“Don’t you think it rides nice?” Teddy said.
“Yeah, it rides nice,” Colley said.
“I grabbed it outside a supermarket. Lady must’ve been inside doing her shopping.”
“Comes out, finds her wagon gone,” Jocko said.
“That’s life,” Teddy said.
“She leave the keys in it?”
“No, but it was unlocked. I opened the door and got at the hood latch. Thing that always amazes me, I can be working on a car four, five minutes, hood up, crossing the wires so I can start it, nobody’ll say boo to me. I once had a cop come over, would you believe it, stood there on the sidewalk with his hands behind his back, watching me while I crossed the wires. He nodded when I got the job finished. Nice work, he was telling me. You fixed whatever was wrong with it.”
The men laughed. The sense of familiarity in the car was beginning to dispel whatever worries Colley had about the heat or the hoodoo jinx number thirteen. They had done this a dozen times before, they had talked easily and casually on the way to one job or another. Teddy, in fact, had probably told that very same story on the way to each and every job, and they had laughed genuinely each time he told it. He would now explain that he had rigged a switch...
“What I done,” he said, “was rig a switch here on the dash. So I can start it without going under the hood each time.”
“Yeah, good,” Jocko said.
“Is that clock right?” Colley said. He was sitting alone in the back, and he leaned forward toward the front seat.
Jocko checked the dashboard clock against his wrist-watch. “I’ve got a quarter to,” he said.
“That’s what I’ve got,” Colley said.
“I never had a car in my life the clock worked,” Teddy said. “I stole Cadillacs, Mercedes-Benzes, Continentals, you name it. The clock never works.”
“They build them so they won’t work,” Jocko said.
“What do you mean?”
“They don’t want them to work.”
“Why wouldn’t they want them to work?” Teddy asked.
“If they wanted them to work, don’t you think they could build them so they worked? Man, they build a machine costs fifteen thousand dollars, whatever, everything all precision-made, you mean to tell me if they wanted that old clock to work, it wouldn’t work?”
“I guess they could make it work if they wanted to,” Teddy said.
“Sure,” Jocko said.
“Then why don’t they?”
“Who knows what their motive is?” Jocko said. “These big companies are all screwed up.” Abruptly, his voice and his manner changed. “Listen, I just want to go over this one more time, Teddy. After we come out, you’re going crosstown to Jerome Avenue, and we’ll ditch the car someplace near Yankee Stadium, wherever you find a good spot.”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“Then we go our separate ways, and meet tomorrow morning at my place.”
“Right,” Teddy said.
“Colley?”
“Fine.”
“You still worried?”
“No, no.”
“Just make believe it’s number fourteen. One after this will be fourteen, so just make believe it’s this one instead.”
“That don’t bother me no more,” Colley said.
“Or make believe it’s a baker’s dozen,” Teddy said.
“What’s that, a baker’s dozen?”
“That’s thirteen,” Teddy said.
“So how does that change anything? If a baker’s dozen is thirteen, I think of it as thirteen, it’s still thirteen, ain’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Teddy said.
“Jesus,” Colley said.
“Don’t think about it at all,” Jocko said. “That’s the best way.”
“I’m not thinking about it,” Colley said. “I’m hot, that’s all. I can’t stand this kind of weather, that’s all.”
“Probably cool off later tonight,” Teddy said.
“Won’t cool off till we get some rain,” Colley said.
“Jeanine likes this kind of weather,” Jocko said. “She’s from Fort Myers originally — you ever been down that part of Florida?”
“I never been to Florida, period,” Colley said.
“Gets mighty hot down there in the summer. July and August, it’s a blast furnace down there.”
“Sounds like just the place for me,” Colley said.
“Yeah,” Jocko said, and laughed. “Jeanine loves it. A day like today, that’s a little too brisk for her.”
“Yeah, it sure is brisk,” Colley said.
“You want to take a right when we get to the corner,” Jocko said.
“Yeah,” Teddy said.
“Then it’s four blocks up.”
“Yeah.”
Jocko reached in under the blue poplin windbreaker he was wearing and pulled from the pocket of his trousers a Colt Cobra. The gun was almost identical to the Detective Special that Colley was carrying, except that it was partially made of aluminum and was lighter — fifteen ounces to twenty-one ounces for Colley’s gun. Both pistols were snub-nosed revolvers, with fixed sights and walnut stocks. Each gun carried six .38 Special cartridges. Jocko rolled out the cylinder now, idly glanced at the cartridges, nodded briefly, flipped the cylinder back into position, and put the gun in his pocket again. Teddy had made the turn onto the avenue now, and was heading north toward the liquor store.
Neither Colley nor Jocko had permits or licenses for the guns they were carrying; both guns had been purchased from receivers of stolen goods. If a cop stopped and searched them and found the pieces on them, they would both be charged with violation of Section 265.05 of the Penal Law — Possession of Weapons and Dangerous Instruments and Appliances. Colley practically knew the Penal Law by heart. Possession of a loaded firearm was a Class D Felony, punishable by a minimum of three and a maximum of seven. Teddy was driving very carefully. No one wanted the fuzz coming down on them for a bullshit gun violation. Get busted holding up a store, okay, that was a legitimate beef. But get stopped for passing a traffic light and then spend seven in jail on a gun rap — no way.
The Penal Law sections on robbery were very clear, with none of the fine print that existed in the burglary sections, where the degree of the crime was figured by whether the breaking and entry had been done in the daytime or in the night, in a dwelling or in a building, with a gun or without — man wanted to become a burglar, he first had to become a lawyer so he’d know what crime he was about to commit! But the robbery sections were in straightforward, almost blunt English, starting right off with the definition: Robbery Is Forceful Stealing. You couldn’t make it plainer than that. The various degrees of robbery were also plain to understand:
Any kind of robbery was a felony. For robbery three, you could get a maximum of seven years in prison; for robbery two, you could get fifteen; for robbery one, which was a Class B felony and nothing to sneeze at, you could get twenty-five. The three of them were about to commit, by definition, robbery one.