Drowned Hopes Part 2

"I didn't expect it to be so big," Dortmunder admitted. Being careful to look both ways, even though there had still been no traffic out here, Dortmunder crossed the road and looked down and saw how the dam also curved gently outward from top to bottom, its creamy gray concrete like a curtain that has billowed out slightly from a breeze blowing underneath. Beyond and below the concrete wall of the dam, a neat stream meandered away farther on down the valley, past a few farms, a village, another village, and at the far end of the valley what looked like a pretty big town, much bigger even than North Dudson. "So that," Dortmunder said, pointing back toward the reservoir, "must have looked like this before they put the dam in."

"If I'd known," Tom said, "I would of buried the G.o.dd.a.m.n box in Dudson Center down there."

Dortmunder looked again at the facade of the dam, and now he noticed the windows in it, in two long rows near the top. They were regular plate-gla.s.s windows like those in office buildings. He said, "Those are windows."

"You're right again," Tom said.

"But- How come? Does a dam have an inside?"

"Sure it does," Tom said. "They got their offices down in there, and all the controls for letting the water in and out and doing the purity tests and pumping it into the pipes to go down to the city. That's all inside there."

"I guess I just never thought about dams," Dortmunder said. "Where I live and all, and in my line of work, things like dams don't come up that often."

"I had to learn about dams," Tom said, "once the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds flooded my money."

"Yeah, well, then you got a personal stake," Dortmunder agreed.

"And I studied this dam in particular," Tom told him. Again pointing through fence, this time at an angle down toward the creamy gray curtain of the dam, he said, "And the best place to put the dynamite is there, and over there."

Dortmunder stared at him. "Dynamite?"

"Sure dynamite," Tom told him. "Whadaya think I got, nuclear devices? Dynamite is the tool at hand."

"But- Why do you want to use dynamite?"

"To move the water out of the way," Tom said, very slowly, as though explaining things to an idiot.

"Wait a minute," Dortmunder said. "Wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute. Your idea here is, you're gonna blow up the dam to drain all the water out, and then walk in and dig up the box of money?"

"What I figure," Tom said, "the cops and all are gonna be pretty busy downstream, so we'll have time to get in and out before anybody takes much of an interest." Turning away to look across the road (and the dam) at the peaceful water in the sunshine, he said, "We'll need some kind of all-terrain vehicle, though, I think. It'll be pretty G.o.dd.a.m.n muddy down in there."

Dortmunder said, "Tom, back up a bit, just back up here. You want to take all that water there, and move it over here."

"Yes," Tom said.

"You want to blow up this dam here, with the people inside it."

"Well, you know," Tom said, "if we give them the word ahead of time, they might get upset. They might want to get in our way, stop us, make problems for us or something."

"How many people work down in there?" Dortmunder asked, pointing at the windows in the dam.

"At night? We'd have to make our move at night, of course," Tom explained. "I figure, at night, seven or eight guys in there, maybe ten at the most."

Dortmunder looked at the windows. He looked downstream at the farms and the villages and the town at the end of the valley, and he said, "That's a lot of water in that reservoir, isn't it?"

"Sure is," Tom said.

"Everybody asleep down there," Dortmunder said, musing, imagining it, "and here comes the water. That's your idea."

Tom looked through the chain-link fence at the peaceful valley. His gray cold eyes gleamed in his gray cold face. "Asleep in their beds," he said. "Asleep in somebody's beds anyway. You know who those people are?"

Dortmunder shook his head, watching that stony profile.

Tom said, "n.o.bodies. Family men hustlin for an extra dollar, an extra dime, sweatin all over their shirts, gettin nowhere. Women turnin fat. Kids turnin stupid. No difference between day and night because n.o.body's goin anywhere anyway. Miserable little small-town people with their miserable little small-town dreams." The lips moved in what might have been a smile. "A flood," he said. "Most excitin thing ever happened to them, am I right?"

"No, Tom," Dortmunder said.

"No?" Tom asked, misunderstanding. "You think there's a lot of excitement down there? Senior proms, bankruptcy auctions, Fourth of July parades, gang bangs, all that kind of thing? That what you think?"

"I think you can't blow up the dam, Tom," Dortmunder said. "I think you can't drown a whole lot of people-hundreds and hundreds of people-in their beds, or in anybody's beds, for seven hundred thousand dollars."

"Three hundred fifty thousand," Tom corrected. "Half of it is yours, Al. Yours and whoever else you bring in on the caper."

Dortmunder looked frankly at his old cellmate. "You'd really do that, Tom? You'd kill hundreds and hundreds of people for three hundred fifty thousand dollars?"

"I'd kill them at a dollar apiece," Tom told him, "if it meant I could get outta this part of the world and get down to Mexico and move into my G.o.dd.a.m.n golden years of retirement."

Dortmunder said, "Tom, maybe you were inside too long. You can't do things like that, you know. You can't go around killing hundreds and hundreds of people just like snapping your fingers."

"It isn't just like snapping my fingers, Al," Tom said. "That's the problem. If it was like snapping my fingers, I'd go do it myself and keep the whole seven hundred. If I learned anything on the inside, you know, it's that I can't be a loner anymore, not on something like this. Except at the very beginning, with Dilly and Baby and them, I was always a loner, you know, all my life. That's why I talked so much when we were together in the cell. Remember how I used to talk so much?"

"I don't have to remember," Dortmunder told him. "I'm listening to it." But what he did remember was how odd he used to find it, back in the good old days in the cell, that a man who did so much talking was (a) famous as a loner, and (b) managed to get all those words out without once moving his lips.

"Well, the reason," Tom went on, "the reason I'm such a blabbermouth is that I'm mostly alone. So when I got an ear nearby, I just naturally bend it. You see, Al," Tom explained, and gestured at the sweet valley spread out defenseless below them, "those aren't real people down there. Not like me. Not even like you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. If I go hungry three, four days, you know, not one of those people down there is gonna get a bellyache. And when the water comes down on them some night pretty soon, I'm not gonna choke at all. I'm gonna be busy digging up my money."

"No, Tom," Dortmunder said. "I don't care what you say, you just can't do it. I'm not a real law-abiding citizen myself, but you go too far."

"I just follow the logic, Al."

"Well, I don't," Dortmunder told him. "I can't do something like this. I can't come out here and deliberately drown a whole lot of people in their beds, that's all. I just can't do it."

Tom considered that, looking Dortmunder up and down, thinking it over, and finally he shrugged and said, "Okay. We'll forget it, then."

Dortmunder blinked. "We will?"

"Sure," Tom said. "You're some kind of goodhearted guy, am I right, been reading the Reader's Digest or something all these years, maybe you joined the Christophers on the inside, something like that. The point is, I'm not too good at reading other people-"

"I guess not," Dortmunder said.

"Well, none of you are that real, you know," Tom explained. "It's hard to get you into focus. So I read you wrong, I made a mistake, wasted a couple of days. Sorry about that, Al, I wasted your time, too."

"That's okay," Dortmunder said, with the awful feeling he was missing some sort of point here.

"So we'll drive back to the city," Tom said. "You ready?"

"Sure," Dortmunder said. "Sorry, Tom, I just can't."

"S'okay," Tom said, crossing the road, Dortmunder following.

They got into the car, and Dortmunder said, "Do I U-turn?"

"Nah," Tom said, "go on across the dam and then there's a left, and we'll go down through the valley and back to the Thruway like that."

"Okay, fine."

They drove across the rest of the dam, Dortmunder continuing to have this faintly uneasy feeling about the calm, gray, silent, ancient maniac seated beside him, and at the far end of the dam was a small stone building that was probably the entry to the offices down below. Dortmunder slowed, looking at it, and saw a big bronze seal, and a sign reading CITY OF NEW YORK-DEPT. OF WATER SUPPLY-CITY PROPERTY, AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. "City property?" Dortmunder asked. "This is part of New York City up here?"

"Sure," Tom said. "All the city reservoirs belong to the city."

A New York City police car was one of three vehicles parked beside the building. Dortmunder said, "They have city cops?"

"The way I understand it," Tom said, "it's not duty that's given to the sharpest and the quickest. But don't worry about it, Al, you wanted out and you're out. Let the next guy worry about New York City cops."

Dortmunder gave him a look, feeling a sudden lurch in his stomach. "The next guy?"

"Naturally." Tom shrugged. "You weren't the only guy on the list," he explained equably. "The first guy, but not the only. So now I'll just have to find somebody with a little less milk in his veins, that's all."

Dortmunder's foot came off the gas. "Tom, you mean you're still gonna do it?"

Tom, mildly surprised, spread his hands. "Do I have my three hundred fifty grand? Has something changed I don't know about?"

Dortmunder said, "Tom, you can't drown all those people."

"Sure I can," Tom said. "You're the one can't. Remember?"

"But-" Just beyond the stone building, with the reservoir still barely visible behind them and the forest starting again on both sides of the road, Dortmunder came to a stop, pulling off onto the gravel verge and saying, "Tom, no."

Tom scowled, without moving his lips. "Al," he said. "I hope you aren't going to tell me what I can do and what I can't do."

"It isn't that, Tom," Dortmunder said, although in fact it was that, and realizing it, Dortmunder also realized how hopeless this all was. "It's just," he said, despairing even as he heard himself say it, "it's just you can't do that, that's all."

"I can," Tom said, colder than ever. "And I will." That bony finger pointed at Dortmunder's nose. "And you are not gonna queer the deal for me, Al. You are not gonna call anybody and say, 'Don't sleep at home tonight if you wanna stay dry.' Believe me, Al, you are not gonna screw me around. If I think there's the slightest chance-"

"No, no, Tom," Dortmunder said. "I wouldn't rat on you, you know me better than that."

"And you know me better than that." Looking out his side window at forest, Tom said, "So what's with the delay? How come we aren't whippin along the highway, headin back to the city, so I can make the call on the second guy on my list?"

"Because," Dortmunder said, and licked his lips, and looked back at the peaceful water sparkling in the sun. Peaceful killer water. "Because," he said, "we don't have to do it that way."

Tom looked at him. "We?"

"I'm your guy, Tom," Dortmunder said. "From the old days, and still today. We'll do it, we'll get the money. But we don't have to drown anybody to do it, okay? We'll do it some other way."

"What other way?"

"I don't know yet," Dortmunder admitted. "But I just got here, Tom, I just came aboard this thing. Give me some time to look the situation over, think about it. Give me a couple weeks, okay?"

Tom gave him a skeptical look. "What are you gonna do?" he demanded. "Swim out with a shovel and dive and hold your breath?"

"I don't know, Tom. Give me time to think about it. Okay?"

Tom thought it over. "A quieter way might be good," he acknowledged. "If it could be done. Less runnin around afterward. Less chance of your ma.s.sive manhunt."

"That's right," Dortmunder said.

Tom looked back at the reservoir. "That's fifty feet of water, you know."

"I know, I know," Dortmunder said. "Just give me a little time to consider the problem."

Tom's gray eyes shifted this way and that in his skull. He said, "I don't know if I want to stay on your sofa that long."

Oh. Dortmunder stared, agonized. The thought of May came into his mind but was firmly repressed, pushed down beneath the hundreds and hundreds of drowned people. "It's a comfortable sofa, Tom," he said, his throat closing on him as he said it but managing to get the words out just the same.

Tom took a deep breath. His lips actually twitched; a visible movement. Then, the lips rigid again, he said, "Okay, Al. I know you're good at this stuff, that's why I came to you first. You want to find another way to get down to the stash, go ahead."

"Thank you, Tom," Dortmunder said. Relief made his hands tremble on the wheel.

"Any time," Tom told him.

"And in the meantime," Dortmunder said, "no dynamite. Right?"

"For now," Tom agreed.

FOUR.

Joe the mailman came whistling down Myrtle Street in the bright sunshine, his tune blending with the songs of birds, the hiss of sprinklers, the far-off murmur of a lawn mower. "Myrtle!" shouted Edna Street, turning away from her regular spot in the upstairs front bedroom window. "Here comes the mailman!"

"I'll get it, Mother!" Myrtle Street called, and went skipping down the well-polished mahogany staircase toward the front door. A pretty person of twenty-five-no longer really a pretty girl but somehow not quite a pretty woman either-Myrtle had lived most of her life in this old sprawling beautiful clapboard house here in Dudson Center, and was barely conscious anymore of the oddity of having the same name as her home address. At least some of the mail Joe would be bringing up onto the porch this afternoon would be addressed: Myrtle Street 27 Myrtle Street Dudson Center, NY 12561 A few things, such as Modern Maturity and Prevention magazine, would be addressed to Edna Street, plus a ton of stuff addressed to somebody named CAR-RT SORT, or to Current Resident.

Joe the mailman smiled roguishly as he climbed the stoop to the wide front porch of 27 Myrtle Street and saw Myrtle Street pushing open the screen door. He liked the way her legs moved inside her loose cotton dresses, the demure but lush swell of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s within the gray cardigan she always wore, the pale softness of her throat, the healthy animal sparkle in her eye. Joe the mailman was forty-three years old, with a family at home, but he could dream, couldn't he? "Lovely as ever," he greeted Myrtle as she smiled h.e.l.lo and reached for today's messages from the world. "We must run away together one of these days."

Myrtle, who had no idea of the actual depth of depravity lurking within Joe's plain-to-lumpish exterior in his badly fitting blue-gray uniform, laughed lightly and said, "Oh, we're both much too busy, Joe."

"What's he want?" screeked Edna's voice from upstairs. "Don't you give him anything for postage due, Myrtle! Make him take it back!"

Myrtle indulgently rolled her eyes and laughed, saying, "Mother."

"She sure is something," Joe agreed. He was imagining his head between those legs.