Drowned Hopes by Donald Westlake

all in the computer,” Kelp told him, “then we say to it, ‘Plot us out the best route for the tunnel.’ And then we follow that route, and it takes us right to the box.”

    “Sounds easy,” May said.

    “Whenever things sound easy,” Dortmunder said, “it turns out there’s one part you didn’t hear.”

    “Could be,” Kelp said, unruffled. “Could be, we’ll give the model to the computer and ask it about the tunnel, and it’ll say the tunnel doesn’t work, too much water around, too much mud, too far to go, whatever.”

    “Be sure to put all that last part in,” Dortmunder told him, “when you’re putting in the rest of the garbage.”

    “We’re not going to put garbage in,” Kelp corrected him. “We’re going to input quality data, John, believe me. In fact,” he said, suddenly even more peppy and enthusiastic, “I know just the guy to work with on this program.”

    “Somebody else?” Dortmunder asked him. “One of us?”

    Kelp shook his head. “Wally’s a computer freak,” he explained. “I won’t tell him what we’re trying for, I’ll just give it to him like as a computer problem.”

    “Do I know this Wally?”

    “No, John,” Kelp said, “you don’t travel in the same circles. Wally’s kind of offbeat. He can only communicate by keyboard.”

    “And what if he communicates by keyboard with the law?”

    “No, I’m telling you that’s all right,” Kelp insisted. “Wally’s a very unworldly guy. And he’ll save us weeks on this thing.”

    “Weeks?” Dortmunder said, startled. “How long is this gonna take?”

    “Just a few days,” Kelp promised. “With Wally aboard, just a very few days.”

    “Because,” Dortmunder pointed out, “until we have this figured out, we have Tom Jimson living here.”

    “That’s right,” May said.

    “And if he decides to stop living here,” Dortmunder went on, “it’s because he’s gone back upstate to make a flood.”

    “The Jimson flood,” said a cold voice from the doorway. They all looked up, and there was Tom, as cold and gray as ever, standing in the doorway and looking from face to face. A wrinkle in his own face might have been intended as an ironic smile. “Sounds like an old folk song,” he said, his lips not moving. “ ‘The Famous Jimson Flood.’ ”

    “I think that was Jamestown,” Kelp said.

    Tom considered that, and considered Kelp, too. “You may be right,” he decided, and turned to Dortmunder. “You spreading my business around, Al?”

    Getting to his feet, Dortmunder said, “Tom Jimson, this is Andy Kelp. Andy and I work together.”

    Tom nodded, and looked Kelp up and down. “So you’re gonna help me realize my dream of retirement,” he said.

    Kelp grinned; he acted as though he liked Tom Jimson. Still comfortably sprawled on the sofa, “That’s what I’m here for,” he said. “John and May and me, we’ve been talking about different approaches, different ways to do things.”

    “Dynamite’s very sure,” Tom told him.

    “Well, I don’t know about that,” Kelp said. “That water’s been in place there twenty years, more or less. What happens when you make a sudden tidal wave out of it? Think it might roil up the bottom, maybe mess things up down there, make it harder to find that box of yours?”

    Dortmunder, standing there in the middle of the room like somebody waiting for a bus, now turned and gazed on Andy Kelp with new respect. “I never thought of that,” he said.

    “ I did,” Tom said. “The way I figure to blow that dam, you won’t have no tidal wave. At least, not up in the reservoir. Down below there, in East Dudson and Dudson Center and Dudson Falls, down there you might have yourself a tidal wave, but we don’t give a shit about that, now, do we?”

    No one saw any reason to answer that. May, also getting to her feet, standing beside Dortmunder like an early sketch for Grant Wood’s Urban Gothic (abandoned), said, “Would you like a