Westlake, Donald E - Novel 32 (14 page)

 
          
The
truck started forward with a jerk, and a second later so did the squad car. It
snapped my neck back, but not very much. I held onto the steering wheel for
balance, and out of habit, and we rolled on down the block. The mechanic stood
where he was until we went by, and the look he gave the car was weary and
irritated.

 
          
The
nose of the squad car bobbed a little as we moved, as though I was in a
speedboat. The front being angled up so high gave the same idea, and all of a
sudden I remembered a summer vacation when I was a kid, maybe ten or eleven,
and the whole family went up in the Adirondacks somewhere for a week. We rented
a cabin on a lake. I mean, near the lake; you had to walk down this dirt path
between two other cabins to get to the water, and I can still remember the way
those stones felt under my bare feet. And there was a rich man there that owned
a house at the other end of the lake, a white house bigger than the house I
lived in back home in Brooklyn, and he had a speedboat.
Red
and white.
He gave me a ride once, two other kids and me. We put on
these orange life vests and sat in the back seat, and when the boat started up
I was scared out of my mind. We went like a bat out of hell, and the front was
up so high I couldn’t see where we were going. But at the same time, it was
really great; the wind and the noise and the spray, and the shore being so far
away. Afterwards, remembering it while safe on dry land, it was even greater,
and I spent the rest of that week wondering why we weren’t rich, too. Rich was
obviously a better thing to be, so why weren’t we? That’s the way kids think.

 
          
I
hadn’t remembered that for maybe twenty years.

 
          
There
was a free space against the curb down near the comer. They stopped the truck
and I got out of the car to watch them jockey it into place. I looked at my
watch when they were finishing up, and it was
ten after twelve
.
Plenty of time.

 
          
The
driver of the tow truck said, “You want a lift back to the station?”

 
          
I
almost said yes, I almost forgot the situation that much. But I caught myself
in time and said, “No, I’ll walk”

 
          
“Up to you.”

 
          
I
gave them a wave and they drove off, and I watched them go. Sometimes I amaze
myself. Could it be this whole business still wasn’t real to me, that I could
forget it that easy? I’d damn near gotten into that truck to ride back to the
station with them, just as though this was any other day and I didn’t have
anything else on my mind at all.
Amazing.
Shaking my
head, I turned and walked over to Eleventh Avenue and headed south.

 
          
My
role now was just to walk around for about ten minutes. One of the secondary
advantages of pulling this caper in uniform is the fact that a cop is the only
guy on earth who can stand around a street comer loitering and not attract any
attention. It’s his
job
to loiter.
Anybody else, somebody’s likely to say, “Who’s the guy on the comer? What’s he
up to?”
But not a cop.

 
          
I’m
surprised criminals don’t pull
all
their jobs wearing the blue.

 
          
After
ten minutes, I headed back around to where I’d left the car. Now, who’s going
to look twice at a cop doing something to a patrol car? I opened the hood, put
the distributor cap back on, got behind the wheel, started the car, and headed
down to where I was supposed to meet Tom.

 
          
The
difference between committing a crime and planning a crime is the difference
between being in a snowstorm and looking at a picture of the blizzard of
’eighty-eight. Joe and I had spent a long time planning this robbery,
organizing things, working out the details, and none of it had ever bothered
me; but all of a sudden we were in the storm, and no fooling.

           
I slept lousy the night before. I
kept waking up and being afraid there was somebody in the house. I never felt
so defenseless in my life, lying there in the darkness, listening, trying to
hear whoever it was that was in the next room. Then I’d drift off again and
have bad dreams, and wake up once more.

 
          
I
only remember one of the dreams.
Or just one part.
I
was very small, and I was in a very big empty dark room, and the walls were
falling outward.
Slowly.
Just
falling out and back.
Terrifying.

 
          
We’d
picked a day that I had off and Joe was working, so I spent the morning hanging
around on my own, trying not to show Mary how tense and irritable I was. Joe
had already told Grace he’d be on double shift today, and Mary thought I was
supposed to be working this afternoon, so we were both covered for the time of
the robbery.

 
          
But
how the early part of the day dragged on! Half a dozen times, I was on the
verge of getting into the car and driving on into the city just to be doing
something, even though it would be hours before I was supposed to meet Joe, and
I’d have a tougher job killing time in New York than at home. But it was just
impossible to sit still, I had to be up and around and moving. I took the Chewy
down to the local car wash and then drove around for half an hour, I spent some
time cleaning out the garage,
I
even took a walk
around the neighborhood, something I’ve never done in my life before. And it
was weird how close to the house I became a stranger, walking past houses that
looked like mine but that didn’t have any more to do with my life than some
shepherd’s hut in Outer Mongolia. That walk did more harm than good, and I was
glad when I got back to my own block, to houses I knew, and the sense of safety
that comes from being where you belong.

 
          
Then,
when it was finally time to go, I got very jittery and nervous, and couldn’t
seem to get myself organized to leave the house. I kept forgetting things and
having to come back.
Including the uniform.
I had it
packed in a little canvas bag, and I damn near left without it. That would have
been bright.

 
          
Did
you ever have a tense situation sometime in your life, and you turn on the
radio, and all the song lyrics seem to refer directly to the problem you’re
going through? That’s what happened on the drive into the city. Every song that
came on was either about somebody making a mistake that loused up his whole
life, or somebody who has to give up his home and go wandering around the
world, or somebody putting himself in danger even though
this
girl that
loves him doesn’t want him to do it.

 
          
I
was almost sorry we hadn’t told Mary and Grace what we were doing, because they
really
would
have talked us out of
it. That way, neither one of us would have backed down, but I still wouldn’t be
driving west on the Long Island Expressway this morning, with my old
patrolman’s uniform in a canvas bag beside me on the seat.

 
          
Don’t
get me wrong. I don’t mean I wanted to give it up. I still wanted to do it, the
reasons for doing it were still just as valid as they’d ever been, and my plans
for afterward still excited me as much as when I’d first worked them out. But
if the situation had been taken out of my hands one way or another, and I’d
been
forced
to turn back, I admit I
wouldn’t have put up too much of a fight.

 
          
Well,
I got to Manhattan with time to spare, drove over to the West Side, and parked
in the low Forties, near Tenth Avenue. Then I walked down to the Port Authority
terminal, carrying the bag with the uniform in it, and changed clothes in a pay
stall in the men’s room there.

 
          
Leaving,
heading across the main terminal floor for the Ninth Avenue exit, I was stopped
by a short old woman wearing a black coat—in weather like this—who wanted to
know where to buy tickets for a Public Service bus. She irritated me at first,
distracting me when I was so tense anyway, and I couldn’t figure out why she
was bothering me with questions like that when just ahead of us there was a
huge sign reading: INFORMATION; but then I remembered I was in uniform. I
shifted gears, became a cop, and gave her courteous directions over to the
ticket windows along the side wall. She thanked me and scurried away, pulling
the coat tight around her as though she were in a high wind that nobody else
could feel. Then I walked on, left the building without being asked any more
questions, and headed back for the car.

 
          
Walking
along, I got this sudden vision in my head of the same thing happening again,
only in a more serious way than with the old woman. I could see Joe and me on
our way to commit a felony and being stopped by somebody who’d just been
mugged,
or getting mixed up with a lost child, or being the
first cops on the scene at a serious automobile accident.

 
          
And
what could we do if something like that happened? We’d have to
stay,
we’d have to play out the policeman’s role. There just
wouldn’t be any
choice,
it would be far too suspicious
for us to refuse to have anything to do with whatever it might be. The next
cops to come along would surely be told about it, and we didn’t want the idea
getting around ahead of time that there were a couple of fake cops up to
something in the city.

 
          
That
would be damn ironic; kept from committing a robbery by the call of duty. I
grinned as I walked along, thinking I would tell Joe about it when I saw him. I
could just see his face.

 
          
At
the Chewy, I opened the trunk and put the canvas bag in it, with my other
clothes. The license plates and numbers were in there, in a shopping bag;
they’d been there for a week, ever since we’d picked them up.

 
          
I
shut the trunk, got behind the wheel, and drove over by the piers. The New York
City piers have gone to hell in the last ten years or so, with most of the
harbor business now being done over in Jersey, so there’s plenty of places in
through there, particularly under the West Side Highway, where you can have all
the privacy you want. Some of the trucking companies store empty trailers
there, which form walls to shield you from the sight of the occasional car or
truck heading down Twelfth Avenue.

 
          
I
tucked the Chewy in by a highway stanchion, next to a parked trailer, and
looked at my watch. I was still running ahead of schedule, but that was all
right. And now that I was really committed to it, and I’d made the first couple
of moves in the planned operation, I was actually calming down, getting less
and less nervous. The buildup had made me tense, but now the tension was
draining away and I felt as easy in my mind as if I was just waiting here for
Ed Dantino to show up so we could go on duty.
Very strange.

 
          
It
was a hot day, too hot to sit in the car. I got out of it, locked it, and
leaned against the fender to wait for Joe.

 
          
They
could hear the parade before they saw it; crowd noises,
march
music, and drums. Mostly the drums, you could hear them from blocks and blocks
away.

 
          
There’s
a feeling about the sound of a parade that something is about to happen,
something fast and dramatic and maybe hard to deal with. It’s the drums that do
it, hundreds and hundreds of drums stretched away for blocks, all thumping out
the same steady beat. It’s a little faster than a normal heartbeat, so if
you’re not marching along with it you can find it making you a little tense or
excited.

 
          
Of
course, if you’re tense or excited to begin with, because you’re about to commit
your first grand larceny, drums like that can just about give you a coronary.

 
          
Both
of them felt that, but neither said anything about it. They were pretending
with one another that they were calm and businesslike, which was probably a
good way to behave, since keeping up the facade seemed to help them deal with
their nervousness and not get immobilized by it.

 
          
Back
when they’d met over by the piers, the fact was they really had both been calm.
Each of them had successfully done the first simple step of the plan—Joe in
getting the squad car, Tom in switching into uniform and finding the place to
stash the Chewy—and there was a sense they shared of having accomplished
something and of being in control of the situation. Then, when they’d first
met, they’d busily switched the license plates on the squad car and put the new
peel-off numbers on its sides, and they’d still had that same feeling of being
smart and organized and well-prepared and in control.

 
          
But
as they drove downtown, and particularly when they got down into the narrow
streets of the financial section, they both got to thinking about accidents and
unforeseen circumstances and all the things that can go wrong with the best
plan in the world. The tension started in them again, and the pounding of the
drums didn’t help.

 
          
Parker,
Tobin, Eastpoole & Company was in a corner building, with the front facing
onto the street where the parade was going by. Down the block, another building
had an arcade that ran through to the next street over. It was that street they
were heading for, a block away from the crowds and jam-up of the parade, but
close enough so they could hear it loud and clear.

 
          
There
was a fire hydrant near the arcade entrance. Joe parked the car there, and they
got out and walked through the arcade, both automatically pacing themselves to
the sound of the drums. Ahead of them, the arched opening of the arcade framed
a black mass of people facing the other way; past them and over their heads,
they could see flags being carried by.

 
          
As
they walked along, Joe suddenly burped. It was incredibly loud, it seemed to
bounce off the windows of the shops along both sides of the arcade, it echoed
like a cathedral bell. Tom gave him a look of astonishment, and Joe rubbed his
front and said, “I’ve got a very nervous stomach.”

 
          
“Don’t
think about it,” Tom said. He meant he didn’t want to think about his own
nervousness.

 
          
Joe
gave him a one-sided grin and said, “You give great advice.”

 
          
They
came to the end of the arcade and stepped out onto the sidewalk, and the parade
noise was suddenly much louder, as though a radio had been turned up. A band
was going by, in red and white uniforms; they could catch glimpses of it
through spaces between the people on the sidewalk. Another band had just passed
by and was half a block away to the left, playing a different marching song but
with the beat of the drums at the same time. A third band was down to the
right, coming this way, its sounds buried within those made by the first two,
plus the talking and yelling and laughing of the onlookers. Police officers in
uniform were placed here and there, but they were concentrating on crowd
control and paid no attention to Tom and Joe; in any case, what were they but
just two more cops assigned to the parade?

 
          
There
was a narrow cleared strip of sidewalk along between the building fronts and
the massed people watching the parade. They turned left and walked in single
file along that strip, moving now in the same direction as the band on the
other side of the people, but because they were striding out they were moving
just a little faster.
Joe went first, marching steadily along
in time to the music and the drums, and watching everything at eye level; the
people, the cops, the building entrances.
Tom followed, moving in a more
easy-going way, looking up at the people gawking out of all the windows above
street level; practically every window in every building had at least one
person standing in it or leaning out of it.

 
          
No
one paid any attention to them. They went into the comer building and took the
self-service elevator. They were alone in it, and on the way up they put on the
moustaches and plain-lensed hom-rim glasses they’d been carrying in their
pockets. Those were the minor parts of their disguises, the uniforms being the
main part; nobody looks past a uniform. The people outside looking at the
parade were watching uniforms go by, not faces, and wouldn’t be able later on
to identify one single musician who’d walked past.

 
          
With
his glasses and moustache on, Tom said, “You do the talking when we get up
there, okay?”

 
          
Joe
gave him a grin. “Why? You got stage-fright?”

 
          
Tom
didn’t let himself be aggravated. “No,” he said. “I’m just out of practice, is
all.
”

 
          
Joe
shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “No problem.”

 
          
At
that point, the elevator stopped, the door opened, and they both stepped out.
Tom had been here before, of course, and had described it all to Joe and drawn
him rough sketches of what the guarded reception area looked like, but this was
Joe’s first actual sight of the place, and he gave it a fast once-over,
orienting the reality to his previous mental picture.

 
          
There
was none of the activity around the counter now that there’d been when Tom had
come here the last time; that would be because everybody was watching the
parade. And now there was only one guard on duty. He was leaning on the
counter, looking over toward the six television screens that showed the
different parts of the brokerage. On three or four of the screens windows
showed, and people could be seen looking out at the parade. From the expression
on the guard’s face, he was wishing he could be at a window, too.

 
          
That
was one of the extra advantages of pulling this job during the parade; the
route to the money would be much less populated than usual. It wasn’t the main
reason for doing it now, but it was an extra little bonus, and they were glad
to have it

 
          
The
guard looked over when they came out of the elevator, and they could see his
face relax when he saw the uniforms. He’d been resting his elbows on the
counter, but now he straightened up and said “Yes, officers?”

 
          
Walking
forward to the counter, Joe said, “We had a complaint about items ejected from
the windows.”

 
          
The
guard blinked, not understanding.
“You what?”

 
          
“Objectionable
articles,” Joe said.
“Ejected from windows near the northeast
corner of the building.”

 
          
Tom
had to admire the toneless neutrality of Joe’s voice, he sounded just like a
patrolman on the beat. That only came with practice, as Tom had said in the
elevator.

 
          
The
guard had finally figured out what Joe was talking about, but he still couldn’t
believe it. He said, “From
this
floor?”

 
          
“We
got to check it out,” Joe said.

 
          
The
guard glanced at the television screens, but of course none of them shov/ed
anybody throwing objectionable articles out the windows. A little later they’d
be throwing paper, confetti, ticker tape, but those aren’t objectionable
articles, except to the Sanitation Department. That’s the trademark of a parade
in the Wall Street area; a snowstorm of paper when the hero goes by that the
parade is in honor of. Or this time, the heroes, in the plural; a group of
astronauts who’d been on the moon.

 
          
The
guard said, “I’ll call Mr. Eastpoole.”

 
          
“Go
ahead,” Joe said.

 
          
The
phone was on a table by the rear wall, near the pegboard with the ID tags on
it. The guard made his phone call with his back turned, and Tom and Joe took
the opportunity to relieve the tension a little; yawning, moving their
shoulders around, shifting their feet, hitching their gunbelts, scratching
their necks.

 
          
He
talked low-voiced, the guard did, but they could hear what he was saying. First
he had to explain things to a secretary, and then he had to explain things all
over again to somebody named Eastpoole. That was the third name in the company’s
brand-name, so Eastpoole had to be one of the major bosses, and you could tell
it by how respectful and soft-pedaled the guard’s voice became as he described
the problem.

 
          
Finally,
he hung up the phone and turned back, saying, “He’ll be right out.”

           
“Well go in to meet him,’’ Joe said.

 
          
The
guard shook his head. He was apologetic, but firm. “I’m sorry,’’ he said, “I
can’t let you in without an escort.”

 
          
They’d
already suspected that, but Tom made his voice sound incredulous when he broke
in, saying, “You can’t let
us
in?”

 
          
The
guard looked more apologetic than ever, but still just as firm. “I’m sorry,
officer,” he said, “but that’s my instructions.”

 
          
Movement
on one of the TV screens down at the end of the counter attracted everybody’s
attention then, and they all turned their heads and watched a man crossing a
room from left to right. He looked to be in his middle fifties, slightly
heavy-set, thick gray hair, jowly face, very expensive well-tailored suit,
narrow dark tie, white shirt. He had a long stride, moving as though he was a
man who got annoyed easily and was used to getting his own way. He’d get
waiters fired in restaurants.

 
          
“He’s
coming now,” the guard said. You could see he didn’t like the position he was
in; cops in front of him, and a tough boss behind him. He said, “Mr.
Eastpoole’s one of the partners here. He’ll take care of you.”

 
          
Tom
always had a habit of empathizing with the working stiff. Now, trying to make
conversation and put the guard at his ease a little, he said, “Not much doing
around here today.”

 
          
“Not
with the parade,” the guard said. He grinned and shrugged, saying, “They might
as well close up, days like this.”

 
          
Joe
was suddenly feeling cute. “Good time for a robbery,” he said.

 
          
Tom
gave him a fast angry look, but the thing had already been said. The guard
didn’t see the look, and apparently Joe didn’t either.

 
          
The
guard was shaking his head. “They’d never get away,” he said, “not with that
crowd out there.”

 
          
Joe
nodded, as though he was thinking it over. “That’s right, too,” he said.

 
          
The
guard glanced at the TV screens, and Eastpoole was just crossing another of
them. Apparently feeling he had the time to relax, the guard leaned on his
elbows on the counter again and said, “Biggest robbery they ever had in the
world was right down here in the financial section.”