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.
Standing in the heavy rain, Stan listened and listened but heard no more gunshots. What’s happening out there? He rested one hand on the rear window of the station wagon, looked out over its forward-slanted roof and submerged hood and saw nothing. But nothing.
So Tom made his move before they got ashore, did he? And did it work?
Whoever came out ahead out there, the winner or winners will want wheels. For themselves, and for the money. Not this station wagon, this heap will never go anywhere on its own again, but Dortmunder’s car, the Peugeot.
Just in case; okay? Just in case Tom managed to catch everybody by surprise out there, Stan should do something to defend himself. So he turned and walked upslope to the Peugeot, got behind the wheel, and started the engine. Better than half a tank of gas; good. He switched on the headlights, then got out of the car and splashed through the rain over to the right side of the clearing and in among the trees.
There were no dry places out here, not after two days and nights of steady rain. Wet and cold but unwilling to make a sitting duck of himself, Stan hunkered down against a tree where he could see the Peugeot’s lights, the clearing, even a bit of the station wagon.
Hell of a position for a driver.
“Got it!” Tiny cried. “Pull me up outta here.”
Dortmunder and Kelp heaved on the rope. The other end of it was tied around Tiny under the armpits, and Tiny was lying half on and half off the platform at the rear of the Over My Head. He’d been reaching farther and farther down under the boat, trying to find an end of rope or—for preference—monofilament, and now at last he’d done it, and once Dortmunder and Kelp’s combined efforts got him completely back up on the platform he rose and held up a jumble of monofilament in his left hand like a serving of angel hair pasta.
“Beautiful stuff,” Kelp prayed.
Tiny tied the monofilament to the rail, then climbed over onto the deck and removed the rope from around himself.
“Tiny, I’m sorry,” Dortmunder said.
Tiny pointed a fat finger at him. “Dortmunder,” he said, “I want this to be a lesson to you. This is what happens to a person that’s rude. You break off a little discussion before it’s finished, before everybody’s done talking, maybe there’s something you oughta know that you don’t know.”