It is this house. It’s changing us. If we stay here much longer, we’ll start buying one another birthday cards.
Before putting the milk on to warm, May opened the back door and looked out at the yard. Rain was steady, unrelenting, falling straight down through a world without wind. This isn’t going to let up for days and days, she thought. The poor guys. I hope everybody’s okay.
Two mugs full of gently steaming milk were on the kitchen table when Wally came into the room, his wet smile gleaming in the overhead fluorescent light. “This is really nice, Miss May,” he said, and sat across from her to cup both hands around the mug. “I was just thinking,” he said, “how really nice this all is, everybody living together here like this. It’s almost like we’re a family.”
“I was just thinking something like that, too,” May told him.
“I’ll miss it when it’s over,” Wally said.
May sipped milk in lieu of responding, and they sat in fairly companionable—but not familial, dammit—silence for a few minutes, until all at once Murch’s Mom walked in, wearing big gray furry slippers, a ratty long robe, and a lot of green curlers in her hair. Squinting balefully in the light, she said, “I thought they were back.”
“Not yet,” May said.
“We’re just waiting here,” Wally told her happily. “We’re having warm milk.”
“Oh, that’s what it is.”
“I could warm you some,” May offered.
“You’d waste it, then,” Murch’s Mom told her, and marched across the room to the refrigerator, where she got out a can of beer, popped the top, and took a deep swig. Wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her robe, turning to the table, she said, “Raining.”
“I hope everybody’s okay,” May said.
“Rain never hurt anybody,” Murch’s Mom decided. “A little water’s good for you.” She came over and sat at the table between them, saying, “Might as well stay up till they get back.”
May watched Wally watching Murch’s Mom drink beer. She knew Wally was loving that, loved the two of them with their warm milk and the crotchety aunt—that would be Murch’s Mom’s role in the affiliation Wally was constructing—with her beer. If he says like a family, May promised herself, I’ll pour bourbon into this milk. A lot of bourbon.
However, he didn’t.
“I never did much like rain,” Tiny said.
“Good for covering your tracks,” Tom said.
Tiny wrung water out of his eyebrows. “What tracks?”
“When the dogs are after you.”
Tiny was feeling the need to put his hands around something and squeeze. “Been on this job too long,” he muttered.
“—h—”
Tiny frowned, making a lot of water cascade down his face. Wiping it away, he said, “You hear something?”
“The motor, you mean? No.”
“Not the motor,” Tiny told him. “Sounded like a voice.”
“—hehhh—”
“You won’t hear any voice,” Tom said, “all you’ll hear is—”
“Shut up,” Tiny requested.
“What was that?”
Tiny was in no mood. “This ground’s wet, Tom,” he said. “Maybe I’ll sit on you for a while.”
“Well, we’re all getting testy,” Tom told him, forgiving him.
Tiny said, “Just be quiet, while I listen to this voice.”
“Joan of Arc,” Tom commented, sotto voce, but then he was quiet, and Tiny listened, and heard no voice.
Was it something he’d made up? Was it just something the rain did? But it had sounded like a voice out there in the water somewhere.
At last, restless and uneasy, Tiny lumbered to his feet and plodded down the soggy bank to the water’s edge, listening, not even caring that Tom was behind him.
“—eye—”
By God, that is a voice. “Hey!” Tiny yelled.
“—eye?—”
“Over here!” Tiny yelled, and saw a dim light out there on the water.
Tom had come down to stand beside him at the lip of the reservoir. At this moment, neither was being wary of the other. Tom said, “What the hell is that out there?”
“The boogie man.”
“No, it isn’t,” Tom said. “I’m the boogie man.”
“Tiny!”
“Over this way!” Tiny shouted, and the light out there bobbled and disappeared.
Tom said, “Which one is it?”
“Couldn’t tell. His voice was full of water.”
Splashing sounded out there, and then the voice called again: “Tiny! Where are you?”
“Over here! Come this way! Can you hear me! Hey, here I am! We’re both here! Can you—”
“They’re here,” Tom said quietly.
They were. Andy Kelp and Doug Berry came stumbling and wading out of the reservoir, still in their full diving gear. Berry said, gasping, “I thought we’d never find the right place.”
“Where’s the boat?” Tiny asked him. “Where’s Dortmunder?”
Kelp and Berry stood panting in front of him. Berry said, “We were hoping he was here.”
Driving around all night, and in the rain. Stan didn’t mind driving usually—he was a driver, after all—but on tiny country roads, at night, in the rain, with no other traffic, nothing to look at or think about, no passenger in the vehicle, not even a destination, just driving aimlessly around until everybody else was finished work, that could get old. Very old.
Finally. Finally. Finally, at quarter to five in the ayem, when Stan made yet another pass by the bridge over Gulkill Creek, Andy Kelp appeared at the side of the road and gave him the high sign, and Stan pulled to a stop just past the bridge.
Sliding over to the right side of the seat, he opened the passenger door, stuck his head out in the rain, and watched Tiny and the others come up out of the woods and climb into the rear of the slat-sided truck. Too bad it didn’t have a roof back there. He called back, “How’d it go?”
Andy came squidging forward through the rain. “Well, yes and no,” he said. “Good news and bad news, like they say.”
“You found the money?”
“That’s the good news,” Andy agreed. “It’s still down there, but we got it dug up and we got a rope on it.”
“Great,” Stan said. “So that’s the good news; you found the money. What’s the bad news?”
“We lost John.”
From the instant she saw Stan’s face, May knew. She didn’t know exactly what she knew, but she knew she knew. That much she knew; that she knew.
“Now, we’re not giving up hope,” was the first thing Stan said, when shortly after sunup he walked into the kitchen where May and Wally and Murch’s Mom were still sitting around, bleary-eyed and weaving but unwilling to go to sleep before the word came. And now the word was this.
May said, “Stan? Not giving up hope about what?”
“Well, about John,” Stan said.
His Mom said, “Stanley, tell us this second.”
“Well, what happened, as I understand it—”
“This second!”
“The boat sank. John was the only one in it. Nobody knows where he is.”
May leaped to her feet, spilling cold milk. “At the bottom of the reservoir!” she cried. “That’s where he is!”
“Well, no,” Stan told her. “At least, that’s not the theory we’re working on. See, there was this line stretched across the reservoir over the railroad track, up by the top of the water, and that’s where John was, so the theory is, he held on to that line and followed it to the shore on one side or the other, and got out before Andy and Doug could catch up with him. So now Andy and Doug are going in along the railroad line from the road on one side, and Tiny and Tom are going in from the other side. And I come back to tell you.”