Drowned Hopes

Vilburgtown County, even before the city of New York drowned it, had been a quiet, peaceful, law-abiding sort of territory. Tom Jimson’s armored car heist on the Thruway stood out against all that rustic quiet like a spaceship from Zog.

TWELVE

What made it the worst for May was the things Tom chose to laugh at on TV. They were never the things other people laughed at—never the things the laugh track, for instance, laughed at—things like people getting confused about who’s supposed to go through the doorway first, things like men with strange pieces of clothing on their heads, things like parrots; never anything normal and predictable like that. No, what Tom laughed at was the soldiers getting blown up by the booby trap, or the one-legged skier vowing not to let his handicap keep him from competing on the slopes, or almost anything on the news.

But what else was May to do with herself? At the end of a long day standing at the supermarket cash register, she wanted to sit down, in her living room, with her television set. She wasn’t going to cower in the kitchen or the bedroom with a lot of old magazines just because this pathological killer happened to be infesting the apartment at the moment.

Actually, if truth be told, under other circumstances May might have found any number of things to keep her occupied in the kitchen during this Jimson siege, but John was out there right now, the kitchen table covered with maps and charts and lists and photos and lined yellow pads and pencils and pens of different colors and compasses and protractors, the floor around John’s and the table’s feet littered with crumpled sheets of yellow paper, the expression on John’s face thunderously intent. Somehow, May wasn’t sure how, it had become some kind of contest, a duel between John and the computer, like those early-nineteenth-century races between a locomotive and a horse, or John Henry trying to beat the spike-driving machine.

Was this a good idea? May was pretty sure it wasn’t.

On the television screen, a lost infant crept up onto the railroad tracks; a distant train whistle was heard. Tom’s nasal chuckle was heard. May sighed, then looked up as the living room doorway filled with the hulk of John, his face the grim picture of a man determined to outrun the hounds of hell. And the locomotive, too, if need be. “Tom,” he said, his voice hoarse, as though he hadn’t spoken in days, maybe weeks.

Tom reluctantly looked away from the infant on the tracks. “Yeah?”

“Those stashes of yours,” John said.

“The ones the lawyers got,” Tom said.

“They didn’t get them all, Tom, did they?” John asked. He asked it as though he really and truly wanted the real and true answer.

May was also reluctant to look away from the baby in peril, for quite different reasons, but she just had to turn her head and observe Tom’s face. And what was that expression? It seemed to be part dyspepsia, part migraine, part the after effects of knockout drops. Showing John this astonishing face, Tom said, “Well, they didn’t get the one under the reservoir, no, that’s why we’re all here.” And May realized this was Tom’s idea of i

Which John wasn’t buying. “There’s others, Tom,” he said. “Maybe not big stashes, but stashes. The lawyers didn’t get them all.”

“They sure tried,” Tom said.

“But they failed, Tom,” John pursued.

Tom sighed. “What is it, Al?” he asked. “What’s the problem here?”

“We may need some equipment,” John told him. “You want to go fifty feet underwater, it’s probably go

Tom, his words very careful, his voice sounding as though there were some sort of constriction in his throat, said, “You want me to pay for this equipment?”

“We’ll divvy at the end,” John said, “after we get the big stash, divide the expenses equal. But in front, ahead of time, what do you want to do? Go to somebody that charges a hundred percent interest? You’re not go

“How about a permanent bank loan?” Tom asked, lifting his eyebrows slightly to show he was being a good sport about all this.

“One job at a time, Tom,” John said. “I’ll work with you on this reservoir thing, but I don’t want to go in with you on any bank jobs.”

Tom spread his hands. “You’re above robbing banks, Al? You’ve never spent the bank’s money?”

“We got different ways of doing things, that’s all,” John told him.

“You don’t like my methods, Al?”

John sighed. “Tom,” he said, “they lack…” He looked around, looked at May, looked back at Tom. “Delicacy,” he said.

Tom made that chuckle sound. “Okay, Al. If we got equipment we gotta get, expenses, within reason, you know, I mean, I’m not rich, but maybe I could come up with a little of the necessary here and there.”

“Good,” John said. He nodded at May, as though remembering now she was someone he’d met somewhere once before, and turned away. His feet could be heard thudding back to the kitchen.

May and Tom looked back at the television screen, where now two grown men tried to sell the audience a lot of bad wine mixed with a lot of bad fruit pulp. Tom said, “What happened to the kid?”

“I don’t know,” May admitted.

“Doesn’t matter,” Tom said, sounding disgusted. “On TV, somebody always manages to grab the kid in time. Ever notice that?”

“Yes,” May said.

“That’s just the way they do it,” Tom said. Then, brightening slightly, he said, “Well, of course, there’s still real life.”

THIRTEEN

Dortmunder came back from the library with a copy of Marine Salvage by Joseph N. Gores under his coat. He took it out from his armpit as he walked past the living room doorway and Andy Kelp’s cheerful voice said, “Reading a book, huh? Anything good?”

Dortmunder stopped and looked in at Kelp seated at his ease on the sofa, holding a can of beer. Knowing May was at work at the supermarket and being in something of a bad mood anyway, Dortmunder said, “You just walked right in, huh?”

“No way,” Kelp told him. “Took me at least a minute to get through that lock of yours.”

Unwillingly looking around the room, Dortmunder said, “Where’s Tom?”

“Beats me,” Kelp said. “Somewhere in a coffin of his native earth, I suppose.”

“He doesn’t have a native earth,” Dortmunder said, and walked on to the kitchen, where his work area had overflowed the table and now also covered all but one of the chairs, plus part of the counter space next to the sink. Maps were taped to the wall and the front of the refrigerator, and the crumpled papers under the table were knee deep.

Kelp had trailed Dortmunder into the kitchen. He stood watching as Dortmunder pointedly sat at the messy table and opened Marine Salvage to the facing pictures of the Empress of Canada lying on her side in Liverpool harbor in 1953 and the Normandie lying on her side in New York harbor in 1942. The Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building were both visible in the background of the Normandie picture. This East Nineteenth Street building where Dortmunder lived and had to put up with Andy Kelp wouldn’t be in the picture because it was too far downtown, the Normandie having fallen over at Forty-eighth Street. Dortmunder made a show of becoming very absorbed in these pictures.

But Andy Kelp was not a man to be deterred by hints. “If you aren’t busy…” he said, and gestured in a friendly fashion with the beer can.

Dortmunder looked at him. “If I’m not busy?”

“I thought we’d take a little run over to Wally’s place,” Kelp said, unruffled. “See how he’s coming along.”

“I’m coming along,” Dortmunder told him. “Don’t worry about it, I’m coming along fine.”