Cops and Robbers

3

They were both on the four-to-midnight shift that time, so they got to drive home pretty late at night, after most of the traffic had thinned out. That was the advantage of the four-to-twelve; they got to drive into town in the middle of the afternoon, before the rush hour, and in any case in the opposite direction from most of the traffic, and then at the other end of the shift they could drive home along practically empty roads.

The disadvantage of the four-to-midnight was that it was the busiest shift of all. They weren’t driving during the rush hour, but they were working during it, and then on into the evening, the high-crime period of the day. Muggings hit their peak between six and eight, when people are coming home from work. Around the same time, the husbands and wives start fighting with each other, and a little later the drunks join in. And store robberies — like the one Joe had pulled — occur most frequently in that period between sundown and ten o’clock, when most of the stores finally close. So when they were on the four-to-midnight shift they tended to spend most of their time working, and very little of it sitting down.

But then midnight would come around at last, and this shift too would come to an end, and they would get to sail home along practically deserted highways once they’d left Manhattan, all by themselves, thinking their thoughts. Which is what they were doing now.

Tom was driving his Chevrolet tonight; six years old, bought used, a gas burner and an oil eater, with bad springs and a loose clutch. He kept talking about trading it in on something a little newer, but he couldn’t bring himself to take it to a used-car dealer and try to get a price on it. He knew too well what this car was worth.

They were riding along without any conversation between them, both tired from the long day, both remembering things that had happened earlier in the week. Tom was going over in his head the conversation with the hippie junk dealer, trying to find better answers to the things the guy had said, and also trying to figure out why he couldn’t seem to get that conversation out of his mind. And Joe was remembering the blood drying on his arm in the sun, stretched out across the roof of the patrol car, looking like something from a monster movie and not anything that could ever have been a part of himself at all. He didn’t particularly want to remember that scene, but it just seemed to stay in his head, no matter what.

Gradually, as they left the city behind them, Tom’s thoughts shifted away from the hippie, roamed around, touched on this and that, and settled on a new subject. It wasn’t exactly Joe’s liquor store, though the liquor store was behind what he was thinking about now. All at once he broke the silence, saying, “Joe?”

Joe blinked. It was like coming out of sleep, or a dentist’s anesthetic. He looked at Tom’s profile and said, “Yeah?”

“Let me ask you a question.”

“Sure.”

Tom kept looking straight ahead through the windshield. “What would you do,” he said, “if you had a million dollars?”

Joe’s answer was immediate, as if he’d been ready for this question all of his life. “Go to Montana with Chet Huntley,” he said.

Tom frowned slightly and shook his head. “No,” he said. “I mean really.”

“So do I.”

Tom turned his head and studied Joe’s face — they both had very serious expressions — and then he looked out the windshield again and said, “Not me. I’d go to the Caribbean.”

Joe watched him. “You would, huh?”

“That’s right.” Tom grinned a little, thinking about it. “One of those islands down there. Trinidad.” He stretched the word out, pronouncing it as though saying it was tasting something sweet.

Joe nodded, and looked around at the glove compartment. “But here we are instead,” he said.

Tom glanced at him again, then faced front. He felt very cautious now, like a man with a bag of groceries walking on ice. He said, “Remember what you told George last week?”

“Big mouth? No, what did I tell him?”

“That we could get anything we want,” Tom said, “only we restrain ourselves.”

Joe grinned. “I remember. I thought you were gonna tell him about my liquor store.”

Tom wasn’t going to get distracted by side issues now; he’d started moving, and he was going to keep moving. Ignoring the liquor-store remark, he said, “Well, what the hell, why don’t we?”

Joe didn’t get it. “Why don’t we what?”

“Do it!” Tom said. He’d been bottling this up for days, his voice was vibrating with it. “Get everything we want,” he said, “just like you said.”

Skeptical, Joe said, “Like how? Liquor stores?”

Tom took one hand off the wheel to wave that away, impatient with it. “That’s nothing, Joe,” he said, “that’s crap! That stinking city back there is full of money, and in our position by God we really can get anything we want. A million dollars apiece, in one job.”

Joe didn’t believe it yet, but he was interested. “What job?”

Tom shrugged. “We’ve got our choice. Anything we want to work out. Some big jewelry company. A bank. Whatever we want.”

Suddenly Joe saw it, and he started to laugh. “Disguised as cops!”

“That’s right!” Tom said. He was laughing, too. “Disguised as cops!”

The two of them sat in the car and just laughed.