Cops and Robbers

by Donald E. Westlake

  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.

  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 Chevvy 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 Chevvy, 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 Chevvy 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.

  11

  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 n
ervousness 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 Chevvy—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 corner 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 horn-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 onceover, 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 showed 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.”

  “We’ll 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.”