Wally explained about the three streetlights that Tom had used to mark the location of the buried casket, and Doug said, “Can you give me an accurate reading on distance to the box from the back wall of the library?”
“Sure.”
John, a bit nastily, said, “What are you gonna do, pace it off when you get down there?”
“I’ll bring a line with me,” Doug told him, “the same length as the distance from the wall to the box. Okay?”
“Mrp,” John said, and stopped interrupting after that, so finally Doug could close with the problem.
At last, when Wally had shown him everything he had, Doug stepped back from the computer screen and said, “Okay. I got the picture now.”
Andy said, “And it can be done?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Andy said.
“But,” Doug said, “it can’t be done without a boat.”
“Gee, Doug,” Andy said. “That’s a reservoir, you know? No boating.”
Doug frowned at him. “I didn’t think you guys worried about laws that much.”
John said, “What Andy means is, we can’t be seen with a boat.”
Doug shrugged. “So we do it on a cloudy night. All we need is a small rubber boat with a little ten-hp motor.”
John said, “A motor? We shouldn’t be heard with a boat either.”
“You won’t hear it,” Doug promised him. “But the main thing is, we have to go in from above, and that means a boat.”
“Expensive,” John suggested.
Doug waved that away. “A couple thou. For the boat and the motor, I mean. Then there’ll be other stuff. Maybe four or five thou altogether.”
John nodded. “Well,” he said, “time to go tell Tom the good news. We need more money.”
FIFTY-SIX
“Goddammit, Tom,” Dortmunder said, strapping on the safety harness, “why didn’t you ever stash your goddamn money anywhere easy?”
“Easy places other people find,” Tom pointed out. He sat on the ground beside the coil of rope.
“What the hell were you doing in South Dakota anyway?” Dortmunder demanded. This whole thing made him mad.
“Robbing a bank,” Tom said. “You ready?”
“No,” Dortmunder said. “I’m never gonna be ready to step out into thin air from on top of a mountain.” Taking one cautious step out onto Lincoln’s forehead, he looked down, way down, at the tops of pine trees. The whole world was out there. “Somebody’s gonna see me,” he said.
“They’ll think you’re a ranger.”
“I don’t have the hat.”
“So they’ll think you’re a ranger that his hat blew off,” Tom said. “Come on, Al, let’s do it and get it over with. We gotta drive all the way back to Pierre, turn in the car, catch the plane.”
“Pierre,” Dortmunder said in disgust, studying Lincoln’s eyebrows. Would they provide handholds? “Who calls a city Pierre?”
“It’s their city, Al. Come on, will ya?”
So Dortmunder dropped to his haunches and slid forward out of Lincoln’s hair, his feet reaching for those bushy thick eyebrows. Behind him, Tom paid out the rope. “How the hell,” Dortmunder complained, “did you ever stash the stuff here in the first place?”
“I was a lot younger then, Al,” Tom told him. “A lot spryer.”
Dortmunder stopped to look back and say, “Young people aren’t spry. Old people are spry.”
“You’re stalling, Al.”
He was. Oh, well. His waggling feet found the eyebrows, he slid down farther, his legs straddled the bumpy nose.
He was now out of sight of Tom, in safety up there on top, calling down, “You there yet?”
“No!”
“It’s the left nostril.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Dortmunder slid off the nose, dangled briefly in space—the pitons they’d pounded into the ground up there damn well better hold—clutched a naris, and hauled himself in to Lincoln’s upper lip.
Left nostril. Jeez, it was like a cave in there, it was so big. Dortmunder inched up into the thing, standing on Lincoln’s lip, and saw the oilcloth-wrapped package tucked behind an irregularity of rock. Reaching for it, he dislodged a few pebbles, raised some dust. Inside Lincoln’s nostril, Dortmunder sneezed.
“God bless,” called Tom.
“Oh, shut up,” Dortmunder muttered inside the nostril. He grabbed the package and got out of that nose.
FIFTY-SEVEN
One Monday in June, the reservoir gang converged on 46 Oak Street in the peaceful upstate rural community of Dudson Center. Already in residence at the house were May Bellamy, Tom Jimson, and Murch’s Mom. Coming from Islip, Long Island (home of the lobotomy; known in psychiatric circles as Icepick, Long Island), was Doug Berry, his custom-packaged pickup laden with gear for the job ahead: diving equipment, a 10hp outboard motor, uninflated inflatable boat, lots of other stuff. In a borrowed bakery van, driving up from New York City, were Stan Murch and Wally Knurr, with Wally’s computer components strapped down on the bread shelves in back. Also coming from the city, in a silver Cadillac with California MD plates, equipped with cruise control, a/c, cassette player, reading lights and extremely woodlike dashboard trim, traveled Andy Kelp (driver), John Dortmunder (front-seat passenger), and Tiny Bulcher (all over the rear seat). Of these vehicles, only the Cadillac was being followed, by a large roughhewn shambling fellow named Ken Warren, wedged with his tow bar into a small red two-door Toyota Chemistra.
The travelers in the Cadillac remained unaware of the intense interest seven car-lengths behind them and chatted mostly about their upcoming task. “I’ve been wrong before,” Dortmunder conceded, “but I just have a feeling. This time, we’re gonna get that box.”
“The reason you’re feeling good,” Kelp told him, ignoring the red Toyota in all three rearview mirrors, “is the same reason I’m feeling good. We are not going into that reservoir. Not you, and not me.”
“Let Doug go in the reservoir.”
“Right.”
“He likes that kind of thing.”
“He does.”
“We don’t.”
“We don’t.”
In the backseat, Tiny wriggled around, uncomfortable, and finally reached underneath himself to pull out a tambourine, which he stared at in irritated astonishment. “Hey,” he said. “There’s a tambourine in this car.”
“A what? You sure?” Kelp looked in the interior rearview mirror as Tiny held up the tambourine, blocking the view of the red Toyota. “It looks like a tambourine,” he admitted.
“It is a tambourine,” Tiny said, and shook it. Tambourine music filled the air.
“I remember that sound,” Dortmunder said. “They used to have those in the movies.”
“Wait a second,” Tiny said, and from the crevice between seat and back he brought out a small cardboard box. “Now we got a deck of tarot cards.” Putting down the tambourine (jing!), he took the cards out of their box and riffled them. “Looks like a marked deck,” he said.
Dortmunder said, “Andy, what kinda doctor did you get this car from?”
“I dunno,” Kelp said. “He was making a house call, I think. It was in front of a Reader and Advisor on Bleecker Street.”
“I don’t want this doctor doing any operations on me,” Tiny said. He shuffled the cards. “John, you want me to tell your fortune?”