Cops and Robbers

by Donald E. Westlake

  “One man,” the speaker-phone said.

  Vigano frowned and sat forward in the chair, bringing his hands down to rest on the empty desk. Over on the sofa, Andy and Mike looked alert. Vigano said, “What’s that?”

  “One man, civilian clothing, has approached our people.”

  Just one? Move the cars into position now, or wait for the other one? “What’s happening?”

  Silence for nearly a minute. Vigano frowned at the phone, feeling tense even though he knew everything had to be all right. But he didn’t want anything unexpected now; if he lost that two million, it would be his head.

  He wouldn’t lose it.

  “Mr. Vigano?”

  Vigano gave the phone an angry look. Who else would it be? He said, “What’s going on?”

  “It’s one of them all right. He’s taken some of the money out of the—Hold on a second.”

  “Took some money? What the hell are you talking about?”

  Nothing. Andy and Mike were both looking as though they wanted to find something cheerful to say, but they’d damn well better keep their mouths shut.

  “Mr. Vigano?”

  “Just talk, I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Yes, sir. The other one showed up, in a police car.”

  “A what? In the park?”

  “Yes, sir. In uniform, in a police car.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Vigano said. Now that he knew what was going on, he felt better. Giving Andy and Mike a tight grin, he said, “I told you they were cute.” He turned back to the phone: “Move the cars in. Don’t change anything, do it all like we figured.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Andy got to his feet in a sudden motion, betraying the nervousness he’d been covering up. He said, “They must really be cops.”

  “Probably.” Vigano felt grim, but confident.

  “How do we stop cops?” Andy spread his hands, looking bewildered. “What if they just drive out of the park, order our people to move over?”

  Mike said, “We can follow them, take care of them some place quieter.”

  “No,” Vigano said. “There’s too many ways to lose them outside. We finish it in the park.”

  Mike said, “Against cops?”

  “They’re just men,” Vigano said. “They wipe themselves like anybody else. And they can’t call their brother cops to come help them, not with two million bucks in the car.”

  “So what do we do?” Mike said, and at the same instant the phone said, “Everybody’s set, Mr. Vigano.”

  “Listen,” Vigano told Mike. He said to the phone, “Spread the word. They stay in the park. If they try to get out, we can force them to stop at our cars. When they do, kill them, take our goods, clear out.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Hold on, there’s more. If they don’t try to leave the park, we just keep them bottled up until the park is opened to cars. Then we drive in, surround them, finish it the same way.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The main point is, they don’t leave the park.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Vigano leaned back again, smiled at Andy and Mike, and said, “See? They’re cute, but we’ve got everything covered.”

  Andy and Mike both grinned, and Andy said, “They’ve got a surprise coming.”

  “That’s just what they have,” Vigano said.

  Nobody said anything after that for a minute or two, until the phone suddenly said, in an excited voice, “Mr. Vigano!”

  “What?”

  “They’re crossing us! They took off with our goods and didn’t leave anything! And they’ve got Bristol with them in the car.”

  “He’s gone over to them?” That didn’t sound right; the people to carry the money had been very carefully selected.

  “No, sir. They must have pulled a gun on him.”

  “They’re headed south?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Vigano squinted, visualizing the park. If they’d come in to try a double cross, they had to have some method for getting away again. Where would it be? Vigano said, “Cover the transverse roads. They might decide to cut across the grass and out that way.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Pass that one on.”

  While the man was gone from the phone, Vigano kept thinking. How fast would a car move, surrounded by bicycles? It was no good settling for holding them in the park now; they had to be stopped, as quick as possible.

  “Mr. Vigano?”

  “All spare men,” Vigano said, “get over to the section of the Drive on the east side, just south of the bridge over the first transverse road. Block the road there. Don’t let them through, finish them off.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Move!”

  Andy and Mike were both leaning on the desk, giving him worried looks. Andy said, “What’s going on?”

  “They’re starting from 85th Street,” Vigano said, “going south. The Drive takes them down to 59th, and then across the bottom of the park. They can’t move fast, not with all those bikes. Our people get over to the east side of the park first, block the road there. If they try to get out before then, they’re stopped. If they last that long, they’re stopped.”

  “Good,” Andy said. “That’s good.”

  “They’ve been cute for the last time,” Vigano said.

  18

  They were in motion. Joe faced front, steering the patrol car southward along the Drive, while Tom faced the rear, holding the .32 aimed at the guy in the back seat.

  Joe tapped over and over on the horn, and ahead of him the bicyclists reluctantly got out of the way, their front wheels waggling back and forth as they glared at the automobile immorally in here during their special time.

  From left and right, as they started away, they could see men running after them. There weren’t any guns in plain sight yet, but there might be any second. The other male picnicker was running along in their wake, leaving the two women sitting on the grass behind him, looking stunned.

  They’d only been moving ten seconds or so. To both of them, every instant now seemed a distinct and separate thing, as though they were working in slow motion.

  Tom said to the guy in the back seat, “You’ve got a gun under there. Take it out slowly, by the butt, with your thumb and first finger, and hold it up in the air in front of you.”

  The guy said, “What’s the point in all this? We’re making the payoff.”

  “That’s right,” Tom said. “And all your friends were here because they like fresh air. Take the gun out the way I said and hold it up in the air.”

  The guy shrugged. “You’re making a big thing over nothing,” he said. But he pulled a Firearms International .38 automatic from under his jacket and held it up in front of himself like a dead fish.

  Tom switched his own pistol to his left hand, and took the automatic away with his right. He dropped that on the seat, switched the pistol back to his right hand again and, still watching his prisoner, said to Joe, “How we doing?”

  “Beautiful,” Joe said grimly. By keeping up almost a steady honking, he was managing to get bicycles and baby carriages out of his path without running over anybody, and was up to maybe twenty miles an hour; twice as fast as the general flow of bicycle traffic, and four times as fast as the men chasing them on foot.

  The 77th Street exit was a little ways ahead. They couldn’t afford to stop and unload their passenger until they got out and away from the park, but that shouldn’t be long now.

  Joe started the turn, seeing the sawhorses down at the other end of the feeder road, and just in the nick of time he saw the green Chevvy and the pale blue Pontiac across the road, just beyond the sawhorses. Three men were standing in front of the Chevvy, looking this way.

  Joe hit the brakes. Tom, startled but not looking away from the guy in the back seat, said, “What’s the matter?”

  “They got us blocked.”

  Tom snapped his head forward and back, taking a quick look out the windshield. Th
e patrol car was stopped, cyclists were streaming by on both sides of it. They couldn’t stay here. “Try another one,” Tom said. “We can’t get through there.”

  “I know, I know.” Joe was twisting the wheel, tapping the accelerator, leaning on the horn. They slid away from that exit and headed south again, hurrying through the cyclists.

  Both of them—Tom by looking out the back window and Joe by looking at the rear-view mirror—saw the three men who’d been standing by the Chevvy suddenly run around the end of the sawhorses and come trotting after the patrol car. They couldn’t catch up, obviously, but that didn’t mean much; they acted as though they knew what they were doing. Tom remembered the walkie-talkie one of them had carried back by the picnickers, and the army imagery seemed stronger than ever all of a sudden; they must have a central-command post somewhere, with men reporting in from all around the park.

  If there’d been a way to call the whole thing off, Tom would have done it right then and there. Just give it up, forget it, make believe none of it had ever happened. As far as he was concerned, they’d had it, they were defeated already, and only going on because there wasn’t anything else to do.

  But not Joe. His sense of combat had been aroused, he was feeling nothing but the warring instinct. As a little kid, his comic-book hero had been Captain America; shield and fist against entire swarming armies of the enemy, and he won out every time. Joe hunched over the steering wheel, weaving the car through all the people with small taps on the accelerator, tiny shifts of the wheel, steady pushing at the horn, feeling himself the master of his machine in a slow-motion Indy 500.

  It was almost no time at all to the next exit at 72nd Street, even at these slow speeds. Joe felt no surprise, only a sense of grim determination, when he saw the two cars parked broadside beyond the sawhorses. “That one, too,” he said, and swung away, still heading south.

  Tom turned his head to the left and saw the blocked exit. Grimacing, staring at the guy in the back seat again, he said to Joe, “Then they’re all blocked.”

  “I know,” Joe said.

  The guy in the back seat grinned a little, nodding. “That’s right,” he said. “Give it up. What’s the point?”

  Tom’s mind was scrambling. He was sure they were going down in defeat, but he’d keep bobbing and weaving all the way to the bottom. “We can’t just drive around,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Frustration was making Joe angry; things were supposed to work differently from this. Thumping a fist against the steering wheel, he said, “What the hell do we do now?”

  The guy in the back seat finally reached into the other basket, and pulled out a handful of phony stock certificates and pieces of newspaper. He looked surprised for just a second, then held the papers up, gave Tom a pitying grin, and said, “You two are really stupid. I just can’t believe how stupid you are.”

  “You shut your face,” Tom said.

  Joe abruptly slammed on the brakes. “Get him out,” he said. “Get him out or shoot him.”

  Tom gestured with the gun. “Out.”

  The guy pushed open the door, making a passing cyclist wobble onto the grass to avoid an accident. “You’re all through,” the guy told them, and slid out of the car, and Joe hit the accelerator while he was still departing. The door, snapping shut, nicked him on the left elbow, and Tom saw him wince and grab the elbow and trot away toward Central Park West.

  Tom faced front. Fifty-ninth Street was just ahead of them, with the spur road angling off toward Columbus Circle. Cars there, too.

  “There’s got to be a way out,” Joe said. He was clutching the steering wheel hard enough to bend it. He was enraged and bewildered because he was the hero of his life, and the hero always has a way out.

  “Keep rolling,” Tom said. He expected nothing anymore, but as long as they were moving it hadn’t ended yet.

  They swept around the curve at the southern tip of the park, the car moving through the cyclists like a whale through trout. They passed the Seventh Avenue turn-off and there were cars out there, too, but they expected that by now.

  The Sixth Avenue entrance was ahead of them, on the right. Sixth Avenue is one-way, leading uptown toward the park, so there’s no automobile exit there, just an entrance. It was blocked anyway, with two cars parked across it.

  The Drive was curving again, leftward, starting up the other side of the park. The Sixth Avenue entrance angled in ahead of them on the right. Farther along, up by the bridge, they both suddenly saw maybe fifteen or twenty men, standing around in the roadway.

  Just standing around. Some with bicycles, some not. Talking together, in little groups. Leaving enough room between them for bicycles to get through, but not enough for a car.

  “God damn it,” Joe said.

  “They blocked—” Tom stopped, and just stared.

  It wasn’t any good. Run those people down and it wouldn’t be the mob they had to worry about anymore, it would be their own kind that would get them. The park would fill up with law in nothing flat.

  But they couldn’t stop.

  Joe hunched lower over the wheel. “Hold tight,” he said.

  Tom stared at him. He wasn’t going to plow through those guys anyway, was he? “What are you going to do?”

  “Just hold tight.”

  The Sixth Avenue entrance was right there, the long approach road curving back southward to the edge of the park. Suddenly Joe yanked the wheel hard right; they climbed a curb, cut across grass, bounced down over another curb, and were headed toward Sixth Avenue, due south, with Joe’s foot flat on the accelerator.

  Tom yelled, “Jesus Christ!”

  “Siren,” Joe shouted. “Siren and light.”

  Pop-eyed, staring out the windshield, Tom felt on the dashboard for the familiar switches, hit them, and heard the growl of the siren start to build.

  The patrol car lunged at the sawhorses, and at the two cars parked sideways beyond them. They blocked the road from curb to curb.

  But they didn’t block the sidewalk. Siren howling, red light flashing, the car raced at the roadblock, and at the last second Joe spun the wheel leftward and they vaulted over the curb, slicing through between the blockage and the stone park wall.

  “Move!” Joe yelled at the people running every which way on the sidewalk. Even Tom couldn’t hear him, with the siren screaming, but the people moved, diving left and right, yanking themselves out of the way by their own shirt collars. Traffic going east and west on 59th Street abruptly jammed up as though they’d hit a wall, opening a line across like the path through the Red Sea. The hoods at the roadblock were clambering into their cars to give chase, and the patrol car wasn’t even past them yet.

  Lamp post. They shot across the sidewalk, Joe nudged the wheel a bit to the right, and they flicked by between the post and one of the parked cars. They both felt the jolt when the right rear of their car kissed off the bumper of the other; and then they were through.

  And Joe headed straight south. Tom threw his hands up in the air and screamed at the top of his voice, “Holy jumping Jesus!”

  Sixth Avenue is one-way north, and five lanes wide. The patrol car was heading south, and three blocks ahead was a phalanx of traffic spread completely across the avenue, coming this way, moving along at about twenty-five miles an hour, following the sequence of the staggered green lights. They covered the road from left to right, they were coming in a tight mass like a cattle drive, and Tom and Joe were tearing toward them at about sixty, and accelerating every second.

  Joe was driving one-handed, waving the other hand at the oncoming traffic, yelling at them under the siren, while Tom pressed against the seatback and braced the heels of his hands against the dashboard, and just stared.

  Cabs and cars and trucks down there veered left and right as though an atomic bomb had just gone off in Central Park. Cars climbed the sidewalks, they practically climbed each other’s shoulders, they went tearing away down side-streets, and hid behind parked bu
ses, and jay-walkers ran for their lives. A lane opened up down the middle of the street, and the patrol car went down it like a bullet through a rifle barrel. Open-mouthed drivers flashed by in cars on both sides. Joe wriggled and squiggled the wheel and tight-roped past taxi bumpers and the jutting tails of trucks.

  Elation suddenly grabbed Tom and lifted him up into the sky. Still bracing himself with one hand, he pounded his other fist on top of the dashboard and yelled, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!”

  Joe was grinning so hard he looked as though he was imitating all those automobile grilles out front. He was practically lying on top of the steering wheel, hunched around it so tight he was driving as much with his shoulders as with his hands. He was concentrating like a pinball player on a streak, goosing the ball past all the dangers toward the big winner.

  Three blocks, four blocks, and they were out of that swarm, with the next bunch half a dozen blocks ahead, coming up with the next traffic-light sequence. “Siren and light off!” Joe yelled. He couldn’t be heard, so he pounded Tom’s leg, and jammed a finger toward the switches, simultaneously making a screaming two-wheel left turn onto West 54th Street.

  Tom hit the switches as they shot around the turn, and then braced himself again, because Joe was standing on the brake with both feet. He brought them down to about twenty, and they rolled the rest of the way to the traffic waiting for the light at Fifth Avenue, and came to a gentle stop behind a garment delivery truck.

  They grinned at one another. They were both shaking like a leaf. Tom said, with both admiration and terror, “You’re a madman. You’re a complete madman.”

  “And that,” Joe said, “is how you don’t get followed.”

  19

  They both had day shift, so they were with the rush-hour traffic again on the Long Island Expressway, heading toward the city. Joe was driving, and Tom was beside him, reading the News.

  This was about a week after the business in the park. When they’d gotten the picnic basket home that night, they’d found it had the full two million dollars in it, to the penny. They’d split it down the middle, and each of them had taken his share for safekeeping. Tom put his in a canvas bag he’d once kept gym equipment in, and locked it away in a cabinet behind the bar in his basement. Joe put his in the blue plastic laundry bag they’d used during the bond robbery, moved his pool filter (which was on the fritz once more), dug a hole under it, put the bag in the hole, filled it up again, and put the filter back on top.