Cops and Robbers

Joe

To me, Broadway in the Seventies and Eighties is the only part of Manhattan that’s worth anything at all. Paul and I cover that area in the squad car a lot, and I kind of like it. The people are maybe a little uglier-looking than the average, but at least they’re human; not like the freaks in the Village or the Lower East Side. Midtown has all the pretty people, all those marching men in their suits and good-looking girl secretaries out wandering around during lunch, but that isn’t where they live. There isn’t anything human or livable in that area at all; it’s just stone and glass boxes that the white-collar people work in all day. On their own time, they go somewhere else.

Anyway, we’re supposed to cover the cross-streets and West End Avenue and Columbus and Amsterdam and Central Park West, but whenever I’m at the wheel I tend to be on Broadway. Unless I feel like doing some fun driving or giving out some tickets, in which case I go over to Henry Hudson Parkway.

Two days after Tom and I had our talk in his car about Vigano, Paul and I were heading south on Broadway, me driving, when all of a sudden, half a block ahead of us, two people came struggling out of a hardware store onto the sidewalk. They were both male, both Caucasian. One was short, heavy-set, fiftyish, wearing gray workpants and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up above his elbows. The other was tall, lanky, twentyish, wearing army boots and khaki pants and a green polo shirt. At first, all I could see was that they were struggling with one another, going around in a circle as though they were dancing.

Paul saw it too. “There!” he said pointing.

I accelerated, then hit the brakes as we got closer. I could see now that the tall young one had a small zippered bag in one hand and a small pistol in the other. The short guy was clinging to the tall guy’s waist, holding on for dear life, and the tall guy was trying to club him with the pistol. There were a lot of pedestrians on the sidewalk, as usual, but they were falling back, giving the two men plenty of room.

Paul and I both jumped out of the car at the same time. He was closer to the curb, while I had to run around the front of the car. At the same time, the tall guy finally managed to break loose from the short one. He gave him a shove backwards, and the short guy staggered a couple of steps and then sat down hard. The tall guy had seen us coming, and he waved the pistol at us.

I yelled, “Drop it! Drop it!”

All of a sudden the son of a bitch fired two shots. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Paul go down, but I had to keep my mind on the guy with the gun. He’d turned and started to run southward along the sidewalk.

I reached the sidewalk, went down on my left knee, propped my forearm on my raised right knee; all those years of practice paid off after all. I was sighted on his back, with the green polo shirt, and then on his legs. But the sidewalks were full, there were too many faces and bodies past him, right in the line of fire. And he was smart enough not to run in a straight line but to shift back and forth as he went.

I kept the pistol aimed, in case I could get a clear shot with nobody beyond him, but it didn’t happen. “Damn it.” I whispered. “Damn it.” And he disappeared around the corner.

I got back to my feet. Over by the storefront, the older man was also getting up. Paul was on his back on the sidewalk, but struggling to sit up, moving like a turtle on its back. I moved to him, holstering the pistol, and crouched beside him as he finished sitting up. He looked stunned, as though he didn’t know where he was. I said, “Paul?”

“Jesus,” he said. His voice was slurred. “Jesus.”

His left trouser leg was wet, stained dark, sodden with blood, midway between the knee and the crotch. “Lie down,” I said, and poked at his near shoulder. But he wasn’t really conscious at all; he didn’t hear me, or didn’t understand me. He just went on sitting there, his mouth hanging open, his eyes blinking very slowly.

I got up again, turning toward the squad car, and the old man clutched at my arm. When I looked at him, pulling my arm away, he shouted, “The money! The money!”

I could have killed him. “Shut up about money!” I yelled, and ran to the car to call in.