Cops and Robbers

15

It was a hot day. It would be really muggy and bad in the city, but fortunately they both had the day off and they could sit around on lawn chairs in Tom’s backyard, near the barbecue, and drink beer and work on their tans and watch the ballgame on the Sony portable Mary had given Tom for last Christmas.

Tom hadn’t been thinking about anything, except how hot it was and how glad he was he wasn’t working and how maybe he’d cut out the beer and start losing weight when the hot weather broke, but Joe had been thinking for the last few days, ever since the shotgun incident, how to approach Tom on this Vigano question, and he was beginning to think the only way to do it was straight out, no beating around the bush, dead ahead.

It was a very dull game. Cincinnati had got six runs in the first inning, and nobody had done a damn thing since. In the bottom of the fourth, with a deliberate walk coming up, Joe said, “Tom, listen.”

Tom gave him a half-awake look. “What?”

“When do we call your Mafia man?”

Tom looked back at the deliberate walk. “Pretty soon,” he said.

“It’s been two weeks,” Joe told him. “We’ve already passed pretty soon, we’re catching up on later, and I see never dead ahead.”

Tom frowned, staring at the television set, and didn’t say anything.

Joe said, “What’s the story, Tom?”

Tom made a face, shook his head, frowned, shrugged, gestured with his beer can; did everything but talk, or meet Joe’s eye.

Joe said, “Come on. We’re in this together, remember? What’s the problem, what’s the delay?”

Tom turned his head and frowned at the barbecue grill. He looked as though he had a toothache. He said in a low voice Joe could barely hear, “Day before yesterday I went into a phone booth.”

“Fantastic,” Joe said. “Three days from now you drop the dime?”

Tom grinned, despite himself. He looked at Joe, and he surprised himself by being relieved that he was getting this off his chest. He said, “Yeah, I guess so.”

Joe said, “So what’s the matter?”

“I don’t know, it’s like—” Tom clenched his teeth, trying to find the way to put it into words. He said, “It’s like we already got away with it, you know? Like we shouldn’t push our luck.”

“Got away with what? So far all we got is air.”

Tom shook his head violently back and forth. He was angry at himself, and he let it show. “The goddam truth is,” he said, “I’m afraid of that son of a bitch Vigano.”

Joe said, “Tom, I was afraid of the robbery. I was scared shitless when we went in there to do that thing, but we did it. It worked, just like we thought it would.”

“Vigano’s tougher.”

Joe lifted an eyebrow. “Than us?”

“Than a stock brokerage. Joe, we’re talking about beating them out of two million dollars. You think it’s going to be easy with those people?”

“No, I don’t,” Joe said. “But the other part wasn’t easy either. I say we can do it.”

“I don’t have a way,” Tom said. “It’s as simple as that. It’s easy to say we’ll work out a system where they have to bring the money and show it to us and all that stuff, but when it comes right down to it, where the hell’s the system?”

“There is one,” Joe said. “There has to be. Look; did we steal ten million dollars? We aren’t stupid. If we can figure that we can figure this.”

“How?”

Joe frowned, trying to think. He looked at the television set and the inning was over, and some actor made up to look like a cowboy was peddling razor blades. Joe shrugged and said, “Disguised as cops.”

“We already did that.”

Joe grinned at him. “We can’t do it again? Treat it the same way, use the equipment and everything just like last time.”

“Like how? Doing what?”

Joe nodded, feeling very pleased with himself. “We’ll think of it,” he said. “I know we will. If we just keep talking about it, we’ll work it out.”

And a little later that afternoon, they did.