Donald Westlake - Drowned Hopes

“I’m coming up,” Tom called. “I won’t bother none of you, none of you bother me.”

“Hold it a second, Tom.”

Dortmunder pushed frantically at Kelp, gesturing to him to get up on the forward deck, above the cabin and ahead of its entrance. Tiny handed the end of the marker rope back to Doug and moved swiftly to the opposite side of the cabin entrance from Dortmunder. Doug, clutching the marker rope in one hand and the rail in the other, crouched down on the platform sticking out behind the boat at the stern.

“Jesus Christ, Al,” Tom called, “how much time do you need? I told you, I’m no threat.”

“You kinda sounded like a threat a minute ago,” Dortmunder called back. “Why don’t you toss that Uzi or whatever it is out ahead of yourself?”

“You’re still a joker, Al,” Tom said. “Here I come.”

Here he came, moving in an odd crablike fashion like Quasimodo on his way up to his bells. The Ingram, looking like a particularly mean example of plumbing supplies, was grasped in his left hand, held out in front of himself for balance. His right hand was down behind him at his ankle, as though he were dragging something.

And, in fact, when he came farther up out of the cabin, it could be seen that he was dragging something. Guffey, a dead weight, bleeding onto the steps, his blood then swirling away once Tom had dragged him out into the rain.

Tom, at a fast scuttling lope, rushed past Dortmunder and Tiny, dragging Guffey behind him. Then he turned around, already drenched, and stared back at Dortmunder and Kelp and Tiny, in a triangle facing him. “Where’s Popeye?” He had to shout over the storm.

“Diving,” Dortmunder yelled back. “Over to the monofilament.”

Tom waved the Ingram in the air like a terrorist announcing a victory, but in his case he was only showing it off, because he said, “A trade, Al. This for the key.”

That was when Dortmunder saw that it was, in fact, his own handcuffs that Guffey had brought along, without Dortmunder’s knowledge, and had used to attach himself to Tom. But Guffey had the key. Wishing Doug would use the advantage he had that Tom didn’t know there was anyone behind him—but knowing damn well Doug would never do one blessed thing—Dortmunder said, “What if it’s no trade, Tom?”

Raging, Tom grimaced, his teeth shiny in the rain. “I’ll kill the bunch of you!” he snarled, “and use the bread knife down there to cut this idiot’s hand off!”

“You won’t get your seven hundred thousand,” Dortmunder pointed out.

“That’s right, Al,” Tom said. “And neither will you. But I’ll be the only one worried about it. Goddammit! Get this idiot off me! Half the money’s yours, Al, it’s yours, I don’t care , just get this—”

And Guffey, not dead yet after all, suddenly came surging up off the deck, left hand reaching for Tom’s scrawny neck, closing around it. The Ingram in Tom’s hand spattered once more, spraying bullets as he pounded its butt against Guffey’s head, and Dortmunder and Tiny both dove down into the cabin as Kelp jumped headfirst into the reservoir.

Doug, terrified, reared up on the little platform as Tom and Guffey, struggling in each other’s grasp, toppled over the rail and crashed into him. All three flailed and toppled and splashed into the water, Tom losing the Ingram, Doug losing the rope.

Guffey, weak, swallowing water, slumped down below the surface, unable to keep afloat. Tom, tangled with him, hoarsely screamed out, “Al! The key! For Christ’s sake, the key!”

“The rope !” Doug shrieked, and dived, jamming his mouthpiece in, face mask on. Kicking hard, he reached up, and when his fumbling hands found the headlamp’s switch and turned it on, he could see nothing around him but dirty water. Ahead, it must be; lower; out there ahead. He dived.

Dortmunder and Tiny came stumbling up out of the cabin. “Where—” Tiny said. “Where is everybody?”

“Help!”

They rushed to the side rail, and there was Kelp floundering in the water. Tiny bent down, grabbed one of Kelp’s wrists, and yanked him aboard. Then, while Kelp sat on the wet deck wheezing and coughing and gasping, Dortmunder and Tiny looked out at the speckled black surface of the reservoir.

Nobody.

Can’t lose the rope, can’t lose the rope, can’t lose the rope. Doug quartered like a hungry fish, slicing through the murky water, straining to see that rope, floating somewhere, nearby, drifting, attached to seven hundred thousand dollars, the only link to seven hundred thousand dollars.

And I was just there with it, he thought.

Movement in the water. Doug turned and saw a leg descending, then another, then a cluster of limbs.

The two bodies floated down past him, entwined, Tom’s face almost unrecognizable with those staring eyes and wide open mouth.

Shuddering, Doug turned away. More money for the rest of us. More money for the rest of us. The rope, the rope, the rope.

“Dortmunder,” Tiny said, “this is a mess.”

“I never expected anything else,” Dortmunder told him.

The two stood over the wheel, rain beating down all around them as Dortmunder held the position, waiting for Doug to reappear. He was, they’d realized, off looking for the rope to the money, which he’d managed to lose in the general excitement. Kelp was lying down in the cabin, recuperating from his unexpected plunge. And Tom and Guffey were gone, no question about that.

Dortmunder had explained to Tiny who Guffey was, and Tiny commented, “I guess it was only a matter of time, with Tom, till one of his pasts caught up with him.”

“He was safer in jail,” Dortmunder agreed. “But what bothers me, Guffey never did find his first name.”

“Tom must of known it,” Tiny said. “Maybe he told him on the way down.”

Kelp came up from the cabin then, looking a lot greener than usual. “Listen,” he said. “Is it okay for the floor down here to be full of water?”

Find the railroad tracks. Then you find the town. Then you find the railroad station. Then you find the casket and the rope.

For the first time in his diving life, Doug was being stupid underwater. Greed and panic had combined to make him forget everything he knew. He was down here alone, an incredibly dangerous thing to begin with. He was improperly equipped for the kind of search he’d suddenly started to undertake. And, most stupid of all, he was paying no attention to the passage of time.

He’d had an hour of air when he started.

“The fucking boat is sinking,” Dortmunder said. “I’m not going to stand here and have conversations .”

“John, John,” Kelp said, “all I’m saying is, think about it. You hardly know a thing about how to run this boat, and—”

“Of course I do.”

“You know how to hold the position. And how to ease it forward a little bit. Doug knows the whole thing . Even if we’re sinking—”

Bitterly, Tiny said, “Tom and his goddamn machine gun, shot the bottom full of holes.”

“Even so,” Kelp said, “we’re sinking slowly . We can wait for Doug.”

“No way,” Dortmunder said.

“He needs us.”

“He’s a pro,” Dortmunder insisted. “He’s dressed for what he’s doing. When he comes up and we aren’t here, he can swim to shore. I can’t swim to shore, not again.”

Then, to cut through all the crap and get out of there, Dortmunder stepped to the wheel and pushed the accelerator level hard forward. The boat surged ahead and cut through both the monofilament and the rope Doug had been coiling so carefully on the prow. That’s the rope that now wrapped itself tightly a dozen times around the propeller and shaft and stopped the Over My Head dead in the water.