Cops and Robbers

13

Once again they changed the license plates and the identifying numbers on the squad car, this time switching everything back to the original way. Their actions were shielded by the highway stanchion and the parked trailer. Joe made the transfer on the rear plate and Tom the front, and then they met at the back of Tom’s Chevvy. Tom opened the trunk lid, and they tossed the plates and numbers and the two screwdrivers in with the canvas bag containing Tom’s civilian clothing.

Neither of them said anything. They were both feeling very down, very deflated. It was the letdown after all the excitement, and they knew it, but knowing what the trouble was didn’t change it.

Tom was making some attempt to shake the feeling off. Pulling the blue plastic laundry bag out of his pocket, he shook it out to its full length and then held it up in front of himself like a doctor holding up a newborn baby. His hand was trembling as he held the bag, and he gave it a shaky, uncertain grin. “Well, there it is,” he said.

Joe gave the bag a sour look. He wasn’t fighting against his depression at all. “Yeah, there it is, all right,” he said.

“Two million dollars,” Tom said.

Joe shook his head. “Air,” he corrected.

Tom gave him a grin that was supposed to be brave and sure of itself. “We’ll see,” he said.

Joe shrugged. The gesture meant that he was skeptical, and that he was too weary to give a damn. “Yeah, we will,” he said.

Suddenly feeling defensive, Tom told him, “We talked it over, Joe. We agreed this was the way to do it.”

Joe shrugged again, and gave an exhausted nod. “I know, I know.” Then, seeing Tom’s expression, he tried to act more friendly, and to explain himself. “I just wish we had something to show for it,” he said.

Tom said, “But that’s just what we didn’t want. Nothing we had to carry away from the scene, nothing we had to hide, nothing to get caught with, nothing to be used as evidence against us.”

“Nothing,” Joe said. Then he spread his hands and said, “What the hell, you’re right. We did talk it over, we did agree. Come on, let’s go. I need a drink.”

Tom was going to argue some more, but Joe had turned away, walking back toward the squad car. And Tom thought, what’s the point in arguing? We’ve already done it, and we did it this way, and it was the right way. He dropped the plastic bag into the trunk, and shut the lid.

They got into the two cars, and Joe led the way back uptown to the police garage. The parking space he’d taken the car from was gone now, but there was another one near it. Joe left the car there without doing anything under the hood; tomorrow morning, a mechanic would find the car had mysteriously fixed itself. If he was a normal mechanic, he’d first take it for granted there’d never been anything wrong with the car other than a stupid driver, and second take credit for having fixed it.

Tom was waiting around the corner in the Chevvy. Joe walked around and got in, and they drove back over to the Port Authority. While Joe stayed outside in the car, Tom went in and changed back to civvies. When he came out, Joe said, “I wasn’t kidding about that drink. My nerves could use one.”

Tom was agreeable; the idea of a drink was a good one to him, too. “Where do you want to go?”

“Nowhere we’re known.”

“I’ll find a place over in Queens.”

“Good.”

Tom drove across town and up to the 59th Street Bridge and over to Queens. They found a bar on Queensboro Boulevard with nobody in it except the bartender and an old fellow dressed in striped railroad coveralls. The railroad man was sitting at the bar, watching an afternoon game show on the television set mounted at the end of room. They ordered a couple of beers, and sat in a booth to drink them.

They were both in the mood for a drink, but they had different reasons. Tom was hoping liquor would make him feel happier, more like celebrating their success, and Joe was in the kind of a bad mood that requires a bad-mood drunk. So they sat in a booth and socked it away for a while and did very little talking.

It was about two-thirty when they first went in there. About an hour later, which was five or six rounds later, Tom roused himself and looked around and said, “Hey.”

Joe turned his head and stared at him. He was already feeling pretty bleary. He said, “What?”

“We’re making a mistake,” Tom told him. “We’re making one of the basic mistakes of the whole world.”

Joe frowned, not following the meaning. He closed one eye and said, “Which mistake is that?”

“That’s the mistake,” Tom said carefully, “where a fella pulls a job and then goes right out and gets drunk, and while he’s drunk he talks about it. Happens all the time.”

“Not to us,” Joe said. He was a little indignant.

“Happens all the time,” Tom insisted. “You know that yourself. You’ve picked them up your own self, I know you have. And so have I. My own self, I’ve picked them up.”

“We’re smarter than that,” Joe said. He drained his glass.

“Well, look at us,” Tom said. “What are we doing, if we’re smarter than that?”

Joe looked around. There were only the four of them in the bar; railroad man, bartender, Tom, Joe. “Who am I gonna talk to?”

“The night’s young,” Tom told him. Looking out at the daylight past the front windows, he said, “In fact, the day’s still young.”

“I’m not gonna talk,” Joe said. He sounded a bit belligerent.

“You said that pretty loud,” Tom told him. “Also, you’re in uniform.”

Joe looked down at himself. He wasn’t wearing the hat or the badge or the gunbelt, all of which were locked up in the trunk of Tom’s Chevvy, but his shirt and pants were identifiably those of a police officer. “Son of a bitch,” he said.

“I’ve got a better idea,” Tom said.

Joe looked at him, interested. “I could use one,” he said.

“We’ll go home.”

“Shit, no!”

“No, wait, listen to me. We’ll go home, and we’ll go down into my bar. I got my own bar, remember?”

Joe frowned, thinking about it. “You mean the basement?”

“It’s in the basement,” Tom said, with dignity, “but it’s the bar. It isn’t the basement.”

Joe studied that one. “It’s in the basement,” he said thoughtfully.

“That may be true,” Tom said. “But it’s the bar.”

“If you say so.”

“It isn’t the basement.”

Joe nodded, judiciously. “I get the idea,” he said.

“So that’s where we’ll go,” Tom said.

“To the bar,” Joe said. “In the basement.”

“In the basement.”

“And drink there.”

“And drink there,” Tom agreed.

“That’s not a terrible idea,” Joe said.

So that’s what they did.