Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye by Horace McCoy

to the other end of the davenport and sat down, anti-charm school, spreading her knees, stretching her skirt tightly, while Reece laid his head on his shoulder, trying, blatantly, to see as far up under there as he could. You see what I mean? You couldn’t blame him …
    That’s where the trouble was,’ I said to the Inspector. ‘No money. You took all we had. There were only a few dollars left. I had to go find the fellow who helped me in the market job. He got two gees as his cut.’
    ‘That’s the fellow Pratt and Downey are after,’ Reece said to the Inspector.
    ‘Did you find him?’ the Inspector asked.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘He let me have a few hundred.’
    ‘Quite a few,’ he said dryly. ‘Eighteen hundred, wasn’t it?’
    I pretended to be surprised that he knew. ‘Well, sir,’ I said, ‘I can see that if I wanna keep any secrets from you, I got to stay away from Mason’s Garage. I can see that but it was the only place I knew to get a car. That’s the only reason I went…’ I took the currency out of my pocket and laid it across my knee, smoothing it down. ‘Here it is, eighteen hundred in cash,’ I said. ‘How much of this can I keep?’
    ‘Well, this time there’s somebody else to be taken care of,’ he said slowly.
    ‘Who?’ Reece asked.
    ‘Pratt and Downey’
    ‘But why?’ Reece asked.
    ‘Don’t be a chump,’ the Inspector said sharply. ‘They’re wise to this. Why do you think they let this guy breeze in and out of their stake-out and not pick him up? There’s enough goddamn jealousy in this department now…’ He reached over and picked up the eighteen hundred dollars from under my fingers and riffled it. He held out two twenties and a ten.
    ‘Here …’ he said.
    ‘Jesus, Inspector,’ I said. ‘Only fifty dollars for us?’
    ‘It’s your own goddamn fault, you go barging in that goddamn garage and give the whole thing away. I told you to get out of town. How do you think those guys feel? I been on the hind tit myself. Who do you think those guys are sore at you or me?’
    I took the fifty dollars. ‘I never thought of that,’ I said. ‘Look, Inspector,’ I said. This fellow who helped me pull the Hartfood Market job, this friend of mine. He lives here in town. He told me about a payroll that’s a pushover. Now, we’re going to Arizona, all right, but I was wondering.… If we just stay here in this apartment till the time comes to make the haul and then we make it and blow town right away, there wouldn’t be any harm in that, would there? We’re perfectly safe here, we wore masks on that other job and nobody could identify us and this payroll’s pretty big, Inspector.…’
    ‘I wouldn’t trust you,’ he said.
    ‘Naturally,’ I said. ‘But there must be somebody you can trust. We’ll need at least a couple of men. You pick ’em. This is worth it, twenty thousand dollars is worth it. You pick a couple of guys you can trust to go in with us. Maybe you and Reece can go with us yourselves, to handle the getaway car or something. If anything goes wrong you can use the old stall, you know, that you were tipped off and just went there to grab us red-handed. You’re an Inspector. You could get away with that…’
    Using cops to actually help me in a hold-up had heretofore been only a thought, never specifically considered any more than the guy playing left field for Dallas specifically considers his participation in a World’s Series; it had been only a vague ambition, a dream that had flashed through my mind and registered and passed on. But now I sensed that it might be attained without long years of bush-league apprenticeship. The Inspector’s face was still hard and set, but his eyes widened, barely perceptibly, and he looked at Reece momentarily, telepathically, and then back at me.
    ‘What the hell,’ I said. ‘Let’s cut ourselves a real piece of cake.’
    He fondled the knot of his cheap silk necktie, not taking his eyes off me, staring