Drowned Hopes d-7

by Donald E. Westlake

  At the other end of the church, the minister continued to stare at these suddenly hostile wedding guests, trying to remember his emergency-techniques training. He knew any number of ways to calm a person in a traumatic or panic-inducing situation, but they all worked on the assumption that he was an outside observer—a skilled and concerned and compassionate observer, it is true, but outside. None of the techniques seemed to have much relevance when he was the one in a panic. “Um,” he said.

  “Hush,” Kelp told him.

  But he couldn’t hush. “Violence is no way to solve problems,” he told them.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Dortmunder said. “It’s never let me down.”

  From the front of the church, underlining the point, came a crash, as Tom, exasperated beyond endurance, stood up, stepped back, and kicked the pulpit in the lattice, which smashed to kindling. The minister jumped like Bambi’s mother in Dortmunder and Kelp’s hands. They held him in place, quivering, while Wally, excitement making him seem taller but on the other hand wider, waddled hurriedly to the front of the church to see what was going on.

  Up there, Tom was on his knees again, pulling out from inside the pulpit an old black cracked-leather doctor’s bag with a rusted-out clasp. “There’s the son of a bitch,” he said, with satisfaction.

  “Gee!” Wally said. “The treasure in the pulpit!”

  Tom gave him a look. “That’s right,” he said, and carried the bag down the aisle toward the others, Wally bouncing along like a living beachball in his wake.

  “Is that it?” Dortmunder asked. “Can we go now?”

  “This is it,” Tom acknowledged, “and we can go in a minute. Hold on here.” He put the doctor’s bag on a handy pew and fiddled for a while with the clasp. “Fucking thing’s rusted shut,” he said.

  Shocked, the minister blurted, “Language!”

  Everybody looked at him, even Wally. Tom said, “How come that’s talking?”

  “I really don’t know,” Kelp said, studying the minister with unfriendly interest. “But I don’t think it’s gonna happen again.”

  Taking a good-size clasp knife from his pocket and opening it, Tom said, “I hear from him again, I take his tongue out.”

  “Drastic,” Kelp suggested calmly, “but probably effective.”

  “Very.”

  The minister stared round-eyed at the knife as Tom used it to slice through the old dry leather around the clasp, freeing the bag, opening it, and then putting the knife away. The minister sighed audibly when the knife disappeared, and his eyes rolled briefly in his head.

  Tom reached into the bag, pulled out a wad of bills, peeled off a few, dropped the wad back into the bag, and turned to slap the bills into the minister’s enfeebled hand. Since the minister couldn’t seem to do it for himself, Tom closed his fingers around the money for him, saying, “Here’s half a grand to fix up the pulpit. Keep your nose clean.” To the others he said, “Now we can go.”

  Dortmunder and Kelp released the minister, who staggered backward against a pew. Ignoring him, the others headed for the door, Dortmunder saying to Tom, “You’re a generous guy. I never knew that.”

  “That’s me, okay,” Tom said. “Ever surprising.”

  As they reached the door, the minister, beginning to recover from his fright, called after them, “Don’t you want a receipt? For your taxes?” But they didn’t answer.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  All was quiet in East Amity, a tiny bedroom community on the south shore of Long Island. Well after midnight, and the commuters were all tucked between their sheets, dreaming of traffic jams, while out on the village streets there was no traffic at all. The village police car drove by, all alone, down Bay Boulevard, idling along, Officer Pohlax yawning at the wheel, barely aware of the boutiques and tire stores he was here to protect. Ahead on the left bulked Southern Suffolk Combined High School (yay!), from which Officer Pohlax himself had graduated just a very few years earlier.

  How old it made him feel now, still in his twenties, to look at the old school and remember that feeling of infinite possibility back then, the absolute conviction that a determined fellow, if he kept himself in shape and didn’t drink too much, could eventually sleep with every girl in the world. Various girls he had and had not slept with during those halcyon days drifted through his mind, every one with the same identical smile, and he and his police car drifted on past the high school, wafted by the gusts of imperfect memory.

  Doug Berry, at the wheel of his black pickup with the blue-and-silver styling package, watched that goddamn slow-moving police car inch by and tapped impatient fingers against the steering wheel. He was parked on a dark side street across from the high school, engine running but lights off, waiting for the coast to be clear. He knew that would be old Billy Pohlax at the wheel—they’d gone to high school together, that very high school across the street, way back when—and he knew Billy wouldn’t pass by here again for at least an hour. Which should be plenty of time, if his students showed up when they were supposed to.

  Three blocks away, brake lights gleamed like rubies on the village police car, which then made a right off Bay Boulevard, heading down to the docks and marinas along the waterfront. Doug slipped the pickup into gear, left the lights off, and scooted across Bay and onto the driveway leading up to the big parking lot wrapped halfway around the school, on its left side and rear. Doug drove around to the back, the equipment in the bed of his vehicle thumping and clanking from time to time, and pulled in close up against the rear door to which he had bought the key, just the other day, from another old classmate, now an assistant building custodian (janitor) at this same school.

  Doug opened his pickup’s door, the interior light went on, and he slammed the door again, scared out of his wits. The light! He’d forgotten about the light! If somebody saw him…

  Was there a way to turn off that damn light? Trying to study the dashboard in the dark, he succeeded only in briefly switching on the dashboard lights. Finally, he decided the only thing to do was chance it, and move as fast as he could. Pop open the door (light on!), scramble out, close the door rapidly without slamming it (light off), sag in relief against the side of the pickup.

  Okay, okay. No problem. Not a single light showed in any of the houses on Margiotta Street, out behind the high school. No one had seen him. There was nothing to worry about.

  Reassuring himself like mad, Doug went over to the door, tried the key, and was relieved, faintly surprised, and also faintly disappointed, when it worked and the door swung open. Standing in the open doorway, he was about to check the time on his waterproof, shockproof, glow-in-the-dark watch/compass/calendar when motion made him look up to see a long black car—a Mercedes, he realized—traveling without lights and just coming to a stop next to his pickup. In the extreme dimness, he could just make out the MD plate on the Mercedes, which was a real surprise. Those guys weren’t doctors. Standards haven’t slipped that much.

  Both front doors of the Mercedes opened, without the interior light going on. (How did they do that?) Andy was the driver, John the passenger. They shut the car doors quietly and approached, Andy saying, “Right on time.”

  “I’ve got the door open,” Doug announced, unnecessarily, since he was standing in it. Then he gestured at the pickup, saying, “All the gear’s here. It weighs a ton.”

  It did, too. Wearing half the stuff and carrying the rest, the three staggered into the school building, Doug closing the door behind them and then leading the way with his pencil flash along the wide empty dark corridor—that well-remembered smell of school! — to the stairs, and then down the long flight and along the next corridor—not quite so wide down here—to the double swinging doors leading to the boys’ locker room, and through it to the entrance to the pool. An interior room in the basement, the pool area had no windows, and so there was no reason not to turn on lights, which Doug did: all of them, revealing great expanses of beige tile and heavily chlorinated water. Footsteps and voices echoed
wetly in here, so you always had the feeling there was somebody else around, just behind you or on the other side of the pool.

  The two students looked at that great ocean in the bottom of the school building, and Andy said, “Where’s the shallow end?”

  “It’s the deep end we want,” Doug told him. “Right here. Let’s get our gear on.”

  “At the real place,” Andy said, “we’re just gonna walk in.”

  “Look, guys,” Doug said. “That was your decision, that I’m not going to the real place with you. So I arranged for us to use this pool. And believe me, wherever it is you’re gonna walk into, when you get fifty feet deep it’s gonna be a lot farther down than the deep end of this pool.”

  They both took a moment to look into the pool, contemplating that truth. Then John sighed and shook his head and said, “Okay, we’ve come this far. Let’s do it.”

  “Fine,” Doug said. “We’ll get out of our street clothes, into our swimsuits and our wetsuits and all our gear, and get to it.”

  Two less athletic or more reluctant students Doug had never had. They didn’t like their wet suits, they didn’t like the way the tank straps felt on their shoulders, they didn’t like the weight belts around their waists (he’d given them each fourteen pounds), they didn’t like their masks, they hated their BCDs. Finally, Doug said, “Look guys, the idea was, you wanted to do this, remember? I’m not forcing you into it.”

  John held up his BCD, a thing that looked like a larger and more elaborate life vest, and said, “What is this thing, anyway?”

  “A BCD,” Doug told him.

  Which didn’t seem to help much. “That’s the alphabet,” Andy pointed out. “A, B, C, D.”

  “No, no,” Doug said. “Not A BCD, a BCD. Buoyancy Control Device. Simply, the amount of air you put in the BCD determines at what level you hover when you’re underwater.”

  “When I’m underwater,” John said, “I generally hover at the bottom.”

  “Not with the BCD,” Doug assured him. “Let me demonstrate.”

  “Go right ahead,” John said.

  So Doug went into the pool, wearing all the gear and with the BCD inflated enough to keep him at the surface. Head out of the water, he said, “I’m going to raise my arm and press the button on the top of the control to release some of the air from the BCD. This pool is only eight feet deep, so I can’t descend very far, but I’ll hover in the water, above the bottom, and then I’ll add air to the BCD from my tank, and I’ll rise again. Now, watch.”

  They looked at each other. Doug said, “Watch me.”

  “We’re watching,” John said.

  So Doug did exactly as he’d announced he would do, keeping his knees bent upward so his feet wouldn’t touch the bottom when he floated downward. He hovered near the bottom for a while, then lay out flat and stroked across the pool, the BCD maintaining his depth at about five feet. Stroking back, he added air and rose to the surface. Looking at those two skeptical faces, he said, “See how easy?”

  “Sure,” said John.

  “So let’s do it,” Doug said. “Jump on in.”

  No. They would not “jump on in”; no matter how he assured them they wouldn’t sink, they insisted on going down to the shallow end and coming down the steps there. And even then, they were barely knee deep when both stopped. Looking as startled as a man whose face is encumbered with mask and mouthpiece can possibly look, Andy cried, “This suit doesn’t work!”

  “Sure it does,” Doug told him. I’m earning my thousand dollars, he told himself. “Come on in, fellas.”

  “It’s wet inside the suit!”

  John said, more quietly and fatalistically, “Inside mine, too.”

  “It’s supposed to do that,” Doug explained, holding to the side of the pool at the deep end. “The wet suit is Neoprene rubber. It lets a layer of water in. Your body warms the water, the suit holds it in, and you stay warm.”

  “But wet!” Andy complained.

  Doug shook his head, losing heart. “I don’t know, guys,” he said. “Maybe you just aren’t cut out for this.”

  “No,” John said, “it’s okay. Just so we know the score. If that’s the way it’s supposed to work, okay, then. Come on, Andy,” he said, and plowed on into the water with the expression of a man tasting his aunt’s favorite eggplant recipe.

  Once he actually got his students in the water, Doug’s problems really began. These two guys simply did not want to breathe underwater. They’d descend, mouthpiece clamped in teeth, eyes wide behind the goggles, and they’d hold their breath. Eventually, asphyxiating, they’d surface and take in great huge gulps of air.

  “Oh, come on, fellas,” Doug kept saying. “That’s air in that tank on your back. Use some of it.” But they wouldn’t.

  Eventually, Doug saw that drastic measures were the only measures with these guys. Climbing out of the pool, but still wearing all his equipment in case of trouble, he convinced and cajoled them toward the deeper end. Their BCDs were full, of course, so they couldn’t sink, and they kept holding to the edge, but at least they were in water that was theoretically over their heads.

  Now to turn theory into practice. Gently but firmly disengaging their clutching fingers from the pool’s rim, Doug shoved each of them away toward the middle. As buoyant as Macy’s parade floats, they drifted in the middle of the pool, blinking at him through their glass masks.

  “Fine,” Doug told them, standing at the edge of the pool. “Mouthpiece in mouth. Are you breathing through your mouthpieces?”

  They nodded. Above the water, they were happy to use scuba air.

  “Fine,” Doug said. “Now we’ll test another part of the equipment. Don’t worry, nothing’s going to happen. Each of you, lift your left arm. You know the silver button on that control there? Fine. Press it.”

  Trustingly, they pressed it. Astounded, they sank.

  Doug looked down through the water at their shifting swaying images. They were standing on the bottom of the pool, staring at each other in horror and shock. At this point, they would either panic and have to be rescued, in which case everybody could go home because the whole idea was impossible, or they would learn to breathe. Doug watched, and waited.

  Bubbles. First from John, then from Andy. Bubbles; they were breathing.

  Doug smiled, conscious of that rare swell of pride and accomplishment that teachers attain all too seldom, and a voice behind him screamed, “AAAKKK! Spaceman! Don’t move! Don’t move!”

  Doug about jumped into the pool. He did jump, but in a circle, landing to face Billy Pohlax, Officer William Pohlax, the beat cop who wasn’t supposed to be around this area for at least another half hour, but who was in this school, in the doorway to this very room, not twenty feet from the pool, shakily pointing a gun in Doug’s general direction. Billy was so obviously terrified, so out of control, that his gun could surely go off at any second.

  Doug cried, “Billy! Billy, it’s me, Doug!”

  “Don’t move, don’t move!” Fear, fortunately, was keeping Billy way back in the doorway, where he couldn’t see the people inside the pool.

  Doug froze. “I just want to show you my face, Billy. Remember me? Doug Berry?”

  “Doug?” Billy’s trembling perceptibly eased.

  Doug risked lifting his hands to his head, removing the mask and mouthpiece, showing his white face to Billy’s white face.

  And Billy sagged with relief, saying, “Jeez, Doug, I thought you were a man from Mars or something. They had that movie Cat People on the box the other night, d’jever see that?”

  “No,” Doug said.

  Looking around, Billy said, “Anybody else here?” He took a step forward into the room.

  “Uhhh, no,” Doug said, and moved casually but quickly to join Billy at the doorway. “What I’m doing here, Billy,” he explained, “Jack Holsem let me have a key, you remember Jack?” Subtly, he moved in a half circle, turning Billy away from the pool.

  “Sure,” Billy said. “Dumb
est kid in school. Works here now.”

  A three-quarter turn away from the pool was the best Doug could make Billy do. “Still in school,” he said, and tried a casual grin, just to see if he could do it. “Anyway, I don’t have any place to try out new equipment, test it, you know. This time of year, the bay’s too cold.”

  “Yeah, I guess it would be,” Billy agreed.

  “Listen, Billy,” Doug said, being very confidential, pressing hard on their old friendship, “I’m not supposed to be here, you know. Jack wasn’t supposed to let me have the key. But I’m not stealing anything or anything, not doing—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Billy said, looking down, watching himself with awkward intensity shove his gun back into its holster.

  “I don’t want to get Jack in trouble,” Doug said, and over Billy’s shoulder he saw John and Andy’s heads emerge, way down at the shallow end of the pool. They were walking out! But then they turned and saw him talking to the cop, the quite obvious cop, and without even pausing they reversed direction and plodded stolidly back underwater again.

  Oh, very good! Very smart! Doug, turning his relief into good fellowship, said, “Billy? You can forget about this, can’t you? For Jack’s sake?”

  “Sure,” Billy said. “You I don’t have to worry about. But what about that stolen car out there?”

  “Stolen car,” Doug echoed, while his stomach joined John and Andy at the bottom of the pool.

  “Mercedes,” Billy explained. “MD plates. Reported stolen in the city about an hour ago. I came back behind the school”—and he grinned sheepishly—“to tell you the truth, Doug, I was gonna coop a little.”

  Doug didn’t know the word. “Coop?”

  “Take a little nap,” Billy translated. “Back behind the school here’s the perfect place. Anyway, I recognized your pickup, you know, because of the bumper sticker, and right next to it’s this stolen Merc.” Consciously becoming more formal, more official, Billy said, “You want to tell me about that, Doug?”