Drowned Hopes Part 4

SEVEN.

May brought in three more beers and they popped the ring opener on the cans: Pop. Pop. Splop. "Well, h.e.l.l," said Dortmunder.

"Oh, John, that's too bad," May said. "Should I get a towel?"

"Naw, that's okay, it didn't spill much," Dortmunder told her, and turned to Kelp to say, "Well? Whadaya think?"

"Hmmmm," Kelp said, and swigged beer. Then he said, "If it isn't bad manners to ask, John, what was this pal of yours in for?"

"He's not my pal."

"Sorry. Ex-cellmate of yours. What was he in for, do you know?"

Dortmunder drank beer, thinking back. "As I remember it," he said, "it was murder, armed robbery, and arson."

Kelp looked surprised: "All at once?"

"He wanted a diversion while he pulled the job," Dortmunder said, "so he torched the firehouse."

"A direct sort of a fella," Kelp said, nodding.

May said, "Like with this dam."

Kelp nodded, thinking, frowning. "You see, John," he said, "I don't really follow how you're involved here. The guy says come help me blow up a dam, you say I don't want to kill a lot of people in their beds, you say good-bye to each other."

"He'll find somebody else," Dortmunder said.

"But isn't that up to him?"

"John doesn't see it like that," May said, "and I agree with him."

Dortmunder finished his beer. "I know," he admitted. "It ought to be that way; I say no and it's done with. But I just have this feeling, there's got to be some way to get at that money without killing everybody in upstate New York."

"And?"

Dortmunder frowned so ma.s.sively he looked like a plowed field. "This is gonna sound egotistical," he said.

"Go for it," Kelp advised.

"Well, it's just I think, if there's any way at all to get to that money without emptying the reservoir, I'm the guy who should think of it."

"The only one who could, you mean," Kelp said.

Dortmunder didn't want to go quite that far in his egotism: "The only one who'd put in the effort," he amended.

Kelp nodded, accepting that. "And what have you come up with so far?"

"Well, nothing," Dortmunder admitted. "But this is still the first day I'm on this thing, you know."

"That's true." Kelp sloshed beer in his can. "You could tunnel, maybe," he said.

Dortmunder looked at him. "Through water?"

"No, no," Kelp said, shaking both the beer can and his head. "I don't think there's a way to do that, really. Tunnel through water. I meant you start on sh.o.r.e, near the water. You tunnel straight down until you're lower than the bottom of the reservoir, and then you turn and tunnel across to this casket, or box, or whatever it is."

"Dig a tunnel," Dortmunder echoed, "under a reservoir. Crawl back and forth in this tunnel in the dirt under this reservoir."

"Well, yeah, there's that," Kelp agreed. "I do get kind of a sinus headache just thinking about it."

"Also," Dortmunder said, "how do you aim this tunnel? Somewhere out there under that reservoir is a casket. What is it, seven feet long? Three feet wide, a couple feet high. And you gotta go right to it. You can't go above it, you can't go below it, you can't miss it to the left or the right."

May said, "You particularly can't go above it."

"That's the sinus headache part," Dortmunder told her, and to Kelp he said, "It's too small a target, Andy, and too far away."

"Well, you know," Kelp said thoughtfully, "this kind of connects in with something I meant to talk to you about anyway." Casually glancing around the living room, he said, "You don't have a PC yet, do you?"

Dortmunder bristled. He didn't know what this was going to turn out to be, but already he knew he didn't like it. "What's that?" he demanded. "Another one of your phone gizmos?"

"No, no, John," Kelp a.s.sured him. "Nothing to do with phones. It's a personal computer, and it just may be the solution to our problem here."

Dortmunder stared at him with loathing. "Personal computer? Andy, what are you up to now?"

"Let me explain this, John," Kelp said. "It's a very simple thing, really, you're gonna love it."

"Uh-huh," Dortmunder said.

"There must be maps," Kelp said, "old maps from before the reservoir was put in. We use those to do a program for the computer, see, and it makes a model of the valley. Your pal shows us-"

"He's not my pal," Dortmunder said.

"Right," Kelp agreed. "Your ex-cellmate shows us-"

Dortmunder said, "Why don't you just call him Tom?"

"Well, I don't really know the guy," Kelp said. "Listen, can I describe this thing to you?"

"Go right ahead," Dortmunder said.

"The maps I'm talking about," Kelp explained, "I don't mean your gas station road maps, I mean those ones with the lines, the whatchacallit."

"Topographical," May said.

"That's it," Kelp said. "Thanks, May."

Dortmunder stared at her. "How come you know that?"

"Why not?" she asked him.

Kelp said, "I'm trying to explain this."

"Right, right," Dortmunder said. "Go right ahead."

"So the computer," Kelp said, "makes a model of the valley from before the water went in, with the towns and the buildings and everything, and we can turn the model any way we want-"

"What model?" Dortmunder demanded. He was getting lost here, and that made him mad. "You wanna make like a model train set? What is this?"

"The model in the computer," Kelp told him. "You see it on your screen."

"The television, you mean."

"Very like television, yes," Kelp agreed. "And it's this detailed three-dimensional model, and you can turn it around and tilt it different ways-"

"Sounds like fun," Dortmunder said acidly.

"And," Kelp insisted, "you can blow up part of it bigger, to get the details and all, and then your, uh, this, uh, this fella who buried it, he shows us on the model where he buried the box, and then we input the reservoir and-"

"You what?"

"Input the reservoir," Kelp repeated, unhelpfully, but then he added, "Our first model in the program is the valley from when the towns were there. So we can pinpoint the box. Then we tell the PC about the reservoir, and put in the dam, and fill the water in, and probably tell it how much water weighs and all that, so it can tell us what might be different down there at the bottom now." A shadow of doubt crossed Kelp's eager face. "There's a lot of data we're gonna have to get," he said, "if we're gonna do this right. Guy-go, you know."

"No," Dortmunder told him. "Guy-go I don't know."

"You never heard that expression?" Kelp was astonished.

"May probably did."

"No, I don't think so," May said.

"Guy-go," Kelp repeated, then spelled it. "G, I, G, O. It means 'Garbage In, Garbage Out.' "

"That's nice," Dortmunder said.

"It means," Kelp amplified, "the computer's only as smart as what you tell it. If you give it wrong information, it'll give you wrong information back."

"I'm beginning to see," Dortmunder said. "This is a machine that doesn't know anything until I tell it something, and if I tell it wrong it believes me."

"That's about it, yes," Kelp agreed.

"So this machine of yours," Dortmunder said, "needs me a lot more than I need it."

"Now, there you go, being negative again," Kelp complained.

May said, "John, let Andy finish about this. Maybe it will help."

"I'm just sitting here," Dortmunder said, and tried to drink from an empty beer can. "I'm sitting here listening, not making any trouble."

"I'll get more beer," May decided.

As she got to her feet, Kelp said, "I'll wait for you to come back."

"Thank you, Andy."

While May was out of the room, Kelp said, "Actually, if we could work this out, that's a lot of money."

"It is," Dortmunder agreed.

"I'm not saying necessarily a tunnel," Kelp said, "but whatever, probably wouldn't take a lot of guys. Your old-This, uh, guy, he's seventy years old, huh?"

"Yeah."

"How strong is he?"

"Very."

"Well, that's fine," Kelp said. "So he can carry his weight. Then you and me. And a driver, probably."

"Absolutely," Dortmunder said. "I drove up there once already. That's enough. We'll call Stan Murch, if it looks like we've got something."

"And maybe Tiny Bulcher, for the lifting and the moving around," Kelp suggested as May came back with three more beers. "Thanks, May."

May said to Dortmunder, "I already opened yours, John."

"Thanks."

"You know," Kelp said, popping open his beer can with casual skill, "your old- This guy, uh..."

"Tom," Dortmunder said. "His name is Tom."

"Well, I'll try it," Kelp said. "Tom. This Tom sounds a lot like Tiny. In fact, I'm looking forward to meeting him."

Dortmunder muttered, "Better you than me."

"Anyhoo," Kelp said, "we were talking about the PC."

Dortmunder looked at him. " 'Anyhoo'?"

"The PC," Kelp insisted. "Come on, John."

"Okay, okay."

"It's true," Kelp said, "we have to get a lot of information to put into the computer, but that's nothing different. You always want the best information you can get anyway, in any job. That's the way you work."