Drowned Hopes (32 page)

“Breathe the good air,” Murch’s Mom ordered her son.

“I’ve never
had
so much space, John,” May went on, sounding infuriatingly enthusiastic about the idea. “Room after room, upstairs and down. And it all came furnished with
very nice
things.”

“And you won’t believe the rent,” Murch’s Mom added. “Not after rents in the city.”

“Mom,” Stan said, a plaintive twang creeping into his voice, “I don’t
want
to live in Dudson Center. What would I
do
around here?”

“Work with John,” his Mom suggested, “getting that Jimson bastard his money.”

Dortmunder sighed.

May said, “John, I hope you don’t think I’m being mean about this. I’m doing it as much for you as for me.”

“That’s nice,” Dortmunder said.

“If Tom blows up the dam —”

“He will.”

“You’ll feel terrible about it the rest of your life,” May assured him. “Knowing you could have prevented it.”

“I’m not going down in there anymore,” Dortmunder said. “Not even for you, May. I’d rather feel terrible the rest of my life than spend
one minute
down in there.”

“Then there has to be some other way,” May said.

“You mean some other person,” Dortmunder told her. “
I
won’t go.
Andy
won’t go.” Turning to Stan, he said, “How about it? Want to take a turn?”

“Pass,” Stan said.

His Mom frowned at him. “That’s not like you, Stanley.”

“It
is
like me,” her son told her. “It’s
exactly
like me. I recognized me in it the minute I opened my mouth. Mom, they
told
me what it’s like down there. And I saw them come out last time.”

May said, “Isn’t there some way without having to actually
walk into
the reservoir?”

“Sure,” Dortmunder told her. “Wally’s got a million ways. Giant magnets. Evaporate the water with lasers. Of course, the best is the spaceship from Zog.”

“Not Wally’s ideas,” May said patiently, “and not his computer’s ideas either.
Your
ideas.”

“My idea,” Dortmunder told her, “is to stay out of that reservoir. May, come
away
from here.” Twisting around again, he glared out the window at that far–off gray wall in the hills. “He’ll do it in a week,” he said. “Less. You can’t change it.”

The wall seemed to shiver and bulge in the distance. Dortmunder could feel the water pressing on him, all around, black, heavy, holding him pinned like a straitjacket. A mad thought crossed his brain like heat lightning: steal two thousand BCDs, distribute them to everybody in the valley; people, buoyant, floating through the flood.

He turned back to the room. “May, I can’t go in that water.”

“And I can’t leave here,” she said.

Dortmunder sighed, one last time. “I’ll talk to Tom,” he said. “I don’t know what I’ll say, but I’ll talk to him.”

“You’re very lucky,” Dortmunder told him. “Look around under the tables there, see if you find somebody rolling a corpse. That’ll be Tom.”

The bartender thought that over for a second or two, then said, “You a friend of his?”

Dortmunder responded with a hollow laugh.

“Okay,” the bartender said. “I guess you’re all right. Gimme your name and number. If anybody called Tom Jimson comes in, I’ll pass along the message.”

“Tell him it’s urgent,” Dortmunder said.

This time it was the bartender who gave the hollow laugh, saying, “I thought you knew this Jimson guy.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Dortmunder agreed gloomily.

For the next day and a half, Dortmunder hung around the apartment, not wanting to miss the call, trying to convince himself Tom hadn’t had time
already
to put together his string and collect his dynamite and his all–terrain vehicle and head north. Not enough time. He couldn’t have done it yet.

Stan Murch and Tiny Bulcher and Andy Kelp phoned from time to time, or dropped by, to see how things were going. “I can’t talk,” Dortmunder explained to Kelp over the phone at one point. “I don’t want Tom to get a busy signal when he calls.”

“I been telling you, John,” Kelp said. “You need call–waiting.”

“No, Andy.”

“
And
a cellular phone you can carry with you, so you can leave the house.”

“No, I don’t, Andy.”

“
And
a kitchen extension. I could —”

“Leave me alone, Andy,” Dortmunder said, and hung up.

Finally, late on the second day, Tom called, sounding very far away. “Where are you?” Dortmunder asked, imagining Tom in North Dudson, just off the Thruway exit.

“On the phone,” Tom answered. “It’s up to you, Al, to tell me
why
I’m on the phone.”

“Well, uhhhh, Tom,” Dortmunder said, and listened to hear what he would have to say next, and didn’t hear anything at all.

“Hello? Is this line dead?”

“No, Tom,” Dortmunder said. “I’m here.”

“You’re gonna be all alone there in a second, Al,” Tom warned him. “I got a lot of — Goddamn it!” he suddenly shouted, apparently turning away from the phone to yell at somebody else at wherever he was. Raucous voices were heard in the background, and then Tom’s voice, still aimed away from the phone, snarling, “Because I say so, snowbird! Just sit there till I’m off the phone!” Then, louder again in Dortmunder’s ear, “Al? You still there?”

“Oh, sure,” Dortmunder said. “Tom, uh, is that your, uh, have you got your guys to help on the —”

“Well, naturally, Al,” Tom said, sounding jaunty. “And we’re all kinda anxious to get going, you know. In fact, I’m having a tiny discipline problem at the moment with this one nose jockey here. So if you could just go ahead and spit it out, you know, we could get on the road.”

“Well, the thing is, Tom,” Dortmunder said, gripping the phone hard, willing himself to keep talking whether he had anything to say or not, “the thing is, I’ve been sort of regretting how I gave up on that, uh, reservoir job. I mean, you know me, Tom, I’m not a quitter.”

“Lotta water there, Al,” Tom said, sounding almost sympathetic; for him, that is. “Too much water to get through, you were right about that. No sweat, no problem, nothing for you to feel bad about. Cost me a couple months, but that’s okay, it was kinda interesting watching you and your pals at work.”

“Well, the thing is, Tom —”

“But
now,
Al,
now
I gotta do it right. Mexico’s calling, Al.”

“Tom, I want to —”

But Tom was off again, yelling at his companion or companions. Dortmunder waited it out, licking his lips, grasping the phone, and when Tom finally finished with his discipline problem, Dortmunder said, very quickly, “Tom, you know May. She moved up there, to Dudson Center. She’s gonna stay there.”

Was that a mistake? Maybe I shouldn’t have let him know I had a personal stake in the situation. Well, it’s too late now, isn’t it?

Tom, after the briefest of pauses, said, “Well, well. Putting the pressure on you, eh, is she, Al?”

“Kind of,” Dortmunder admitted. It was a mistake.

“You know, Al,” Tom said, “I got a philosophy that maybe might help you at this time.”

“You do?”

“That’s right. There’s more than one woman in this world, Al, but there’s only one
you.
”

A
bad
mistake. “Tom,” Dortmunder said, “I really want to make one more try. Just bear with me once more, don’t blow the dam —”

“On accounta May.” Tom’s voice was always icy cold, but somehow right now it sounded even colder.

“On account of,” Dortmunder told him, “my professional, uh, pride is at stake here. I don’t want to be defeated by the problem. Also, you said yourself, you’d be happier without the massive manhunt.”

“That’s true, Al,” Tom said, still with that absolute–zero voice. “But let us say, just for argument, Al, just let us say I’m gonna go ahead and get this over with. And let us say you can’t, no matter what you do, you just can’t yank that woman of yours out from in front of the dam. Now, Al, just for the sake of argument here, would you find yourself tempted to make a little anonymous phone call to the law?”

Dortmunder’s hand, slippery with sweat, trembled on the phone. “I’d hate to have to face that problem, Tom,” he said. “And I just think there’s still a way we can do the job without the, uh, fuss.”

“Uh–huh. Hold it, Al.”

Dortmunder waited, listening.
Thunk
of phone onto a hard surface. Voices off, raised in anger. Sudden crashing of furniture, heavy objects — bodies? — thudding and bumping. Silence, just as sudden.

“Al? You there?”

“I’m here, Tom.”

“I think I must be slowing down,” Tom said. “Okay, I see your problem, Al.”

“That’s why I want to —”

“And I see
my
problem.”

Dortmunder waited, breathing through his mouth.
I’m
his problem, he thought. In the background, at Tom’s end of the line, whining voices complained.

His own voice now like thin sharp wires, Tom said, “Maybe we ought to have a talk, Al, you and me. Maybe you ought to come here.”

I have to talk him out of it, Dortmunder thought. Somehow. Knowing exactly what Tom had in mind, he said, “Sure, Tom, that’s a good idea.”

“I’m on Thirteenth Street,” Tom said.

Well, that was appropriate. “Uh–huh,” Dortmunder said.

“Off Avenue C.”

“Rough neighborhood, that,” Dortmunder suggested.

“Oh, yeah?” Tom said, as though he hadn’t noticed. “Anyway, between C and D. Four–ninety–nine East Thirteenth Street.”

“Which bell do I ring?”

Tom chuckled, like ice cubes rattling. “There’s no
locks
around here anymore, Al,” he said. “You just come in, come up to the top floor. We’ll have a good long talk, just you and me.”

“Right, Tom,” Dortmunder said, through dry lips. “See you — koff, kah — see you soon.”

Which was, so far, nobody. Scurrying sounds preceded him up the stairwell, scuffling noises followed, but no one actually appeared as Dortmunder slogged steadily upward through a building that any World–War–II–in–Europe movie could have been shot in, if nobody stole the camera. Great bites had been taken out of the plaster walls, leaving dirty crumbly white wounds in the gray–green skin. At every level the corridor windows, fore and aft, were mostly broken out, some leaving jagged glass teeth, others patched with six–pack cardboard and masking tape. The white hexagonal tile floors had apparently been systematically beaten with sledge hammers over a period of many months, then smeared with body fluids and sprinkled with medical waste. That the bare light bulbs dangling from the corridor ceilings had once been enclosed in white glass globes was indicated by the amount of white ground glass mixed with the rest of the trash on the floors.

The apartment doors were dented metal, some painted brown, some gray, many without knobs or locks. From the cooking smells emerging through these sprung doorways, most of the tenants planned to have rat for lunch. Rounding the turn at the third floor, Dortmunder heard a baby wailing from some apartment nearby and nodded, muttering, “You’re right about that, kid.” Then he thumped on up.

The building was six stories high, the maximum height when it was thrown up for a building without an elevator. The stairwell, a square shaft cored from its gangrenous center, consisted of two half–flights per story; up to a landing, double back to the next floor. Dortmunder was just rounding the turn at floor five and a half when a sudden fusillade of gunfire roared out above him. “Yi!” he cried, and dropped to the filthy steps, shielding his head with the two–by–three. Wasn’t Tom even going to give him a
minute
to talk?

The gunfire went on for a few more seconds, then faltered; then there was a scream; then a sudden new rattle of shots. Dortmunder peeked up past the two–by–three but could see nothing except steps and the stairwell wall.

The silence stretched, covering the entire neighborhood; nobody’s home when the guns start banging. Then there was the clear sound of a metal door slammed open against a plaster wall, and an irritated voice that was recognizably Tom’s said, “Assholes.
Now
see what you made me do.”

Footsteps clattered down the stairs. Dortmunder got his feet under himself, rose quickly upward, and blinked at Tom as the older man reached the landing, right in front of him, concentrating on the fresh clip he was sliding into the butt of the blue–steel .45 automatic held loosely in his right hand.

Dortmunder stared at the automatic, and Tom looked up, saw him, and stopped, his eyes alight with the adrenaline of battle. They stood facing each other on the landing, Dortmunder squeezing the two–by–three in his hand, Tom lifting one eyebrow, silence all around them.

Then Tom relaxed and moved, tension gone as he tucked the automatic away inside his clothing. Casually, he said, “Whadaya say, Al? Glad you could make it.”

“I come right over,” Dortmunder said. His hands and throat were still clenched.

Tom glanced down at the two–by–three. Conversationally, he said, “What’s that for, Al?”

Dortmunder gestured vaguely with it, indicating the building. “People.”

“Hm.” Tom nodded. “You better hope nobody needs a piece a wood,” he said. “Come on, let’s get outta here.”

Dortmunder couldn’t resist looking up the stairs. “Your new partners?”

“I had to let them go. Come on, Al.” Tom started down the stairs and Dortmunder followed, not looking back anymore.

As they descended, Tom said, “The quality of help these days, Al, it’s a real scandal.”

“I guess it is,” Dortmunder agreed.

“You and your pals,” Tom went on, “seem to have a little trouble closing with the problem, but at least you’re steady and reliable.”

“That’s right,” Dortmunder said.

“You don’t put anything in your nose except your finger.”

“Uh–huh,” Dortmunder said.

“And nothing at all in your veins.”

“My blood and me,” Dortmunder said as they reached the ground floor and headed toward the smashed defense of the front door, “have an agreement. It does its job, and I don’t pester it.”

“You got it in a nutshell, Al,” Tom said as they stepped out to sunlight that, in this neighborhood, looked like an error. “Don’t second–guess your body, that’s what it comes down to. Those former associates of mine, upstairs, they didn’t understand that. They messed themselves around so much they got it into their heads, since they knew where the reservoir was, they didn’t need
me
anymore.” Tom’s laugh had an edge to it, like a church bell during the plague. “Lost touch with reality, that’s what they did.”

“I guess so.” Dortmunder looked up toward the top–floor windows of this moldering pile. “Was it their apartment?”

“It is now,” Tom said, and shrugged away all previous associations, turning to Dortmunder on the sidewalk to say, “So you’ve got a new plan, huh?”

“Well, no,” Dortmunder said.

Tom lowered an eyebrow in Dortmunder’s direction. Away from him, it was easy to forget how tall he was, and how bony. “You
don’t
have a plan?”

“Not yet,” Dortmunder explained. “I wanted to be sure you’d go along with me before I got into any —”

“Al, I’ll tell you the truth,” Tom said. “I’m disappointed.”

“I’m sorry, Tom.”

“You’re right to be. Here I thought your love for a good woman had inspired you to come up with a really first–class notion, and everything was gonna be fine.”

“Everything is, Tom,” Dortmunder assured him. “Now that —”

“I might not have been quite so dismissive of those three fellas upstairs,” Tom went on, “if I’d known you were just blowing smoke.”

“I’m not blowing —
Three
fellas?” And one old seventy–year–old made of iron bars and antifreeze.

“That’s how many I figured I needed,” Tom said. “Two to carry the dynamite and get blown up with it, one to drive the backhoe and do the work down in Putkin’s Corners.”

“And be left there,” Dortmunder suggested.

Tom’s lips seemed actually to stretch, as though he might be smiling somewhere deep inside. “You know me so well, Al,” he said. But then the ghost smile disappeared, and he said, “And that’s why I’m so surprised you’d come to me empty–handed this way.”

“Not empty–handed,” Dortmunder said. “I’m going to —”

“Yeah, come to think of it,” Tom said, “maybe you should throw that stick away. Those sirens I hear are getting closer.”

Dortmunder had been too distracted by Tom to pay attention to the outer world, but now he did hear that, yes, there
were
sirens approaching. Fast. From not very far away. “Right,” he said, and tossed the two–by–three into the gutter.

“Let’s take a walk,” Tom said, “since I’m carrying a gun those cops would take a great interest in, and while we walk you can tell me your ideas, and we can discuss where I’m gonna live now.”

They started walking toward Avenue C. Dortmunder said, “Where you’re gonna live?”

Ahead, the first police car came screaming around the corner. “My previous place,” Tom explained, “isn’t gonna be available for a while.”

Dortmunder looked around to watch the police car brake to a stop at Tom’s former address. Cops piled out of it while two more police cars joined the party, one of them coming the wrong way down this one–way street. “Yeah, I see what you mean.”

“This place where May is,” Tom said, “up in Dudson Center. Lotta room there?”

“She says the most she ever had,” Dortmunder said, knowing what was coming but seeing no way out.

“Probably reassure her to have me there where she could see me,” Tom suggested. “Keep an eye on me. Know I’m not blowing the dam when I’m in front of it myself.”

“Probably so,” Dortmunder said.

“Yeah,” Tom said, nodding to himself as they turned the corner away from the scene of excitement. “She’ll probably be glad to see me, in fact, May. Happy to have me around.”

“Probably so,” Dortmunder said.