Tom began to switch the ice cubes to his Colonial ice-bucket. Joe rooted around among all the dirty glasses on the card table, and finally said, “What did I do with my drink?”
“I’ll make you another.”
“Thanks.”
Joe was drinking scotch and soda. Tom knew that wasn’t considered a summertime drink, but he’d never said anything; it was what Joe liked all year ’round, so why pester him?
Tom started making the drink, and Joe turned to look at the freeloaders all over the lawn in the gloom of twilight. The men were talking with men, the women were talking with women, the kids were running around the adults like motorcycles around traffic stanchions. It occurred to Joe that of all the women currently in the backyard the only one he really wanted to ball was Mary, who was Tom’s wife. Then she turned, and he realized in the half-light he’d made a mistake and it was Grace he’d been staring at, his own wife. He grinned and shook his 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 to the beauty parlor this morning and had come back 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, all 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 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, and he ran a supermarket over in the five towns. He was a little drunk now, not terrible, and he came up with a loose 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 about 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-race 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, “It’s 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: “Here.”
“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, you 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 worse, 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?”