Stan said, "Here comes Mom."

Dortmunder turned to look out the window again and saw the green and white Plymouth Frenzy parked at the curb out there, with the legend TOWN TAXI on its door. Murch's Mom was getting out from behind the wheel, wearing her usual workaday garb of checked leather cap, zippered jacket over flannel shirt, chinos, and boots. She moved with an unusual and uncharacteristic languor, closing the cab door rather than slamming it, walking toward the house at a normal pace with elbows barely sawing at all, chin hardly even a little bit thrust out.

"Gee," Stan said, sounding worried. "What's wrong with Mom?"

"She's relaxed," May said.

She sure was. When she came into the house, she didn't slam the door, didn't stomp her feet on the floor, didn't even scream and holler. All she did was hang up her zipper jacket and cloth cap in the hall, amble into the living room, and mildly say, "Oh, hi, Stanley, I'm glad you could come. How you doing, John?"

"Drowning," Dortmunder said.

"That's nice." Murch's Mom crossed the living room to present a cheek for her son to kiss. He did so, looking astonished at the idea, and she studied him critically but kindly, saying, "Have you been eating?"

"Well, sure," Stan said, and shrugged. "Like always. You know."

"Can you stay over?"

Dortmunder cleared his throat. "Uhhh," he said. "The idea was, we come up here to bring you back."

Murch's Mom turned around to frown at Dortmunder. With a touch of her old pugnacity, she said, "Back to the city? Down there with those wahoos and yo-yos?"

"That's right," Dortmunder said.

Murch's Mom pointed a stubby finger at Dortmunder's nose. "Do you know," she demanded with a tremor in her voice, "what people do up here when you put on your turn signal?"

"No," Dortmunder admitted.

"They let you make the turn!"

"That's nice," Dortmunder said.

Murch's Mom planted her feet on the floor, her fists on her hips, her elbows to east and west, and her jaw toward Dortmunder. "Whadaya got to match that in New York?"

"The water isn't over your head."

Murch's Mom nodded once, slowly, meaningfully. "That's up to you, John," she said.

Dortmunder sighed.

May, apparently taking pity on him, got to her feet at that point and said, "You're probably both thirsty after that long drive up."

"I sure am," Stan agreed.

"I have tea made," May told him, and started for the door.

Simultaneously, Dortmunder and Stan both said, "Tea?"

May paused in the doorway, looking back, raising an eyebrow.

Stan, hesitant, said, "I was kinda looking forward, you know, May, to a beer."

May and Murch's Mom both shook their heads. It was his Mom who said, "You shouldn't drink beer, Stanley, if you're going to drive all the way back today."

Dortmunder said, "I'm not driving."

While Stan gave him a dirty look, May said, "John, that wouldn't be fair. I'll be right back with the tea. It's all made." And she left.

While May was gone, Stan tried to talk his Mom into giving up this ridiculous idea and coming home. His arguments were many and, to Dortmunder's ear, persuasive: 1) This little vacation would soon pall, and Mom would begin to miss the rough-and-tumble of city life.

2) The longer she stayed up here in the sticks, the more she would lose that compet.i.tive edge without which you can't hope to make it in Big Town.

3) The style of this house would soon begin to grate on her nerves something fierce, being so unlike the nice apartment over the garage in Brooklyn where they'd both been so happy for so long.

4) You can't make the same kind of money pushing a hick hack as driving a metered yellow cab in New York City.

5) Tom Jimson will blow up the dam.

"That's up to John," Murch's Mom kept repeating at every iteration of No. 5; the other four she just shrugged off, not even arguing back. It was a very depressing performance all the way around.

Then May came back with mugs of tea on a round Rheingold beer tray. (At least, Dortmunder thought, she hadn't gone all the way to a tea set and little cups and tiny sandwiches with all the good chewy crust cut off. So maybe there was hope.) Or maybe not. They all sat around the living room with their mugs of tea, like a Poverty Row production for "Masterpiece Theater," and May said, "If you really want to move up here, John, there's plenty of room. You, too, Stan."

"Breathe the good air," Murch's Mom ordered her son.

"I've never had so much s.p.a.ce, John," May went on, sounding infuriatingly enthusiastic about the idea. "Room after room, upstairs and down. And it all came furnished with very nice things."

"And you won't believe the rent," Murch's Mom added. "Not after rents in the city."

"Mom," Stan said, a plaintive tw.a.n.g creeping into his voice, "I don't want to live in Dudson Center. What would I do around here?"

"Work with John," his Mom suggested, "getting that Jimson b.a.s.t.a.r.d his money."

Dortmunder sighed.

May said, "John, I hope you don't think I'm being mean about this. I'm doing it as much for you as for me."

"That's nice," Dortmunder said.

"If Tom blows up the dam-"

"He will."

"You'll feel terrible about it the rest of your life," May a.s.sured him. "Knowing you could have prevented it."

"I'm not going down in there anymore," Dortmunder said. "Not even for you, May. I'd rather feel terrible the rest of my life than spend one minute down in there."

"Then there has to be some other way," May said.

"You mean some other person," Dortmunder told her. "I won't go. Andy won't go." Turning to Stan, he said, "How about it? Want to take a turn?"

"Pa.s.s," Stan said.

His Mom frowned at him. "That's not like you, Stanley."

"It is like me," her son told her. "It's exactly like me. I recognized me in it the minute I opened my mouth. Mom, they told me what it's like down there. And I saw them come out last time."

May said, "Isn't there some way without having to actually walk into the reservoir?"

"Sure," Dortmunder told her. "Wally's got a million ways. Giant magnets. Evaporate the water with lasers. Of course, the best is the s.p.a.ceship from Zog."

"Not Wally's ideas," May said patiently, "and not his computer's ideas either. Your ideas."

"My idea," Dortmunder told her, "is to stay out of that reservoir. May, come away from here." Twisting around again, he glared out the window at that far-off gray wall in the hills. "He'll do it in a week," he said. "Less. You can't change it."

The wall seemed to shiver and bulge in the distance. Dortmunder could feel the water pressing on him, all around, black, heavy, holding him pinned like a straitjacket. A mad thought crossed his brain like heat lightning: steal two thousand BCDs, distribute them to everybody in the valley; people, buoyant, floating through the flood.

He turned back to the room. "May, I can't go in that water."

"And I can't leave here," she said.

Dortmunder sighed, one last time. "I'll talk to Tom," he said. "I don't know what I'll say, but I'll talk to him."

FORTY-EIGHT.

Tom Jimson was not an easy guy to get hold of. The phone number he'd given May as a contact was a saloon in Brooklyn with a bartender who at first had no desire to be cooperative. "Never heard of the guy," he said.

"You're very lucky," Dortmunder told him. "Look around under the tables there, see if you find somebody rolling a corpse. That'll be Tom."

The bartender thought that over for a second or two, then said, "You a friend of his?"

Dortmunder responded with a hollow laugh.

"Okay," the bartender said. "I guess you're all right. Gimme your name and number. If anybody called Tom Jimson comes in, I'll pa.s.s along the message."

"Tell him it's urgent," Dortmunder said.

This time it was the bartender who gave the hollow laugh, saying, "I thought you knew this Jimson guy."

"Yeah, you're right," Dortmunder agreed gloomily.

For the next day and a half, Dortmunder hung around the apartment, not wanting to miss the call, trying to convince himself Tom hadn't had time already to put together his string and collect his dynamite and his all-terrain vehicle and head north. Not enough time. He couldn't have done it yet.

Stan Murch and Tiny Bulcher and Andy Kelp phoned from time to time, or dropped by, to see how things were going. "I can't talk," Dortmunder explained to Kelp over the phone at one point. "I don't want Tom to get a busy signal when he calls."

"I been telling you, John," Kelp said. "You need call-waiting."

"No, Andy."

"And a cellular phone you can carry with you, so you can leave the house."

"No, I don't, Andy."

"And a kitchen extension. I could-"

"Leave me alone, Andy," Dortmunder said, and hung up.

Finally, late on the second day, Tom called, sounding very far away. "Where are you?" Dortmunder asked, imagining Tom in North Dudson, just off the Thruway exit.

"On the phone," Tom answered. "It's up to you, Al, to tell me why I'm on the phone."

"Well, uhhhh, Tom," Dortmunder said, and listened to hear what he would have to say next, and didn't hear anything at all.

"h.e.l.lo? Is this line dead?"

"No, Tom," Dortmunder said. "I'm here."

"You're gonna be all alone there in a second, Al," Tom warned him. "I got a lot of-G.o.dd.a.m.n it!" he suddenly shouted, apparently turning away from the phone to yell at somebody else at wherever he was. Raucous voices were heard in the background, and then Tom's voice, still aimed away from the phone, snarling, "Because I say so, s...o...b..rd! Just sit there till I'm off the phone!" Then, louder again in Dortmunder's ear, "Al? You still there?"

"Oh, sure," Dortmunder said. "Tom, uh, is that your, uh, have you got your guys to help on the-"

"Well, naturally, Al," Tom said, sounding jaunty. "And we're all kinda anxious to get going, you know. In fact, I'm having a tiny discipline problem at the moment with this one nose jockey here. So if you could just go ahead and spit it out, you know, we could get on the road."

"Well, the thing is, Tom," Dortmunder said, gripping the phone hard, willing himself to keep talking whether he had anything to say or not, "the thing is, I've been sort of regretting how I gave up on that, uh, reservoir job. I mean, you know me, Tom, I'm not a quitter."

"Lotta water there, Al," Tom said, sounding almost sympathetic; for him, that is. "Too much water to get through, you were right about that. No sweat, no problem, nothing for you to feel bad about. Cost me a couple months, but that's okay, it was kinda interesting watching you and your pals at work."

"Well, the thing is, Tom-"

"But now, Al, now I gotta do it right. Mexico's calling, Al."

"Tom, I want to-"

But Tom was off again, yelling at his companion or companions. Dortmunder waited it out, licking his lips, grasping the phone, and when Tom finally finished with his discipline problem, Dortmunder said, very quickly, "Tom, you know May. She moved up there, to Dudson Center. She's gonna stay there."

Was that a mistake? Maybe I shouldn't have let him know I had a personal stake in the situation. Well, it's too late now, isn't it?

Tom, after the briefest of pauses, said, "Well, well. Putting the pressure on you, eh, is she, Al?"

"Kind of," Dortmunder admitted. It was a mistake.

"You know, Al," Tom said, "I got a philosophy that maybe might help you at this time."

"You do?"