“Not entirely,” Andy said, with a grin and a shrug. “Unexpected little problems.”

“Turbidity,” John said, as though it were the filthiest word he knew. And maybe it was.

“Oh, turbidity,” Doug said, nodding, seeing the problem now, saying, “I’m a saltwater man, deep-water man, so I don’t run into that too much. But in a reservoir, sure, I suppose you would. Screwed things up, huh?”

“You sum up good,” John told him.

“If you came to me for advice,” Doug said, “I’m sorry, but I’m the wrong guy. Like I say, turbidi—”

“We already got advice,” Andy told him. “From a famous writer that’s an expert on these things. You know the big ship called the Normandie?”

“That’s not the point,” John interrupted. “The point is, we think we know how to do it right this time—”

“Go in from above,” Doug suggested. “I know that much. Take a boat out—”

“Can’t,” John said. “But we still got an idea. What we don’t got is air.”

“Ah,” Doug said. “I get it.”

“We figure,” Andy said, “you could fill our tanks just like you did last time.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Doug said, wondering how much extra he could charge.

Andy told him, “We’ll pay double, for two tanks.”

“You know,” Doug said slowly, thinking vaguely there might be something extra in this for him somewhere, “what you probably need is a pro along, somebody to deal with the problems right there, when they happen.”

“No, we don’t,” John said.

“Thanks a lot, Doug,” Andy said, grinning at him and shaking his head. “I appreciate the thought behind the offer. But we think we got it pretty well doped out this time.”

“We hope,” John said.

“We’re pretty confident,” Andy reminded his partner, and turned back to Doug to say, “So all we need is air.”

“Then that’s what you’ll get,” Doug said, but as he led the way out of the shop and around to the compressor under its shiny blue tarp on the dock behind the shack, he kept thinking, There’s got to be something in this for me. Something. For me.

FORTY-THREE

The thing is, the railroad doesn’t have handcars anymore. Those terrific old handcars with the seesaw type of double handle so one guy would push down while the other guy facing him pulled up, and then vice versa, and the handcar would go zipping along the track, that old kind of handcar that guys like Buster Keaton used to travel on, they don’t have them anymore. All the good things are gone: wood Monopoly houses, Red Ryder, handcars.

Which is why the big sixteen-wheeler that Stan Murch airbraked to a coughing stop at the railway crossing on the old road west of Vilburgtown Reservoir at one A.M. on that cloudless but moonless night did not contain a handcar. What it contained instead, in addition to diving gear and a winch and other equipment, was a weird hybrid vehicle that had mostly been, before the surgical procedures began, a 1976 American Motors Hornet. A green Hornet, in fact; so not everything is gone.

Still a two-door small car with a minimal backseat and small separate trunk (not a hatchback), this Hornet was now without engine, transmission, radiator, radio, hood, hubcaps, bumpers, head- and taillights, spare tire, windshield wipers, dashboard and roof. It still contained its steering mechanism (not power steering), brakes (ditto), seats, windshield, windows and 1981 New York State inspection sticker. It also had new axles front and back, and new wheels, the very old tires of which had been reduced to half pressure, which made it slump lower than normally to the ground, as though its transfiguration had reduced it to gloom.

Also looking reduced to gloom was Dortmunder, who had ridden along in the truck cab with Stan, allegedly to give him directions, since this was Stan’s first trip up here to the north country, but actually just to rest and be by himself and brood about the fact that he was going underwater again; Stan, in any case, followed the beige Cadillac driven by Kelp and containing Tom and Tiny.

“Ppphhhrr-AHG!” said the airbrakes, and, “We’re here,” said Stan.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Dortmunder said.

“Which side do I want?”

Dortmunder looked around. Everything was different at night. “The left,” he decided.

“Good,” Stan said, “that’ll be easier. I’ll just back it up short of that guard rail, right?”

“That’s it,” Dortmunder said, and sighed, and climbed down out of the cab. This was one time when planning the job was a lot better than actually going out and doing it. A lot better. What haven’t I thought of? Dortmunder asked himself. Sssshhhhh, he answered.

Kelp had pulled into the side of the road beyond the crossing, and now he and the other two walked back to join Dortmunder, Kelp saying, “Nice and smooth, huh?”

“If traffic came along right now, it could really screw us up,” Dortmunder said hopefully.

“Nah,” Kelp told him. “Don’t worry, John. There’s no traffic along here this late.”

“That’s good,” Dortmunder said hopelessly.

“This hour of night, all these people around here are in bed,” Kelp said.

“Uh-huh,” Dortmunder said, thinking about his own bed.

Stan, backing and filling, had turned the big semi now, putting it crossways on the empty road, its rear bumper two feet from the rusty white metal lower crosspiece of the barrier. Leaning out his window, Stan called, “Let’s hurry it up, guys. Somebody comes along here, he could broadside me.”

“Nobody will come along,” Dortmunder said bitterly.

“The bars up here even close at midnight,” Kelp explained.

Everybody but Stan went to the back of the semi, where Tiny opened the big rear doors, and then he and Kelp climbed up inside while Dortmunder and Tom went around to the other side of the barrier, Tom shining his flashlight here and there, Dortmunder waiting for the planks to come out.

This part was going to be kind of tricky, and yet simple. The upper crosspiece of the barrier was about ten inches higher than a standard loading dock, and so the same height above the floor of the semi. They had a vehicle to pull out of the truck and over that barrier, and so a normal ramp wouldn’t do the job. They’d had to invent.

Tiny and Kelp pushed out the first plank, a long and heavy two-by-six. When it thunked into the barrier, Dortmunder called, “Hold it,” and he and Tom lifted it up to the top of the barrier and helped slide it on out. It was very heavy.

“Here comes the tricky part,” Kelp called from inside the truck.

“Right, right,” Dortmunder said. “Just let it come down.”

“It isn’t let,” came Tiny’s voice from inside the truck. “It’s coming down.”

And it did. Overbalanced, the plank abruptly seesawed on the fulcrum of the metal barrier and, as Dortmunder and Tom scampered out of its way, the end of the thing crashed down to the ground in the general vicinity of the railway tracks. The other end of it, still just within the truck opening and angled up to about the height of Kelp’s head in there, was now shown to be hinged to another two-by-six plank slanted down into the dark interior.

“You guys ready?” Kelp called.

“Sure, sure, just a minute,” Dortmunder told him, and said to Tom, “Shine the light around, will ya? Where’s the end of the board?”

“Here it is,” Tom said, standing over it, pointing the light down.

Dortmunder joined him, and the two of them moved the end of the heavy plank farther along the trackbed, lifting it, swinging it, dropping it, repeating the cycle until Dortmunder noticed he was doing most of the work, since he was using two hands and Tom only one. “Use both hands, Tom,” he said.

“I gotta hold the flashlight.”

“Hold it in your mouth.”

“No way, Al.”

Tiny called from the truck, “What’s the holdup?”

“Give me the flashlight,” Dortmunder said.

Reluctantly, Tom handed it over, and Dortmunder stuck the other end of it in his mouth, clamping it with his teeth, aiming it by moving his head. “Rurr,” he explained. “Gar rurr gar-gar.”