Cops and Robbers

1

They were on day shift then, which meant they had to face all that morning traffic on the Long Island Expressway. That was the only bad thing about living out on the Island, bucking that rush-hour traffic whenever they had day shift.

One of them was Joe Loomis; thirty-two years of age, he was a uniformed patrolman assigned to a squad-car beat with a partner named Paul Goldberg. The other was Tom Garrity; thirty-four years old, he was a detective third-grade usually partnered with a guy named Ed Dantino. They were both stationed at the 15th Precinct on the West Side of Manhattan, and lived next door to one another on Mary Ellen Drive in Monequois, Long Island, twenty-seven miles from the Midtown Tunnel.

They drove into town together like this whenever their schedules worked that way, taking turns at whose car they’d use. This morning they were in Joe’s Plymouth, with Joe at the wheel, dressed in uniform. Except for the hat, which he’d tossed on the back seat. Tom was in the passenger seat in his usual work clothes; a brown suit, white shirt, thin yellow tie.

Physically, they were more or less the same type, though there wouldn’t be any trouble telling them apart. They were both just about six feet tall, and both a little overweight; Tom maybe twenty pounds, Joe maybe fifteen. In Tom, the weight concentrated mostly in his stomach and behind, while in Joe it spread out all over him, like baby fat. Neither of them liked to admit to themselves that they’d gained weight. Without saying anything to anybody, both of them had tried to go on diets a couple of times, but the diets never seemed to work.

Joe’s hair was black, and very thick, and worn a little longer than it used to be; not so much because he wanted to be stylish with the new trends, as because it was always a boring pain in the ass to get a haircut, and these days it was possible to get pretty shaggy before anybody noticed or commented. So Joe ran longer between haircuts than he used to.

Tom’s hair was brown, and thinning badly. He’d read a few years ago that taking a lot of showers sometimes caused baldness, so he’d been secretly using his wife’s shower cap ever since, but the hair was still coming out. The top of his head was very thin now, with long roads of scalp showing where there used to be only a forest of hair.

Joe had the quicker personality of the two, rough and pragmatic, while Tom was more thoughtful and more imaginative. Joe was the one likely to get into brawls, and Tom was the one likely to calm everybody down again. And while Tom could sit almost anywhere and keep company with his thoughts, Joe needed action and movement or he’d get bored, he’d start to fidget.

As he was fidgeting now. They’d been sitting in this one spot in stalled traffic for almost five minutes, and now Joe was craning his head this way and that, trying to stare past the cars in front of him to see what was causing the tie-up. But there wasn’t anything special to see; just three lanes of nobody moving. Finally, out of anger and frustration, he leaned on the horn.

The sound went through Tom’s head like a blunt nail. “Don’t,” he said, waving one hand. “Forget it, Joe.” He was too weary to be bugged by stalled traffic.

“Bastards,” Joe said, and looked to his right. Over there, past Tom, he saw the car in the next lane; a pale blue brand new Cadillac Eldorado. The windows were all rolled up, and the driver was sitting in there in his air-conditioned comfort as neat and unruffled as a banker turning down a second mortgage. “Look at that son of a bitch,” Joe said, and pointed with his jaw at the Caddy and the man in it.

Tom glanced over. “Yeah, I know,” he said.

They both looked at him for a few seconds, envying him. He looked to be in his forties, very neatly dressed, and he faced front looking calm and untroubled; he didn’t care if there was a traffic jam or not. And the way his one finger was tapping lightly on the steering wheel, he had a radio in there that worked. Probably even his dashboard clock worked.

Joe rested his left forearm on the steering wheel and glared at his watch. He said, “If we stay here without moving another sixty seconds by my watch, I’m going over there and study that Caddy and find a violation and give that son of a bitch a ticket.”

Tom grinned. “Sure, sure,” he said.

Joe kept frowning at his watch, but gradually his expression changed and he started to grin instead, remembering something he still couldn’t get over. Still looking at the watch, but not really counting anymore, he said, “Tom?”

“Yeah?”

“You remember that liquor store a couple of weeks ago, the guy that held it up disguised as a cop?”

“Sure.”

Joe turned his head and looked at Tom. He was grinning very broadly now. “That was me,” he said.

Tom laughed. “Sure it was,” he said.

Joe moved his arm down from the steering wheel. He’d forgotten all about his watch. “No, I mean it,” he said. “I had to tell somebody, you know? And who else but you?”

Tom didn’t know whether he was supposed to believe it or not. Squinting at Joe as though that would help him see better, he said, “You putting me on?”

“I swear to God.” Joe shrugged. “You know Grace lost her job.”

“Sure.”

“And Jackie’s supposed to have swimming lessons this summer. Dinero, you know?” He rubbed his thumb and finger together, in the gesture that means money.

Tom was beginning to think it might be the truth. “Yeah?” he said. “So?”

“So I was thinking about it. The whole thing, the payments and the problems and the whole mess, and I just walked in and did it.”

Meaning it as a question, but phrasing it like a statement, Tom said, “On the level.”

“On a stack of Bibles. I got two hundred thirty-three bucks.”

Tom started to grin. “You really did it,” he said.

“Damn right.”

A horn honked behind them. Joe looked front, and the traffic had moved maybe three car lengths. He shifted into drive, caught up, and shifted back into park.

Tom said, in a bemused kind of way, “Two hundred thirty-three dollars.”

“That’s right.” Joe was feeling great, having the chance to talk about it. He said, “And you know what really amazed me?”

“No.”

“Well, two things. That I’d even do it at all. The whole time, I couldn’t believe it. I’m pointing a gun at this guy, I just can’t believe it.”

Tom nodded, encouraging him. “Yeah, yeah...”

“But the thing that really got me is how easy it was. You know? No resistance, no trouble, no sweat. Walk in, take it, walk out.”

Tom said, “What about the guy in the store?”

Joe shrugged. “He works there. I’m pointing a gun at him. He’s gonna get a medal saving the boss’s dough?”

Tom shook his head. He was grinning from ear to ear, as though he’d just been told his daughter was head of her class. “I can’t get over it,” he said. “You really did it, you just walked in and did it.”

“It was so easy,” Joe said. “You know? To this day I can’t believe how easy it was.”

The traffic moved a little again. They were both quiet for a minute, but they were still both thinking about Joe’s robbery. Finally Tom looked over at him, his expression serious, and said, “Joe? What do you do now?”

Joe frowned at him, not understanding the question. “What?”

Tom shrugged, not knowing any other way to say it. “What do you do? I mean, is that it?”

Joe made a barking kind of laugh. “I’m not giving it back, if that’s what you mean. I spent it.”

“No, I don’t mean...” Tom shook his head, trying to find what he meant. Then he said, “Will you do it again?”

Joe started to shake his head, but then stopped and frowned, thinking it over. “Christ alone knows,” he said.