“And when we put it all in the computer,” Kelp told him, “then we say to it, ‘Plot us out the best route for the tunnel.’ And then we follow that route, and it takes us right to the box.”
“Sounds easy,” May said.
“Whenever things sound easy,” Dortmunder said, “it turns out there’s one part you didn’t hear.”
“Could be,” Kelp said, unruffled. “Could be, we’ll give the model to the computer and ask it about the tunnel, and it’ll say the tunnel doesn’t work, too much water around, too much mud, too far to go, whatever.”
“Be sure to put all that last part in,” Dortmunder told him, “when you’re putting in the rest of the garbage.”
“We’re not going to put garbage in,” Kelp corrected him. “We’re going to input quality data, John, believe me. In fact,” he said, suddenly even more peppy and enthusiastic, “I know just the guy to work with on this program.”
“Somebody else?” Dortmunder asked him. “One of us?”
Kelp shook his head. “Wally’s a computer freak,” he explained. “I won’t tell him what we’re trying for, I’ll just give it to him like as a computer problem.”
“Do I know this Wally?”
“No, John,” Kelp said, “you don’t travel in the same circles. Wally’s kind of offbeat. He can only communicate by keyboard.”
“And what if he communicates by keyboard with the law?”
“No, I’m telling you that’s all right,” Kelp insisted. “Wally’s a very unworldly guy. And he’ll save us weeks on this thing.”
“Weeks?” Dortmunder said, startled. “How long is this gonna take?”
“Just a few days,” Kelp promised. “With Wally aboard, just a very few days.”
“Because,” Dortmunder pointed out, “until we have this figured out, we have Tom Jimson living here.”
“That’s right,” May said.
“And if he decides to stop living here,” Dortmunder went on, “it’s because he’s gone back upstate to make a flood.”
“The Jimson flood,” said a cold voice from the doorway. They all looked up, and there was Tom, as cold and gray as ever, standing in the doorway and looking from face to face. A wrinkle in his own face might have been intended as an ironic smile. “Sounds like an old folk song,” he said, his lips not moving. “ ‘The Famous Jimson Flood.’ ”
“I think that was Jamestown,” Kelp said.
Tom considered that, and considered Kelp, too. “You may be right,” he decided, and turned to Dortmunder. “You spreading my business around, Al?”
Getting to his feet, Dortmunder said, “Tom Jimson, this is Andy Kelp. Andy and I work together.”
Tom nodded, and looked Kelp up and down. “So you’re gonna help me realize my dream of retirement,” he said.
Kelp grinned; he acted as though he liked Tom Jimson. Still comfortably sprawled on the sofa, “That’s what I’m here for,” he said. “John and May and me, we’ve been talking about different approaches, different ways to do things.”
“Dynamite’s very sure,” Tom told him.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Kelp said. “That water’s been in place there twenty years, more or less. What happens when you make a sudden tidal wave out of it? Think it might roil up the bottom, maybe mess things up down there, make it harder to find that box of yours?”
Dortmunder, standing there in the middle of the room like somebody waiting for a bus, now turned and gazed on Andy Kelp with new respect. “I never thought of that,” he said.
“I did,” Tom said. “The way I figure to blow that dam, you won’t have no tidal wave. At least, not up in the reservoir. Down below there, in East Dudson and Dudson Center and Dudson Falls, down there you might have yourself a tidal wave, but we don’t give a shit about that, now, do we?”
No one saw any reason to answer that. May, also getting to her feet, standing beside Dortmunder like an early sketch for Grant Wood’s Urban Gothic (abandoned), said, “Would you like a beer, Tom?”
“No,” Tom said. “I’m used to regular hours. Good night.”
Kelp, still with his amiable smile, said, “You off to bed?”
“Not till you get up from it,” Tom told him, and stood there looking at Kelp.
Who finally caught on: “Oh, you sleep here,” he said, whapping his palm against the sofa cushion beside him.
“Yeah, I do,” Tom agreed, and went on looking at Kelp.
May said, “Let me get you sheets and a pillowcase.”
“Don’t need them,” Tom said as Kelp slowly unwound himself and got to his feet, still smiling, casually holding his beer can.
“Well, you need something,” May insisted.
“A blanket,” he told her. “And a towel for the morning.”
“Coming up,” May said, and left the room, with alacrity.
“Well,” Dortmunder said, having trouble exiting, “see you in the morning.”
“That’s right,” Tom said.
“Nice to meet you,” Kelp said.
Tom paid no attention to that. Crossing to the sofa, he moved the coffee table off to one side, then yawned and started taking wads of bank-banded bills out of his various pockets, dropping them on the coffee table. Dortmunder and Kelp exchanged a glance.
May came back in, gave the money on the moved coffee table a look, and put an old moth-eaten tan blanket and a pretty good Holiday Inn towel on the sofa. “Here you are,” she said.
“Thanks,” Tom said. He put a.32 Smith & Wesson Terrier on the coffee table with the money, then switched off the floor lamp at one end of the sofa and turned to look at the other three.
“Good night, Tom,” Dortmunder said.
But Tom was finished being polite for today. He stood there and looked at them, and they turned and went out to the hall, May closing the door behind them.
Murmuring, not quite whispering, Dortmunder said to Kelp, “You wanna come out to the kitchen?”
“No, thanks,” Kelp whispered. “I’ll call you in the morning after I talk to Wally.”
“Good night, Andy,” May said. “Thanks for helping.”
“I didn’t do anything yet,” Kelp pointed out as he opened the closet door and took out his bulky heavy pea coat. Grinning at Dortmunder, he said, “But the old PC and me, we’ll do what we can.”
“Mm,” said Dortmunder.
As Kelp turned toward the front door, the living room door opened and Tom stuck his gray head out. “Tunnel won’t work,” he said, and withdrew his head and shut the door.
The three looked wide-eyed at one another. They moved away in a group to huddle together by the front door, as far as possible from the living room. May whispered, “How long was he listening?”
Dortmunder whispered, “We’ll never know.”
Kelp rolled his eyes at that and whispered, “Let’s hope we’ll never know. Talk to you tomorrow.”
He left, and Dortmunder started attaching all the locks to the front door. Then he stopped and looked at his hands, and looked at the locks, and whispered, “I don’t know why I’m doing this.”
EIGHT
You roll aside the two giant boulders and the tree trunk. You find the entrance to a cave, covered by a furry hide curtain. You thrust this aside and see before you the lair of the Thousand-Toothed Ogre.
Wally Knurr wiped sweat from his brow. Careful, now; this could be a trap. Fat fingers tense over the keyboard, he spat out:
Describe this lair.
A forty-foot cube with a domed ceiling. The rock walls have been fused into black ice by the molten breath of the Nether Dragon. On fur-covered couches loll a half-dozen well-armed Lizard Men, members of the Sultan’s Personal Guard. Against the far wall, Princess Labia is tied to a giant wheel, slowly rotating.