“You could keep it warmer in here,” John said.
“A mouthpiece?” Andy asked. “I’ve talked to one or two, but I’ve never breathed through one, no.”
“Okay,” Doug said, turning to his well-stocked shelves. “We’ll start now.”
SEVENTEEN
“I wish you’d take that thing off, John,” May said. “It makes you look like something in science fiction.”
Dortmunder removed the mouthpiece from his mouth; not to accede to May’s request, but to make it possible to answer her. “I’m supposed to get used to breathing through it,” he said, and put it back in his mouth. Then he immediately forgot and breathed through his nose, as usual; underwater, he would have drowned half a dozen times by now.
Fortunately, he wasn’t underwater. He was in the living room with May, watching the seven o’clock news (which is to say, watching the headache and laxative commercials) and waiting for Tom Jimson to come back from wherever he was when he wasn’t here. He’d been waiting for Tom since he’d come back from Long Island and Doug Berry and the wonderful world of underwater late this afternoon.
May said, “John, you aren’t breathing through it.”
“Mm!” he said, startled, and grasped his nose between thumb and forefinger of his right hand, to force himself to do it right. Breathe through the mouth, doggone it. The mouth gets dry almost immediately, but that’s all right. It’s better than the lungs getting wet.
So Dortmunder went on sitting there, on the sofa, next to the silently disapproving May, breathing through his mouth and watching the news over the knuckles of the hand holding his nose. That was his position when Tom noiselessly appeared in the doorway just as the news anchorman was smiling his last. (Though what he had to smile about, considering everything he’d had to report to the world in the last half hour, was hard to figure out.) But there, all at once, was Tom Jimson in the doorway, raising an eyebrow, looking at Dortmunder and saying, “Something smell bad, Al?”
“Mm!” Dortmunder said again, and took the mouthpiece out of his mouth and sneezed. Then he said, “This is the mouthpiece for going underwater.”
“Not very far underwater,” Tom suggested, giving the mouthpiece a critical look.
“This is just one part of it,” Dortmunder explained. “In fact, Tom, I’ve gotta talk to you about that. It’s time to come up with some cash.”
Tom’s face, never exactly what you’d call mobile, stiffened up so much he now looked like a badly reproduced photo of himself. From somewhere deep within the photo came the hollow word, “Cash?”
“Come on, Tom,” Dortmunder said. “We agreed on this. You’ll dip into your other little stashes to finance this thing.”
The photo crumpled a bit. “How much cash?”
“We figure seven to eight grand.”
Animation of a sort returned to Tom’s face. That is, his eyebrows climbed up over his forehead as though trying to escape into his hair. “Dollars?” he asked. “Why so much?”
“I told you how we need a pro,” Dortmunder reminded him.
Coming farther into the room, glancing briefly at the television set on which the news had now been followed by a comedy series about a bunch of very healthy and extremely witty teens who all hung out at the same sweet shop, Tom said, “Yeah, I remember. For air. You can’t get air without a pro. But I never hearda air costing seven, eight grand before.”
Getting to her feet, May said, “Nobody’s watching TV.” She sounded faintly annoyed by the fact. Crossing to switch off the set, she said, “Anybody want a beer?”
“I think I’m gonna need one,” Tom said, and he crossed to take May’s seat as she left for the kitchen. His eyebrows still well up on his forehead, he said, “Tell me about this rich air, Al.”
“To begin with,” Dortmunder told him, “we had to find the pro. One we could deal with. So the guy that found the right guy, some fella that Andy knows, he wanted a finder’s fee. Five hundred bucks.”
“To find the pro,” Tom said.
“That’s very cheap, Tom,” Dortmunder assured him. “You got a better way to find the exact right guy we need?”
Tom shook his head, ignoring the question more than agreeing with it. He said, “So this is the exact right guy, is it?”
“Yeah, it is. And he isn’t in it for a piece, just a flat payment in front. We’re getting him for a grand, and that’s very cheap.”
“If you say so, Al,” Tom said. “Inflation, you know? I still can’t believe the prices of things. When I went inside twenty-three years ago, you know how much a steak cost?”
“Tom, I don’t even care,” Dortmunder said, and May came in with two cans of beer. Looking at them, Dortmunder said, “May? Aren’t you having any?”
“Mine’s in the kitchen,” May said. “You two talk business.” And, with a blank smile at them both, she went away to the kitchen again, which was hers once more now that Dortmunder had removed all his books and papers and pencils and pens and pictures from it, stowing the whole mountain of stuff in the bottom dresser drawer in the bedroom.
Tom swallowed beer and said, “So we’re up to fifteen hundred.”
“The rest is equipment and stuff,” Dortmunder told him. “And training.”
Tom frowned at that. “Training?”
“You don’t just go underwater, Tom,” Dortmunder explained.
“I don’t go underwater at all,” Tom said. “That’s up to you and your pal Andy, if that’s what you wanna do.”
“That’s what we want to do,” Dortmunder agreed, not letting a single doubt peek through. “And to do it right,” he went on, “we got to train and learn how it’s done. So we’ll take lessons from this guy, and that’s why I’m practicing with this mouthpiece here, learning to breathe through my mouth. So that costs. And then there’s the air and the tanks and what we wear and the underwater flashlights and all the rope we’re gonna need and lots of other stuff, and it all comes out to seven or eight grand.”
“Expensive,” Tom commented, and drank more beer.
“It’s gotta be expensive,” Dortmunder told him. “This isn’t a place you just walk into, you know.”
Tom said, “What about the little fella with the computer? Any thought outta him?”
“Wally?” Dortmunder made no effort to keep victor’s scorn out of his voice. “He had a lot of great ideas,” he said. “Spaceships. Giant magnets. Giant lasers. Even more expensive than me, Tom.” Shrugging, Dortmunder said, “No matter how we do this, it isn’t gonna be cheap.”
“Oh, I dunno,” Tom said. “Dynamite and life are cheap.”
“We agreed, Tom,” Dortmunder reminded him. “We do it my way first. And we finance from your stash.”
Tom slowly shook his head. “Those lawyers really cleaned me out, Al. I don’t have that much left.”
Dortmunder spread his hands. Tom sat there, brooding, holding his beer, wrestling with the problem. There was nothing more for Dortmunder to say to him—Tom would dope it all out for himself or not—so he put the mouthpiece back in and practiced breathing through his mouth without holding his nose. Underwater, of course, he’d have goggles on that would make a tight seal all around his eyes and nose, so he wouldn’t be able to hold his nostrils shut anyway. He had a practice pair of goggles, in fact, that Doug Berry had loaned him, but he would have felt foolish sitting next to May and wearing goggles to watch television, so they were on the dresser in the bedroom.
“There’s one,” Tom said thoughtfully, “up in the same area.”