Doug removed the marker cord from his wrist and tied it to the coffin rail, then drifted up beside Kelp. They both looked down at the box, just lying there. Captured. Tamed. With a leash on it. They looked at each other again, smiling, elated with what they’d done, and a shoe drifted slowly downward between them.
A shoe? Naturally, they both looked down, following its descent, and so the shoe remained in the amber gleam of their lamps until it hit the casket, hesitated there, seemed to stumble over the box, and then fell slowly on down to the ground.
Doug moved first, swooping downward, snagging the shoe on the way by, bringing it back up to where Kelp hovered. They hung there together in the water, half a dozen feet above the casket, and studied the shoe as Doug turned it slowly in his hands. Then they stared at each other again, wide-eyed.
Dortmunder. His shoe. No question.
“Taking them a long time,” Tom said.
“Seems long cause we ain’t doing anything,” Tiny told him. “And because it’s raining.” Then he twisted around, seated on the damp ground in the rain-streaked dark, to peer into the sopping night and say, “How come you’re behind me?”
Tom cackled. “You don’t have to worry about me, Tiny.”
“I don’t worry about you,” Tiny promised him. “Just come around and sit down here beside me.”
“Too wet to sit down there.”
“It’s wet everywhere. Okay, I’ll come back and sit beside you.”
“Naw, never mind, here I come,” Tom said, and Tiny heard the old bastard’s bones crack as he got to his feet. Sounded like rifles being cocked.
In a minute, Tom slid out of the dripping darkness like a half-starved fox and sat down within Tiny’s range of vision but just out of reach of Tiny’s hands. “That better, Tiny?”
“I like you, Tom,” Tiny lied. “I like to look at you.”
Tom cackled, and then they were quiet awhile, the two of them sitting on the ground in the rather heavy rain beside Gulkill Creek, the reservoir spread out a murky gray-black in front of them, pebbled with a million raindrops.
“Hope everything’s okay,” Tiny said.
Now, here was a mess. Kelp and Doug followed the marker cord up to the surface, and when they got there, what did they find? A steady rain. The boat, deflated and empty, drooped down into the wet darkness of the reservoir, still attached to the monofilament but pulling it four or five feet lower below the surface than it had been before. The gas tank was floating around loose. The motor was gone. So was Dortmunder.
With full buoyancy in the BCD, Kelp could pull the mouthpiece out and cry, “Where’s John?”
“I dunno.” Doug was also at full buoyancy, paddling in a circle, trying to see in the dark.
“Jeepers, Doug,” Kelp said, “what happened up here?”
“Rain swamped the boat,” Doug told him. “I dunno what happened to the motor. Or John.”
“He didn’t drown,” Kelp cried, staring all around, bobbing on the surface in his agitation, water from time to time lapping into his mouth. “We didn’t see him coming down, Doug. Only the shoe, that’s all.”
“Well, no, he wouldn’t drown,” Doug said. “He’s got a line here, the monofilament. All he has to do is pull himself along that until he gets to shore.”
“Hey, you’re right!” Kelp thrashed around in the water in his relief because, despite what he’d said, he’d been thinking privately that maybe John did drown.
“We’ll catch up with him, help him,” Doug said. “He can’t have much of a start on us.”
“Good idea!” Kelp looked left and right into two equally impenetrable darknesses. “Which way?”
Doug considered the problem. “I tell you what,” he said. “You follow the line that way, I’ll go this way. Go underwater, it’ll be faster. And the light’ll show on the monofilament.”
“Right,” Kelp said, and put his mouthpiece back in. Releasing a little air from the BCD, he sank a few feet below the surface, switched on the headlamp, and saw the gleaming silvery-white line stretch away through the black water. Kicking easily, he followed the line, really pleased at how good he was getting at this and looking forward to seeing John flounder along ahead of him like a wounded walrus.
But no such luck. Kelp went almost all the way to shore, close enough to see the railroad tracks emerge along the slanted bottom, and still no John. When he was in near enough to stand on the railbed with his head and shoulders out of the water, he even risked a quick flash of his headlamp at the tangled brush along the bank. “John?” he called in a half whisper.
Nothing. But John wouldn’t have had time to get this far anyway, not as slow as he’d have to travel and as fast as Kelp had sliced through the water. So Doug must have found him in the other direction.
No. Doug was waiting again by the boat, head out of the water, and he was alone. When Kelp surfaced beside him, Doug said, “No?”
“Oh, wow,” Kelp said.
Oh! May, suddenly awake, stared at a gray rectangle in the wrong place in the dark, and listened to a toilet flushing and flushing and flushing. Jiggle that thing! And what’s the window doing over there?
Shifting in the bed, she suddenly realized she was alone, remembered where she was (that’s why the window’s there instead of there), and understood that the sound she could hear through the window was rain falling. Oh, those poor guys, out there at the reservoir, they’re going to get soaked.
Well, Andy and Doug were going to get soaked anyway, but now the rest of them— May sat up, suddenly wondering what time it was and what had awakened her. A bad dream? A thought about John? Some sound? Were they back? Had they finally succeeded in getting the money? What time was it?
03:24.
She listened, but other than the rush of rain she couldn’t hear a thing. Shouldn’t they be back by now? Or soon, anyway?
In any event, she was absolutely wide awake. No chance to get back to sleep, not right away. Climbing out of bed, she found her robe in the dark, put it on, and stepped out to the hall, faintly illuminated by an ankle-height night light plugged into an outlet near the head of the stairs. She looked over the rail, but the downstairs was completely dark. She was about to start down when she noticed the line of light under the door of Andy and Wally’s room.
Was Wally still up? May crossed the hall and knocked softly on the door. “Wally? You awake?”
There were scraping, rustling noises within, and then the door opened and there was Wally, as short and round and moist as ever, and fully dressed. Blinking wetly up at May, he said, “Are they back?”
“No. I just woke up, I thought I’d have a glass of warm milk. Want some?”
Wally smiled. “Gee,” he said, “that sounds…” He looked around, at a loss for a simile. “That sounds like this house,” he decided. “Gosh, I would I’d like some warm milk, Miss May, thank you. I’ll just switch off the computer, and I’ll be right down.”
He plays with that computer too much, May thought as she descended to the ground floor, switching on lights along the way. Then she thought, well, it could be worse. Then she thought: Wait. I’m not his mother.