“Dortmunder,” Tiny said, ponderously thoughtful, “is what you call your focal point.”
With his patented bloodless lipless cackle, Tom said, “Pity he tossed in his hand just before the payout.”
Everybody looked uncomfortable. May said, “I’m here to see to John’s interests.”
“Oh?” Tom asked mildly. “Does Al still have interests?”
Murch’s Mom gave him a beady look. “I don’t see what it matters to you,” she said. “It doesn’t come out of your half. You’re just a troublemaker for the fun of it, aren’t you?”
“As long as everybody’s happy,” Tom told her, “I’m happy.”
“The question is,” May insisted, “when are you going to do it, and how are you going to do it?”
“May,” Kelp said, “I’ve touched that box now, with this hand.” He showed it to her, palm out. “From here on, it’s so easy.”
“Fine,” May said. “Tell me about it.”
Kelp turned to Doug. “Explain it to her, okay?”
“Well,” Doug said. “We go out and tie the rope to the rope, and Tiny winches it in.”
Tiny said, “Don’t you have to do something to get the box lighter, so it’ll lift up over the tree stumps?”
“Oh, right,” Doug said. “I forgot that part.”
“And when,” May said. “And what kind of boat. And what are the details?”
“That’s what we need John for!” Kelp exclaimed, punching the table in his irritation.
“We don’t have John,” May pointed out. “So we’ll have to work out the details ourselves. And the first detail is, when do you want to do it?”
“As soon as possible,” Stan answered. Turning to Tiny, he explained, “I hate to say this, but I think we’re better off in the rain. As long as we get ourselves ready for it.”
“And the boat doesn’t sink,” Tiny said.
“Well, a new boat,” Doug said. “That’s gonna be expensive.”
Everybody looked at Tom, who gazed around mildly (for him) and said, “No.”
“Tom,” Kelp said, “we need a certain amount of—”
“No more dough from me,” Tom said. He sounded serious about it. To Doug he said, “Who’m I buying all this equipment from? You. So donate the stuff.”
“Well, not the boat,” Doug told him.
“Steal the fucking boat,” Tom advised.
Doug floundered a bit at that, but Stan rescued him, saying, “Okay, Doug, never mind, we’ll work out the boat.”
“Okay,” Doug said, but he was getting those little white spots on his cheeks again, like when he’d been in shock.
Stan turned to May. “We’ll work it all out, May. We’re just not used to doing this, that’s all.”
May surveyed the table. “I’ll make fresh coffee,” she decided, and went away to the kitchen. She could hear them bickering in there the whole time she was away.
SIXTY-THREE
Dortmunder did not sleep like a baby, home in his own bed at last. He slept like a grown-up who’d been through a lot. He slept leadenly, at times noisily, mouth open, limbs sprawled any which way, bedclothes tangled around ankles. He had good dreams (sunlight, money, good-looking cars, and fast women) and bad dreams (water), and periods of sleep so heavy an alligator would have envied him.
It was during a somewhat shallower stretch that Dortmunder was slightly disturbed by the scratchings and plinkings of someone picking the lock on the apartment door, opening it, creeping in (these old floors creak, no matter what you do) and closing the door with that telltale little snick. Dortmunder almost came all the way to the surface of consciousness at that instant, but instead, his brain decided the noises were just Tom returning from one of his late-night filling-the-pockets forays, and so the tiny sounds from the hallway were converted in his dream factory into the shushings and plinkings of wavelets, and in that dream Tom was a giant fish with teeth, from whom Dortmunder swam and swam and swam, never quite escaping.
Normally, the interloper would have had trouble finding his way around the dark and almost windowless apartment, but Dortmunder’s recent underwater experiences had led him to leave a light burning in the bathroom, by which illumination it was possible for the interloper to make his way all through the place, to reassure himself that the sleeping Dortmunder was the only current resident, and then to go on and make himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the kitchen. (The clinking of knife inside peanut butter jar became, in Dortmunder’s dreams, the oars in the oarlocks of Charon’s boat.)
The interloper was quiet for a long time after ingesting his sandwich and one of Dortmunder’s beers; in fact, he napped a little, at the kitchen table. But then, along around sunup, he moved into the bedroom and threw all Dortmunder’s clothing onto the floor from the chair beside the door so he could sit there, just beyond the foot of the bed, and watch Dortmunder sleep.
The faint metallic click as the interloper cocked his rifle caused Dortmunder to frown in his sleep and make disgusting smacking sounds with his mouth, and to dream briefly of being deep underwater and having his air tank suddenly fall off his back and separate from the mouthpiece hose with a faint metallic click just before his mouth and stomach and brain filled with water; but then that dream floated away and he dreamed instead about playing poker with some long-ago cellmates in the good old days, and being dealt a royal flush—in spades—which caused him to settle back down in contentment, deeper and deeper into sleep, so that it was almost two hours later when he finally opened his eyes and rubbed his nose and did that sound with his mouth and sat up and stretched and looked at the rifle aimed at his eye.
“GL!” Dortmunder cried, swallowing his tongue.
Rifle. Gnarled old hands holding the rifle. Wrinkly old eye staring down the rifle’s sights. The last resident of Cronley, Oklahoma, seated in a chair in Dortmunder’s bedroom.
“Now, Mr. Department of Recovery,” said the hermit, “you can just tell me where Tim Jepson is. And this time, ain’t nobody behind me with no bottle.”
SIXTY-FOUR
No bottle…
When dawn’s sharp stiletto poked its orange tip into Guffey’s eye through the windowless opening in the Hotel Cronley’s bar’s front wall, he awakened to a splitting headache and a conundrum. Either the infrastructure man’s partner had hit him on the head with three bottles, which seemed excessive, or something funny was going on.
Three bottles. All broken and smashed on the bar floor, all with their corks still jammed tight in their cracked-off necks. And all absolutely stinking. They were dry inside, so it wasn’t merely that the wine had gone bad after all these years; and in any event, the stench seemed to come more from the crusted gunk on the bottles’ outside.
Plumbing. The second invader had gone to the basement to look at the plumbing. So did Guffey, reeling a bit from the aftereffects of the blow on the head, and when he found the dismantled trap he knew. By God, it was Tim Jepson after all! Come back for his fourteen thousand dollars, just as Mitch Lynch had said he would. Fourteen thousand dollars hidden all these years in those wine bottles in this dreadful muck river; wasn’t that just like Jepson?
In my hands, Guffey thought inaccurately, and I let him get away. But perhaps all hope was not yet lost. There was still one slender thread in Guffey’s hand: the license plate of that little white automobile. Could he follow that thread? He could but try.