Cops and Robbers

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 nervousness 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.”

Tom, really interested, said, “Is that right?”

The guard nodded, for emphasis, and said, “That’s right. It was in the World Series. Remember the year the Mets won the pennant?”

Joe laughed and said, “Who’ll ever forget?”

“That’s right,” the guard said. “It was in the last game, the ninth inning, everybody in New York City was at their radio. Somebody walked into a vault at one of the firms on the Street, and walked out with thirteen million dollars in bearer bonds.”

They looked at one another. Joe turned back to the guard and said, “They ever get him?”

“Nope,” said the guard.

At that point, Eastpoole came in from the door on the right. He was being brisk, impatient, slightly hostile. He probably didn’t like his employees gawking out of windows instead of getting their work done, and he surely didn’t like a couple of cops coming around and telling him there’s something wrong going on in his shop. He strode over, efficient, in a hurry to give them the brush-off, and said, “Yes, officer?”

Joe had a natural talent for people like this. He just slowed himself down and became very official and very dense; it drove the hurry-up types right up the wall. Joe gave this one a suspicious look and said, “You Eastpoole?”

Eastpoole made an impatient little hand gesture, brushing a minor annoyance away. “Yes,” he said, “I’m Raymond Eastpoole. What can I do for you?”

“We got a complaint,” Joe said, taking his time about it. “Items ejected from the windows.”

Eastpoole didn’t believe it, and made no attempt to hide the fact. Frowning, he said, “From these offices?”

Joe nodded. “That’s the report we got,” he said. He was showing that nothing would either ruffle him or hurry him up. He said, “We want to check out the northeast corner of the building, all the windows over on that side.”

Eastpoole would rather have had nothing to do with them or their complaint or anything else concerned with today. He glanced over at the guard behind the counter, but there was obviously no help there, so finally he gave an angry shrug and said, “Very well. I’ll accompany you myself. Come along.”

Joe nodded, still taking his time. “Thank you,” he said, but not as though anybody had done anybody any favors. His style was that they were all equals in this room. It was a style guaranteed to rub somebody like Raymond Eastpoole the wrong way.

Which it did. Eastpoole turned away, to lead them on their tour of the northeast corner of the building, and then turned back to frown at the guard again and say, “Where’s your partner?”

The guard hesitated, showing his embarrassment. And when he lied, he did a lousy job of it, saying, “Uh, he’s, uh, he’s to the men’s room.”

Eastpoole couldn’t show his anger in the cops’ direction, but he could aim it at the guard. His voice taut with fury, he said, “You mean he’s leaning out a window somewhere, watching the parade.”

The guard was blinking, scared of this bastard. “He’ll be right back, Mr. Eastpoole,” he said.

Eastpoole thumped a fist onto the counter. “We pay,” he said, “for two men at this counter, twenty-four hours a day.”

“He just went off a minute ago,” the guard said. He was really sweating.

Partly to get the guard off the hook, and partly because they had their own schedule to think about, Joe broke in at that point, saying, “We’d like to check things out, Mr. Eastpoole, before anything else gets dropped.”

Eastpoole would clearly have preferred to keep nagging at the guard. He glowered at Joe, glowered at the guard, and then mulishly gave in, turned on his heel and led the way from the room. They followed him, Joe going first and then Tom coming along behind. Passing through the doorway, Tom glanced back and saw the guard hurriedly reaching for the phone; to call his partner to haul ass away from the window, no doubt.

They walked down a fairly long corridor, and then through several large offices, each of them full of desks and filing cabinets, and all of them lined with windows along one wall. The desks were all unoccupied, and people were standing looking out of all the windows.

They hadn’t heard the drums or the music from the time they’d gotten into the elevator to come up here, but now the sound was with them again, and they walked automatically to the rhythm of the drums. Tension seemed to shimmer upward from the street outside those windows like heat waves off asphalt paving in the summertime. Both of them were tense again, walking along in Eastpoole’s wake, the drums echoing in their bloodstreams.

And yet, they still hadn’t reached the point of no return. They could still even at this late date change their minds and not go through with it. They could do an inspection tour of the windows with Eastpoole, find nothing, give him a lecture, and walk out. Return the squad car, drive home, forget the whole thing; it was still possible. But any second now, it would stop being possible for good and all.

Twice, as they walked along, they saw TV cameras mounted high on the wall in the corner of a room. The camera would turn slowly back and forth, like a fan, angled shallowly downward so as to get a good view of the entire room. These two were among the six that showed up on the screens out by the reception area. And on other sets of screens on this floor, as well. One of the big advantages of this brokerage for Tom and Joe was that their check into the security systems showed there wasn’t any closed-circuit TV communication to any other floor; it was all confined to this one level.

From the office with the second camera in it, they passed on to a short empty corridor. They entered it, and Joe made the decision that moved them finally over the line, making them criminals in fact as well as in theory. And he did it with two words: “Hold it,” he said, and reached out to take Eastpoole by the elbow and stop him from walking on.

Eastpoole stopped, and you could see he was offended at being touched. When he turned around to find out what the problem was, he jerked his elbow free again. “What is it?” he said. He sounded very petulant for a grown man.

Joe looked around the corridor and said, “Is there a camera in here? Can that guard check this area?”

“No,” Eastpoole said. “There’s no need for it. And there are no windows here, if you’ll notice.” He half-turned away again, gesturing at the far end of the corridor. “What you want is—”

Joe put an edge in his voice, saying, “We know what we want. Let’s go to your office.”

“My office?” Eastpoole didn’t have the first idea what was going on. Staring at them both, he said, “What for?”

Tom said, “We don’t have to show you guns, do we?” He spoke calmly, not wanting Eastpoole to be so upset he’d lose control.

Eastpoole kept staring. He said, “What is this?”

“It’s a robbery,” Tom said. “What do you think it is?”

“But—” Eastpoole gestured at them, at their uniforms. “You two—”

“You can’t tell a book by its cover,” Tom said.

Joe poked Eastpoole’s arm, prodding him a little. “Come on,” he said, “let’s move. To your office.”

Eastpoole, starting to get over his shock, said, “You can’t believe you can get away with—”

Joe gave him a shove that pushed him into the corridor wall. “Stop wasting our time,” he said.“I’m feeling very tense right now, and when I’m tense sometimes I hit people.”

Eastpoole’s skin was turning pale under the eyes and around the mouth. He almost looked as though he might faint, and yet there was still arrogance in him, he might still be stupid enough to talk back. Tom, moving forward between Joe and Eastpoole, being the calm and reasonable one, said, “Come on, Mr. Eastpoole, take it easy. You’re insured, and it isn’t your job to deal with people like us. Be sensible. Do what we want, and let it go.”

Eastpoole was nodding before Tom had finished talking. “That’s just what I’ll do,” he said. “And later, I’ll see to it you get the maximum penalty of the law.”

“You do that,” Joe said.

Tom, turning to Joe, said, “It’s all right, now. Mr. Eastpoole’s going to be sensible.” He looked back. “Aren’t you, Mr. Eastpoole?”

Eastpoole was looking sullen, but subdued. Half-gritting his teeth, he looked at Tom and said, “What do you want?”

“To go to your office. You lead the way.”

Joe said, “And don’t be cute.”

“He won’t be cute,” Tom said. “Go ahead, Mr. Eastpoole.”

Eastpoole turned and started walking again, and they both followed him. It’s such an old tried-and-true technique, one partner hard and one partner soft, that it’s become a cliché in the television police shows. But the fact is, it works. You give a guy one person to be friends with and one person to be scared of, and between the two you’ll most of the time get whatever you want.

This time, what they wanted was Eastpoole’s office, and that’s what they got. They walked there, and the outer office was empty, and they went directly on through. Eastpoole’s secretary, who should have been at the desk in the outer office, was in here, looking out a window at the parade. Her own room didn’t have any windows in it.

Eastpoole’s office looked like half of a living room and half of a rich man’s den. It was a corner office, with windows in two walls, and near the juncture of those two walls was the desk, a big free-form mahogany thing with an onyx desk set and two telephones — one white, one red — and only a few neatly stacked pieces of paper. A couple of chairs with upholstered seats and backs in a blue-and-white vertical-stripe cloth were near the desk, and a large antique refectory table was over against the inner wall.

Down at the end of the room opposite the desk there was a white latticework divider that separated off about a third of the floor space. Behind it was a glass and chrome diningroom table, several chrome chairs with white vinyl seats, and a bar with fluorescent lights on each shelf. Some kind of real ivy growing out of pots on the floor had been trained to grow up the latticework, giving the glass-and-chrome section behind it the look of a special private nook, the kind of secret place that shows up in children’s stories.

In front of the latticework on this side was a long blue sofa, with an octagonal wooden coffee table in front of it, and a pair of armchairs nearby. There were lamps and end tables and heavy ashtrays. Spotted on the walls around the room were half a dozen paintings, probably original, probably valuable. And amid them, positioned for easy viewing from the desk, was the double rank of six television screens. Tom and Joe looked at those screens the instant they walked into the room, and there was no unusual activity showing on any of them. So far, so good.

They both noticed that there were now two guards showing on the screen for the reception area.

Eastpoole’s secretary belonged in this setting. She was a tall, cool, beautiful girl in a beige knit dress. She turned away from the window now and came walking over, saying to her boss, “Mr. Eas—”

Eastpoole, angry, not wanting to hear whatever normal business the secretary had been about to discuss with him, interrupted her, gesturing over his shoulder at the two cops and saying, “These people are—”

Not that way. Tom overrode him, pushing forward and saying, “It’s okay, Miss. Nothing to worry about.”

The secretary, looking from face to face, was beginning to get alarmed, but not yet really frightened. Addressing the question to all of them equally, she said, “What’s the matter?”

Bitterly, Eastpoole said, “They aren’t really police.”

Tom made a kind of joke of it, to keep the girl from going into panic. “We’re desperate criminals, mam,” he said. “We’re engaged in a major robbery.”

Whenever Joe was confronted by a woman he wanted to get into bed with and knew it wasn’t possible to he got hostile, and showed it in a kind of angry smiling manner. As he did now, coming forward and saying, “They’ll ask you questions on TV, just like a stewardess.”

With an unconscious automatic gesture, she reached up and patted her hair. At the same time, her eyes were getting more frightened, and there was a tremor in her voice when she said, “Mr. Eastpoole, is this really—”

“Yes, it’s really,” Tom said. “But you yourself are in absolutely no danger. Mr. Eastpoole, you sit down at your desk.”

The secretary stared at everybody. “But—” she said, and then ran down, unable to formulate the question. She moved her hands vaguely, and stared, and looked frightened.

Eastpoole did what he was told. Sitting down behind the desk, he said, “There’s no way you can get away with this, you know. You’re just endangering people’s lives.”

“Oh, my God,” the secretary said. Her right hand fluttered upward to her throat.

Joe pointed at the guards on the TV screens, and said to Eastpoole, “Any of them gets excited while we’re here, you’re all through.”

Eastpoole tried to give him a scornful stare, but he was blinking too much. “You don’t have to threaten me,” he said. “I’ll let the authorities pick you up later.”

Nodding, Tom said, “That’s the way to think, all right.”

Joe pulled one of the blue-and-white striped chairs around behind Eastpoole’s desk, so he could sit beside him. But he didn’t sit yet; instead, he stood next to the chair and said to Eastpoole, “You and me are going to wait here. My partner and your lady friend are going to the vault.”

The secretary’s head jerked back and forth. “I–I can’t,” she said, in a thin voice. “I’ll faint.”

Reassuring her, Tom said gently, “No, you won’t. You’ll do just fine, don’t worry about a thing.”

Joe told her, “You just do what your boss tells you to do.” Then he gave Eastpoole a hard meaningful look.

Eastpoole’s response was surly, but defeated. Gazing down at his neat desktop, he said, “We’ll do what they want, Miss Emerson. Let the police handle it later.”

“Right,” Joe said.

Tom, looking at the secretary, gestured toward the door.

“Let’s go, Miss,” he said.

She gave one last appealing look in Eastpoole’s direction, but Eastpoole was still brooding at his desktop. Her hands fluttered again, as though in accompaniment to the statement she hadn’t quite found the words for; but then she turned and walked obediently to the door, and she and Tom went out together.