“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.
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?”