Drowned Hopes

“You what?”

“Input the reservoir,” Kelp repeated, unhelpfully, but then he added, “Our first model in the program is the valley from when the towns were there. So we can pinpoint the box. Then we tell the PC about the reservoir, and put in the dam, and fill the water in, and probably tell it how much water weighs and all that, so it can tell us what might be different down there at the bottom now.” A shadow of doubt crossed Kelp’s eager face. “There’s a lot of data we’re go

“No,” Dortmunder told him. “Guy-go I don’t know.”

“You never heard that expression?” Kelp was astonished.

“May probably did.”

“No, I don’t think so,” May said.

“Guy-go,” Kelp repeated, then spelled it. “G, I, G, O. It means ‘Garbage In, Garbage Out.’ ”

“That’s nice,” Dortmunder said.

“It means,” Kelp amplified, “the computer’s only as smart as what you tell it. If you give it wrong information, it’ll give you wrong information back.”

“I’m begi

“That’s about it, yes,” Kelp agreed.

“So this machine of yours,” Dortmunder said, “needs me a lot more than I need it.”

“Now, there you go, being negative again,” Kelp complained.

May said, “John, let Andy finish about this. Maybe it will help.”

“I’m just sitting here,” Dortmunder said, and tried to drink from an empty beer can. “I’m sitting here listening, not making any trouble.”

“I’ll get more beer,” May decided.

As she got to her feet, Kelp said, “I’ll wait for you to come back.”

“Thank you, Andy.”

While May was out of the room, Kelp said, “Actually, if we could work this out, that’s a lot of money.”

“It is,” Dortmunder agreed.

“I’m not saying necessarily a tu

“Yeah.”

“How strong is he?”

“Very.”

“Well, that’s fine,” Kelp said. “So he can carry his weight. Then you and me. And a driver, probably.”

“Absolutely,” Dortmunder said. “I drove up there once already. That’s enough. We’ll call Stan Murch, if it looks like we’ve got something.”

“And maybe Tiny Bulcher, for the lifting and the moving around,” Kelp suggested as May came back with three more beers. “Thanks, May.”

May said to Dortmunder, “I already opened yours, John.”

“Thanks.”

“You know,” Kelp said, popping open his beer can with casual skill, “your old— This guy, uh…”

“Tom,” Dortmunder said. “His name is Tom.”

“Well, I’ll try it,” Kelp said. “Tom. This Tom sounds a lot like Tiny. In fact, I’m looking forward to meeting him.”

Dortmunder muttered, “Better you than me.”

“Anyhoo,” Kelp said, “we were talking about the PC.”

Dortmunder looked at him. “ ‘Anyhoo’?”

“The PC,” Kelp insisted. “Come on, John.”

“Okay, okay.”

“It’s true,” Kelp said, “we have to get a lot of information to put into the computer, but that’s nothing different. You always want the best information you can get anyway, in any job. That’s the way you work.”

“That’s right,” Dortmunder said.

“And when we put it all in the computer,” Kelp told him, “then we say to it, ‘Plot us out the best route for the tu

“Sounds easy,” May said.

“Whenever things sound easy,” Dortmunder said, “it turns out there’s one part you didn’t hear.”

“Could be,” Kelp said, unruffled. “Could be, we’ll give the model to the computer and ask it about the tu

“Be sure to put all that last part in,” Dortmunder told him, “when you’re putting in the rest of the garbage.”

“We’re not going to put garbage in,” Kelp corrected him. “We’re going to input quality data, John, believe me. In fact,” he said, suddenly even more peppy and enthusiastic, “I know just the guy to work with on this program.”

“Somebody else?” Dortmunder asked him. “One of us?”

Kelp shook his head. “Wally’s a computer freak,” he explained. “I won’t tell him what we’re trying for, I’ll just give it to him like as a computer problem.”

“Do I know this Wally?”

“No, John,” Kelp said, “you don’t travel in the same circles. Wally’s kind of offbeat. He can only communicate by keyboard.”

“And what if he communicates by keyboard with the law?”

“No, I’m telling you that’s all right,” Kelp insisted. “Wally’s a very unworldly guy. And he’ll save us weeks on this thing.”

“Weeks?” Dortmunder said, startled. “How long is this go

“Just a few days,” Kelp promised. “With Wally aboard, just a very few days.”

“Because,” Dortmunder pointed out, “until we have this figured out, we have Tom Jimson living here.”

“That’s right,” May said.

“And if he decides to stop living here,” Dortmunder went on, “it’s because he’s gone back upstate to make a flood.”

“The Jimson flood,” said a cold voice from the doorway. They all looked up, and there was Tom, as cold and gray as ever, standing in the doorway and looking from face to face. A wrinkle in his own face might have been intended as an ironic smile. “Sounds like an old folk song,” he said, his lips not moving. “ ‘The Famous Jimson Flood.’ ”

“I think that was Jamestown,” Kelp said.

Tom considered that, and considered Kelp, too. “You may be right,” he decided, and turned to Dortmunder. “You spreading my business around, Al?”

Getting to his feet, Dortmunder said, “Tom Jimson, this is Andy Kelp. Andy and I work together.”

Tom nodded, and looked Kelp up and down. “So you’re go

Kelp gri

“Dynamite’s very sure,” Tom told him.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Kelp said. “That water’s been in place there twenty years, more or less. What happens when you make a sudden tidal wave out of it? Think it might roil up the bottom, maybe mess things up down there, make it harder to find that box of yours?”

Dortmunder, standing there in the middle of the room like somebody waiting for a bus, now turned and gazed on Andy Kelp with new respect. “I never thought of that,” he said.

“I did,” Tom said. “The way I figure to blow that dam, you won’t have no tidal wave. At least, not up in the reservoir. Down below there, in East Dudson and Dudson Center and Dudson Falls, down there you might have yourself a tidal wave, but we don’t give a shit about that, now, do we?”

No one saw any reason to answer that. May, also getting to her feet, standing beside Dortmunder like an early sketch for Grant Wood’s Urban Gothic (abandoned), said, “Would you like a beer, Tom?”

“No,” Tom said. “I’m used to regular hours. Good night.”

Kelp, still with his amiable smile, said, “You off to bed?”

“Not till you get up from it,” Tom told him, and stood there looking at Kelp.

Who finally caught on: “Oh, you sleep here,” he said, whapping his palm against the sofa cushion beside him.

“Yeah, I do,” Tom agreed, and went on looking at Kelp.

May said, “Let me get you sheets and a pillowcase.”

“Don’t need them,” Tom said as Kelp slowly unwound himself and got to his feet, still smiling, casually holding his beer can.

“Well, you need something,” May insisted.

“A blanket,” he told her. “And a towel for the morning.”