“I don’t have to remember,” Dortmunder told him. “I’m listening to it.” But what he did remember was how odd he used to find it, back in the good old days in the cell, that a man who did so much talking was (a) famous as a loner, and (b) managed to get all those words out without once moving his lips.
“Well, the reason,” Tom went on, “the reason I’m such a blabbermouth is that I’m mostly alone. So when I got an ear nearby, I just naturally bend it. You see, Al,” Tom explained, and gestured at the sweet valley spread out defenseless below them, “those aren’t real people down there. Not like me. Not even like you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. If I go hungry three, four days, you know, not one of those people down there is gonna get a bellyache. And when the water comes down on them some night pretty soon, I’m not gonna choke at all. I’m gonna be busy digging up my money.”
“No, Tom,” Dortmunder said. “I don’t care what you say, you just can’t do it. I’m not a real law-abiding citizen myself, but you go too far.”
“I just follow the logic, Al.”
“Well, I don’t,” Dortmunder told him. “I can’t do something like this. I can’t come out here and deliberately drown a whole lot of people in their beds, that’s all. I just can’t do it.”
Tom considered that, looking Dortmunder up and down, thinking it over, and finally he shrugged and said, “Okay. We’ll forget it, then.”
Dortmunder blinked. “We will?”
“Sure,” Tom said. “You’re some kind of goodhearted guy, am I right, been reading the Reader’s Digest or something all these years, maybe you joined the Christophers on the inside, something like that. The point is, I’m not too good at reading other people—”
“I guess not,” Dortmunder said.
“Well, none of you are that real, you know,” Tom explained. “It’s hard to get you into focus. So I read you wrong, I made a mistake, wasted a couple of days. Sorry about that, Al, I wasted your time, too.”
“That’s okay,” Dortmunder said, with the awful feeling he was missing some sort of point here.
“So we’ll drive back to the city,” Tom said. “You ready?”
“Sure,” Dortmunder said. “Sorry, Tom, I just can’t.”
“S’okay,” Tom said, crossing the road, Dortmunder following.
They got into the car, and Dortmunder said, “Do I U-turn?”
“Nah,” Tom said, “go on across the dam and then there’s a left, and we’ll go down through the valley and back to the Thruway like that.”
“Okay, fine.”
They drove across the rest of the dam, Dortmunder continuing to have this faintly uneasy feeling about the calm, gray, silent, ancient maniac seated beside him, and at the far end of the dam was a small stone building that was probably the entry to the offices down below. Dortmunder slowed, looking at it, and saw a big bronze seal, and a sign reading CITY OF NEW YORK—DEPT. OF WATER SUPPLY—CITY PROPERTY, AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. “City property?” Dortmunder asked. “This is part of New York City up here?”
“Sure,” Tom said. “All the city reservoirs belong to the city.”
A New York City police car was one of three vehicles parked beside the building. Dortmunder said, “They have city cops?”
“The way I understand it,” Tom said, “it’s not duty that’s given to the sharpest and the quickest. But don’t worry about it, Al, you wanted out and you’re out. Let the next guy worry about New York City cops.”
Dortmunder gave him a look, feeling a sudden lurch in his stomach. “The next guy?”
“Naturally.” Tom shrugged. “You weren’t the only guy on the list,” he explained equably. “The first guy, but not the only. So now I’ll just have to find somebody with a little less milk in his veins, that’s all.”
Dortmunder’s foot came off the gas. “Tom, you mean you’re still gonna do it?”
Tom, mildly surprised, spread his hands. “Do I have my three hundred fifty grand? Has something changed I don’t know about?”
Dortmunder said, “Tom, you can’t drown all those people.”
“Sure I can,” Tom said. “You’re the one can’t. Remember?”
“But—” Just beyond the stone building, with the reservoir still barely visible behind them and the forest starting again on both sides of the road, Dortmunder came to a stop, pulling off onto the gravel verge and saying, “Tom, no.”
Tom scowled, without moving his lips. “Al,” he said. “I hope you aren’t going to tell me what I can do and what I can’t do.”
“It isn’t that, Tom,” Dortmunder said, although in fact it was that, and realizing it, Dortmunder also realized how hopeless this all was. “It’s just,” he said, despairing even as he heard himself say it, “it’s just you can’t do that, that’s all.”
“I can,” Tom said, colder than ever. “And I will.” That bony finger pointed at Dortmunder’s nose. “And you are not gonna queer the deal for me, Al. You are not gonna call anybody and say, ‘Don’t sleep at home tonight if you wanna stay dry.’ Believe me, Al, you are not gonna screw me around. If I think there’s the slightest chance—”
“No, no, Tom,” Dortmunder said. “I wouldn’t rat on you, you know me better than that.”
“And you know me better than that.” Looking out his side window at forest, Tom said, “So what’s with the delay? How come we aren’t whippin along the highway, headin back to the city, so I can make the call on the second guy on my list?”
“Because,” Dortmunder said, and licked his lips, and looked back at the peaceful water sparkling in the sun. Peaceful killer water. “Because,” he said, “we don’t have to do it that way.”
Tom looked at him. “We?”
“I’m your guy, Tom,” Dortmunder said. “From the old days, and still today. We’ll do it, we’ll get the money. But we don’t have to drown anybody to do it, okay? We’ll do it some other way.”
“What other way?”
“I don’t know yet,” Dortmunder admitted. “But I just got here, Tom, I just came aboard this thing. Give me some time to look the situation over, think about it. Give me a couple weeks, okay?”
Tom gave him a skeptical look. “What are you gonna do?” he demanded. “Swim out with a shovel and dive and hold your breath?”
“I don’t know, Tom. Give me time to think about it. Okay?”
Tom thought it over. “A quieter way might be good,” he acknowledged. “If it could be done. Less runnin around afterward. Less chance of your massive manhunt.”
“That’s right,” Dortmunder said.
Tom looked back at the reservoir. “That’s fifty feet of water, you know.”
“I know, I know,” Dortmunder said. “Just give me a little time to consider the problem.”
Tom’s gray eyes shifted this way and that in his skull. He said, “I don’t know if I want to stay on your sofa that long.”
Oh. Dortmunder stared, agonized. The thought of May came into his mind but was firmly repressed, pushed down beneath the hundreds and hundreds of drowned people. “It’s a comfortable sofa, Tom,” he said, his throat closing on him as he said it but managing to get the words out just the same.
Tom took a deep breath. His lips actually twitched; a visible movement. Then, the lips rigid again, he said, “Okay, Al. I know you’re good at this stuff, that’s why I came to you first. You want to find another way to get down to the stash, go ahead.”