Westlake, Donald E - Novel 32 (10 page)

           
There was a certain amount of leeway
in setting up the work schedules at the precinct, so Tom and Joe could usually
adjust things around to be on duty at the same hours. They got cooperation from
the precinct because it was understood they had a car pool together. If they’d
both been patrolmen, or both on the detective squad, they could probably have
worked it out one hundred per cent of the time, but operating out of two
different offices the way they did there were bound to be times when the work
schedules were in conflict, with nothing to be done about it.

 
          
Because
of one of those conflicts, it was three days before they got to talk about
Tom’s meeting with Vigano, and when at last they did get together Joe was too
worn out to pay much attention. He’d been on a double shift, sixteen hours
straight, caused by some special activity over at the United Nations. In fact,
it was the stuff at the United Nations, involving a couple of African countries
and the Jewish Defense League and some anti-Communist Polish group and who
knows what
all, that
had created the conflict in the
work schedule in the first place.

 
          
It
wasn’t that Joe himself had had to go over to the UN, but a lot of uniformed
men from the precinct had been sent down there for the duration of the special
circumstances, and that meant the guys who were left had to double up to cover
the territory.

 
          
That
was one of the big differences between the patrolmen and the detective squad.
The detectives were chronically short-handed, and used to it, but there was
never any time when orders would come down that would strip out half the men
from the squad and leave the rest to take up the slack. The patrolmen though,
were, under normal circumstances, up pretty close to full strength, until every
once in a while the phone would ring in the Lieutenant’s office, a couple of
buses would pull up out front to take the boys away, and the ones left would
have to start scrambling.
Like today.

 
          
Today,
the result was that they rode back together in Tom’s car that afternoon with
Tom excited and ready to talk, and Joe just sitting there as though he’d been
hit by a fire hydrant. In fact, having come to work eight hours before Tom, he
had his own car in the city, the Plymouth, and was just leaving it there,
because he didn’t think he had the stamina to drive it all the way home. He’d
come back in with Tom tomorrow, and drive the Plymouth home tomorrow night, if
all went well.

 
          
At
first, Tom didn’t realize just how far out of it Joe was. They got into the car
together and Tom headed for the tunnel, and as they drove he gave a quick
rundown on what Vigano had said. Joe didn’t make any response, mostly because
he was barely listening. Tom tried to capture his attention by talking louder
and faster, trying to push some of his own enthusiasm into Joe’s ear. “It’s
simple,” he said. “What are bonds? They’re just pieces of paper.” He glanced
over at Joe. “Joe?”

 
          
Joe
nodded. “Pieces of paper,” he said.

 
          
“And
the great thing is,” Tom said, “we can actually do it.” He gave Joe another
look, with some annoyance in it.
“Joe, you with me?”

 
          
Joe
shifted around in his seat, moving his body like a sleeper who doesn’t want to
wake up. “For Christ’s sake, Tom,” he said, “I’m dead cm my feet.”

 
          
“You
aren’t on your feet.”

 
          
Joe
was too tired for humor; it just made him grouchy. “I
been
on my feet,” he said. “Double shift.”

 
          
“If
you pay attention to me,” Tom said, “you can say good-bye to all that.”

 
          
They
were just entering the Midtown Tunnel. Joe said, “You really believe in this?”

 
          
“Naturally.”

 
          
Joe
didn’t make any answer, and Tom didn’t say anything else while they were in the
tunnel. Coming out the other side, Tom said, “You got change?”

 
          
Joe
roused himself and patted his pockets, while Tom slowed for the toll booths.
Joe didn’t have any change, so he got out his wallet. “Here’s a dollar,” he
said.

 
          
“Thanks.”
Tom took the dollar, gave it to the attendant, got the change back, and passed
it to Joe, who sat there looking at the coins in his palm as though he didn’t
know what he was supposed to do with them.

           
Driving away from the booth, Tom
said, “How’d you like a job like that?”

 
          
“I
don’t want any job at all,” Joe said. He dropped the coins in his shirt pocket
and rubbed his face with his palm.

 
          
“Just standing there all day,” Tom said, “taking money in.”

 
          
“They
all rake off a little,” Joe said.

 
          
“Yeah,
and they get caught.”

 
          
Joe
squinted at him. “We won’t?”

 
          
“No,
we won’t,” Tom said.

 
          
Joe
shrugged, and looked out the side window at the black buildings and brick
smokestacks of Long Island City.

 
          
Tom
said, “The big difference is, we won’t do it over and over. One big job, and
quit. I go to Trinidad, you go to Montana.”

 
          
Joe
turned his head to Tom again. “Saskatchewan,” he said.

 
          
Tom,
thrown off the track, frowned at the trucks he was driving among, and said,
“What?”

 
          
“I
thought it over,” Joe told him. He was beginning to wake up despite himself,
though he was still in a bad mood. He said, “What I’d really like to do is get
Grace and the kids out of this country entirely. But completely out, before it
goes to hell altogether.”

 
          
“Where’s
this you want to go?”

 
          
“Saskatchewan.”
Joe made a vague gesture, as though pointing northward. “It’s in Canada,” he
said. “They give you land if you want to be a farmer.”

 
          
Tom
gave him a grin of surprise and disbelief. “What do you know about farming?”

 
          
“A
hell of a lot less than I’ll know next year.” They were now on that part of the
Expressway lined on both sides with cemeteries, and Joe brooded out at it all.
It’s like somebody’s idea of a sick joke, all those tombstones stretching away
on both sides of the Expressway just a couple miles from Manhattan; like a
parody of a city, in bad taste. Neither of them had ever mentioned it to the
other, but those damn cemeteries had bugged them both from time to time, over
the years of driving back and forth. And the funny thing was
,
they bothered the both of them more in the daytime than at night.
And more on sunny days than rainy days.
And
more in the summer than in the winter.

 
          
This
was a sunny day in July.

           
Neither of them said any more until
they were past the cemeteries. Then Joe said, “I’m really thinking about that,
you know. Just pack everybody in the car and take off for Canada. Except with
my luck, it’d break down before we got to the border.”

 
          
“Not
if you had a million dollars” Tom said.

 
          
Joe
shook his head. “There are times,” he said, “I almost believe we’re gonna do
it.”

 
          
Tom
frowned at him. “What’s the matter with you? You’re the one that’s
done
it already.”

 
          
“You
mean the liquor store?”

 
          
“What
else?”

 
          
“That
was a different thing,” Joe said. “That was—” He moved his hands, trying to
think of the word.

 
          
“Small-time,”
Tom said. “I’m telling you to think bigtime. You know what Vigano had?”

 
          
Small-time
wasn’t the word Joe had been
looking for. Irritated, he said, “What did he have?”

 
          
“His own bowling alley.
Right in the
house.”

 
          
Joe
just stared.
“A bowling alley?”

 
          
“Regulation bowling alley.
One lane.
Right in the house.”

 
          
Joe
grinned. That was the kind of high life he could understand. “Son of a bitch,”
he said.

 
          
“Go
tell
him
crime doesn’t pay,” Tom
said.

 
          
Joe
nodded, thinking it over. He said, “And he told you securities, huh?”

 
          
“Bearer
bonds,” Tom said.
“Just pieces of paper.
Not heavy, no
trouble, we turn them right over.”

 
          
Joe
was wide awake now, interested, his irritation forgotten. “Tell me the whole thing,”
he said. “What he said, what you
said.
What’s his
house look like?”

 
          
To
me, Broadway in the Seventies and Eighties is the only part of Manhattan that’s
worth anything at all. Paul and I cover that area in the squad car a lot, and I
kind of like it
The
people are maybe a little
uglier-looking than the average, but at least they’re human; not like the
freaks in the Village or the Lower East Side. Midtown has all the pretty
people, all those marching men in their suits and good-looking secretaries out
wandering around during lunch, but that isn’t where they
live.
There isn’t anything human or livable in that area at all;
it’s just stone and glass boxes that the white-collar people work in all day.
On their own time, they go somewhere else.

 
          
Anyway,
we’re supposed to cover the cross-streets and West End Avenue and Columbus and
Amsterdam and Central Park West, but whenever I’m at the wheel I tend to be on
Broadway. Unless I feel like doing some fun driving or giving out some tickets,
in which case I go over to Henry Hudson Parkway.

 
          
Two
days after Tom and I had our talk in his car about Vigano, Paul and I were
heading south on Broadway, me driving, when all of a sudden, half a block ahead
of us, two people came struggling out of a hardware store onto the sidewalk.
They were both male, both Caucasian. One was short, heavy-set, fiftyish,
wearing gray workpants and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up above his
elbows. The other was tall, lanky, twentyish, wearing army boots and khaki
pants and a geen polo shirt. At first, all I could see was that they were
struggling with one another, going around in a circle as though they were
dancing.

 
          
Paul
saw it too. “There!” he said pointing.

 
          
I
accelerated,
then
hit the brakes as we got closer. I
could see now that the tall young one had a small zippered bag in one hand and
a small pistol in the other. The short guy was clinging to the tall guy’s
waist, holding on for dear life, and the tall guy was trying to club him with
the pistol. There were a lot of pedestrians on the sidewalk, as usual, but they
were falling back, giving the two men plenty of room.

 
          
Paul
and I both jumped out of the car at the same time. He was closer to the curb,
while I had to run around the front of the car. At the same time, the tall guy
finally managed to break loose from the short one. He gave him a shove
backwards, and the short guy staggered a couple of steps and then sat down
hard. The tall guy had seen us coming, and he waved the pistol at us.

 
          
I
yelled, “Drop it! Drop it!”

 
          
All
of a sudden the son of a bitch fired two shots. Out of the comer of my eye I
saw Paul go down, but I had to keep my mind on the guy with the gun. He’d
turned and started to run southward along the sidewalk.

 
          
I
reached the sidewalk, went down on my left knee, propped my forearm on my
raised right knee; all those years of practice paid off after all. I was
sighted on his back, with the green polo shirt, and then on his legs. But the
sidewalks were
full,
there were too many faces and
bodies past him, right in the line of fire. And he was smart enough not to run
in a straight line but to shift back and forth as he went.

 
          
I
kept the pistol aimed, in case I could get a clear shot with nobody beyond him,
but it didn’t happen. “Damn it,”

 
          
I
whispered. “Damn it.” And he disappeared around the corner.

 
          
I
got back to my feet. Over by the storefront, the older man was also getting up.
Paul was on his back on the sidewalk, but struggling to sit up, moving like a
turtle on its back. I moved to him, holstering the pistol, and crouched beside
him as he finished sitting up. He looked stunned, as though he didn’t know
where he was. I said, “Paul?”

 
          
“Jesus,”
he said. His voice was slurred. “Jesus.”

 
          
His
left trouser leg was wet, stained dark, sodden with blood, midway between the
knee and the crotch. “Lie down,” I said, and poked at his near shoulder. But he
wasn’t really conscious at all; he didn’t hear me, or didn’t understand me. He
just went on sitting there, his mouth hanging open, his eyes blinking very
slowly.

 
          
I
got up again, turning toward the squad car, and the old man clutched at my arm.
When I looked at him, pulling my arm away, he shouted, “The money!
The money!”

 
          
I
could have killed him. “Shut up about money!” I yelled, and ran to the car to
call in.