Drowned Hopes

Murch’s Mom said, “Edna—”

Edna said, “Now about the money. It’s dirty money. I don’t care how long it’s been in the water, it’s still dirty. Myrtle and I don’t want any part of it, and you shouldn’t want it either, Wallace, and you certainly won’t need it if you’re working at the bank, and however would you report it on your income tax? Gladys, I understand your son is a professional in this sort of thing and therefore he would want his share of the money, and I accept it if you say he isn’t a vicious monster like Tom Jimson but simply a very good professional driver, but I’m really afraid he should never have gotten involved in this. Tom Jimson will be going to Mexico, all right, and glad to see the back of him, but he’ll take all that money with him when he goes. Miss Bellamy’s friend John was right when he left, and I think your son Stanley should have gone with him, because there is simply no depth to Tom Jimson’s wickedness. I’m sure, by now, out there on that dark water, he has started doing something terrible.”

Tom went down into the cabin of the Over My Head to have a look around. The curtains had been shut over the windows down here and one dim light over the sink switched on, in which glow he saw they’d put Dortmunder’s hitchhiker, still out cold, on the sofa where Tom had stashed the Ingram Model 10 when he’d left the house briefly and surreptitiously much earlier today. That was all right; when the time came, the hitchhiker could be target number one.

The Ingram Model 10, named for its designer, Gordon Ingram, was manufactured from 1970 in the United States by the Military Armament Corporation. A machine pistol less than a foot long and weighing only 6.5 pounds, the Model 10 fires.45-caliber ammunition from a 30-round magazine that fits into—and juts down from—the pistol grip. It fires in fully automatic mode, using the blowback principle, has fixed sights fore and aft, and the cocking handle, mounted on the top (convenient for both right- and left-handed shooters), is grooved down the middle so as not to interfere with sighting. It is factory-fitted with a suppressor to reduce noise.

Tom had removed from his copy of the weapon its usual retractable metal-pipe shoulder butt that, when extended, just about doubled the weapon’s length. After all, he didn’t expect ever to use it for targets more than a couple of feet away, so he would never have to aim from a shoulder stance. Like tonight, for instance; how far can a target go on a boat?

Tom gave off contemplating the unconscious hitchhiker, and the equalizer concealed beneath his sleeping head, when Doug came bounding down the narrow steps, filling the cabin as much by his energy and sheer physicality as by his simple presence. “Gotta suit up,” he explained.

“I’ll get out of your way then, Popeye,” Tom said.

“Naw, that’s okay, Tom,” Doug said. “It’s miserable up there on deck, not enough room for everybody to get in under the tarp. Sit on the other bunk, why doncha?”

“Good idea,” Tom said, and did so.

Doug frowned at the sleeper. “He’s been out a long time,” he commented. “Tiny doesn’t know his own strength.”

“Oh, I think he does,” Tom said.

“Think he’ll be all right?”

“We’ll all be all right, Popeye. Very soon, now.”

If Doug minded this nickname Tom had recently found for him, naming him after a blowhard comic-strip sailor, he hadn’t yet said so. Of course, it was possible he didn’t get it; Tom had found, in his long life, that an astonishing number of people had just about no sense of humor at all.

Doug was still frowning in worry at Dortmunder’s unconscious friend. “See, the thing is,” he explained, “up till now, we maybe broke a few laws and all, trespassing and stealing this boat and like that, but nothing really major, you know? If we got caught—”

“You won’t get caught,” Tom told him. “I guarantee it.”

“Hope you’re right,” Doug said, and turned his attention to the wetsuit and other gear he had to change into, stowed in the forward storage area beyond the bunks.

Meantime, up on deck, Dortmunder had been left by Doug in charge of the wheel, with somewhat more assistance from Kelp and Tiny than he felt he absolutely needed. “Remember,” Kelp said, for about the thousandth time, “you don’t want to run across that monofilament and bust it.”

“The boat isn’t even moving,” Dortmunder pointed out.

Tiny said, “Well, Dortmunder, it’s not exactly not moving, either. Up and down and side to side count.”

“I’m holding the position,” Dortmunder answered, with just a soupçon of asperity in his voice. “Doug said hold the position, I’m holding the position.”

“We’re only saying,” Kelp said.

Doug came flap-footing in his flippers up from below at that point. He was changed into his diving gear, which made him the only person here properly dressed for the weather. He said, “Holding the position?”

“Yes,” said Dortmunder, in lieu of a lot of other things.

“Good. Might as well get it over with.”

Doug picked up a coil of line, one end of which was knotted to the side rail. Seating himself on that rail next to that knot, he used his free hand to adjust the mask and mouthpiece over his face, waved sideways like Queen Elizabeth, and flipped backward over the side.

“Gee,” Kelp said. “Just like that.”

“I see his light down there,” Tiny said, leaning his head briefly out into the full blast of the rain. “Nope; now it’s gone.” And he crowded back in with Dortmunder and Kelp and the wheel.

The position that Dortmunder was holding was into the wind, somewhere between where the monofilament line should be and where the dam should be. So long as he faced the Over My Head into the wind this way, the canvas-and-Lucite temporary wheelhouse provided a certain mount of protection from the elements.

The idea was, they would stay here while Doug moved along just below the surface of the reservoir, shining his forehead lamp out ahead of himself, looking for the thin white line of monofilament to glow back at him from out of the watery dark. Once he’d found it, he would search along it until he came to the marker rope leading down to the casket at the bottom of the reservoir. The line he’d carried with him, which he would have been unreeling all along, would be tied to the monofilament at the same place as the marker rope, and then Doug would swim back to the boat and guide them very slowly to the proper place.

Once boat and marker rope had been brought together, the rest would be easy. They would use the Over My Head’s own power winch to raise the casket from the bottom of the reservoir up out of the water, where they’d be able to wrestle it aboard like Moby-Dick; Tiny’s particular skills would come strongly into play at that point. Then it would be back to the clearing where Stan awaited; run the Over My Head aground, prow in; shlep the casket ashore; carry it home, divide the money, get into warm clothes, and have a beer.

A definite plan.

There. The nearly straight line of monofilament, just a foot below the surface of the reservoir, gleamed with a ghostly pale radiance where Doug’s lamp beam touched it. He ranged along that shimmery line and soon found the marker rope, still in place.

He quickly tied the new line from the new boat to the monofilament, then looked down at the marker rope, extending away into the murk below, and he just couldn’t resist. Flippered feet kicking strongly, he swooped down through the dark, headlamp picking up the marker rope along the way, and there he was at the bottom, and there it was, waiting.

Standing on end, a casket has a less restful, more problematic appearance than in its more usual lying-down posture. Standing on end in fifty feet of mucky water, in front of a slime-covered brick wall, its own once-glossy surface dulled and dirtied and covered with goo, a casket looked like a doorway to a different world. Not a better one.