Drowned Hopes

In a cartoon helicopter hovering over a cartoon town. Wally said, “That’s County Hall, isn’t it?”

“Right,” said Tom. “With the library next to it.”

The cartoon helicopter swooped around the wooden dome of County Hall, and Dortmunder’s stomach did a little lurch, as though he were on a roller coaster. “Take it a little slower, okay?” he said.

“Oh, sure,” Wally said, and the cartoon helicopter slowed, hanging in the air over the County Hall dome, looking toward the low red brick library building. “It’s behind that?”

“Right,” said Tom.

Wally’s fingers moved, and so did the cartoon helicopter, approaching the library. “I couldn’t find any photos of that area back there,” Wally explained apologetically, “so I didn’t put any details in. I have the size of the field, though, from surveyor’s plats.”

“It was just a field,” Tom said. “The idea was, they were supposed to blacktop it for a parking lot for the library, but they didn’t.”

Dortmunder said, “Tom? What if they’d changed their mind later? Water; blacktop; you’d still be under something. And they would have dug everything up first before they made a parking lot.”

“I knew somebody at the library,” Tom said, lips not moving and eyes not turning from the terminal screen, where the cartoon helicopter rounded the side of the library building and looked at a blank tan rectangle of field, with the backs of stores across the way. “She told me,” he went on, “they gave up the parking lot idea. Spent the money on books.”

“Huh,” Dortmunder said. “All of it?”

Wally, hovering his helicopter over the expanse of blank tan, said, “Do you know exactly where the clue was buried?”

“I can show you,” Tom said, “if you put in the streetlights.”

“I put in everything,” Wally told him, “that was in the photos.”

“Okay, then. There’s one spot back there where you can’t see any of the three streetlights. The one next to the library, the one in front of County Hall, and the one on the other block by the stores.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Wally said, and eased the helicopter down onto the tan field for a landing, where it swiveled upward over a span of ninety degrees and altered itself into the eyes of a person standing on the field, looking at the rear of the library. Wally’s fingers moved, and the person turned slightly to the right to look past the library toward County Hall.

“There’s the streetlight,” Tom said. “Move forward a little.”

The person did, at Wally’s direction, and the thin pole of the streetlight—a cartoon streetlight, just sketched in—disappeared behind the corner of the library.

“This is some goddamn piece of work,” Tom said, leaning closer over Wally’s head. “Let’s take a look to the left.” The angle of vision moved leftward, past the library. “Good,” Tom said. “No streetlight. Now the other way.”

The person in the field turned all the way around, buildings sliding past in distorted perspective, as in a funhouse mirror, while Dortmunder’s stomach did that lurch again. And there was the low row of stores, facing the other way, and between two of them appeared another stick-figure streetlight.

His grim voice hushed, Tom said, “Back up a little, and to the right.”

Wally did it. The stores shifted; the streetlight disappeared.

“Right there!” Tom crowed, his mouth all the way open for once. “Right goddamn there!”

TEN

“Was I right?” Kelp demanded, gri

“He says,” Tom Jimson answered, his thin lips immobile, “the tu

“I know that, I know that,” Kelp admitted, brushing it aside, or at least trying to brush it aside. “That isn’t the—”

“Them graphics looked pretty good,” Tom Jimson added, nodding with satisfaction.

The graphics, as a matter of fact, had looked far too graphic. Wally, his fingers scampering like escaped sausages over the keys, had described to them how he’d presented the salvage operation problem to the computer, and how he’d input the tu

Not much. In beautiful blue and brown and green, the computer thought the routes were watery graves, every last one of them. Down would angle the tu

At that point, despite himself, Kelp’s throat would close. Every time. Which had made it difficult to take much part in the immediately ensuing conversation about non-tu

“Like,” said Tom Jimson.

“Like we’ll find it,” Kelp assured him. “We didn’t come up with anything yet, that’s perfectly true, but old Wally and his computer, they’ll—”

“Hmp,” said Dortmunder.

Whoops; another precinct heard from. They had just stopped at the curb at Eleventh Avenue to wait for the light to change, so Kelp leaned forward to look past the stone outcropping of Tom Jimson’s face at the rubble outcropping of Dortmunder’s face, and what he saw there told him his old friend John was not entirely happy. “John?” Kelp said. “What’s the problem?”

“Nothing,” Dortmunder said, and stepped out in front of a cab that, up till then, had thought it was going to beat the light. As the cabby stuck his head out his side window and began to make loud remarks, Kelp and Tom Jimson stepped off the curb after Dortmunder, Tom pausing to look at the cabby, who at once decided he’d made his point and, with dignity, retracted his head back inside his vehicle.

Meantime, Kelp, pursuing Dortmunder, said, “John? I don’t get it. What’s wrong?”

Dortmunder muttered something. Kelp hurried to overtake him and heard the last part: “—was the pla

“The pla

Reaching the far corner, Dortmunder turned and said it all over again, out loud: “I was always under the impression, myself, that I was the pla

“Well, sure you are, John,” Kelp said, as Tom Jimson joined them and they resumed their walk east. “Sure you’re the pla

“That’s his rep,” Tom agreed.

“I’ve put together a lot of jobs in my time,” Dortmunder said.

“Of course you have, John,” Kelp said.

“Sometimes things go wrong, a little wrong,” Dortmunder said. “I freely admit that.”

“Luck, pure luck,” Kelp assured him.

“But the plan is good,” Dortmunder insisted. “I defy you, show me once when I put together a string of events that wasn’t the best when it comes to you get in, you get the goods, you get out.”

“I can’t,” Kelp admitted. “You win that one, John, I can’t come up with even one.”

“And all without a computer,” Dortmunder finished, with heavy emphasis.

“John, John,” Kelp said, while Tom looked a little confused by this turn of events, “the computer doesn’t take your place, John. The computer’s a tool, that’s all, like a pair of pliers, like a jimmy, a lockpick, a, a, a…”