Authors: Donald Westlake
“That’s what he calls me,” Doug agreed. “Everybody else calls me Doug.”
They looked at each other and came to some sort of decision. Nodding briskly, Andy said, “Got it. Okay, Doug, here’s the story. John and me, we got to go into a body of water, like a lake —”
“Freshwater, you mean,” Doug suggested.
“Yeah,” Andy said. “Down at the bottom of this lake, there’s a box we want. A big box. So we got to get to it, tie a rope on, pull it out.”
John said, “We thought it should be kind of simple. But then we went to a store to buy the stuff, and it turns out there’s this secret society or something, nobody gets to go underwater unless they know the password.”
“We have no fatalities in the sport in the United States,” Doug told him, “and that’s why. Safety first.”
“I believe in safety first,” John said. “I don’t want to go anywhere that it
isn’t
safety first. So maybe this is okay after all. We can’t pull the job without a pro.”
“Not if it’s underwater,” Doug agreed.
“But,” John said, “we need a very particular special pro. Not just any pro.”
“Not the pro in just any dive shop you see around,” Andy said, expanding on the idea.
Here comes the illegality, Doug thought. Entrapment. Temptation. They’re probably both wired. Be very careful about
everything
you say. “Mm,” he said.
“So we asked around,” John went on, “among people we know, particular people we know …”
“And I happened to know Mikey,” Andy said. “We’ve been in trade together a couple times. And he said you were exactly the guy we were looking for.”
“So here we are,” John said.
“Mm,” Doug said.
They all looked at one another for a minute. Finally, Andy said, “Don’t you wanna know what we want?”
“I thought you were going to tell me,” Doug said, trying not to sound too eager to commit anything illegal.
Andy and John looked at each other again, and then John nodded and said, “Okay. Here’s what we want. We want the expertise and the equipment so we can go down into this res — this lake and get this box. That’s what we want.”
Doug said, “Mm.”
Again they all stood around gaping at one another, and this time Andy said, “You want to do it?”
Doug had to ask the question somehow, without suggesting he was open to criminal considerations. Tone flat, he said, “What’s illegal about it?”
They looked surprised. “Illegal?” John said. “Unless you’re gonna sell us stuff you got from Mikey, I don’t know
what’s
illegal about what we want here.”
“You’re the pro, that’s all,” Andy said.
Doug shook his head, bewildered, but still afraid to expose himself to risk. “Then why me?” he asked. “I mean, it’s not that I’m — that I do illegal things or anything. I’m not suggesting here that I’m open to uh, um, criminal enterprises or anything, but why did you need a
special
pro and all that?”
They stared at him, as bewildered as he was. John said, “Criminal
enterprises?
”
But then Andy laughed and clapped his hands together and said, “John, he’s afraid we’re wired!”
John looked surprised, then offended. “Wired? You mean like FBI men? Do we look like FBI men?”
“Well, you wouldn’t, would you?” Doug said. “Not that it matters, I’m not proposing any, uh …”
“Criminal enterprise,” John suggested.
Andy said, “Look, Doug, somebody’s gotta start by trusting somebody, so I’m gonna start by trusting you. You got an honest face. See, there’s a fella we know, a long time ago he went to jail, and he just got out now, and it turns out before he went inside he buried some money —”
“Criminal enterprise money,” John interpolated.
“Right,” Andy said. “Your basic ill–gotten gains is what we’re talking about here. And now he’s out and he wants these gains, and it turns out there’s a reservoir there now.”
Doug couldn’t help himself; he laughed. He said, “A reservoir? He buried the money and now it’s
underwater?
”
“That’s why we’re here,” Andy told him. “And to tell you the truth, Doug, there
is
gonna be some criminal enterprise in all this. For instance, when we go over the fence around the reservoir, that’s already breaking a law. Trespassing or something. And when we go into the reservoir, actually into the water, there’s another law laying dead on the ground.”
“And,” John said, “when we get the box with the money in it, we won’t give it back to the bank, so there we go again. Who we’ll give it to is the guy that buried it, and he’ll give us some for helping out, and we’ll give
you
some for helping out.”
“How much?” Doug couldn’t help from asking.
“A thousand dollars,” John said, “over your regular fees and expenses and the cost of the stuff we use.”
“Doug,” Andy said, sounding very sincere and confidential, “in all honesty and truth, Doug, I never in my life even
thought
about being an FBI man.”
Doug wanted to believe these two — and God knows he could use a thousand dollars — but a lot of Congressmen had once wanted to believe a couple of fellas like this were Arab sheiks. He said, “If we’re gonna start familiarizing ourselves with the equipment and all, you two will have to take your coats and, uh, shirts off, you know. Strip to the waist.”
Andy, grinning, said to John, “He still thinks we’re wired.”
“No, no,” Doug said, “it’s just to, uh, fit everything, that’s all.”
John shook his head, with a faint look of disgust, and took his coat off, and Andy followed suit. With no hesitation at all, they both stripped down, revealing physiques no one in history could have been proud of. But no microphones, no tape recorders, no
wires.
Spreading his arms, pirouetting slowly, grinning at Doug, Andy said, “Okay, Doug?”
“Okay,” Doug said, and covered his confusion with a deep layer of professional manner. “Have either of you ever breathed through a mouthpiece before?”
“You could keep it warmer in here,” John said.
“A mouthpiece?” Andy asked. “I’ve
talked
to one or two, but I’ve never breathed through one, no.”
“Okay,” Doug said, turning to his well–stocked shelves. “We’ll start now.”
Dortmunder removed the mouthpiece from his mouth; not to accede to May’s request, but to make it possible to answer her. “I’m supposed to get used to breathing through it,” he said, and put it back in his mouth. Then he immediately forgot and breathed through his nose, as usual; underwater, he would have drowned half a dozen times by now.
Fortunately, he wasn’t underwater. He was in the living room with May, watching the seven o’clock news (which is to say, watching the headache and laxative commercials) and waiting for Tom Jimson to come back from wherever he was when he wasn’t here. He’d been waiting for Tom since he’d come back from Long Island and Doug Berry and the wonderful world of underwater late this afternoon.
May said, “John, you
aren’t
breathing through it.”
“Mm!” he said, startled, and grasped his nose between thumb and forefinger of his right hand, to
force
himself to do it right. Breathe through the mouth, doggone it. The mouth gets dry almost immediately, but that’s all right. It’s better than the lungs getting wet.
So Dortmunder went on sitting there, on the sofa, next to the silently disapproving May, breathing through his mouth and watching the news over the knuckles of the hand holding his nose. That was his position when Tom noiselessly appeared in the doorway just as the news anchorman was smiling his last. (Though what he had to smile about, considering everything he’d had to report to the world in the last half hour, was hard to figure out.) But there, all at once, was Tom Jimson in the doorway, raising an eyebrow, looking at Dortmunder and saying, “Something smell bad, Al?”
“Mm!” Dortmunder said again, and took the mouthpiece out of his mouth and sneezed. Then he said, “This is the mouthpiece for going underwater.”
“Not very
far
underwater,” Tom suggested, giving the mouthpiece a critical look.
“This is just one part of it,” Dortmunder explained. “In fact, Tom, I’ve gotta talk to you about that. It’s time to come up with some cash.”
Tom’s face, never exactly what you’d call mobile, stiffened up so much he now looked like a badly reproduced photo of himself. From somewhere deep within the photo came the hollow word, “Cash?”
“Come on, Tom,” Dortmunder said. “We agreed on this. You’ll dip into your other little stashes to finance this thing.”
The photo crumpled a bit. “How much cash?”
“We figure seven to eight grand.”
Animation of a sort returned to Tom’s face. That is, his eyebrows climbed up over his forehead as though trying to escape into his hair. “
Dollars?
” he asked. “Why so much?”
“I told you how we need a pro,” Dortmunder reminded him.
Coming farther into the room, glancing briefly at the television set on which the news had now been followed by a comedy series about a bunch of very healthy and extremely witty teens who all hung out at the same sweet shop, Tom said, “Yeah, I remember. For air. You can’t get air without a pro. But I never hearda air costing seven, eight grand before.”
Getting to her feet, May said, “Nobody’s watching TV.” She sounded faintly annoyed by the fact. Crossing to switch off the set, she said, “Anybody want a beer?”
“I think I’m gonna need one,” Tom said, and he crossed to take May’s seat as she left for the kitchen. His eyebrows still well up on his forehead, he said, “Tell me about this rich air, Al.”
“To begin with,” Dortmunder told him, “we had to find the pro. One we could deal with. So the guy that found the right guy, some fella that Andy knows, he wanted a finder’s fee. Five hundred bucks.”
“To find the pro,” Tom said.
“That’s very cheap, Tom,” Dortmunder assured him. “You got a better way to find the exact right guy we need?”
Tom shook his head, ignoring the question more than agreeing with it. He said, “So this is the exact right guy, is it?”
“Yeah, it is. And he isn’t in it for a piece, just a flat payment in front. We’re getting him for a grand, and that’s
very
cheap.”
“If you say so, Al,” Tom said. “Inflation, you know? I still can’t believe the prices of things. When I went inside twenty–three years ago, you know how much a steak cost?”
“Tom, I don’t even care,” Dortmunder said, and May came in with two cans of beer. Looking at them, Dortmunder said, “May? Aren’t you having any?”
“Mine’s in the kitchen,” May said. “You two talk business.” And, with a blank smile at them both, she went away to the kitchen again, which was hers once more now that Dortmunder had removed all his books and papers and pencils and pens and pictures from it, stowing the whole mountain of stuff in the bottom dresser drawer in the bedroom.
Tom swallowed beer and said, “So we’re up to fifteen hundred.”
“The rest is equipment and stuff,” Dortmunder told him. “And training.”
Tom frowned at that. “Training?”
“You don’t just go underwater, Tom,” Dortmunder explained.
“I don’t go underwater at all,” Tom said. “That’s up to you and your pal Andy, if that’s what you wanna do.”
“That’s what we want to do,” Dortmunder agreed, not letting a single doubt peek through. “And to do it right,” he went on, “we got to train and learn how it’s done. So we’ll take lessons from this guy, and that’s why I’m practicing with this mouthpiece here, learning to breathe through my mouth. So that costs. And then there’s the air and the tanks and what we wear and the underwater flashlights and all the rope we’re gonna need and lots of other stuff, and it all comes out to seven or eight grand.”
“Expensive,” Tom commented, and drank more beer.
“It’s gotta be expensive,” Dortmunder told him. “This isn’t a place you just walk into, you know.”
Tom said, “What about the little fella with the computer? Any thought outta him?”
“Wally?” Dortmunder made no effort to keep victor’s scorn out of his voice. “He had a lot of great ideas,” he said. “Spaceships. Giant magnets. Giant lasers. Even more expensive than me, Tom.” Shrugging, Dortmunder said, “No matter how we do this, it isn’t gonna be cheap.”
“Oh, I dunno,” Tom said. “Dynamite and life are cheap.”
“We agreed, Tom,” Dortmunder reminded him. “We do it my way first. And we finance from your stash.”
Tom slowly shook his head. “Those lawyers really cleaned me out, Al. I don’t have that much left.”
Dortmunder spread his hands. Tom sat there, brooding, holding his beer, wrestling with the problem. There was nothing more for Dortmunder to say to him — Tom would dope it all out for himself or not — so he put the mouthpiece back in and practiced breathing through his mouth without holding his nose. Underwater, of course, he’d have goggles on that would make a tight seal all around his eyes and nose, so he wouldn’t be able to hold his nostrils shut anyway. He had a practice pair of goggles, in fact, that Doug Berry had loaned him, but he would have felt foolish sitting next to May and wearing goggles to watch television, so they were on the dresser in the bedroom.
“There’s one,” Tom said thoughtfully, “up in the same area.”
“Mlalga,” Dortmunder said, and took the mouthpiece out and said, “Under the reservoir?”
“No no, Al, nearby. One of the towns they didn’t drown. We can go up there tomorrow and get it. Rent another car and drive up.”
“No,” Dortmunder said. “I don’t drive up there again. And no more rentals. I’ll call Andy, he’ll arrange transportation.”