John looked at her. “May,” he said. “You want me to go down in there again? When I just barely got outta there the last time? When if I go down in there again, what we’re mostly talking about is what they call a watery grave? May? Do you really want me to do that again?”
“Of course not, John,” May said. “Not if the problems can’t be solved. I don’t want to lose you, John. I don’t want you to risk your life on this.”
“Well, that’s what I was risking,” John told her. “More than I knew. And that’s the end of it.”
“All I’m asking, John,” May said, “is you keep an open mind.”
“And let all that muddy water run in.”
“Just to see,” May persisted. “Just to see if it’s possible, to explore the options. And then, if it isn’t, it isn’t, and Tom goes and does it some other way.”
“Boom,” said Tom cheerfully.
“Okay,” John said to her. “And if we keep this thing going, if we keep looking around for some kind of magic three-D glasses to look through mud with, then while we’re doing all this, where’s”—he jabbed a thumb at Tom, sitting comfortably to his left—“where’s this gonna live?”
May was sure she looked as stricken as she felt. “Well,” she said, “well, umm…” And she turned to Tiny, on her left, raising her eyebrows, hoping for a volunteer.
But Tiny looked embarrassed, and fumbled with his spoon, and wouldn’t meet her eye. “Josie,” he mumbled, “she wouldn’t, uh, it wouldn’t work out so good.”
May’s pleading gaze slid onto Andy, who flashed three or four quick panicky smiles and said, “Gee, May, I’d love to, but you know, my place’s so small, I can barely fit me in there, I been planning to look for somewhere bigger for a long…”
May sighed and looked toward Wally on her right, but he was already shaking his head, saying, “Oh, I wish I could help, Miss May, I really do, but my little apartment’s so filled up with electronics and computers and all, well, John and Andy can tell you, it’s so cramped in there you can’t barely sit down anywhere, and, uh…”
Sighing, May looked across the table at John, who met her gaze with grim satisfaction, saying, “Let’s put it this way, May. I leave it up to you. You want me to forget this thing, and send everybody away? Or you want me to keep looking for underwater Seeing Eye dogs?”
May refused to look toward Tom, knowing he would be at his blandest and most careless, just sitting there, toying with his spoon. Tuna casserole curdling within her, she turned to Wally again. “How long will it take you to find that book, Wally?” she asked.
THIRTY-ONE
The book was called Normandie Triangle, and the writer was called Justin Scott, and according to the book the divers didn’t solve the problem of cruddy, black, filthy water, also known as “turbidity.” What they did was, they made a model on shore of the parts of the ship they wanted to work on, and they practiced on the model until they could do the work with their eyes closed, and then they went down into the water and did it; and it might just as well have been with their eyes closed.
So the book itself wasn’t that much help. However, Wally, with his incredible unlimited computer access to what was apparently every piece of knowledge in the world, had come up with the fact that Justin Scott lived in New York and had a telephone. Wally had the number.
“We’ll call from my place,” Kelp decided. “I got a speakerphone.”
“Of course you do,” Dortmunder said grumpily. Andy was well known to have surrounded himself with all the latest in telephone technology, and Dortmunder was too proud to admit he didn’t know what a speakerphone was.
At least Kelp wasn’t one to put out cheese and crackers, though when Dortmunder arrived at his place—which wasn’t that small, actually, a one-bedroom with a separate kitchen—Kelp had apparently anticipated some sort of party, because he looked past Dortmunder at the hall and said, “Where’s everybody?”
“Who everybody?” Dortmunder asked, walking into the living room.
“Well, Tiny,” Kelp said, standing there with the door still open. “Maybe Tom or Wally. Or could be May.”
Dortmunder stood in the middle of the living room and looked at him. “Why don’t you close your door, Andy?”
“Oh. Sure.” And he did.
Dortmunder said, “Everybody’s gonna be guided by my judgment, so they don’t need to come along. If I decide I’m crazy enough to go down in that lake again, everybody’s gonna let me do it.”
“Let us do it,” Kelp pointed out.
Dortmunder shook his head at him. “I don’t know why you’re so eager,” he said.
“I’m not exactly eager,” Kelp said. “But the thing is, I remembered about the BCD when I was down there—”
“When you weren’t thinking about books.”
“The BCD,” Kelp said. “That’s the difference right there, John. I was getting nervous, the same way you were getting, but then I remembered that good old BCD. One push on the button and up you go. When you know you can always get outta there if you need to, it makes things easier.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dortmunder said. It rankled with him that he hadn’t thought of the BCD in his moment of direst need, and it rankled double that Kelp had thought of it. “BCD or no BCD,” he said, “if I can’t walk and I can’t see, I ain’t going.”
“So let’s have a beer,” Kelp suggested, “and call this guy, and see what’s the story.”
So they did. Dialing the number, Kelp said, “I’ll switch to the speakerphone after we start talking.”
“Sure,” Dortmunder said.
A little pause, and then Kelp made a face. “It’s the answering machine.”
“You’re the last to complain,” Dortmunder told him.
Kelp ignored that. “I’ll leave my number,” he decided, and sat there waiting for the answering machine message to finish itself. Then he said, “Hi, I’m a fan, my name’s—What? Oh, hello! You’re there!”
Little pause, Kelp nodding and grinning. “Yeah, I do that sometimes, too,” he said. “Screening your calls, that’s very— Oops, hold on a second.”
He reached down, hit a switch on the side of the phone, and suddenly the room was filled with a voice saying, “—never get any work done.”
“I agree a hundred percent,” Kelp told the phone while Dortmunder stared around in shock for the source of the voice.
Which now said, “What can I do for you?”
The phone. Dortmunder got it at last; the phone had a loudspeaker in it, that’s why it was called a speakerphone. So this was the writer talking.
But now it was Kelp talking, saying, “My name’s Andy… Kelly, and I want to tell you, I just read Normandie Triangle again, so that’s I think the third time, and it’s really terrific.”
“Well, thanks,” said the speakerphone. “Thanks a lot.”
“Now, the reason I happened to read it again,” Kelp went on, “is I have a friend with a summer house upstate on Parmalee Pond. You know Parmalee Pond?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” said the speakerphone. “A friend of mine has—”
“My friend,” Kelp said hastily, “just bought his place. He’s new there. And what he did, his first time up there, he went out in his rowboat and he was gonna take a picture of his house from the lake with this very expensive Nikon camera—”