Westlake, Donald E - Novel 32 (3 page)

 
          
 
I don't know why, for some reason I'd been
pissed off all day. It had started right from the time I got out of bed this
morning. If Grace hadn't avoided me, we would have had us a good old-fashioned
fight, because I was really in the mood for it.

 
          
 
Then the car, and the
traffic, none of that helped.
And the heat.
It
felt good telling Tom about the liquor store, a thing Td been bottling up
inside me for a couple weeks, but a little while after I told him and we'd
stopped talking about it I was in a rotten mood again. Only now I had something
to hook onto, because I just kept thinking about that comfortable bastard in
his air-conditioned Cadillac out there on the Long Island Expressway this
morning. I was sorry I hadn't ticketed him for something; anything. I hated the
idea that somebody was better off than me.

 
          
 
For me, the best way to work off a mad is to
drive. Not in that stop-and-go traffic like on the Expressway this morning;
that just makes things worse. But in ordinary traffic, where I can move, use my
skills. I get behind the wheel, I push it a little hard, win some contests, and
pretty soon I feel better. So I volunteered to drive today, and my partner,
Paul Goldberg, just shrugged and said it was fine with him. Which I knew he
would; he has no feeling for cars, Paul. He'd rather I drove all the time, so
he could sit beside me and chew gum. I never saw anybody in my life who could
chew so much gum. He went through Chiclets like kids through Kleenex.

 
          
 
He's a couple years younger than me, Paul is,
and slender and wiry, with more strength than he looks. His name is Goldberg,
but he looks Italian. He has that curly kind of black hair, and an olive
complexion, and those big brown doe eyes the chicks love so much. He's a
bachelor, and I guess he makes out pretty good with the women. He ought to,
given his looks and potential. I don't know for sure; I hinted around a couple
of times, but he never talked about his personal life while we were on patrol
together. Which was only
fair,
since I never talked
about mine either.

 
          
 
On the other hand, what kind of personal life
does a married man with kids have to talk about?

 
          
 
We did a little driving around the
neighborhoods to begin with today, but it wasn't the kind of movement I needed
to unload the irritable feeling in my chest. It was also too hot for mooching
along down side streets; what we needed was to be where we could move fast
enough to create a breeze for ourselves, keep ourselves a little cooled off.
Me
, especially, keep me cooled off.

 
          
 
So I headed us west over 79th Street and got
on the
Henry
Hudson Parkway
northbound. Way up ahead you could see the
George
Washington
Bridge
. On our left was the
Hudson River
, looking better than it really is, and
across on the other side
New Jersey
. There were little puffs of white cloud in the blue
sky,
boats of different sizes were on the river, and even the city, off to our
right, looked clean in the sunlight. For looking at, it was a really nice day.
Of course, you can't see
humidity,
or a temperature in
the high eighties.

 
          
 
I got off the Parkway at
96th Street
and hit the neighborhoods again for a
while. Now I was having second thoughts about telling Tom about the liquor
store. Could I really trust him? What if he told somebody else, what if the
word got around? Sooner or later it would reach the Captain, once it got
started, and if that ever happened I was finished. The 15th Precinct had a
couple of very hairy Captains for a while, guys who were in on the take, guys
you could have bought off on a baby rape with a bottle of Scotch, but the boom
got lowered all of a sudden, on the Captain we had at the time and also the one
who'd been there before him and was assigned some place else and about to
retire, and they both got their heads handed to them. Now we had a Captain who
was out to make King of the Angels; spit on the sidewalk off duty and he'd
write you up. Think what he'd do to a patrolman who held up a liquor store
while driving his beat.

 
          
 
But Tom wouldn't say
anything,
he'd have more sense than that. I could trust him; that's why I'd told him. And
face
it,
I'd had to tell somebody, I couldn't keep it
tied up inside me much longer. Sooner or later I'd have told somebody like Grace,
for God's sake, and Grace would never in a million years understand. With Tom,
no matter what else he might think, I knew he'd understand.

 
          
 
And keep his mouth shut.
Right?

 
          
 
Christ, I hoped so.

 
          
 
I was really feeling bugged.
Frustrated and irritable and about ready to punch somebody in the
mouth.
I'd been having days like this every once in a while for the last
few months, and I didn't know what to do about them, how to deal with them.
Except wait them out, wait for it all to go away, which sooner or later it
always did.

 
          
 
Down on
72nd Street
, I went over to the Parkway again. Paul had
tried starting a couple of conversations, but I didn't feel like talking. I'd
come close, a few times in the last week, to telling Paul about the liquor
store, but I didn't really know Paul as well as I knew Tom, I didn't have that
same sense of closeness with him. And now that I'd told Tom, I didn't want to
tell anyone else at all. Or talk to anyone else at all. In fact, part of me was
sorry I'd talked to Tom.

 
          
 
We got back up on the Parkway, and rolled
along. The air was a little better over the river, and the motion of the car
made a breeze that at least blew the stink off. My mood was picking up.

 
          
 
Then I spotted the white Cadillac Eldorado up
ahead, moving right along. It was the same model as the one this morning, but a
different color. I saw him up there, looking so cute and arrogant and rich, and
all the bile came right back into me again, stronger than ever.

 
          
 
I eased up on him and saw he had
New York
plates. Good. If I gave him a ticket he
couldn't be a scofflaw, fade away into some other state and thumb his nose at
me. He'd have to pay up or have a mess on his hands when it came time to renew
his license.

 
          
 
I clocked him a mile, and he was doing
fifty-four. Good enough.

 
          
 
"I'm taking the Caddy," I said.

 
          
 
I guess Paul had been half-asleep, sitting
there in the silence next to me. He sat up straighter and looked ahead and
said, "The what?"

 
          
 
"That white Caddy."

 
          
 
Paul studied the Cad, and raised his eyebrows
at me.
"How come?"

 
          
 
"I feel like it. He's doing
fifty-four."

 
          
 
I hit the dome light, but not the siren. He
could see
me,
he wouldn't need a lot of noise. He
slowed right away, and I crowded him off onto the shoulder.

 
          
 
Paul said, "You cut him a little close
there."

 
          
 
"He should
of
braked harder." I looked at Paul, waiting for him to say something else,
but all he did was shrug, as though to say he didn't care, it wasn't his
business— which it wasn't—so I got out of the car and went back to talk to the
driver of the Cad.

 
          
 
He was about forty, with those pop-eyes called
thyroid. He was wearing a suit and a tie, and when I went back to talk to him
he opened his window by pushing a button. I asked to see his license and
registration, and stood there a long time reading them, waiting for him to
start a conversation. His name was Daniel Mossman, and he leased the Cad from a
company in
Tarrytown
. And he didn't have anything to say for
himself at all. I said, "You know the speed along this stretch, Dan?"

 
          
 
"Fifty," he said.

 
          
 
"You know what I speed I clocked you at,
Dan?"

 
          
 
"I believe I was doing about
fifty-five." There was no expression in his voice, nothing in his face,
and those pop-eyes just looked at me like a fish.

 
          
 
I said, "What do you do for a living,
Dan?"

 
          
 
"I'm an attorney," he said.

 
          
 
An attorney.
He
couldn't even say lawyer. I was twice as irritable as before. I went back to
the patrol car and got behind the wheel, holding Mossman's license and
registration.

 
          
 
Paul looked over at me, and rubbed his thumb
and finger together.
"Anything?"

 
          
 
I shook my head. "No," I said.
"I'm giving the bastard a ticket."

Missing pg 22-23

 
head
, and almost
turned to tell Tom what he'd just done when he realized that wouldn't be a good
idea.

 
          
 
He looked around some more, and at last saw
Mary way over by the house. Both women were wearing slacks with stripes, and
fuzzy sweaters. Mary's pink, Grace's white. Because of the party they'd both
gone off i the beauty parlor this morning and had come bad with hairdos that
sat up on top of their heads like Venusian helmets, hair styles that had
absolutely nothing to do with who they really were. But that was women for
you,
they did that sort of thing.

 
          
 
Tom said, ''Joe?"

 
          
 
Joe turned.
"Yeah?"

 
          
 
"You remember that—
Here
."
Tom handed over the fresh drink.

 
          
 
"Thanks."

 
          
 
"You remember," Tom
said,
that thing you told me the other day about the liquor
store?"

 
          
 
Joe pulled at his drink, and grinned
"Sure."

 
          
 
Tom hesitated, biting his lower lip, looking
worriedly at the people at the other end of the yard. Finally, a in a rush, he
said, "Have you done it again?"

 
          
 
Joe frowned, not sure what he was getting at
"No. Why?"

 
          
 
"You thought about it?"

 
          
 
With a little shrug.
Joe looked away. "A couple of times, I guess. I didn't want to push my
luck."

 
          
 
Tom nodded. "Yeah, I guess so."

 
          
 
One of the guests came up then, stopping the
conversation for a while. He was named George Hendricks, ad he ran a
supermarket over in the five towns. He was little drunk now, not terrible, and
he came up with a loot grin on his face and said, "Time for a
refill."

 
          
 
"You're a screwdriver," Tom said,
and took his glass.

 
          
 
"You're goddam right I am," George
said. He was about thirty pounds overweight, and always hinting aboot what a
sex maniac he was. Now he said, mostly to Joe, since Tom was busy making his
drink, "You two both still work in the city, huh?"

 
          
 
Joe nodded. "Yeah, we do."

 
          
 
"Not me," George said. "I’m out
of that rat-rae for good." Up till a few years ago, he'd managed a Finast
in
Queens
.

 
          
 
Drunks always irritated Joe, even when he was
off duty.

 
          
 
Skeptical, a little bored, he said to George,
"Ifs that different out here?"

            
“Hell, yes. You know that
yourself, you moved out here.”

 
          
 
“Grace and the kids are out here," Joe
said. "I’m still in the city."

 
          
 
Tom held George's fresh drink out to him:
There."

 
          
 
"Thanks." George took the glass, but
didn't drink yet. He was still involved in his conversation with Joe. He said,
"I don’t see how you guys stand it. The city is nothing but wall-to-wall
crooks.
Everybody out to chisel a dollar.”

 
          
 
Joe merely shrugged, but Tom said, "It’s
the way of the world, George."

 
          
 
"Not out here," George said. He made
it one of those definite, don't-argue-with-me statements.

 
          
 
"Out here," Tom said, "just
like any place else. It’s all the same."

           
“You guys,” George said, and shook
his head. “You think everybody’s crooked in the whole world. It’s being in the
city gives you that idea.” He gave a knowing grin, and rubbed his thumb and finger
together.
“Being in on it a little.”

 
          
Joe,
who’d been looking at the women again, trying without success to develop an
interest in George’s wife, turned his head and gave George a flat stare. “Is
that right?”

 
          
“One
hundred per cent,” George said. “I know about
New York City
cops.”

 
          
“That’s
the same everywhere, too,” Tom said. He wasn’t offended; he’d given up being
sore about slurs like that years ago. He said, “You think the guys in the
precinct out here could make it on their salaries?”

 
          
George
laughed and pointed his drink at Tom. “See what I mean? The city corrupts your
mind,
you think everybody in the world is a crook.”

 
          
Suddenly
irritated, Joe said, “George, you come home every night with a sack of
groceries. You don’t do that on any employee
discount,
you just pack up those groceries and walk out of the store.”

 
          
George
was outraged. He stood up straighter, and got drunker. “I work for them!” he
said, his voice loud enough to carry to the far end of the yard. “If the chain
paid a man a decent salary—”

 
          
“You’d
do the same thing,” Joe said.

 
          
Smoothly,
Tom said, “Not necessarily, Joe.” He was a natural
host,
he eased groups through the rough spots. He said to Joe, but for George’s
benefit, “Everybody hustles, but nobody wants to. I don’t want Mary to work,
yon don’t want Grace to work, George doesn’t want Phyllis to work, but what are
you gonna do?”

 
          
George
probably embarrassed at having gotten mad, made a heavy attempt at humor. “Lose
the house to the bank,” he said.

 
          
Tom
said, “The way I see it, the problem is really very simple. There’s so and so
much money, and there’s so and so many people. And there isn’t quite enough
money to go around. So you do the only thing that’s left; you steal to make up
the difference.”

 
          
Joe
gave Tom a warning look, but Tom hadn’t been thinking about the liquor store
just then, and in any case didn’t notice him.

 
          
George, still trying to make up for his bad temper, said, “Okay.
I can go along with that. You got to make up the difference, and you do a
little of this and that. Like me with the groceries.” Then, with a smirk, and
another heavy attempt at humor, he added, “And you guys with whatever you can
get.”

 
          
“Don’t
kid
yourself
,” Joe said. He was still serious. He
said, “In our position, we could get whatever we wanted. We restrain ourselves,
that’s all.”

 
          
George
laughed, and Tom gave Joe a thoughtful look. But Joe was moodily glaring at
George; he was thinking he’d like to give him a ticket.