent in the future."

"My mom worked in the library in Putkin's Corners," she went on. "That's the biggest town that got evacuated. And my grandfather ran the funeral parlor there."

This was more information than Doug absolutely had to possess for his purposes. "Then you know what I mean," he said, turning down the voltage a bit on his smile.

"I sure do."

"So, I guess I better get started. Then."

"Oh!" Seeming to come awake, the girl said, "Of course." Pointing across the room, she said, "That's the microfilm viewer over there. I'm sorry it isn't a very modern one, not like our VDT here."

He drew a blank: "VDT?"

"Video display terminal," she explained, and gestured at a small neat computer terminal on her side of the counter. Its dull black screen was blank. "It's really a wonderful help to us all," she said. "But I'm afraid we don't have a modern microfilm viewer yet. You'll have to crank that one."

"I took my vitamins today," he a.s.sured her, and grinned as he made a muscle.

She pretended not to look at his arm. "I'll bring you the microfilm," she said, and turned away.

Doug walked across the airy quiet room to the old table beating the old microfilm viewer. He was almost the only customer in here this morning; two or three old people read old magazines, and at one reading table sat a lone state trooper bent in agonized intense study over some thick book dense with print.

Doug faltered a second when he saw the uniform, then moved on, realizing the trooper was too deeply involved in his book to care about other patrons of the library. Besides, what did Doug have to fear from state troopers? At this stage of the game, nothing.

He sat in front of the viewer, and a couple of minutes later the girl brought him four rolls of microfilm, saying, "This is the year they built the dam, and these are the three years before. When you finish those, bring them to the desk and I'll get you some more."

"Thanks a lot." Doug leaned toward her, lowering his voice to say, "Listen. Can I ask a question?"

"About the library?"

"Kind of. What's the cop doing?"

She turned her head, as though not having noticed the state trooper before, then gave an indulgent laugh as she said, "Oh, Jimmy. He's studying for his civil-service exam." Bending toward Doug-a nice fresh faint aroma came from her-she lowered her own voice to say, "He's not very good at studying. It drives him crazy."