“Absolutely,” Tom said. “I’m not comin all the way out here, Al, for the fresh air. And not to look up Myra either.”

“How old would she be now?” Dortmunder asked.

“She wouldn’t,” Tom told him. “Broads like Myra don’t live long.”

Not for the first time, Dortmunder found himself wondering just what in hell he was doing in association with Tom Jimson in any way at all. Back in prison there hadn’t been any choice in the matter—cell assignments hadn’t become negotiable until he’d been in there considerably longer—but in any case, back there he always had the comfort of knowing there was armed assistance constantly within shouting range.

What do I care about the people in that valley? Dortmunder asked himself, as the little white LEM progressed toward the dead Cronley. If I went there, walked around one of those Dudsons, people look out their windows, they see me, they’d call the cops. Saving that valley from Tom Jimson isn’t my obligation, dammit. I got into this thing because he startled me, that’s all, and it didn’t seem like it was gonna be that hard, take that long, have so many problems. So now I’m in it, and here I am in Oklahoma, like some kind of pioneer or something, driving this beer keg with wheels. Makes no sense at all.

“There it is,” Tom said, breaking a long and uncharacteristic silence.

Dortmunder slowed the vehicle almost to a dead stop so he could risk looking up and out. They’d just come over a low humpback ridge, and out ahead of them now was more greenery than Dortmunder had seen since the salad on the plane. This greenery, though, was mostly trees, short squat trees, deeply green, a thin platoon of them stretching to left and right. Since they’d spent most of the afternoon crossing this miserable imitation road, the trees’ shadows spread long pointing fingers out to the right, as though suggesting visitors would be advised to take a detour. Sticking up above this linear forest were a couple of buildings and a church steeple.

Dortmunder said, “Trees on account of a river there, huh?”

“Al, you’re a regular woodsman,” Tom said.

“And that’s your town, huh?”

“That’s my stash,” Tom said. “The tall building there, that’s the hotel.”

“Tall building,” said Dortmunder.

“You can laugh, Al,” Tom said, though Dortmunder had done no such thing. “But from Myra’s room up there on the top floor, you could see for miles.”

“See what for miles?”

Tom did his chuckle. “Well, us, for instance,” he said.

THIRTY-SIX

Guffey watched the little white car roll slowly toward town. The binoculars made it seem closer than it was, but flattened everything out. The scope on the 30–03 was better; more definition. He could just about put a round through the windshield into either one of those bobbing heads from here, at this range. If he wanted to. Not that there was any particular reason to shoot those two strangers down like dirty dogs; not yet, anyway. Not until they got close enough, not until he could see who they were.

And what if it was—Guffey’s leathery old hands trembled on the stock of the rifle—what if one of them was him?

Tim Jepson. At long long last.

“The fella that ruint my life,” Guffey whispered through dry cracked lips. He lowered the rifle and his rheumy old eyes watched unaided as the small white car rocked and bobbed slowly this way. Tim Jepson.

Except it wouldn’t be, of course. It never had been yet, no matter how long he waited, no matter how much he cultivated his patience. In twenty-six years, it had never once been Tim Jepson coming back to Cronley, coming back to pick up his fourteen thousand dollars.

But it would be! Someday! Someday it would be! But never today.

At first, in the early sixties, the occasional visitor—trespasser? invader? transient? — to the recently dead town of Cronley had been mostly just another looter hoping to find plumbing fixtures or brass doorknobs the previous looters had missed. Those had been tough, gritty, nasty city people in greasy green work clothes, driving slat-sided trucks and smoking cigars. They reminded Guffey of the toughest element back in prison, and so he kept out of their way, moving his few possessions with him, and not one of them had ever even known Cronley still possessed one last resident.

In the latter sixties, a different kind of visitor started to arrive: young dropouts in bright-colored clothing and headbands, like goofy Indians. They came in beat-up Volkswagen buses, they lit a lot of campfires, they played mopey music on portable phonographs, and they planted corn and tomatoes and marijuana. Only the marijuana came up, and soon each hopeful band decided to drop back in; Guffey would watch their buses jounce away over the ridge.

Very few of the dropouts became aware of the old hermit of Cronley, though a few of the girls did catch him peeping at them while they skinny-dipped in the river. Most of the girls got scared and mad, and told their boys, and Guffey would have to go off again and hide in the woods for a few days until they stopped looking for him; but one girl had beckoned with a crooked little finger and a crooked little grin, and my goodness! That was Guffey’s only sexual experience since before he’d gone to prison—over forty years now, it must be—but it was a humdinger. Well worth remembering. Kept a fella going when the nights got cold.

The hippies and yippies and trippies and flippies thinned out in the early seventies, and for a few years Guffey had Cronley absolutely to himself. Then, starting in the late seventies, the professors began to show up: archaeologists, anthropologists, ethnologists, social historians. Men and women alike, they wore khaki trousers and heavy boots and lots of clothing with labels that read L. L. BEAN. (Guffey stole some of their gear to replenish his own worn-out stuff.)

Eventually, though, grant money must have veered off in some other direction. It had been almost ten years now since Guffey had seen a safari-hatted, heavy-booted professor out around these parts. More recently there’d been a little spate of carpenters and architects and interior decorators looking for wood; barn wood, staircase newels, old and interesting panels. They encouraged the further deterioration of Cronley pretty well, but that was a short-lived fad, over and done with while the town was still moderately full of good wood. Guffey guessed it must be three, maybe even four years since another human being had ventured out this way.

And now this little white car. With his natural sense of caution, as the car approached the outskirts of town Guffey gathered up his few belongings, left his room on the top floor of the Cronley Hotel, and made his way down the peeling, scabrous hall to the stairs. The elevator hadn’t worked for years, of course, and in any event Guffey would never ride that elevator again. That or any other elevator, but especially that one. That elevator was where his troubles had begun.

It was him and Eddie Hobbs and Tim Jepson when it started. Jepson was older than him and Eddie. They knew he was a hardcase, and they wanted to be hardcases just like him, and when he invited them to throw in with him on the hijacking, it had just seemed like a lark, kind of. They weren’t going to rob anybody good, after all, but were going to hit up a card shark, a fella that had been taking advantage of the returning GIs. That’s the way Jepson had presented it, and him and Eddie, nineteen and dumb and fresh off the farm, had gone right along with it.

And Jepson had betrayed them. Stuck them in an elevator without any power and took off with the loot. Him and Eddie were frantic in that elevator, in the dark, and things didn’t improve any once the lights came back and the elevator started again to move. When it reached bottom, they knew, when it reached bottom and the door slid open, all hell would break loose.