Cops and Robbers

8

They both had that afternoon off. Tom was mowing his front lawn, wearing just a bathing suit in the sunshine, when Joe came around from between the houses and said, “Hey, Tom.” He too was dressed in a bathing suit, and he was carrying two open cans of Budweiser beer.

Tom stopped. He was panting and sweating. “What?”

“Come take a break.”

Tom pointed at the beer. “Is that for me?”

“I even opened it for you,” Joe said, and handed him one of the beers. “Come on, the kids are out of the pool for once.”

Tom took a swig of beer, and they walked down the drive-way between the houses and over into Joe’s backyard. It was a really hot sunny day in July, and the pool looked great to the both of them. Cool water in a container of light blue, nothing looks better than that on a hot day. Except a beer.

Tom said, “The filter’s working?”

Joe put his finger to his lips. “Easy, it’ll hear you. Come on, cool off.”

Joe had a short sturdy wooden ladder in an A shape over the side of the pool; you went up three steps on one side of the A, and down three steps into the water on the other side. They both climbed up and over, Joe first, and while Joe waded around the four-foot-deep water throwing out leaves and sticks and pieces of paper and dead bugs, Tom sat back on one of the steps of the ladder, so he was in water up to his neck. With his right hand he held the beer can up out of the water.

Joe looked over at him and laughed. “You look like the Statue of Liberty.”

Tom grinned, saluted with the beer, and took a swig. It was tough to drink in that position, but Joe was watching, so Tom did it for the effect. Then he said, “You know what I was thinking before? When I was over there with the lawn-mower?”

“What?”

“Remember I told you I used to go to City College nights?”

Joe waded over to lean against the side of the pool to Tom’s left. “So?”

Tom moved up a step, so the water was only chest-high and it was easier to drink. “What I was thinking,” he said, “if I’d kept at it, you know where I’d be today?”

“Where?”

“Right here. I still wouldn’t be a lawyer, not for two more years.”

“Sure,” Joe said. He nodded. “You put a penny away every day, at the end of the year you’re still poor. It’s the same principle.”

Tom stared at him. “It is?”

They looked at one another, both bewildered, until Tom lost interest in the subject and changed it, saying, “Listen, what about the wives?”

Joe switched his bewilderment to the new topic. “What?”

“What do we tell the wives?”

“Oh,” Joe said. “About the robbery, you mean.”

“Naturally.”

Joe didn’t see any problem. He shrugged and said, “Nothing.”

“Nothing? I don’t know about you and Grace,” Tom said, “but if I put Mary in Trinidad, she’s going to know she’s in Trinidad.”

“Sure,” Joe said. “Then. When we’re ready to move, that’s when we tell them. After it’s all over.”

Tom hadn’t made up his own mind about that yet. There were times, particularly at night, when he very strongly wanted to tell Mary about it, talk it over with her, see what she had to say. Frowning, he said, “Not now at all?”

“In the first place,” Joe said, “they’d worry. In the second place, they’d be against it, you know they would.”

Tom nodded; that was what had kept him quiet up till now. “I know,” he said. “Mary wouldn’t approve, not ahead of time.”

“They’d throw cold water on the whole idea,” Joe said. “If we tell the wives, we’ll never do it.”

“You’re right,” Tom said. He was disappointed, but he was also relieved that the question was resolved. “Not till it’s all over,” he said. “Then we tell them.”

“When we’re ready to take off out of here,” Joe said.

“Right,” Tom said. Then he said. “The thing is, you know we can’t leave the country right away.”

“Oh, sure,” Joe said. “I know that. They’d be on our asses in five minutes.”

“What we’ve got to agree right now,” Tom said, “is that we bury the money and neither one of us goes near it until we’re ready to leave.”

“That’s fine with me.”

“The big advantage we’ve got,” Tom said, “is that we’ve seen every mistake there is.”

“That’s right. And we know how not to make them.”

Tom took a deep breath. “Two years,” he said.

Joe winced. “Two years?”

“We’ve got to play it cool,” Tom said.

Joe looked pained, as though he had an ankle cramp down underwater. He wanted to argue against it, but on the other hand he had to agree with the theory of it; so he was stuck. Reluctantly, but giving in, he said, “Yeah, I suppose. Okay, two years it is.”