Westlake, Donald E - Novel 32 (21 page)

 
          
It
was tougher to get through the crowd this time; the convenient empty lane
between crowd and building fronts had gone, swallowed up by the generalized
movement of the crowd away from here.

 
          
The
pursuit would be slowed just as
much,
they had to keep
reminding themselves of that.

 
          
They
reached the arcade, and it too was full of people now, though not quite as bad
as the street; they moved through at a good pace.

 
          
The
squad car was right where they’d left it, just as it was supposed to be. A lot
of people were milling around, but none of them were interested in two cops.
Tom paused by a wire trash can at the curb. He held the laundry bag by a bottom
comer, and quietly upended it into the trash can. The typewriter paper fell
out, and the weight of it all together in a pack drove it down through the
crumpled newspapers and cigarette packages and paper cups, halfway out of
sight.

 
          
They
moved on toward the squad car. Tom squashed the laundry bag into a ball and
stuffed it into his pocket
They
got into the car, Joe
behind the wheel, and drove away.

 
          
Two
blocks later, they had to stop at an intersection to let two other patrol cars
rush by, sirens screaming and lights flashing. Then they drove on.

 
          
Once
again they changed the license plates and the identifying numbers on the squad
car, this time switching everything back to the original way. Their actions
were shielded by the highway stanchion and the parked trailer. Joe made the
transfer on the rear plate and Tom the front, and then they met at the back of
Tom’s Chewy. Tom opened the trunk lid, and they tossed the plates and numbers
and the two screwdrivers in with the canvas bag containing Tom’s civilian
clothing.

 
          
Neither
of them said anything. They were both feeling very down,
very
deflated. It was the letdown after all the excitement, and they knew it, but
knowing what the trouble was didn’t change it

 
          
Tom
was making some attempt to shake the feeling off. Pulling the blue plastic
laundry bag out of his pocket, he shook it out to its full length and then held
it up in front of himself like a doctor holding up a newborn baby. His hand was
trembling as he held the bag, and he gave it a shaky, uncertain grin. “Well,
there it is,” he said.

 
          
Joe
gave the bag a sour look. He wasn’t fighting against his depression at all.
“Yeah, there it is, all right,” he said.

 
          
“Two
million dollars,” Tom said.

 
          
Joe
shook his head. “Air,” he corrected.

 
          
Tom
gave him a grin that was supposed to be brave and sure of
itself
.
“We’ll see,” he said.

 
          
Joe
shrugged. The gesture meant that he was skeptical, and that he was too weary to
give a damn. “Yeah, we will,” he said.

 
          
Suddenly
feeling defensive, Tom told him, “We talked it over, Joe. We agreed this was
the way to do it.”

 
          
Joe
shrugged again, and gave an exhausted nod. “I know, I know.” Then, seeing Tom’s
expression, he tried to act more friendly, and to explain himself. “I just wish
we had something to show for it,” he said.

 
          
Tom
said, “But that’s just what we didn’t want. Nothing we had to carry away from
the scene, nothing we had to hide, nothing to get caught with,
nothing
to be used as evidence against us.”

 
          
“Nothing,”
Joe said. Then he spread his hands and said, “What the hell, you’re right. We
did talk it over, we did agree. Come on, let’s go. I need a drink.”

 
          
Tom
was going to argue some more, but Joe had turned away, walking back toward the
squad car. And Tom thought, what’s the point in arguing? We’ve already done it,
and we did it this way, and it was the right way. He dropped the plastic bag
into the trunk, and shut the lid.

 
          
They
got into the two cars, and Joe led the way back uptown to the police garage.
The parking space he’d taken the car from was gone now, but there was another
one near it. Joe left the car there without doing anything under the hood;
tomorrow morning, a mechanic would find the car had mysteriously fixed
itself
. If he was a normal mechanic, he’d first take it for
granted there’d never been anything wrong with the car other than a stupid
driver, and second take credit for having fixed it.

 
          
Tom
was waiting around the corner in the Chewy. Joe walked around and got in, and
they drove back over to the Port Authority. While Joe stayed outside in the
car, Tom went in and changed back to civvies. When he came out, Joe said, “I
wasn’t kidding about that drink. My nerves could use one.”

 
          
Tom
was agreeable; the idea of a drink was a good one to him, too. “Where do you
want to go?”

 
          
“Nowhere
we’re
known.”

 
          
“I’ll
find a place over in Queens.”

 
          
“Good.”

 
          
Tom
drove across town and up to the 59th Street Bridge and over to Queens. They
found a bar on Queensboro Boulevard with nobody in it except the bartender and
an old fellow dressed in striped railroad coveralls. The railroad man was
sitting at the bar, watching an afternoon game show on the television set
mounted at the end of room. They ordered a couple of beers, and sat in a booth
to drink them.

 
          
They
were both in the mood for a drink, but they had different reasons. Tom was
hoping liquor would make him fed happier, more like celebrating their sucess,
and Joe was in the kind of a bad mood that requires a bad-mood drunk. So they
sat in a booth and socked it away for a while and did very little talking.

 
          
It
was about two-thirty when they first went in there. About an hour later, which
was five or six rounds later, Tom roused himself and looked around and said,
“Hey.” Joe turned his head and stared at him. He was already feeling pretty
bleary. He said, “What?”

 
          
“We’re
making a mistake,” Tom told him. “We’re making one of the basic mistakes of the
whole world.”

 
          
Joe
frowned, not following the meaning. He closed one eye and said, “Which mistake
is that?”

 
          
“That’s
the mistake,” Tom said carefully, “where a fella pulls a job and then goes
right out and gets drunk, and while he’s drunk he talks about it.
Happens all the time.”
“Not to us,” Joe said. He was a
little indignant.

 
          
“Happens
all the time,” Tom insisted. “You know that yourself. You’ve picked them up
your own self, I know you have. And so have I. My own self, I’ve picked them
up.”

           
“We’re smarter than that,” Joe said.
He drained his glass.

 
          
“Well,
look at us,” Tom said. “What are we doing, if we're smarter than that?”

 
          
Joe
looked around. There were only the four of them in the bar; railroad man,
bartender, Tom, Joe. “Who am I gonna talk to?”

 
          
“The
night’s young,” Tom told him. Looking out at the daylight past the front
windows, he said, “In fact, the day’s still young.”

 
          
“I’m
not gonna talk,” Joe said. He sounded a bit belligerent.

 
          
“You
said that pretty loud,” Tom told him. “Also, you’re in uniform.”

 
          
Joe
looked down at himself. He wasn’t wearing the hat or the badge or the gunbelt,
all of which were locked up in the trunk of Tom’s Chewy, but his shirt and
pants were identifiably those of a police officer. “Son of a bitch,” he said.

 
          
“I’ve
got a better idea,” Tom said.

 
          
Joe
looked at him, interested. “I could use one,” he said.

 
          
“Well
go home.”

 
          
“Shit,
no!”

 
          
“No,
wait, listen to me. Well go home, and well go down into my bar. I got my own
bar, remember?”

 
          
Joe
frowned, thinking about it. “You mean the basement?”

 
          
“It’s
in
the basement,” Tom said, with
dignity, “but it’s the bar. It isn’t the basement.”

 
          
Joe
studied that one. “It’s in the basement,” he said thoughtfully.

 
          
“That
may be true,” Tom said. “But it’s the bar.”

 
          
“If you say so.”

 
          
“It
isn’t the basement.”

 
          
Joe
nodded, judiciously. “I get the idea,” he said.

 
          
“So
that’s where we’ll go,” Tom said.

 
          
‘To
the bar,” Joe said.
“In
the basement.”

 
          
“In the basement.”

 
          
“And
drink there.”

 
          
“And
drink there,” Tom agreed.

 
          
“That's
not a terrible idea,” Joe said.

 
          
So
that’s what they did.

 
          
Their
hangovers were beyond belief, and they both had morning duty the next day. They
rode in together in Joe’s car, both of them stunned by last night’s drinking,
and by too little sleep, and by this morning’s heat; it was going to be a hell
of a day, they could see that already.

 
          
They
had the radio on in the car, and it was full of yesterday’s robbery. The first
they heard of it was when the news announcer said, ‘Two men, disguised as police
officers and apparently driving a New York City Police Department car, made off
yesterday with nearly twelve million dollars in negotiable securities in what
police term one of the largest robberies in Wall Street history.

 
          
Tom
said, ‘Twelve million? That’s good.”

 
          
“It’s
bullshit,” Joe said. “They’re padding it for the insurance company, just like
anybody else.”

 
          
“You
think so?”

 
          
“I
guarantee it”

 
          
Grinning,
Tom said, “Til tell you what we’ll do. Ten million or twelve million, we’ll
still let Vigano have it for the two million we said to begin with.”

 
          
Joe
laughed, then winced and took one hand off the steering wheel to clutch his
forehead. Still holding it, but still laughing, he said, “We’re a couple of
sports, we are.” “Quiet a second,” Tom said, and patted the air.

 
          
On
the radio, they were still talking about the robbery. The announcer had been
replaced by somebody interviewing a Deputy Police Commissioner. The interviewer
was saying, “Is there any chance at all that these actually were police officers?”

 
          
The
Commissioner had a deep voice, and a slow dignified manner of speech, like a
fat man walking. He said, “We don’t at this time believe so. We do not believe
that this was a crime such as police officers would have committed. The police
force is not perfect, but armed robbery is not in the pattern of police crime.”

           
The interviewer asked, “Is it
possible they really did use a Police Department squad car to make their
getaway?”

 
          
The
Commissioner said, “You mean stolen?”

 
          
“Well—”
said the interviewer. “Stolen, or borrowed.”

 
          
The
Commissioner said, “That possibility is being investigated. The investigation
is not yet complete, but so far we have no evidence of any stolen police
vehicle.”

 
          
“Or
borrowed,” said the interviewer.

 
          
The
Commissioner, sounding a little irritated, said, “Or borrowed, yes.”

 
          
“But
that possibility is being investigated?”

 
          
Heavily,
sounding like a man having trouble holding onto his temper, the Commissioner
said, “All possibilities are being investigated.”

 
          
Joe
said, “That wise-ass reporter could lay off on the borrowed for a while.”

 
          
“We’re
safe on that,” Tom said. “You know we are. We worked it out, and there’s no way
anybody can figure out what car was used.”

 
          
Joe
said, “We’re safe on
that?
What do
you mean, we’re safe on that? Where aren’t we safe?”

 
          
“We’re
safe all over,” Tom said. “You were talking about the car, that’s all. I’m
saying they can’t get to us through the car, there’s no way.”

 
          
“I
already knew that,” Joe said. Squinting out at the traffic, he said, “I should
have worn sunglasses.”

 
          
They
both had sunglasses on. Tom looked over at Joe and said, “You are wearing
sunglasses.”

 
          
“What?”
Joe touched his face and felt the glasses. “Jesus Christ, it must be bright out
there.” He lowered the glasses slightly, looked at the glare, and shoved them
back into place. “I should have worn two pair,” he said. “Wait,” Tom said.
“They’re still talking about it.”

 
          
A
different interviewer was on now, asking questions of the Inspector from the
downtown precinct who was in charge of the investigation. The interviewer was
asking him, “Do you have any leads or suspects so far?”

 
          
That’s
the question they always ask, and it’s the one question that can never be
answered while an investigation is still going on. But they always ask it, and
the spokesman has to deal with it somehow. What the Inspector said was, “So
far, the best we can say is, it looks like an inside job. They knew exactly
what to take, negotiable instruments as good as money.”

 
          
The
interviewer said, “All bearer bonds, is that it?”

           
“That’s right,” the Inspector said.
“They were very explicit with the girl they sent into the vault to get the
stuff for them. They wanted all bearer bonds, no bond worth less than twenty
thousand or more than a hundred thousand.”

 
          
“And
that’s what they got,” said the interviewer. “Exactly,” said the Inspector.
“To the tune of almost twelve million dollars.”

 
          
“And the fact that the robbers wore police uniforms?”

           
“Definitely a disguise,” the
Inspector said.

 
          
The
interviewer said, “Then you’re confident the robbers have no connection with
the Police Department.”

           
“Absolutely,” said the Inspector.

 
          
“And
that’s more bullshit,” Joe said. “We’ll be lucky they don’t run the whole force
through the line-up, give Eastpoole a look at us all.”

 
          
“I’d
rather not,” Tom said.

 
          
“If
they do,” Joe said, “I hope it’s this morning. I don’t even recognize myself
right now.”

 
          
“We
drank too much last night,” Tom said. “We shouldn’t do that.”

 
          
“Not
when we got to work.”

 
          
“Not
anyway,” Tom said. “That’s the way you get fat.”

           
Joe gave him a look, then faced the
highway again, “Talk about yourself, pal,” he said.

 
          
Tom
didn’t have the strength to be insulted. “Anyway,” he said, “a year from now,
we won’t have to go to work at all any more. Not ever.”

 
          
“I
want to talk to you about that,” Joe said.

 
          
“About what?”

 
          
“About
how long we stick around.”

 
          
Tom
roused himself toward anger. “Are you going to start that again?”

 
          
Joe,
being low and intense even though it made his head hurt more, said, “A year is
too long, that’s all, too much shit happens. You do what you
want,
I’m giving it six months.”

 
          
“We
agreed—”

 
          
“Sue
me,” Joe said, and glowered at the traffic.

 
          
Tom
stared at him, and for a few seconds he was boiling mad. But then the rage
suddenly drained out of him, like water out of a sink, and all he felt was
tired again. Looking away, he shrugged and said, “Do what you want, I don’t
care.”

           
They were both silent for a couple
minutes. Then Joe said, “Besides, we’ve still got Vigano to think about.” Tom
kept looking out the side window. He wasn’t mad about the six months any more;
in fact he agreed with it, though he’d never admit that But the Vigano thing
was something else. “Yeah, that’s right,” he said.

 
          
“We’ll
want to give him a call,” Joe said. “You call him, right? You know him.”

 
          
“Yeah,
sure,” Tom said. “I’m the one he’s got the arrangement with, how I’m supposed
to call and everything.”

 
          
“When
will you do it?
This afternoon?”

 
          
“No,
not today,” Tom said. “It’s not a good idea to do it today.”

 
          
“Why not?”

 
          
“Well,
in the first place, I’ve got too much of a headache to think straight. In the
second place, we ought to let a couple days go by, maybe a week. Let things
quiet down a little after the robbery before we do anything else.”

 
          
Joe
shrugged. “I don’t get the point,” he said.

 
          
“Listen,”
Tom said, “what’s the hurry?” He was getting annoyed again, and that was making
the headache worse, and that was making him more annoyed. “We’re going to be
here six months no matter when I call Vigano.”

 
          
“Okay,”
Joe said. “Do it any way you want.”

 
          
“So
there’s no reason to rush. He’ll keep.”

 
          
“Fine
with me,” Joe said.

 
          
“Just
let me do it at my own pace.”

 
          
“That’s
what I’ll do,” Joe said. “Forget I brought it up.”

           
“All right,” Tom said. He was breathing
hard. “All right,” he said.