Donald Westlake - Drowned Hopes

Tom reluctantly looked away from the infant on the tracks. “Yeah?”

“Those stashes of yours,” John said.

“The ones the lawyers got,” Tom said.

“They didn’t get them all, Tom, did they?” John asked. He asked it as though he really and truly wanted the real and true answer.

May was also reluctant to look away from the baby in peril, for quite different reasons, but she just had to turn her head and observe Tom’s face. And what was that expression? It seemed to be part dyspepsia, part migraine, part the after effects of knockout drops. Showing John this astonishing face, Tom said, “Well, they didn’t get the one under the reservoir, no, that’s why we’re all here.” And May realized this was Tom’s idea of innocence.

Which John wasn’t buying. “There’s others, Tom,” he said. “Maybe not big stashes, but stashes. The lawyers didn’t get them all.”

“They sure tried,” Tom said.

“But they failed, Tom,” John pursued.

Tom sighed. “What is it, Al?” he asked. “What’s the problem here?”

“We may need some equipment,” John told him. “You want to go fifty feet underwater, it’s probably gonna mean you’re gonna need equipment of some kind.”

Tom, his words very careful, his voice sounding as though there were some sort of constriction in his throat, said, “You want me to pay for this equipment?”

“We’ll divvy at the end,” John said, “after we get the big stash, divide the expenses equal. But in front, ahead of time, what do you want to do? Go to somebody that charges a hundred percent interest? You’re not gonna take out a bank loan on this, you know, Tom. Filling in the form would already be a problem.”

“How about a permanent bank loan?” Tom asked, lifting his eyebrows slightly to show he was being a good sport about all this.

“One job at a time, Tom,” John said. “I’ll work with you on this reservoir thing, but I don’t want to go in with you on any bank jobs.”

Tom spread his hands. “You’re above robbing banks, Al? You’ve never spent the bank’s money?”

“We got different ways of doing things, that’s all,” John told him.

“You don’t like my methods, Al?”

John sighed. “Tom,” he said, “they lack…” He looked around, looked at May, looked back at Tom. “Delicacy,” he said.

Tom made that chuckle sound. “Okay, Al. If we got equipment we gotta get, expenses, within reason, you know, I mean, I’m not rich, but maybe I could come up with a little of the necessary here and there.”

“Good,” John said. He nodded at May, as though remembering now she was someone he’d met somewhere once before, and turned away. His feet could be heard thudding back to the kitchen.

May and Tom looked back at the television screen, where now two grown men tried to sell the audience a lot of bad wine mixed with a lot of bad fruit pulp. Tom said, “What happened to the kid?”

“I don’t know,” May admitted.

“Doesn’t matter,” Tom said, sounding disgusted. “On TV, somebody always manages to grab the kid in time. Ever notice that?”

“Yes,” May said.

“That’s just the way they do it,” Tom said. Then, brightening slightly, he said, “Well, of course, there’s still real life.”

Dortmunder came back from the library with a copy of Marine Salvage by Joseph N. Gores under his coat. He took it out from his armpit as he walked past the living room doorway and Andy Kelp’s cheerful voice said, “Reading a book, huh? Anything good?”

Dortmunder stopped and looked in at Kelp seated at his ease on the sofa, holding a can of beer. Knowing May was at work at the supermarket and being in something of a bad mood anyway, Dortmunder said, “You just walked right in, huh?”

“No way,” Kelp told him. “Took me at least a minute to get through that lock of yours.”

Unwillingly looking around the room, Dortmunder said, “Where’s Tom?”

“Beats me,” Kelp said. “Somewhere in a coffin of his native earth, I suppose.”

“He doesn’t have a native earth,” Dortmunder said, and walked on to the kitchen, where his work area had overflowed the table and now also covered all but one of the chairs, plus part of the counter space next to the sink. Maps were taped to the wall and the front of the refrigerator, and the crumpled papers under the table were knee deep.

Kelp had trailed Dortmunder into the kitchen. He stood watching as Dortmunder pointedly sat at the messy table and opened Marine Salvage to the facing pictures of the Empress of Canada lying on her side in Liverpool harbor in 1953 and the Normandie lying on her side in New York harbor in 1942. The Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building were both visible in the background of the Normandie picture. This East Nineteenth Street building where Dortmunder lived and had to put up with Andy Kelp wouldn’t be in the picture because it was too far downtown, the Normandie having fallen over at Forty-eighth Street. Dortmunder made a show of becoming very absorbed in these pictures.

But Andy Kelp was not a man to be deterred by hints. “If you aren’t busy…” he said, and gestured in a friendly fashion with the beer can.

Dortmunder looked at him. “If I’m not busy ?”

“I thought we’d take a little run over to Wally’s place,” Kelp said, unruffled. “See how he’s coming along.”

“ I’m coming along,” Dortmunder told him. “Don’t worry about it, I’m coming along fine.”

Kelp nodded and pointed at the messy table with his beer can, saying, “I took a look at some of that stuff while I was waiting.”

“I see that,” Dortmunder said. “Things are moved around.”

“You got some very tricky ideas in there,” Kelp said.

“Both,” Dortmunder told him. “Simple ideas and tricky ideas. Sometimes, you know, a simple idea’s a little too simple, and sometimes a tricky idea’s too tricky, so you got to concentrate on it and give it your attention and work it out.”

“Then after that, what you have to do,” Kelp suggested, “is take a break, walk away from it, come back refreshed.”

“I just went to the library,” Dortmunder pointed out. “I am refreshed.”

“You don’t look refreshed,” Kelp said. “Come on, I’ll give Wally a call, see if this is a good time to come over.”

Dortmunder frowned at that. “Give him a call? What do you mean, give him a call? Did you give me a call?”

Kelp didn’t get it. “I came over,” he said. “That’s what I do, isn’t it?”

“You come over,” Dortmunder said, gesturing at the table, “you go through the plans, you don’t give me any advance warning.”

“Oh, is that the problem?” Kelp shrugged. “Okay, fine, we won’t call, we’ll just go over.” He took a step toward the doorway, then stopped to look back and say, “You coming?”

Dortmunder couldn’t quite figure out how that had happened. He looked around at his table covered with half-thought-out plans. He had things to do here.

Kelp, in the doorway, said, “John? You coming? This was your idea, you know.”

Dortmunder sighed. Shaking his head, he got slowly to his feet and followed Kelp through the apartment. “Me and my ideas,” he said. “I just keep surprising myself.”

Kelp, leading the way up the battered stairs toward Wally Knurr’s battered door, said, “Anyway, the advantage, just dropping in like this, Wally won’t have a chance to bring out that cheese and crackers of his.”

Dortmunder didn’t answer. He was looking at the little red plastic crack-vial tops lying around on the steps, wondering what the letter T embossed on each one meant and how come crack producers felt it necessary to add a little styling detail like that fancy T to the packaging of their product. Also, as they climbed nearer and nearer to the wonder computer, Dortmunder was feeling increasingly surly, not so much because he’d been double-shuffled into coming here, but because he still couldn’t quite figure out how it had been done.