“No, they didn’t,” Tom told him, “on account of this fence, and the cops on duty here, and the state law they passed to make this reservoir off limits to everybody.” “But that was a long time ago,” Dortmunder objected. “Those chemicals are gone. The people that had them took them all themselves.” “Al,” Tom said, “have you ever seen any government give up control, once they got it? Here’s the fence, here’s the cops, here’s the state law says everybody keep out, here’s the job to be done. So they do it. Otherwise, they wouldn’t feel right taking their paycheck every week.”
“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.”
“Sounds easy,” May said. “Whenever things sound easy,” Dortmunder said, “it turns out there’s one part you didn’t hear.”
yellow VW and putt-putted away to the city. And this was the first time he’d been back among the Dudsons since. “It’s
“It’s our next exit, Andy,” he said, rattling his maps. “I know that, Wally,” Andy said, amiably enough. “The State of New York spent three hundred thousand dollars to put up a sign there to tell me so.”
the backseat John gave an occasional long sigh. His sighs
from the backseat John gave an occasional long sigh. His sighs didn’t seem to comment on Andy’s language or the quality of North Dudson’s drivers so much as on life itself.
“Even today, you take a look at the Amtrak map, the railroad lines go all around Oklahoma, but they never go in.
“No matter where I go with you, Tom, sooner or later it’s the descent into the depths.” “This is a very solid structure, Al,” Tom assured him. “There’s no way it’s gonna collapse on us.” Dortmunder hadn’t even been thinking of that, but now he was. “Thanks, Tom,” he said.
What did it all matter, really, in the vastness of space, the fullness of time? Maybe Tiffany wasn’t exactly the ideal person to spend the rest of one’s life with, but what the heck, maybe he wasn’t anybody’s lifelong ideal either.
It hadn’t been easy for Andy Kelp to find a large station wagon with both MD plates and a trailer hitch, but he’d persevered, not settling for second best,