“Heat would solve this problem,” Tom commented.
“Heat brings heat,” Dortmunder told the back of his head. Tom didn’t bother to answer.
“I’ll go around again,” Kelp suggested, “and when we get to that one-lane bridge from before, I can squeeze them.”
“A Caddy can beat a Fairlane,” Tom pointed out. “Why not just floor this sucker?”
“I don’t break speed limit laws in a borrowed car,” Kelp told him.
Tom snorted but made no comments about the superior qualities of rented cars.
Dortmunder looked back, and the Fairlane was still on their tail, far too close for anybody who knew anything about surveillance. Unless somebody wanted them to know they were being followed. But why? And who were those two women? He said, “Tom, why would anybody follow you?”
“Me?” Tom said, looking over his shoulder. “Whadaya mean, me? How come it isn’t one of you guys? Maybe they’re computer salesmen, want to talk to Wally.”
“The rest of us aren’t known around here,” Dortmunder said.
“Neither am I,” Tom said. “Not after twenty-six years.”
“I don’t like it,” Dortmunder said. “Right here in the neighborhood where we’re supposed to do the main job, and we’ve got new players in the game.”
“Here’s the turn,” Kelp said, and took it. Then he looked in the rearview mirror and said, “They kept going!”
Dortmunder looked back, and now there was no one behind them at all. “I don’t get it,” he said.
Wally, tentative about making suggestions among this crowd, said, “Maybe they were lost.”
“No,” Dortmunder said.
“Well, wait a second,” Kelp said. “That’s not entirely crazy, John.”
“No?” Dortmunder studied Kelp’s right ear. “How much crazy is it?” he asked.
“People get lost,” Kelp said, “particularly in the country. Particularly in places like this, where everything’s got the same name.”
“Dudson,” commented Tom.
“That’s the name, all right,” Kelp agreed. “How many Dudsons are there, anyway?”
“Let’s see,” Tom said, taking the question seriously. “North, East, Center, and Falls. Four.”
“That’s a lot of Dudsons,” Kelp said.
“There used to be three more,” Tom told him. “Dudson Park, Dudson City, and Dudson. They’re all under the reservoir.”
“Good,” Kelp said. “Anyway, John, how about that? You go out for a nice ride in the country, all of a sudden everywhere you look another Dudson, you’re lost, you don’t know how to get back, you’re driving in circles.”
“We were the one driving in circles,” Dortmunder said.
“I’m coming to that,” Kelp promised. “So there you are, driving in circles, and you decide you’ll pick another car and follow it until it gets somewhere. Only they picked us. So when we start going in circles, too, they figure we’re also lost on account of all the Dudsons, so off they go.”
“Sounds good to me,” Tom said.
Timidly, Wally said, “It does make sense, John.”
“I never seen that to matter much,” Dortmunder commented. “But, okay, maybe you’re all right. Nobody around here knows any of us, those two women didn’t act like they knew how to tail anybody, and now they’re gone.”
“So there you are,” Kelp said.
“There I am,” Dortmunder agreed, frowning.
Tom said, “So now can we go pick up my stash?”
“Yes,” Kelp said.
“Just the same,” Dortmunder said, mostly to himself, “something tells me we got that Ford in our future.”
TWENTY-ONE
“Mother,” Myrtle said, keeping her attention straight out the windshield as they drove together through the twilight back toward Dudson Center, “you just have to tell me the truth.”
“I don’t see that at all,” Edna said. “Keep your eyes on the road.”
“My eyes are on the road. Mother, please! I have the right to know about my own father.”
“The right!” Even for Edna, that word was flung out with startling fury. “Did I have the right to know him? I thought I did, but I was wrong. He knew me, God knows, and here you are.”
“You’ve never said a word about him.” Myrtle found herself awed by it, by Edna’s years of silence, by her own blithe acceptance of the status quo, never questioning, never wondering. “Can he be that bad?” she asked, believing the answer would simply have to be no.
But the answer was, “He’s worse. Take my word for it.”
“But how can I?” Myrtle pleaded. “How can I take your word, when you don’t give me any words? Mother, I’ve always tried to be a good daughter, I’ve always—”
“You have,” Edna said, suddenly quieter, less agitated. Myrtle risked a quick sidelong glance, and Edna was now brooding at the dashboard, as though the words mene mene tekel upharsin had suddenly appeared there. Myrtle was surprised and touched to see this softening of her mother’s features. Imperfectly seen though her face might be in the light of dusk, some harsh level of reserve or defense was abruptly gone.
And abruptly back: “Watch the road!”
Myrtle’s eyes snapped forward. The two-lane blacktop road was now bringing them past the Mexican restaurant at the edge of Dudson Center; they were less than fifteen minutes from home.
Myrtle hadn’t at all wanted to give up the pursuit. It was true the people in the backseat of the Cadillac kept turning around to look at her, it was true the Cadillac was driving in circles around the countryside, it was true these things suggested they’d realized they were being followed and therefore had no intention of going on to their original destination until she stopped following them, but what did any of that matter? She didn’t care where they were going, she cared only about who they were. Or not even all of them, only the one: her father. To her way of thinking, if she followed them long enough, if she made her presence both obvious and inevitable, sooner or later wouldn’t they have to either arrive somewhere, or at least stop somewhere, so that she could get out of her car and go look at them, see them, talk to them? Talk to him?
But Edna had said no. “They’re on to us,” she snarled out of the side of her mouth, displaying another previously unknown side to her personality. “Forget it, Myrtle. We’ll go home.”
“But we’re so close! If we lose them—”
“We won’t lose that son of a bitch,” Edna had said grimly. “If he’s back—and he’s back, all right, damn his eyes—one of these black days he’ll come around, you see if he doesn’t. It’s only a matter of time. Myrtle, if they take that goddamn left again up there, you don’t follow them! You go straight ahead!”
And the Cadillac had taken the g——left, and obedient Myrtle, the good daughter, had gone straight ahead. And now they were almost home, the adventure almost finished, long before it had ever really begun. Myrtle had no faith in her mother’s conviction that her father would “come around” one of these days, black or otherwise; after all these years, why should he?
And he’d been so close!
Once Mother gets out of this car, Myrtle thought, I’ve lost the truth forever. “Please,” she said, so faintly she wasn’t sure Edna would be able to hear her at all.
The answer was a sigh; another surprising example of softness. In a voice so gentle as to be almost unrecognizable, Edna said, “Don’t ask me these things, Myrtle.”