Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean I wanted to give it up. I still wanted to do it, the reasons for doing it were still just as valid as they’d ever been, and my plans for afterward still excited me as much as when I’d first worked them out. But if the situation had been taken out of my hands one way or another, and I’d been forced to turn back, I admit I wouldn’t have put up too much of a fight.
Well. I got to Manhattan with time to spare, drove over to the West Side, and parked in the low Forties, near Tenth Avenue. Then I walked down to the Port Authority terminal, carrying the bag with the uniform in it, and changed clothes in a pay stall in the men’s room there.
Leaving, heading across the main terminal floor for the Ninth Avenue exit, I was stopped by a short old woman wearing a black coat — in weather like this — who wanted to know where to buy tickets for a Public Service bus. She irritated me at first, distracting me when I was so tense anyway, and I couldn’t figure out why she was bothering me with questions like that when just ahead of us there was a huge sign reading: INFORMATION; but then I remembered I was in uniform. I shifted gears, became a cop, and gave her courteous directions over to the ticket windows along the side wall. She thanked me and scurried away, pulling the coat tight around her as though she were in a high wind that nobody else could feel. Then I walked on, left the building without being asked any more questions, and headed back for the car.
Walking along, I got this sudden vision in my head of the same thing happening again, only in a more serious way than with the old woman. I could see Joe and me on our way to commit a felony and being stopped by somebody who’d just been mugged, or getting mixed up with a lost child, or being the first cops on the scene at a serious automobile accident.
And what could we do if something like that happened? We’d have to stay, we’d have to play out the policeman’s role. There just wouldn’t be any choice, it would be far too suspicious for us to refuse to have anything to do with whatever it might be. The next cops to come along would surely be told about it, and we didn’t want the idea getting around ahead of time that there were a couple of fake cops up to something in the city.
That would be damn ironic; kept from committing a robbery by the call of duty. I grinned as I walked along, thinking I would tell Joe about it when I saw him. I could just see his face.
At the Chevvy, I opened the trunk and put the canvas bag in it, with my other clothes. The license plates and numbers were in there, in a shopping bag; they’d been there for a week, ever since we’d picked them up.
I shut the trunk, got behind the wheel, and drove over by the piers. The New York City piers have gone to hell in the last ten years or so, with most of the harbor business now being done over in Jersey, so there’s plenty of places in through there, particularly under the West Side Highway, where you can have all the privacy you want. Some of the trucking companies store empty trailers there, which form walls to shield you from the sight of the occasional car or truck heading down Twelfth Avenue.
I tucked the Chevvy in by a highway stanchion, next to a parked trailer, and looked at my watch. I was still running ahead of schedule, but that was all right. And now that I was really committed to it, and I’d made the first couple of moves in the planned operation, I was actually calming down, getting less and less nervous. The buildup had made me tense, but now the tension was draining away and I felt as easy in my mind as if I was just waiting here for Ed Dantino to show up so we could go on duty. Very strange.
It was a hot day, too hot to sit in the car. I got out of it, locked it, and leaned against the fender to wait for Joe.
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.