In the meantime, here he was in North Dudson, pulling to a stop in the parking lot behind the library, ready to do his Vilburgtown Reservoir research. Climbing out of the shiny black pickup in the warm June sunlight, he made a handsome picture, a fine complement to the day. With his tall and well-built frame, in his casual khaki slacks, soft blue polo shirt, and aviator-style sunglasses, with his weathered tan and carelessly wavy dark blond hair, the only thing wrong with the picture was that he didn’t look at all like somebody who would be going to the library, not on such a beautiful day. Nevertheless, that’s where he headed, bounding up the steps with athletic grace, pushing the sunglasses up into the hair on top of his head as he entered the cool dim interior.
The girl at the counter was pretty enough, though not as pretty as he, which he knew without gloating about it; his good looks were simply a fact of nature, a part of who he was. (Pretty men feel differently about their beauty from pretty women, are less proud of it and protective toward it and prepared to display it. Their attitude toward their looks is rather like the attitude of the old rich toward their money: they’re pleased to have it but consider mentioning it vulgar, even in their thoughts.)
Doug approached the pretty-enough girl, smiling a winning smile, and said, “Hi.”
“Hi,” she answered. As women tended to do, she perked up in his presence. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m interested in two things,” he told her, then grinned at himself and shook his head and said, “Let me rephrase that. Right now, there’s two things I’m interested in.”
“Two library things,” she amplified, flirting with him just slightly.
“That’s the key,” he agreed. “I’m interested in your local reservoir—”
“Vilburgtown.”
“Right. And I’m interested in your local paper. Do you have microfilm?”
“Well, that depends how far back you want to go,” she told him. “Before about 1920, we really don’t have much at all.”
“No, that’s fine.” He grinned, showing his white teeth. “I want to read about the building of the dam to begin with, so I need to find out from you how long ago that was.”
“Eighteen years,” she said promptly. “I know because I was in second grade. It was a big deal around here.”
“Eighteen years ago?” He pantomimed thinking hard. “I would have been in fourth grade,” he decided. “So I’ve got two years seniority on you.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and gave him a mock salute.
“At ease,” he told her, and said, “I’ll want the local paper for the year the dam was built, and for about ten years before that.”
She gave him a suddenly watchful look, saying, “That’s a funny thing to ask for.”
The curiosity of small-town librarians knew no limits. Doug had long since had to come up with a cover story for his interest in local histories prior to the construction of dams. “I’m with the Environment Protection Alliance,” he explained. “You probably heard of us?”
“Nnnooooo.” She looked doubtful.
“We’re small, but we’re growing,” Doug assured her with his broadest grin. “A volunteer group, concerned with the environment.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What we’re trying to do,” Doug went on, embroidering the bushwah with a little eye sparkle and tooth gleam, “is help communities avoid getting taken over for things like reservoirs. So I look for local factors that might be a common denominator before the town was lost. Employment, local elections, all of that.”
Doug’s story, if considered with a cold clear eye, made no sense at all, but where is there a cold clear eye in this old world? The present girl, like the victims before her, distracted by his good looks and winning manner and open honest smile, simply heard the buzzwords—environment, volunteer, common denominator, communities, employment—and nodded, returning his smile, saying, “Well, I wish you luck. It was a real trauma around here when all those towns got taken over.”
“I’m sure it was,” Doug agreed. “That’s what we’re trying to help prevent in the future.”
“My mom worked in the library in Putkin’s Corners,” she went on. “That’s the biggest town that got evacuated. And my grandfather ran the funeral parlor there.”
This was more information than Doug absolutely had to possess for his purposes. “Then you know what I mean,” he said, turning down the voltage a bit on his smile.
“I sure do.”
“So, I guess I better get started. Then.”
“Oh!” Seeming to come awake, the girl said, “Of course.” Pointing across the room, she said, “That’s the microfilm viewer over there. I’m sorry it isn’t a very modern one, not like our VDT here.”
He drew a blank: “VDT?”
“Video display terminal,” she explained, and gestured at a small neat computer terminal on her side of the counter. Its dull black screen was blank. “It’s really a wonderful help to us all,” she said. “But I’m afraid we don’t have a modern microfilm viewer yet. You’ll have to crank that one.”
“I took my vitamins today,” he assured her, and grinned as he made a muscle.
She pretended not to look at his arm. “I’ll bring you the microfilm,” she said, and turned away.
Doug walked across the airy quiet room to the old table beating the old microfilm viewer. He was almost the only customer in here this morning; two or three old people read old magazines, and at one reading table sat a lone state trooper bent in agonized intense study over some thick book dense with print.
Doug faltered a second when he saw the uniform, then moved on, realizing the trooper was too deeply involved in his book to care about other patrons of the library. Besides, what did Doug have to fear from state troopers? At this stage of the game, nothing.
He sat in front of the viewer, and a couple of minutes later the girl brought him four rolls of microfilm, saying, “This is the year they built the dam, and these are the three years before. When you finish those, bring them to the desk and I’ll get you some more.”
“Thanks a lot.” Doug leaned toward her, lowering his voice to say, “Listen. Can I ask a question?”
“About the library?”
“Kind of. What’s the cop doing?”
She turned her head, as though not having noticed the state trooper before, then gave an indulgent laugh as she said, “Oh, Jimmy. He’s studying for his civil-service exam.” Bending toward Doug—a nice fresh faint aroma came from her—she lowered her own voice to say, “He’s not very good at studying. It drives him crazy.”
“That’s the way he looks, all right.” Then Doug grinned broadly and stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Doug, by the way. Doug Berry.”
Her hand in his was small and gentle, but disconcertingly bony. “Myrtle,” she told him, and then seemed to hesitate or stumble or something for just a second before she said, “Myrtle Street.”
“Myrtle’s a nice name,” he told her, holding on to her hand, getting used to it. “You don’t run into too many Myrtles anymore.”
“I think it’s old-fashioned,” she said, gently disengaging her hand from his. “But I guess I’m stuck with it. Well, I shouldn’t keep you from your research.” She gestured to the microfilm viewer, smiled, and went away to her counter.
Doug watched her go, pleased by her, then did get to his research. Like most small-town papers, this one didn’t have a useful master index, so it was simply the tedious job of going back through the first pages, week after week; the kind of robbery he had in mind would definitely have made the front page, probably more than once.
Nothing in the first four rolls. Nothing in the first of the second batch of rolls. But then, five years before the dam was built, there it was: a major armored car robbery out on the Thruway near town. Seven hundred thousand dollars stolen! Two guards killed. Police had leads. In later weeks, gang members were found dead. The mastermind and the money had both disappeared. Police had leads. Then the story faded away. Police had no more leads. The mastermind had the money.