Donald Westlake - Drowned Hopes

“That’s the usual way,” Dortmunder agreed. “Except it’s mostly Las Vegas now.”

“Well, these clowns can’t even get that much right,” Tom said. “The fact is, what they steal for is to feed their veins, and they go right on feeding their veins inside, they buy it off guards and trusties and visitors and each other and probly even the chaplain, but if you ask them why they ignored the career counselor and took up this life of crime for which they are so shit- poor fitted, they’ll tell you it’s political. They’ll tell you they’re the victims.”

Dortmunder nodded. “I’ve heard that one,” he said. “It’s useful in the sentencing sometimes, I think. And in the parole.”

“It’s a crock, Al,” Tom insisted.

Gently, Dortmunder said, “Tom, you and I’ve told the authorities a couple fibs in our time, too.”

“Okay,” Tom said. “Granted. Anyway, the result is, inflation makes it cost more to feed and house a fella in the pen in the manner to which we’ve all become accustomed, and budget cuts—Did you know, Al,” he interrupted himself, “that health-wise, long-term cons are the healthiest people in America?”

“I didn’t know that,” Dortmunder admitted.

“Well, it’s the truth,” Tom said. “It’s the regularity of the life, the lack of stress, the sameness of the food intake, the handiness of the free medical care, and the organized exercise program. Your lifers are the longest-lived people in the society. Any insurance company will tell you so.”

“Well,” Dortmunder said; “that must be some kind of consolation, I guess.”

“Yeah.” Tom made that laugh sound again. “Just knowing if you were out somewhere having fun you’d die sooner.” Tom slurped coffee without apparently opening his lips, and said, “So, anyway, with all of those things coming together, with its costing more to house me and feed me, plus you’ve got these budget cuts so they got less money to do this housing and feeding, plus you’ve got the entire male population between seventeen and twenty-six clamoring to come in to be housed and fed, the governor decided to give me a seventieth birthday present.” Grinning closed-mouthed at May, he said, “You wouldn’t think I was seventy, would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” May said.

“I look younger than Al here,” Tom told her.

May frowned at Dortmunder. “John,” she said, “why does he keep calling you Al? If you do really know him, and if he really knows you, and if you really lived in the same cell together, and if your name is John—and it is John—why does he call you Al ?”

Tom made a sound that might have been meant for a chuckle. “It’s a kind of an inside joke between Al and me,” he said.

Dortmunder explained, “It’s Tom’s idea of comedy. He found out my middle name’s Archibald, and I don’t much love that name—”

“You hate it,” May said.

“It’s one of the worst things about being arrested,” Dortmunder said. “When they look at me and say, ‘John Archibald Dortmunder, you are under arrest,’ I always cave in right away, and that’s why.”

May said, “And when this man found out how much you hated that name, that’s what he decided to call you from then on?”

“That’s right,” Dortmunder said.

“And his idea of a nickname for Archibald is Al?”

“Right again,” Dortmunder said.

“Inside joke,” Tom said, and made the chuckle sound again.

“That,” May said, “is his idea of humor.”

“You’re beginning to get the picture,” Dortmunder told her.

“Al,” Tom said, “are you really close with this woman? I mean, can I talk in front of her?”

“Well, Tom,” Dortmunder said, “if you plan on talking much in front of me , you’ll be talking in front of May. I mean, that’s the way it is.”

“That’s okay,” Tom said. “I got no problem with that. I just wanted to be sure you were secure in your mind.”

Dortmunder said, “Tom, you want something.”

“Of course I want something,” Tom told him. “What do you think I am? You think I do reunions ? You think I make my way around the country, drop in on old cellmates, but up a lot of old jackpots? Al, do I look to you like a guy sends out Christmas cards ?”

“Like I said, Tom,” Dortmunder answered patiently, “you’re here because you want something.”

“Yes,” Tom said. “I want something.”

“What?”

“Help,” Tom said simply.

“You mean money?” Dortmunder asked him, though he didn’t think that could be it. Tom Jimson was not a borrower type; he’d rather shoot you and rob the body than be reduced to begging.

“Well, it’s money in a way,” Tom said. “Let me explain, okay?”

“Go right ahead.”

“You see,” Tom said, “it’s like this. What I always did when I made a good-sized haul, I always stashed some or all of it, hid it somewhere so I’d have it if I needed it later on. I learned that when I was just a kid, from Dilly.”

May said, “Dilly?”

Dortmunder told her, “John Dillinger. Tom started out with Dillinger, and that’s what he called him.”

May said, “To his face?”

“Lady,” Tom said, “I never had a lot of trouble gettin my own way. I want to call this fella here Al, I call him Al. I wanted to call Dilly Dilly, that’s what I called him.”

“All right,” May said. The wary look in her eyes was on the increase.

“So anyway,” Tom said, “Dilly and I kind of come out together, in a way of speaking. What I mean, he got out of the pen in Indiana in ’thirty-three, and that’s when I was just gettin started myself. I was fourteen. I learned a lot from Dilly that year, before he pulled that fake death of his, and one of the things I learned was, always stash some of it away for a rainy day.”

“I remember that,” Dortmunder said. “I remember, while we were cellmates, every once in a while you had to tell some lawyer where another of those stashes was so he could go dig it up and pay himself what you owed him.”

“Lawyers,” Tom said, his voice rasping more than usual, and his lips moved slightly, just enough to give a glimpse of small, white, sharp-looking teeth. “They got their hands on a lot of my stashes over the years,” he admitted, “and they never gave me a thing for it all. But they didn’t get the big stash, and they weren’t going to. That one I held out, even from the lawyers. That one’s my retirement. There’s a place in Mexico I’m goin, way down below Acapulco on the west coast. That money’s gonna get me there, and once I’m there that money’s gonna keep me happy and healthy for a good long time. I’m gonna be an old man, Al, that’s the one ambition in life I got left.”

“Sounds good,” Dortmunder said, wondering why Tom didn’t just get on that southbound plane. Why come here ? Why tell this story to Dortmunder ? Where was the part he wasn’t going to like?

“What it was,” Tom was saying, “it was an armored car on the Thruway, taking money from Albany on down to New York. We had a nice clean hit, but then my partners ran into some trouble later on, and it wound up I had the whole seven hundred thousand.”

Dortmunder stared at him. “Dollars?”

“That’s what they were using back then,” Tom agreed. “Dollars. This was a year or two before I went up the last time. I was pretty flush, and what with one thing and another I didn’t have any partners to share the stuff with, so I got me a casket—”

“A box, you mean,” Dortmunder said.

“A casket , I mean,” Tom told him. “The best kind of box there is, Al, if you want to keep something safe. Airtight, watertight, steel-encased.”