When the marker rope was attached to the winch: then.
Dortmunder and Kelp and Tiny huddled their heads together over the wheel so they could hear one another above the storm without having to shout loud enough to be heard by Tom down in the cabin. “Once we get that box ashore,” Kelp was saying, “we’ve got to keep a very close eye on Tom because you just know he’s gonna pull something.”
“Before that, if you ask me,” Tiny growled. “Once we get that box in the boat, once he sees it, there’s no way he’s gonna control himself. He’ll make his move. That’s when we gotta be on our guard.”
“You ask me,” Dortmunder said, “the time to be on your guard with Tom is all the time.”
“Pflufh!” said Doug, appearing at the rail, spitting out his mouthpiece.
They all turned to watch as Doug, who had hoisted himself up out of the water onto the narrow platform jutting out from the stern of the boat, climbed over the rail and stood on the exposed rear deck for a second, face mask still on, dripping in the rain. Then he pulled off the face mask and grinned and came over to speak to Dortmunder, his large wet presence forcing Tiny to back down two steps into the cabin.
“I got it,” Doug said. “So all you do is keep us moving just barely forward, okay?”
Doug had given Dortmunder a quick orientation course in operating this vessel on their way out from shore, not enough to take it on a round-the-world cruise, but maybe enough to keep it moving just barely forward for a few minutes. “Sure,” Dortmunder said.
“I’ll be up on the prow,” Doug told him. “You’ll be able to see me up there through the windshield. If I want you to steer to the right or the left, I’ll wave my arm out like this.”
“Got it,” Dortmunder said.
“Forward, I point that way. Stop, I hold my hand back to you like this.”
“Got that, too.”
“Now, take it real slow and easy,” Doug told him, “because I’m going to be bringing in the line while we move.”
“Very slow, very easy,” Dortmunder promised.
Tom, sitting up on the bunk, heard the conversation through the narrow open doorway where the bottom half of Tiny now stood. He heard Doug’s footsteps move forward on the deck just above his head, and saw Tiny’s legs recede back up to the wheelhouse level. One on the prow, he thought. One on the bunk down here. Three around the wheel.
Doug, seated cross-legged on the prow, waved for Dortmunder to ease them forward, and then began to draw in the line as they moved, coiling it in his lap so it wouldn’t drift under the boat. Getting fouled on one of their lines was, as he saw it, their greatest danger at this point.
They were less than ten minutes easing their way across the rainswept reservoir, and then Doug, still tugging gently on the line, saw the knot rise dripping and swaying out of the water dead ahead. The monofilament was invisible in these conditions, so the white knot of rope seemed to be levitating itself. He waved to Dortmunder to stop, looped the rope in a quick knot over the davit on the prow, and went back to the wheelhouse.
(One down here, four around the wheel.)
Dortmunder said, “Now I hold the position, right?”
“You bet,” Doug told him. “Tiny, let me show you the winch.”
Tiny said, “That includes going out in the rain, huh?”
Doug went to the rear, and Tiny followed. (One down here, two at the wheel, two at the stern.) Opening a floor panel at the stern, Doug shone his headlamp in and pointed out the machinery. “There’s the switch. That’s the spool. It runs off the same shaft as the propeller, so John can make it go slower or faster up there at the wheel.”
“Gotcha,” Tiny said.
“Be right back with the rope,” Doug told him. Straightening, he adjusted face mask and mouthpiece and then backflipped out of the boat.
Tom shifted on the bunk, putting both feet on the gently rocking floor. One down here, two at the wheel, one at the stern, one in the water. That one’s the duck in the barrel.
Doug swam to the monofilament, untied the marker rope, tied it to his wrist instead, and made his way back to the boat. He came up on the small platform at the rear, but Tiny was looking the other way. “Tiny!” he called. “I got it here!”
Right, Tom thought. He stood, leaned forward, reached over the sleeping hitchhiker, slid his hand in under the mattress, and it wasn’t there.
What? Tom moved his hand left, right… Cold on wrist. Click.
Tom blinked, and the hitchhiker sat up, the Ingram just visible beyond him under his pillow. Wild-eyed, glaring in triumph, raising their right wrists handcuffed together, the maniac cried, “Now, Tim Jepson! Now!”
“Oh, shit!” Dortmunder cried. “It’s started!”
Kelp yelled, “What—” But the rest of his words were blotted by a sudden chatter of automatic gunfire.
Everybody stared at everybody else. Doug looked ready to jump back into the water. In fact, everybody looked ready to jump into the water, even Dortmunder.
“Al?”
The wheel forgotten, Dortmunder concentrated on keeping well away from the opening into the cabin. “Yeah, Tom?”
“It’s a wash, Al,” Tom’s voice called. “You were cuter than I thought.”
Dortmunder had no idea in what way he’d been so wonderfully cute. He said, “So now what, Tom?”
“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?”