“Cruise control,” Kelp said, with quiet pride. “Everything. You gotta go back in comfort.”

Dortmunder was touched. Not enough to reconsider, but touched. “Thank you, Andy,” he said.

“The truth is,” Kelp said, leaning forward, speaking confidentially, “I think you’re right. That reservoir is out to get you.”

SIXTY-TWO

Well, at least there was a little more room at the dinner table, though no one said that out loud in case of hurting May’s feelings. But it was nice, just the same, to have that extra inch or two for the elbow when bringing a forkful of turkey loaf mouthward.

On the other hand, when it came to discussing future plans, all at once Dortmunder’s absence from the table became less positive and pleasant, though that wasn’t obvious right at first, when Doug raised the subject over coffee, saying, “Well, it’s easy from here on. We’ve touched the box. We know where it is.”

“We’ve got a rope on it,” Kelp added.

Nodding, Doug said, “And the other end of the rope is tied to our monofilament, which nobody’s going to see.”

“Especially in this weather,” Tiny said, and sneezed.

“Another good thing,” Tom added. “This last time, you birds didn’t leave a lot of evidence around to alert the law.”

Wally said, “The computer says there’s a million ways to get it now. It’s so easy.”

Stan said, “Good. So let’s do it and get it over with.”

His Mom said, “I’ll go along with that. I want to get back to where driving’s a contact sport.”

“So we’ll just do it,” Doug said, and shrugged at how easy it was.

“Be glad to get it over with,” Kelp said.

Then there was a little silence, everybody drinking coffee or looking at the wall or drawing little fingertip circles on the tablecloth, nobody quite meeting anybody else’s eye. The light in the crowded little dining room seemed to get brighter, the tablecloth whiter, the walls shinier, the silence deeper and deeper, as though they were turning into an acrylic genre painting of themselves.

Finally, it was May who broke the silence, saying, “How?”

Then everybody was alive and animated again, all looking at her, all suddenly eager to answer the question. “It’s easy, May,” Kelp said. “We just winch it in.”

“We tie the rope to the rope,” Doug explained.

“Naturally,” Tiny added, “we gotta get a new winch.”

“Oh, yeah,” Kelp said, nodding. “And a rope.”

Stan said, “Don’t we need some kind of boat?”

“Not one that sinks in the rain,” Tiny suggested.

Wally asked, “Well, when do we do it? Do you want to wait for the rain to stop?”

“Yes,” Tiny said.

“Well, I don’t know,” Doug said. “Depends on how long that is. You know, the engineers in the dam put a little boat in the water every once in a while, run around the reservoir, take samples and so on, and if they ran over our line they’d cut it. Even if they didn’t foul their propeller, even if they didn’t find it, we’d lose the line.”

Tiny said, “They won’t do one of their jaunts in this weather, count on it.”

“That’s true,” Doug agreed.

May cleared her throat and said, “It seems to me, John would point out right here that the instant the rain stops the people in the dam might go right out in their boat so they can get caught up with their schedule.”

“That’s also true,” Doug agreed.

Wally said, “Miss May, what else would John point out?”

“I don’t know,” May said. “He isn’t here.”

Everybody thought about that. Stan said, “What it is, when John’s around, you don’t mind coming up with ideas, because he’ll tell you if they’re any good or not.”

“Dortmunder,” Tiny said, ponderously thoughtful, “is what you call your focal point.”

With his patented bloodless lipless cackle, Tom said, “Pity he tossed in his hand just before the payout.”

Everybody looked uncomfortable. May said, “I’m here to see to John’s interests.”

“Oh?” Tom asked mildly. “Does Al still have interests?”

Murch’s Mom gave him a beady look. “I don’t see what it matters to you,” she said. “It doesn’t come out of your half. You’re just a troublemaker for the fun of it, aren’t you?”

“As long as everybody’s happy,” Tom told her, “I’m happy.”

“The question is,” May insisted, “when are you going to do it, and how are you going to do it?”

“May,” Kelp said, “I’ve touched that box now, with this hand.” He showed it to her, palm out. “From here on, it’s so easy.”

“Fine,” May said. “Tell me about it.”

Kelp turned to Doug. “Explain it to her, okay?”

“Well,” Doug said. “We go out and tie the rope to the rope, and Tiny winches it in.”

Tiny said, “Don’t you have to do something to get the box lighter, so it’ll lift up over the tree stumps?”

“Oh, right,” Doug said. “I forgot that part.”

“And when,” May said. “And what kind of boat. And what are the details?”

“That’s what we need John for!” Kelp exclaimed, punching the table in his irritation.

“We don’t have John,” May pointed out. “So we’ll have to work out the details ourselves. And the first detail is, when do you want to do it?”

“As soon as possible,” Stan answered. Turning to Tiny, he explained, “I hate to say this, but I think we’re better off in the rain. As long as we get ourselves ready for it.”

“And the boat doesn’t sink,” Tiny said.

“Well, a new boat,” Doug said. “That’s gonna be expensive.”

Everybody looked at Tom, who gazed around mildly (for him) and said, “No.”

“Tom,” Kelp said, “we need a certain amount of—”

“No more dough from me,” Tom said. He sounded serious about it. To Doug he said, “Who’m I buying all this equipment from? You. So donate the stuff.”

“Well, not the boat,” Doug told him.

“Steal the fucking boat,” Tom advised.

Doug floundered a bit at that, but Stan rescued him, saying, “Okay, Doug, never mind, we’ll work out the boat.”

“Okay,” Doug said, but he was getting those little white spots on his cheeks again, like when he’d been in shock.

Stan turned to May. “We’ll work it all out, May. We’re just not used to doing this, that’s all.”

May surveyed the table. “I’ll make fresh coffee,” she decided, and went away to the kitchen. She could hear them bickering in there the whole time she was away.

SIXTY-THREE

Dortmunder did not sleep like a baby, home in his own bed at last. He slept like a grown-up who’d been through a lot. He slept leadenly, at times noisily, mouth open, limbs sprawled any which way, bedclothes tangled around ankles. He had good dreams (sunlight, money, good-looking cars, and fast women) and bad dreams (water), and periods of sleep so heavy an alligator would have envied him.

It was during a somewhat shallower stretch that Dortmunder was slightly disturbed by the scratchings and plinkings of someone picking the lock on the apartment door, opening it, creeping in (these old floors creak, no matter what you do) and closing the door with that telltale little snick. Dortmunder almost came all the way to the surface of consciousness at that instant, but instead, his brain decided the noises were just Tom returning from one of his late-night filling-the-pockets forays, and so the tiny sounds from the hallway were converted in his dream factory into the shushings and plinkings of wavelets, and in that dream Tom was a giant fish with teeth, from whom Dortmunder swam and swam and swam, never quite escaping.

Normally, the interloper would have had trouble finding his way around the dark and almost windowless apartment, but Dortmunder’s recent underwater experiences had led him to leave a light burning in the bathroom, by which illumination it was possible for the interloper to make his way all through the place, to reassure himself that the sleeping Dortmunder was the only current resident, and then to go on and make himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the kitchen. (The clinking of knife inside peanut butter jar became, in Dortmunder’s dreams, the oars in the oarlocks of Charon’s boat.)