I love Central Park West. On the one side there's the park, green and rolling, and on the other side the apartment buildings full of rich people, rolling in green. The East Side has become more fashionable in the last few years, as the slums of Harlem have crowded down from the north and the Puerto Rican slum of Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues has crowded over from the west, but there's still plenty of wealth to be found on Central Park West, particularly toward the southern end.
We parked in front of the address. It had a canopy and a doorman, both of which I liked. We went inside, and going up in the elevator I said, "You do the talking, okayr*
I'd already told Ed I was under the weather, so he just said, "Sure-It was a very expensive apartment we were headed for, on a high floor. The woman herself let us in, opening the door as though she weren't used to that kind of manual labor. She was about forty-five, and holding time away with every pill and diet and exercise she could find. She looked expensive but old, like her apartment
She took us into the living room, but didn't suggest we sit down. It was a beautiful room, all golden and brown, with high windows overlooking the park. An air-conditioner hummed, and the sun shone through the windows, and you could almost hear the buzz of lazy insects. You get the idea; everything sun-dappled and rich and comfortable and beautiful and easy. It was just a great room to be in.
Ed did the talking for both of us, while I wandered around the room, digging how good it felt to be there. She had knickknacks and whatnots all over the place, in marble and onyx and different kinds of wood and some in chrome or glass or green stone, and every one of them was just a pleasure to be with.
Over by the window, Ed and the woman were talking, their voices seeming to be muffled by the sunlight, muted and indistinct, like voices in another room when you're sick in bed in the daytime. From time to time I'd tune in on what they were saying, but I just couldn't build up any interest. It was the room I cared about, I didn't give a shit about the two spades that had busted in here.
At one point, I heard Ed say, "And they came in through the service entrance?"
"Yes," she said. She had a voice like a prune, very offensive. "They struck my maid," she said. "They cut the inside of her mouth, I sent her downstairs to my doctor. I could have her sent back up if you need a statement."
"Maybe later," Ed said.
"I can't think why they struck her," she said. "She is black, after all."
Ed said, "Then they came in here, is that it?"
"No," she said, "they never came in here at all, thank goodness. I have some rather valuable things in here. They went from the kitchen into the bedroom."
"Where were you?"
On a glass coffee table was an ornate lacquered Oriental wooden box. I picked it up and opened it, and it had half a dozen cigarettes inside. Virginia Slims. The wood inside the box was a warm golden color, like imported beer.
The woman was saying, "I was in my office. It connects with the bedroom. I heard them rummaging around, and went to the door. As soon as I saw them, of course, I realized what they were doing."
"Can you give me a description?"
"I honestly didn't—"
I said, "How much would a thing like this cost?"
The woman looked at me, baffled. "I beg your pardon?"
I showed her the Oriental box. This thing," I said. "How much would it go for?"
She talked down her nose at me. "I believe that was thirty-seven hundred dollars. Under four thousand."
What a great thing! Four thousand dollars for this little box. 'To hold cigarettes in," I said, mainly to myself, and turned away again to put it back on the coffee table.
Behind me, the woman was being a little miffed, saying to Ed, "Where were we?"
I looked at the things on the coffee table. It made me happy to be with them. I couldn't help smiling.
Joe
I don't know why, for some reason I'd been pissed off all day. It had started right from the time I got out of bed this morning. If Grace hadn't avoided me, we would have had us a good old-fashioned fight, because I was really in the mood for it.
Then the car, and the traffic, none of that helped. And the heat. It felt good telling Tom about the liquor store, a thing Td been bottling up inside me for a couple weeks, but a little while after I told him and we'd stopped talking about it I was in a rotten mood again. Only now I had something to hook onto, because I just kept thinking about that comfortable bastard in his air-conditioned Cadillac out there on the Long Island Expressway this morning. I was sorry I hadn't ticketed him for something; anything. I hated the idea that somebody was better off than me.
For me, the best way to work off a mad is to drive. Not in that stop-and-go traffic like on the Expressway this morning; that just makes things worse. But in ordinary traffic, where I can move, use my skills. I get behind the wheel, I push it a little hard, win some contests, and pretty soon I feel better. So I volunteered to drive today, and my partner, Paul Goldberg, just shrugged and said it was fine with him. Which I knew he would; he has no feeling for cars, Paul. He'd rather I drove all the time, so he could sit beside me and chew gum. I never saw anybody in my life who could chew so much gum. He went through Chiclets like kids through Kleenex.
He's a couple years younger than me, Paul is, and slender and wiry, with more strength than he looks. His name is Goldberg, but he looks Italian. He has that curly kind of black hair, and an olive complexion, and those big brown doe eyes the chicks love so much. He's a bachelor, and I guess he makes out pretty good with the women. He ought to, given his looks and potential. I don't know for sure; I hinted around a couple of times, but he never talked about his personal life while we were on patrol together. Which was only fair, since I never talked about mine either.
On the other hand, what kind of personal life does a married man with kids have to talk about?
We did a little driving around the neighborhoods to begin with today, but it wasn't the kind of movement I needed to unload the irritable feeling in my chest. It was also too hot for mooching along down side streets; what we needed was to be where we could move fast enough to create a breeze for ourselves, keep ourselves a little cooled off. Me, especially, keep me cooled off.
So I headed us west over 79th Street and got on the Henry Hudson Parkway northbound. Way up ahead you could see the George Washington Bridge. On our left was the Hudson River, looking better than it really is, and across on the other side New Jersey. There were little puffs of white cloud in the blue sky, boats of different sizes were on the river, and even the city, off to our right, looked clean in the sunlight. For looking at, it was a really nice day. Of course, you can't see humidity, or a temperature in the high eighties.
I got off the Parkway at 96th Street and hit the neighborhoods again for a while. Now I was having second thoughts about telling Tom about the liquor store. Could I really trust him? What if he told somebody else, what if the word got around? Sooner or later it would reach the Captain, once it got started, and if that ever happened I was finished. The 15th Precinct had a couple of very hairy Captains for a while, guys who were in on the take, guys you could have bought off on a baby rape with a bottle of Scotch, but the boom got lowered all of a sudden, on the Captain we had at the time and also the one who'd been there before him and was assigned some place else and about to retire, and they both got their heads handed to them. Now we had a Captain who was out to make King of the Angels; spit on the sidewalk off duty and he'd write you up. Think what he'd do to a patrolman who held up a liquor store while driving his beat.
But Tom wouldn't say anything, he'd have more sense than that. I could trust him; that's why I'd told him. And face it, I'd had to tell somebody, I couldn't keep it tied up inside me much longer. Sooner or later I'd have told somebody like Grace, for God's sake, and Grace would never in a million years understand. With Tom, no matter what else he might think, I knew he'd understand.
And keep his mouth shut. Right?
Christ, I hoped so.
I was really feeling bugged. Frustrated and irritable and about ready to punch somebody in the mouth. I'd been having days like this every once in a while for the last few months, and I didn't know what to do about them, how to deal with them. Except wait them out, wait for it all to go away, which sooner or later it always did.
Down on 72nd Street, I went over to the Parkway again. Paul had tried starting a couple of conversations, but I didn't feel like talking. I'd come close, a few times in the last week, to telling Paul about the liquor store, but I didn't really know Paul as well as I knew Tom, I didn't have that same sense of closeness with him. And now that I'd told Tom, I didn't want to tell anyone else at all. Or talk to anyone else at all. In fact, part of me was sorry I'd talked to Tom.
We got back up on the Parkway, and rolled along. The air was a little better over the river, and the motion of the car made a breeze that at least blew the stink off. My mood was picking up.
Then I spotted the white Cadillac Eldorado up ahead, moving right along. It was the same model as the one this morning, but a different color. I saw him up there, looking so cute and arrogant and rich, and all the bile came right back into me again, stronger than ever.
I eased up on him and saw he had New York plates. Good. If I gave him a ticket he couldn't be a scofflaw, fade away into some other state and thumb his nose at me. He'd have to pay up or have a mess on his hands when it came time to renew his license.
I clocked him a mile, and he was doing fifty-four. Good enough.
"I'm taking the Caddy," I said.
I guess Paul had been half-asleep, sitting there in the silence next to me. He sat up straighter and looked ahead and said, "The what?"
"That white Caddy."
Paul studied the Cad, and raised his eyebrows at me. "How come?"
"I feel like it. He's doing fifty-four."
I hit the dome light, but not the siren. He could see me, he wouldn't need a lot of noise. He slowed right away, and I crowded him off onto the shoulder.
Paul said, "You cut him a little close there."
"He should of braked harder." I looked at Paul, waiting for him to say something else, but all he did was shrug, as though to say he didn't care, it wasn't his business— which it wasn't—so I got out of the car and went back to talk to the driver of the Cad.
He was about forty, with those pop-eyes called thyroid. He was wearing a suit and a tie, and when I went back to talk to him he opened his window by pushing a button. I asked to see his license and registration, and stood there a long time reading them, waiting for him to start a conversation. His name was Daniel Mossman, and he leased the Cad from a company in Tarrytown. And he didn't have anything to say for himself at all. I said, "You know the speed along this stretch, Dan?"
"Fifty," he said.
"You know what I speed I clocked you at, Dan?"
"I believe I was doing about fifty-five." There was no expression in his voice, nothing in his face, and those pop-eyes just looked at me like a fish.
I said, "What do you do for a living, Dan?"
"I'm an attorney," he said.
An attorney. He couldn't even say lawyer. I was twice as irritable as before. I went back to the patrol car and got behind the wheel, holding Mossman's license and registration.
Paul looked over at me, and rubbed his thumb and finger together. "Anything?"
I shook my head. "No," I said. "I'm giving the bastard a ticket."
Missing pg 22-23
head, and almost turned to tell Tom what he'd just done when he realized that wouldn't be a good idea.
He looked around some more, and at last saw Mary way over by the house. Both women were wearing slacks with stripes, and fuzzy sweaters. Mary's pink, Grace's white. Because of the party they'd both gone off i the beauty parlor this morning and had come bad with hairdos that sat up on top of their heads like Venusian helmets, hair styles that had absolutely nothing to do with who they really were. But that was women for you, they did that sort of thing.
Tom said, ''Joe?"
Joe turned. "Yeah?"
"You remember that— Here." Tom handed over the fresh drink.
"Thanks."
"You remember," Tom said, that thing you told me the other day about the liquor store?"
Joe pulled at his drink, and grinned "Sure."
Tom hesitated, biting his lower lip, looking worriedly at the people at the other end of the yard. Finally, a in a rush, he said, "Have you done it again?"
Joe frowned, not sure what he was getting at "No. Why?"
"You thought about it?"
With a little shrug. Joe looked away. "A couple of times, I guess. I didn't want to push my luck."
Tom nodded. "Yeah, I guess so."
One of the guests came up then, stopping the conversation for a while. He was named George Hendricks, ad he ran a supermarket over in the five towns. He was little drunk now, not terrible, and he came up with a loot grin on his face and said, "Time for a refill."
"You're a screwdriver," Tom said, and took his glass.
"You're goddam right I am," George said. He was about thirty pounds overweight, and always hinting aboot what a sex maniac he was. Now he said, mostly to Joe, since Tom was busy making his drink, "You two both still work in the city, huh?"
Joe nodded. "Yeah, we do."
"Not me," George said. "I’m out of that rat-rae for good." Up till a few years ago, he'd managed a Finast in Queens.
Drunks always irritated Joe, even when he was off duty.
Skeptical, a little bored, he said to George, "Ifs that different out here?"
“Hell, yes. You know that yourself, you moved out here.”
“Grace and the kids are out here," Joe said. "I’m still in the city."
Tom held George's fresh drink out to him: There."
"Thanks." George took the glass, but didn't drink yet. He was still involved in his conversation with Joe. He said, "I don’t see how you guys stand it. The city is nothing but wall-to-wall crooks. Everybody out to chisel a dollar.”
Joe merely shrugged, but Tom said, "It’s the way of the world, George."
"Not out here," George said. He made it one of those definite, don't-argue-with-me statements.
"Out here," Tom said, "just like any place else. It’s all the same."
“You guys,” George said, and shook his head. “You think everybody’s crooked in the whole world. It’s being in the city gives you that idea.” He gave a knowing grin, and rubbed his thumb and finger together. “Being in on it a little.”
Joe, who’d been looking at the women again, trying without success to develop an interest in George’s wife, turned his head and gave George a flat stare. “Is that right?”
“One hundred per cent,” George said. “I know about New York City cops.”
“That’s the same everywhere, too,” Tom said. He wasn’t offended; he’d given up being sore about slurs like that years ago. He said, “You think the guys in the precinct out here could make it on their salaries?”
George laughed and pointed his drink at Tom. “See what I mean? The city corrupts your mind, you think everybody in the world is a crook.”
Suddenly irritated, Joe said, “George, you come home every night with a sack of groceries. You don’t do that on any employee discount, you just pack up those groceries and walk out of the store.”
George was outraged. He stood up straighter, and got drunker. “I work for them!” he said, his voice loud enough to carry to the far end of the yard. “If the chain paid a man a decent salary—”
“You’d do the same thing,” Joe said.
Smoothly, Tom said, “Not necessarily, Joe.” He was a natural host, he eased groups through the rough spots. He said to Joe, but for George’s benefit, “Everybody hustles, but nobody wants to. I don’t want Mary to work, yon don’t want Grace to work, George doesn’t want Phyllis to work, but what are you gonna do?”
George probably embarrassed at having gotten mad, made a heavy attempt at humor. “
Lose the house to the bank,” he said.
Tom said, “The way I see it, the problem is really very simple. There’s so and so much money, and there’s so and so many people. And there isn’t quite enough money to go around. So you do the only thing that’s left; you steal to make up the difference.”
Joe gave Tom a warning look, but Tom hadn’t been thinking about the liquor store just then, and in any case didn’t notice him.
George, still trying to make up for his bad temper, said, “Okay. I can go along with that. You got to make up the difference, and you do a little of this and that. Like me with the groceries.” Then, with a smirk, and another heavy attempt at humor, he added, “And you guys with whatever you can get.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” Joe said. He was still serious. He said, “In our position, we could get whatever we wanted. We restrain ourselves, that’s all.”
George laughed, and Tom gave Joe a thoughtful look. But Joe was moodily glaring at George; he was thinking he’d like to give him a ticket.
Tom
The way to take somebody out of a place full of his friends is to do it fast. This was a coffee shop on Macdougal Street in Greenwich Village, a hangout of several different kinds of freaks, and at one o’clock on a Saturday night it was full; college students, tourists, local citizens, hippies passing through town, a general cross-section of people who don’t like cops.
Ed waited outside on the sidewalk. If worse came to worst, I’d push Lambeth into running and he’d run straight into Ed’s arms.
He was at a table midway along on the right, just as the finger had said. He was with four other people, two male and two female, and he had a bunched-up handkerchief in his left hand and kept patting his nose with it. Either he had a cold or he was on something; most of them sooner or later try a free sample of what they sell.
I stopped behind his chair, and leaned over him slightly. “Lambeth?”
When he looked up over his shoulder, I saw that his eyes were watery and red-lined. It was still maybe a cold, but it was still more likely heroin. He said, “Yeah?”
Westlake, Donald E - Novel 32 Page 2