"We figure seven to eight grand."

Animation of a sort returned to Tom's face. That is, his eyebrows climbed up over his forehead as though trying to escape into his hair. "Dollars?" he asked. "Why so much?"

"I told you how we need a pro," Dortmunder reminded him.

Coming farther into the room, glancing briefly at the television set on which the news had now been followed by a comedy series about a bunch of very healthy and extremely witty teens who all hung out at the same sweet shop, Tom said, "Yeah, I remember. For air. You can't get air without a pro. But I never hearda air costing seven, eight grand before."

Getting to her feet, May said, "n.o.body's watching TV." She sounded faintly annoyed by the fact. Crossing to switch off the set, she said, "Anybody want a beer?"

"I think I'm gonna need one," Tom said, and he crossed to take May's seat as she left for the kitchen. His eyebrows still well up on his forehead, he said, "Tell me about this rich air, Al."

"To begin with," Dortmunder told him, "we had to find the pro. One we could deal with. So the guy that found the right guy, some fella that Andy knows, he wanted a finder's fee. Five hundred bucks."

"To find the pro," Tom said.

"That's very cheap, Tom," Dortmunder a.s.sured him. "You got a better way to find the exact right guy we need?"

Tom shook his head, ignoring the question more than agreeing with it. He said, "So this is the exact right guy, is it?"

"Yeah, it is. And he isn't in it for a piece, just a flat payment in front. We're getting him for a grand, and that's very cheap."

"If you say so, Al," Tom said. "Inflation, you know? I still can't believe the prices of things. When I went inside twenty-three years ago, you know how much a steak cost?"

"Tom, I don't even care," Dortmunder said, and May came in with two cans of beer. Looking at them, Dortmunder said, "May? Aren't you having any?"

"Mine's in the kitchen," May said. "You two talk business." And, with a blank smile at them both, she went away to the kitchen again, which was hers once more now that Dortmunder had removed all his books and papers and pencils and pens and pictures from it, stowing the whole mountain of stuff in the bottom dresser drawer in the bedroom.

Tom swallowed beer and said, "So we're up to fifteen hundred."

"The rest is equipment and stuff," Dortmunder told him. "And training."

Tom frowned at that. "Training?"

"You don't just go underwater, Tom," Dortmunder explained.

"I don't go underwater at all," Tom said. "That's up to you and your pal Andy, if that's what you wanna do."

"That's what we want to do," Dortmunder agreed, not letting a single doubt peek through. "And to do it right," he went on, "we got to train and learn how it's done. So we'll take lessons from this guy, and that's why I'm practicing with this mouthpiece here, learning to breathe through my mouth. So that costs. And then there's the air and the tanks and what we wear and the underwater flashlights and all the rope we're gonna need and lots of other stuff, and it all comes out to seven or eight grand."

"Expensive," Tom commented, and drank more beer.

"It's gotta be expensive," Dortmunder told him. "This isn't a place you just walk into, you know."

Tom said, "What about the little fella with the computer? Any thought outta him?"

"Wally?" Dortmunder made no effort to keep victor's scorn out of his voice. "He had a lot of great ideas," he said. "s.p.a.ceships. Giant magnets. Giant lasers. Even more expensive than me, Tom." Shrugging, Dortmunder said, "No matter how we do this, it isn't gonna be cheap."

"Oh, I dunno," Tom said. "Dynamite and life are cheap."

"We agreed, Tom," Dortmunder reminded him. "We do it my way first. And we finance from your stash."

Tom slowly shook his head. "Those lawyers really cleaned me out, Al. I don't have that much left."

Dortmunder spread his hands. Tom sat there, brooding, holding his beer, wrestling with the problem. There was nothing more for Dortmunder to say to him-Tom would dope it all out for himself or not-so he put the mouthpiece back in and practiced breathing through his mouth without holding his nose. Underwater, of course, he'd have goggles on that would make a tight seal all around his eyes and nose, so he wouldn't be able to hold his nostrils shut anyway. He had a practice pair of goggles, in fact, that Doug Berry had loaned him, but he would have felt foolish sitting next to May and wearing goggles to watch television, so they were on the dresser in the bedroom.

"There's one," Tom said thoughtfully, "up in the same area."

"Mlalga," Dortmunder said, and took the mouthpiece out and said, "Under the reservoir?"

"No no, Al, nearby. One of the towns they didn't drown. We can go up there tomorrow and get it. Rent another car and drive up."

"No," Dortmunder said. "I don't drive up there again. And no more rentals. I'll call Andy, he'll arrange transportation."

EIGHTEEN.

Wally said, "Well, the truth is, Andy, I'm kind of embarra.s.sed."

"Yeah, that makes sense," Andy Kelp agreed, nodding. Seated on the brown Naugahyde sofa in Wally's cluttered living room, he munched cheese and crackers while Wally sat facing him, frowning in agony. Andy said, "I felt kind of embarra.s.sed, too, Wally. Talking you up to John the way I did. And then we get Zog and all this."

Wally squirmed. His big wet eyes blinked over and over in discomfort. His little pudgy hands made vague unhappy gestures. He felt very awkward in this whole situation. He said, "Gee, Andy, I think... well, I just think maybe I ought to tell you the truth."

Andy raised an eyebrow, gazing at him over a cheese-topped cracker. "The truth, Wally?"

Wally hesitated. He hated having to trust his own instincts, particularly when it meant disagreeing with the computer. But on the other hand, this was a computer that didn't know the difference between Zog and Earth, which was perfectly all right in some applications but kind of a problem in others. So maybe Wally was right to override the computer's decision this time. On the other other hand, exposing himself to these people was definitely scary. "The warlord has no pity," the computer had reminded him, more than once.

Did Andy have pity? His eyes seemed very bright, very alert, as he looked at Wally, waiting for the truth, but he didn't really look-Wally had to admit to himself, reluctantly-what you could call sympathetic. As Wally hesitated, Andy put the cracker and its shipment of cheese back on the plate on the coffee table and said, "What truth was that, Wally?"

So there was nothing for it but to go forward. Wally took a deep breath, swallowed once more, and said, "The treasure is seven hundred thousand dollars in cash stolen from a Securivan armored car in a daring daylight robbery on the New York State Thruway near the North Dudson exit on April twenty-sev-"

Andy, staring at him, said, "What?"

"Tom was one of the robbers," Wally rushed on, "and he's been in jail ever since, but not for that, because they never found the people who robbed the armored car."

Wally, blinking more and more rapidly, sank back in his chair, exhausted. He looked at the plate of cheese and crackers and suddenly desperately wanted to eat all of them; but he was afraid to. He'd have to leave his mouth clear in case he had to talk, in case he had to, for instance, plead for his life. Reluctantly, hesitantly, he looked up away from the food at Andy's face, and saw him grinning in admiration and astonishment. "Wally!" Andy said in unmistakable pleasure. "How'd you do that?"

Wally gulped and grinned in combined relief and delight. "It was easy," he said.

"No, come on, Wally," Andy said. "Don't be modest. How'd you do it?"

So Wally explained the reasoning he'd worked out with the computer, and then demonstrated his access to the New York Times data bank, and actually brought up the original news item about the armored car robbery, which Andy read with close attention and deep interest, commenting to himself, "Not much finesse there. Just smash and grab."

"I wanted to tell you so we'd have better communication," Wally explained, "and better input to help solve the problem. But I was afraid. And the computer advised against."

"The comput-?" Andy seemed startled, but then he grinned again and said, "How come?" Walking back over to the sofa, he said, "Computer doesn't like me?"

Wally followed, and they took their seats again, Wally saying, "It wasn't so much you, Andy. It was mostly Tom the computer was worried about."

"Smart computer," Andy said, and frowned, thinking it over. "Do we let Tom in on this?" he asked himself. Absentmindedly he picked up a cheese and cracker, pushed it into his mouth, and talked around it. "In some ways it's simpler," he said, more or less intelligibly. "We can talk up front with each other. On the other hand, I can see Tom getting a little testy."

"That's what the computer and I thought, too," Wally agreed.

Andy swallowed his cheese and cracker, thinking. "I tell you what we say," he decided.

Wally leaned forward, all ears. Well, mostly ears.

Andy reached for another cheese and cracker and pointed at himself with it. "I told you," he said. "I decided the only way to get good input from you was to give you the whole picture. So I explained to you how Tom had been involved in this robbery years and years ago, brought in to it by bad companions and all, and how now he's old and not wanting to be a robber anymore, and how he was let out of prison, and all he wants to do is retire, and this money's all he's got for his golden years, so we're all getting together to help him get it back. Because, by now, whose money is it, anyway? So that's what I told you. Right?"

Wally nodded. "Okay, Andy," he said. "But, Andy?"

"Yeah?"

"Is, uh," Wally said. He craved a cracker piled with cheese. "Is, uh," he said, "any of that the truth?"

Andy laughed, calm and innocent and obviously easy in his mind. "Why, Wally," he said. "Except for leaving out the part where Tom continues to be a homicidal maniac, it's all the truth."

NINETEEN.

Myrtle Street slowly turned the crank of the old-fashioned microfilm viewer, and on its metal floor all the yesterdays of Vilburgtown County crept languidly by, recorded for posterity in the pages of the County Post. From the year before Myrtle's birth up till the year Mother married Mr. Street, the cake sales and high school dances and Boy Scout meetings inched inexorably past, the Town Council sessions and selectman elections and volunteer fire department fund raisers leisurely unwound, the fires and floods and severe winter storms floated through (sapped of all urgency), the automobile accidents and burglaries and the one big armored car robbery out on the Thruway all popped into view and faded like sudden puffs of smoke. But through it all there wasn't the slightest hint of the ident.i.ty of Myrtle Street's father.

In the week since Edna had blurted out that astonishing sentence-"That was your father in that car!"-Myrtle had thought of nothing else. Suddenly she burned with the desire-no, the need-to know her true origins. But Edna was no help at all. After that initial sudden outburst and that quick (equally startling) string of profanity, Edna had shut up like a safe on the subject, had refused to talk about it, had refused even to let Myrtle talk about it. Clearly she regretted that flare-up, that window into the past she'd inadvertently and briefly opened, and was waiting only for that out-of-control moment to be forgotten.

Well, it wasn't going to be forgotten. Myrtle had the bit well and truly in her teeth now and was determined to learn everything. From knowing nothing, she wanted to know all. Her earlier complacence now astonished her. She'd always known, of course, that Gosling was her mother's maiden name, that Street was the only other name Edna had ever possessed, and that she herself had entered the world long before Edna and Mr. Street had ever met. She had known it, but she'd never actually thought about it, wondered about it, followed through the implications. And now?

Now, she had to know. The window was open, and there was no shutting it. If Edna wouldn't talk, there had to be another way. Myrtle had two elderly female cousins in the area, one a widow in a nursing home in Dudson Falls, the other an old maid still in her family's farmhouse (though without the farm acreage) outside North Dudson. Myrtle had tried talking to both of them this last week but had gotten nowhere. The frustrating thing about trying to deal with doddering oldsters was that it was impossible to know for sure whether they were lying or merely feeble-minded. Both old ladies had sworn ignorance of Myrtle's male parentage, though, so that was that.

What else was there, what other way to learn about the past? Twenty-six years ago. Who was spending time then with Edna Gosling, already thirty-six years of age and chief librarian at the Putkin's Corners munic.i.p.al library? It was really too bad the Vilburgtown Reservoir had drowned Putkin's Corners a few years later; there might have been clues there. Well, they were unreachable now.

And the County Post seemed to contain no clues at all. No photos of the younger Edna Gosling on the arm of this gentleman or that at VFW Post clambakes or Dudson Consolidated School reunions, no "and pa.s.senger Edna Gosling" in stories of automobile accidents, no "accompanied by Miss Edna Gosling" in social-page wedding reports.

What else had Edna said about the man she claimed to be Myrtle's father back there at her first startled instant of recognition? "It couldn't happen, but it did," she'd said, meaning, presumably, that she hadn't believed the man would-no, could-ever return to this part of the world. Because she'd thought he was dead? Out of the country? Permanently hospitalized? But then she'd called the man, as Myrtle remembered it, a "dirty b.a.s.t.a.r.d son of a b.i.t.c.h." Was that because he'd left her, pregnant and unwed, so many years ago?

If only Edna would open up!

But she wouldn't, that's all. But there was nothing. And now it was nearly six o'clock, time for Myrtle to leave work and go pick up Edna at the Senior Citizens Center. Having finished going through for the third time the papers covering the year before her birth, Myrtle sighed, fast-cranked the roll of microfilm back onto its reel, put it away in its box, said good evening to Janice (the employee who would steer the library through the twilight hours), went out to the employee parking area behind the library, got behind the wheel of the black Ford Fairlane, and drove across town and down Main Street to where Edna stood irritably on the curb, waiting.

The clock on the Fairlane's dashboard a.s.sured Myrtle she wasn't late, so Edna's irritation was simply at its normal level of background static and nothing for Myrtle to worry about. Therefore, she had a welcoming smile on her face as she pulled to the curb before the dour old lady and pushed open the pa.s.senger door, calling, "h.e.l.lo, Mother!"

"Hm," Edna commented. She stepped forward to climb into the car, then glanced up over its top at a pa.s.sing vehicle and suddenly shouted, "G.o.dd.a.m.n!"

Now, "G.o.dd.a.m.n" was not something Edna said. It certainly wasn't something she ever shouted, and it absolutely positively wasn't something she would shout in the middle of the public street. Astounded, Myrtle gaped at her mother as Edna clambered into the car, slammed the door, pointed a trembling and bony finger at the windshield, and cried, "Follow that son of a b.i.t.c.h!"

Then she understood. Peering out, seeing a clean new tan automobile driving away from them down Main Street, Myrtle said, "My father again?"

"Follow him!"

Myrtle was, G.o.d knows, willing. Putting the Fairlane in gear, she pulled out onto Main Street just about a block behind that tan car, with only one other automobile in between. Weaving left and right to see past that intervening car, she could make out that the tan car was a new Cadillac Sedan de Ville, with MD plates. Myrtle, waiting impatiently for a chance to pa.s.s the extraneous car, said, "Is my father a doctor?"

"Hah!" Edna said. "He liked to play doctor plenty enough. Don't you lose him, now."

"I won't," Myrtle promised.

"What's he up to?" Edna muttered, beating her bony fist against the dashboard.

The car up ahead had four people in it, two in front and two in back. Maybe I'm going to get to know my father after all these years, Myrtle thought.

"p.r.i.c.k son of a b.i.t.c.h c.o.c.ksucker."

And she was sure as heck getting to know her mother better, too.

TWENTY.

"Car following us," Kelp said.

Dortmunder, in the backseat with Wally, twisted around to look out the rear window. They'd just put yet another little town behind them, and three vehicles were visible back there, strung out along this country road flanked by forest and small clearings containing tiny aluminum-sided houses with dead automobiles in their front yards. "Which one?" Dortmunder asked. "The black Fairlane. The one right behind us."

The Fairlane was about three car lengths back; pretty close for a tail. Frowning at it, Dortmunder tried to make out the people inside through the sky-reflecting windshield. "You sure?" he said. "Looks to me like a couple women in there."

"Been right on our a.s.s for miles," Kelp said.

"They don't act like pros," Dortmunder said.

Wally, excitement making his eyes and mouth wetter than usual, said, "Do you think they really are, Andy? Following us?"

Tom, up front next to Kelp, said, "One way to be sure. We'll circle once. If they're still with us, we'll take them out. Anybody carrying?"

"No," Dortmunder said.

Wally, very eager, said, "Carrying what?"

"You aren't," Dortmunder told him. "Don't worry about it."