Drowned Hopes Part 31

"That's right. There's more than one woman in this world, Al, but there's only one you."

A bad mistake. "Tom," Dortmunder said, "I really want to make one more try. Just bear with me once more, don't blow the dam-"

"On accounta May." Tom's voice was always icy cold, but somehow right now it sounded even colder.

"On account of," Dortmunder told him, "my professional, uh, pride is at stake here. I don't want to be defeated by the problem. Also, you said yourself, you'd be happier without the ma.s.sive manhunt."

"That's true, Al," Tom said, still with that absolute-zero voice. "But let us say, just for argument, Al, just let us say I'm gonna go ahead and get this over with. And let us say you can't, no matter what you do, you just can't yank that woman of yours out from in front of the dam. Now, Al, just for the sake of argument here, would you find yourself tempted to make a little anonymous phone call to the law?"

Dortmunder's hand, slippery with sweat, trembled on the phone. "I'd hate to have to face that problem, Tom," he said. "And I just think there's still a way we can do the job without the, uh, fuss."

"Uh-huh. Hold it, Al."

Dortmunder waited, listening. Thunk of phone onto a hard surface. Voices off, raised in anger. Sudden crashing of furniture, heavy objects-bodies? - thudding and b.u.mping. Silence, just as sudden.

"Al? You there?"

"I'm here, Tom."

"I think I must be slowing down," Tom said. "Okay, I see your problem, Al."

"That's why I want to-"

"And I see my problem."

Dortmunder waited, breathing through his mouth. I'm his problem, he thought. In the background, at Tom's end of the line, whining voices complained.

His own voice now like thin sharp wires, Tom said, "Maybe we ought to have a talk, Al, you and me. Maybe you ought to come here."

I have to talk him out of it, Dortmunder thought. Somehow. Knowing exactly what Tom had in mind, he said, "Sure, Tom, that's a good idea."

"I'm on Thirteenth Street," Tom said.

Well, that was appropriate. "Uh-huh," Dortmunder said.

"Off Avenue C."

"Rough neighborhood, that," Dortmunder suggested.

"Oh, yeah?" Tom said, as though he hadn't noticed. "Anyway, between C and D. Four-ninety-nine East Thirteenth Street."

"Which bell do I ring?"

Tom chuckled, like ice cubes rattling. "There's no locks around here anymore, Al," he said. "You just come in, come up to the top floor. We'll have a good long talk, just you and me."

"Right, Tom," Dortmunder said, through dry lips. "See you-koff, kah-see you soon."

FORTY-NINE.

Dortmunder plodded up black slate stairs, his left hand on the rough iron railing, right hand clutching a two-foot-long chunk of two-by-three he'd picked up from a dumpster on the street a couple blocks from here. Not for Tom, but for whomever he might meet along the way.

Which was, so far, n.o.body. Scurrying sounds preceded him up the stairwell, scuffling noises followed, but no one actually appeared as Dortmunder slogged steadily upward through a building that any World-War-II-in-Europe movie could have been shot in, if n.o.body stole the camera. Great bites had been taken out of the plaster walls, leaving dirty crumbly white wounds in the gray-green skin. At every level the corridor windows, fore and aft, were mostly broken out, some leaving jagged gla.s.s teeth, others patched with six-pack cardboard and masking tape. The white hexagonal tile floors had apparently been systematically beaten with sledge hammers over a period of many months, then smeared with body fluids and sprinkled with medical waste. That the bare light bulbs dangling from the corridor ceilings had once been enclosed in white gla.s.s globes was indicated by the amount of white ground gla.s.s mixed with the rest of the trash on the floors.

The apartment doors were dented metal, some painted brown, some gray, many without k.n.o.bs or locks. From the cooking smells emerging through these sprung doorways, most of the tenants planned to have rat for lunch. Rounding the turn at the third floor, Dortmunder heard a baby wailing from some apartment nearby and nodded, muttering, "You're right about that, kid." Then he thumped on up.

The building was six stories high, the maximum height when it was thrown up for a building without an elevator. The stairwell, a square shaft cored from its gangrenous center, consisted of two half-flights per story; up to a landing, double back to the next floor. Dortmunder was just rounding the turn at floor five and a half when a sudden fusillade of gunfire roared out above him. "Yi!" he cried, and dropped to the filthy steps, shielding his head with the two-by-three. Wasn't Tom even going to give him a minute to talk?

The gunfire went on for a few more seconds, then faltered; then there was a scream; then a sudden new rattle of shots. Dortmunder peeked up past the two-by-three but could see nothing except steps and the stairwell wall.

The silence stretched, covering the entire neighborhood; n.o.body's home when the guns start banging. Then there was the clear sound of a metal door slammed open against a plaster wall, and an irritated voice that was recognizably Tom's said, "a.s.sholes. Now see what you made me do."

Footsteps clattered down the stairs. Dortmunder got his feet under himself, rose quickly upward, and blinked at Tom as the older man reached the landing, right in front of him, concentrating on the fresh clip he was sliding into the b.u.t.t of the blue-steel.45 automatic held loosely in his right hand.

Dortmunder stared at the automatic, and Tom looked up, saw him, and stopped, his eyes alight with the adrenaline of battle. They stood facing each other on the landing, Dortmunder squeezing the two-by-three in his hand, Tom lifting one eyebrow, silence all around them.

Then Tom relaxed and moved, tension gone as he tucked the automatic away inside his clothing. Casually, he said, "Whadaya say, Al? Glad you could make it."

"I come right over," Dortmunder said. His hands and throat were still clenched.

Tom glanced down at the two-by-three. Conversationally, he said, "What's that for, Al?"

Dortmunder gestured vaguely with it, indicating the building. "People."

"Hm." Tom nodded. "You better hope n.o.body needs a piece a wood," he said. "Come on, let's get outta here."

Dortmunder couldn't resist looking up the stairs. "Your new partners?"

"I had to let them go. Come on, Al." Tom started down the stairs and Dortmunder followed, not looking back anymore.

As they descended, Tom said, "The quality of help these days, Al, it's a real scandal."

"I guess it is," Dortmunder agreed.

"You and your pals," Tom went on, "seem to have a little trouble closing with the problem, but at least you're steady and reliable."

"That's right," Dortmunder said.

"You don't put anything in your nose except your finger."

"Uh-huh," Dortmunder said.

"And nothing at all in your veins."

"My blood and me," Dortmunder said as they reached the ground floor and headed toward the smashed defense of the front door, "have an agreement. It does its job, and I don't pester it."

"You got it in a nutsh.e.l.l, Al," Tom said as they stepped out to sunlight that, in this neighborhood, looked like an error. "Don't second-guess your body, that's what it comes down to. Those former a.s.sociates of mine, upstairs, they didn't understand that. They messed themselves around so much they got it into their heads, since they knew where the reservoir was, they didn't need me anymore." Tom's laugh had an edge to it, like a church bell during the plague. "Lost touch with reality, that's what they did."

"I guess so." Dortmunder looked up toward the top-floor windows of this moldering pile. "Was it their apartment?"

"It is now," Tom said, and shrugged away all previous a.s.sociations, turning to Dortmunder on the sidewalk to say, "So you've got a new plan, huh?"

"Well, no," Dortmunder said.

Tom lowered an eyebrow in Dortmunder's direction. Away from him, it was easy to forget how tall he was, and how bony. "You don't have a plan?"

"Not yet," Dortmunder explained. "I wanted to be sure you'd go along with me before I got into any-"

"Al, I'll tell you the truth," Tom said. "I'm disappointed."

"I'm sorry, Tom."

"You're right to be. Here I thought your love for a good woman had inspired you to come up with a really first-cla.s.s notion, and everything was gonna be fine."

"Everything is, Tom," Dortmunder a.s.sured him. "Now that-"

"I might not have been quite so dismissive of those three fellas upstairs," Tom went on, "if I'd known you were just blowing smoke."

"I'm not blowing- Three fellas?" And one old seventy-year-old made of iron bars and antifreeze.

"That's how many I figured I needed," Tom said. "Two to carry the dynamite and get blown up with it, one to drive the backhoe and do the work down in Putkin's Corners."

"And be left there," Dortmunder suggested.

Tom's lips seemed actually to stretch, as though he might be smiling somewhere deep inside. "You know me so well, Al," he said. But then the ghost smile disappeared, and he said, "And that's why I'm so surprised you'd come to me empty-handed this way."

"Not empty-handed," Dortmunder said. "I'm going to-"

"Yeah, come to think of it," Tom said, "maybe you should throw that stick away. Those sirens I hear are getting closer."

Dortmunder had been too distracted by Tom to pay attention to the outer world, but now he did hear that, yes, there were sirens approaching. Fast. From not very far away. "Right," he said, and tossed the two-by-three into the gutter.

"Let's take a walk," Tom said, "since I'm carrying a gun those cops would take a great interest in, and while we walk you can tell me your ideas, and we can discuss where I'm gonna live now."

They started walking toward Avenue C. Dortmunder said, "Where you're gonna live?"

Ahead, the first police car came screaming around the corner. "My previous place," Tom explained, "isn't gonna be available for a while."

Dortmunder looked around to watch the police car brake to a stop at Tom's former address. Cops piled out of it while two more police cars joined the party, one of them coming the wrong way down this one-way street. "Yeah, I see what you mean."

"This place where May is," Tom said, "up in Dudson Center. Lotta room there?"

"She says the most she ever had," Dortmunder said, knowing what was coming but seeing no way out.

"Probably rea.s.sure her to have me there where she could see me," Tom suggested. "Keep an eye on me. Know I'm not blowing the dam when I'm in front of it myself."

"Probably so," Dortmunder said.

"Yeah," Tom said, nodding to himself as they turned the corner away from the scene of excitement. "She'll probably be glad to see me, in fact, May. Happy to have me around."

"Probably so," Dortmunder said.

FIFTY.

"I do like you to touch me," Myrtle told Doug Berry, pushing him away. "And that's exactly why I shouldn't let you."

"That makes no sense at all," Doug said, continuing to crowd her.

"It makes sense to me," Myrtle told him, scrinching as far over on the pickup's seat as possible, keeping her arms folded over her chest as she determinedly gazed out through the windshield at the big outdoor movie screen where Dumbo teetered on a tree branch. "Watch the movie," she said. "You said you'd never been to a drive-in before, so here we are, so watch the movie."

"At a drive-in? Myrtle," Doug said, keeping his hands to himself at last, "you're driving me crazy."

Well, if that was true, Myrtle thought, then they were even, because Doug Berry was certainly driving her crazy. Not in the same way, of course; not s.e.xually, or romantically. Though Doug was certainly s.e.xy, and he kept doing his best to be romantic, and if everything else had been okay who knew what might happen?

But everything else was not okay. Everything else wasn't okay because Doug Berry was a fake, and up to something, and it more than likely had something to do with her father, and she couldn't for the life of her figure out what it was.

But that he was a fake went without question. When he'd first come to the library, she'd accepted his story about his researches without question, but when he'd suddenly stopped looking at the old microfilm three years before his alleged range of interest was finished, and when he'd suddenly switched to the present day with no explanation, she'd begun to suspect something was wrong. But what?

Lunch with him, at her instigation, had revealed nothing more than that he was fun and flirty and that he wanted to see her again, which was nice, but not enough. That first evening, on her own time, she'd gone through the microfilm of the year when Doug had stopped, the year he'd obviously found whatever he was really looking for, and when she'd come to the armored car robbery out on the Thruway all the pieces had come together. That robbery was almost certainly another of the "jobs" her criminal father had "pulled" before he'd been sent to prison for a different "job" several years later, and Doug Berry was almost certainly on the elder Jimson's "trail" for some reason. It was a good thing she'd resisted the urge to use the Jimson "moniker" with Doug, as she had-frightening and thrilling herself-with nice little Wally Knurr. (It was television, of course, that had given Myrtle this easy familiarity with criminal argot.) Suspicions aroused, and fearing at first that Doug might actually be an undercover policeman of some sort, hounding her father like Javert (which would be why he'd asked about the state trooper, Jimmy), Myrtle had looked up the Environment Protection Alliance, the so-called organization Doug was supposedly doing research for, and of course there was no such thing. (The VDT at the library, now that Wally Knurr had made its mysteries plain to her, had been a great help in this study of the Doug Berry problem.) So he was a fake; some sort of fake, specifics not yet known. His real name was Doug Berry, however, because it said so on the credit card he'd used the first time he'd taken her out to dinner, which was the second time they'd met, now being the third time, at this drive-in movie south of North Dudson, one of the few such enterprises still extant in America. Doug Berry was his name, and this ridiculously childish pickup truck with the offensively childish b.u.mper sticker about divers on the back had a license plate from Suffolk County down on Long Island. The Suffolk County phone book in the library not only listed a Berry Doug but even gave a second business phone number for him which, when she'd dialed it, had produced an answering machine speaking identifiably with Doug's voice: "South Sh.o.r.e Dive Shop. Sorry we're not open now. Our usual hours are Thursday through Sunday, ten to five. Licensed professional instruction, basic and advanced courses. Dive equipment for sale or rent, air refills, tank tests, all your diving needs under one roof. Hope to see you!"

What did a diving instructor from Long Island have to do with retired (presumably) criminal and former "jailbird" Tom Jimson? That Doug's initial request for information at the library had been connected to the local reservoir had to have some significance-reservoir, water, diving-but Myrtle couldn't begin to guess what it might be. One thing seemed sure, though; she should keep this connection to Doug Berry alive, without letting it get out of hand.

Or into hand, rather.

And so tonight's visit to the drive-in; their third meeting, without either of them getting anywhere. Myrtle knew Doug was feeling frustrated, but doggone it, so was she. Her natural tendency would be to find this handsome and easy-going fellow irresistible, but how could she fall into his arms unless she knew whose side he was on? What if he were, in one way or another, her father's enemy? (On the other hand, he could conceivably be on her father's side, in which case falling into his arms would be a double pleasure. He might even-remote hope-be the means by which she could actually get to meet her father at last.) Her researches had done no more than show that Doug Berry was not who he'd claimed; they couldn't go farther, couldn't describe who or what he really was. It kept seeming to Myrtle that some sort of subtle indirect questioning during these dates should give her the clues she needed to find out what was going on, but she just couldn't seem to think what those subtle and indirect questions might be. People in the movies and on television always come up with the appropriate delicate probe, but- Whoops. Speaking of delicate probes. "Come on, Doug," Myrtle said, putting his hand back in his own lap.

Doug sighed, elaborately long-suffering.

I wish I knew how to get in touch with Wally Knurr, Myrtle thought. I bet he could help me figure out what's going on. But except for that one day at the library when he'd opened the cornucopia of the VDT to her wondering eyes, she'd never seen Wally again. Probably a salesman of some kind, she thought, traveling around, maybe even selling computers or something like that. Will his sales route ever bring him back through North Dudson? And would he have any reason to return to the library?

"Doug, please."

"Myrtle, please."

"Watch the movie, Doug," Myrtle urged him. "It's a nice movie, isn't it?"

"I never miss it," Doug said bitterly.