Drowned Hopes Part 39

Dortmunder about jumped out of the boat, staring around in frenzy, and when he first saw Doug's head in the water below his right elbow he had no idea what it could be. A bomb? A coconut?

The coconut removed its mouthpiece and goggles and spoke: "Where's Andy?"

"Oh, my G.o.d, it's Doug!"

"Of course it's Doug," Doug said. "Andy isn't here?"

"No," Dortmunder told him, "he went in right after you."

"s.h.i.t," Doug commented.

Dortmunder said, "You don't think something's wrong, do you?"

"He didn't hold on to the guideline, that's all," Doug answered, wriggling for demonstration the white nylon cord that was tied to the boat and that then angled straight down into the water, its other end tied to the weight at the bottom.

Dortmunder nodded, saying, "Oh. He was supposed to hold on to that, was he?"

"That's how we keep together," Doug pointed out. "That's how I found you, coming back up."

Dortmunder said, "Probably he was thinking mostly about his mouthpiece."

"His mouthpiece?"

"And his goggles," Dortmunder added. "He forgot to put them on before he went over."

"Oh, for Christ's sake," Doug said. "Listen, if he comes up or anything, give two tugs on this line here, okay?"

"Right," Dortmunder said. "But you don't think anything happened, do you?"

But Doug was gone, shooting back down into the depths. Dortmunder looked over the side, seeing nothing. Not even his own reflection. Poor Andy, he thought.

That could be me, he thought.

Kelp sat on the stone bench on the westbound platform like the last-ever pa.s.senger waiting for a train that will never come. Legs crossed, arms folded, body pushed slightly forward by the bulk of the scuba tank, he sat mostly at his ease; vaguely visible in the diffuse glow from his headlamp, water lazily ebbing and flowing around him, and if he could have seen himself there, in the drowned town, in the brown water, waiting on the ruined platform for the nonexistent train, he would definitely have scared himself.

But he couldn't see himself, nor was there anyone else to observe him seated there. Minute after minute there was n.o.body else, and after a while Kelp began to fidget, began to feel a little cold and uncomfortable on this stone bench, began, in fact, to feel quite alone here in Putkin's Corners.

Where was Doug? Wouldn't he have to follow the tracks to the station? Wasn't that the most logical, the only thing, he could do? And then- Light. Vague, dim, barely discernible inside the muck, made harder to see by the diffusion of his own light. Hard even to be sure it truly existed, wasn't merely some refracted ray of his own headlamp's gleam, but wasn't that, over there, not along the track but over on the far side, on the east bound platform, where he hadn't expected to see anything at all, some sort of light?

I should reach up, Kelp thought, and switch off my lamp to make it easier to see that light over there; if there's really a light over there to be seen. The problem was, he'd had plenty of time by now to get himself good and spooked, which he hadn't realized until that other light-if it existed-had come swimming more or less into view from a completely unexpected direction. What if it was a- Well, there aren't any ghosts, really, but- Underwater, somehow, the regular rules didn't seem to apply. Maybe anything that wanted to exist could exist, down here, at the bottom, away from people. Maybe that light was... anything at all.

Kelp managed to lift his right hand and touch the switch on his headlamp, but he never did summon the strength to turn it off. He just sat there, hand to head, while the light across the way floated and swayed, moved into nonexistence, flowed back again, disappeared once more, and then suddenly came straight at him! Oh, boy. Oh, boy.

It was Doug. Kelp felt vast relief and didn't even mind when Doug hauled him to his feet and shook a stern finger at him, which he then pointed at the white nylon cord wrapped around his other wrist. This cord drifted away upward into the dark, and the second Kelp saw it he remembered what he was supposed to have done first thing out of the boat.

Of course! Dummy! Elaborately, he demonstrated to Doug his understanding, embarra.s.sment, apology, by throwing both hands up in the air, then smacking himself on the ear, shaking his head, punching himself on the jaw, pounding his right fist into his left palm...

Doug grabbed both his wrists. When Kelp looked inquiringly at him, Doug released the wrists and made down-patting gestures: take it easy.

Oh. Sure. Kelp nodded, flashing his headlamp up and down Doug's person.

Next, Doug selected one of several more nylon cords hooked to his weight belt and tied the other end to Kelp's belt. Now they could be up to eight feet apart but wouldn't lose each other.

Great. Kelp expressed his pleasure in this move by firmly shaking Doug's hand with both of his. Doug nodded, a bit impatiently, pulled his hand free, and made walking movements with his fingers.

Right. Kelp nodded emphatically again, and would have turned and walked from here to the library but that Doug suddenly lifted up into the air-into the water-and started swimming away. Hastily, before the rope linking them could get taut, Kelp launched himself off the platform and followed.

The thing about needing a cloudy night to do whatever it is you want to do, that means you have to be prepared to accept clouds with all their implications.

Dortmunder sat in the rubber boat, bored, sleepy, a little chilly, also apprehensive about Andy Kelp. Was he okay down there? Would Doug find him? If there was some sort of trouble, wouldn't Doug have come back to say so by now?

Plip, on the back of his hand. Thinking it was some kind of splash from the water all around him, he brushed it off.

Plip. Forehead this time. Plip-plip-plip.

No. Dortmunder lifted his head toward the completely beclouded sky. Plipliplipliplplplppppppp...

"Of course," Dortmunder said, and hunched his shoulders against the rain.

They kept off the bottom as much as possible to limit turbidity, but they were near the bottom all the time. First, the end of the measuring cord with the red ribbon tied around it was placed by Doug at the right rear corner of the library, while Kelp ranged as far as the connecting rope would permit, found a rock, brought it back, and used it to hold the red-ribboned cord in place. Then they moved along the rear wall like wasps under a house eave, setting the cord against the base of the building, till they came to the knot.

This time it was Kelp who held the cord in position, while Doug swam this way and that, exactly like a fish in a too-small aquarium, and eventually came back with a rock of his own, which was placed atop the knot.

The next part would be tricky. They wanted to mark a distance out across the field at right angles to the library wall. They'd rehea.r.s.ed this in daylight, on dry land, in the back yard at 46 Oak Street, but doing it under present conditions was still kind of strange. For instance, they hadn't spent all their time flying over the back yard.

First, Kelp stood straddling the knot, his back-or the scuba tank, actually-against the library wall, his face turned outward so the beam from his headlamp marked the right angle. Then Doug, paying out the cord as he went, swam eight feet away along that light beam and paused there with the new line of cord resting on the bottom. Kelp now lifted into the water, kick-swam forward about four feet, and put his second flashlight on the ground beside the cord, switched on, the beam running out along the rest of the cord. Then he came forward to where Doug waited, straddled the cord again, and Doug backed away slowly, paying out more cord, keeping his alignment with the two lights until he'd gone another eight feet. Then they repeated the procedure all over again.

According to Wally's calculations, the center of the buried casket would be thirty-seven feet out from the library wall, which meant they had to go through their slow underwater gavotte five times before they reached the second knot in the measuring cord, the one that said, Dig here.

At last. Floating over the spot, heads close, haloed in sepia illumination, Kelp and Doug grinned around their mouthpieces at each other. Victory was in their grasp.

What happens when the boat fills with rainwater? It can't sink, can it? These doughnut sides are filled with air.

But the d.a.m.n thing can sure wallow, all right. In fact, with Dortmunder's weight in it, the boat's att.i.tude seemed to be that if it filled with water it would be perfectly happy to loll around just a few inches below the surface, soaking Dortmunder to the bone and ruining the little 10hp motor.

Number one, he wasn't dressed for this c.r.a.p. He'd known he was going to be outdoors, on the reservoir, in a boat, in the dark, in June, with the temperature fairly cool, so he'd worn solid thick-soled shoes and wool socks and black chinos and a zipper-front weatherproof jacket. But none of that was enough. Not in this rain. Not underwater.

And that was number two. NO UNDERWATER. That was the deal this time, that's why Dortmunder wasn't suited up like Kelp and Doug. He would go along with everybody else, he would even go on the water if it would help, but in the water, no.

Also, number three, the gas tank. A small red metal five-gallon tank attached to the motor by a black flexible hose, up till now it had been content to nestle in under the doughnut curve of the side of the boat, back near the rear, where the doughnut was replaced by a solid square piece of fabric-covered wood to which the motor was clamped.

But gasoline is lighter than water, and as the interior of the boat turned itself inexorably into a wading pool the gas tank wanted to come out and play. Dortmunder had no bailing can, nothing to bail with except his cupped hands, and it was both annoying and painful to have those cupped hands constantly banging into a pa.s.sing gas tank. He kept pushing it back into its corner, muttering at it as though it were a playful puppy being playful at the wrong time, but the d.a.m.n thing just kept bobbing back out again.

The boat was shipping water, that's why it was sinking so fast. It was happening around the motor. The top of the flat piece the motor was clamped to was a little lower than the top of the doughnut anyway, and with the weight of the motor pulling that end down it was lower yet, so now, with the boat wallowing half submerged, water lapped in around the motor every time Dortmunder moved, and still did when Dortmunder didn't move because the boat moved. The reservoir moved. The air moved. And the water chuckled in.

He had to shift the weight somehow, get that G.o.dd.a.m.n flat rear of the boat higher than the rest. But how? There wasn't much time left; the water inside the boat kept rising, and of course the higher it rose the lower the boat sank and the more rapidly more water came in at the back.

He had shifted his own weight forward; it wasn't enough. The gas tank moved all over the place, but didn't seem to matter much. The only really heavy thing left, the thing that was causing all the trouble, was the motor. Move that, temporarily, move it to the front of the boat, and then the back would be higher and he could bail steadily for a while and maybe get ahead of this thing, at least until Doug and Kelp came back.

The important thing, he told himself, is not to drop the G.o.dd.a.m.n motor over the side. That would be tough to explain to the divers. He'd watched Doug install the thing, however, and it seemed to him he could uninstall it without disaster, so he set to work, at once, before the boat sank any lower.

First, release the gizmo on the side that permitted him to tilt the motor forward, bringing the propeller out of the water but, more importantly under these circ.u.mstances, also bringing some of the weight of the motor into the boat.

Then remove the fuel hose from the motor, in the front, just under the housing, where it attached by sliding on over a kind of thick bright-metal needle.

Then, one-handed, holding the motor with the other hand, very slowly and carefully loosen the two wing nuts holding the clamps on both sides.

Then, gripping the wet metal of the motor housing as tightly as possible, lift the motor out of the groove, shift it forward into the boat, lose balance on the wobbly unreliable bottom of the G.o.d-d.a.m.n-it-to-h.e.l.l boat, lunge away from the back and toward the front with the d.a.m.n motor grasped tightly in both of one's arms to keep it inside the boat, and sprawl lengthwise on top of the motor as it lands heavily on the front part of the doughnut, fuel needle first. Fuel needle first.

What's that hissing noise?

Things were going so well!

Just as both Wally and Doug had said, from their different backgrounds and kinds of expertise, the bottom of the reservoir in the area of the field behind the library was so soft and mucky they didn't need any heavy complicated tools to do their digging for them. All they had to do was not mind getting their hands a little dirty.

And that's the way it worked, all right. They got their hands very dirty, but the water in which they worked constantly washed them clean again; and besides, it was kind of fun.

Floating just above the spot marked by the knot in the measuring cord, suspended on a slant with their heads lower than their feet, they kept reaching down into the muck, one hand after the other, and flinging the sludge backward like dogs preparing to bury a bone. The turbidity became intense, so that soon they could barely see what they were doing directly in front of themselves, even with both headlamps lit, but it hardly mattered. They could feel what they were doing: they were throwing mud, three feet worth of mud.

Boom-boom. They both hit it at the same instant, their grasping fingers jabbing down through the muck and running straight into something solid. Heavy. Wood. Didn't want to move.

Their pleasure made them both forget themselves for an instant, and they started to drift away from the spot, but both immediately compensated, kicking with their flippers, nosing down toward the messy muddy hole they'd made, reaching down into the mire, one on either side. Their questing fingers slid along the wood, then found the coffin rails. They pulled themselves right down next to the hole and spent awhile removing more and more mud, until the whole top of the casket was more or less clear and they could slip the cord connecting them beneath it, pulling up the slack. Then they added air to their BCDs and gripped the rails. Slowly, reluctantly, after so many years alone and asleep in the deep, the casket began to lift.

All they wanted to do at this point was get the casket up out of its hole and maybe drag it around to the firmer base of the steps or sidewalk in front of the library. Once they had it accessible, they'd tie to one of its handles the cord that linked them with the boat, and from there on it would all be easy.

First, they'd go up to the surface, attach the marker cord to the monofilament, then run back to sh.o.r.e where Tiny and Tom were waiting. They'd get the fresh scuba tanks, pick up the extra BCD and take the end of the rope from the winch. Then they'd go back out to the monofilament, find the marker cord, and tie it to the rope from the winch. Then Kelp and Doug would go back down to the casket, wrap it in the extra BCD, fill the BCD with air, and as Tiny winched from the sh.o.r.e, ride herd on the buoyant casket. Simple.

The first part was certainly simple, though not particularly easy. The casket was heavy, even with their buoyancy to help. They never did lift it clear of the mucky ground, so turbidity roiled and rolled in their wake, but they managed to haul it along as they followed the measuring cord back to the library, then worked their way around to the front of the building, where they put their burden down at last on the crumbling concrete between the old sidewalk and the library steps.

Doug removed the marker cord from his wrist and tied it to the coffin rail, then drifted up beside Kelp. They both looked down at the box, just lying there. Captured. Tamed. With a leash on it. They looked at each other again, smiling, elated with what they'd done, and a shoe drifted slowly downward between them.

A shoe? Naturally, they both looked down, following its descent, and so the shoe remained in the amber gleam of their lamps until it hit the casket, hesitated there, seemed to stumble over the box, and then fell slowly on down to the ground.

Doug moved first, swooping downward, snagging the shoe on the way by, bringing it back up to where Kelp hovered. They hung there together in the water, half a dozen feet above the casket, and studied the shoe as Doug turned it slowly in his hands. Then they stared at each other again, wide-eyed.

Dortmunder. His shoe. No question.

"Taking them a long time," Tom said.

"Seems long cause we ain't doing anything," Tiny told him. "And because it's raining." Then he twisted around, seated on the damp ground in the rain-streaked dark, to peer into the sopping night and say, "How come you're behind me?"

Tom cackled. "You don't have to worry about me, Tiny."

"I don't worry about you," Tiny promised him. "Just come around and sit down here beside me."

"Too wet to sit down there."

"It's wet everywhere. Okay, I'll come back and sit beside you."

"Naw, never mind, here I come," Tom said, and Tiny heard the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d's bones crack as he got to his feet. Sounded like rifles being c.o.c.ked.

In a minute, Tom slid out of the dripping darkness like a half-starved fox and sat down within Tiny's range of vision but just out of reach of Tiny's hands. "That better, Tiny?"

"I like you, Tom," Tiny lied. "I like to look at you."

Tom cackled, and then they were quiet awhile, the two of them sitting on the ground in the rather heavy rain beside Gulkill Creek, the reservoir spread out a murky gray-black in front of them, pebbled with a million raindrops.

"Hope everything's okay," Tiny said.

Now, here was a mess. Kelp and Doug followed the marker cord up to the surface, and when they got there, what did they find? A steady rain. The boat, deflated and empty, drooped down into the wet darkness of the reservoir, still attached to the monofilament but pulling it four or five feet lower below the surface than it had been before. The gas tank was floating around loose. The motor was gone. So was Dortmunder.

With full buoyancy in the BCD, Kelp could pull the mouthpiece out and cry, "Where's John?"

"I dunno." Doug was also at full buoyancy, paddling in a circle, trying to see in the dark.

"Jeepers, Doug," Kelp said, "what happened up here?"

"Rain swamped the boat," Doug told him. "I dunno what happened to the motor. Or John."

"He didn't drown," Kelp cried, staring all around, bobbing on the surface in his agitation, water from time to time lapping into his mouth. "We didn't see him coming down, Doug. Only the shoe, that's all."

"Well, no, he wouldn't drown," Doug said. "He's got a line here, the monofilament. All he has to do is pull himself along that until he gets to sh.o.r.e."

"Hey, you're right!" Kelp thrashed around in the water in his relief because, despite what he'd said, he'd been thinking privately that maybe John did drown.

"We'll catch up with him, help him," Doug said. "He can't have much of a start on us."

"Good idea!" Kelp looked left and right into two equally impenetrable darknesses. "Which way?"

Doug considered the problem. "I tell you what," he said. "You follow the line that way, I'll go this way. Go underwater, it'll be faster. And the light'll show on the monofilament."

"Right," Kelp said, and put his mouthpiece back in. Releasing a little air from the BCD, he sank a few feet below the surface, switched on the headlamp, and saw the gleaming silvery-white line stretch away through the black water. Kicking easily, he followed the line, really pleased at how good he was getting at this and looking forward to seeing John flounder along ahead of him like a wounded walrus.

But no such luck. Kelp went almost all the way to sh.o.r.e, close enough to see the railroad tracks emerge along the slanted bottom, and still no John. When he was in near enough to stand on the railbed with his head and shoulders out of the water, he even risked a quick flash of his headlamp at the tangled brush along the bank. "John?" he called in a half whisper.

Nothing. But John wouldn't have had time to get this far anyway, not as slow as he'd have to travel and as fast as Kelp had sliced through the water. So Doug must have found him in the other direction.

No. Doug was waiting again by the boat, head out of the water, and he was alone. When Kelp surfaced beside him, Doug said, "No?"

"Oh, wow," Kelp said.

Oh! May, suddenly awake, stared at a gray rectangle in the wrong place in the dark, and listened to a toilet flushing and flushing and flushing. Jiggle that thing! And what's the window doing over there?

Shifting in the bed, she suddenly realized she was alone, remembered where she was (that's why the window's there instead of there), and understood that the sound she could hear through the window was rain falling. Oh, those poor guys, out there at the reservoir, they're going to get soaked.

Well, Andy and Doug were going to get soaked anyway, but now the rest of them- May sat up, suddenly wondering what time it was and what had awakened her. A bad dream? A thought about John? Some sound? Were they back? Had they finally succeeded in getting the money? What time was it?

03:24.