Westlake, Donald E - Novel 32 by Cops (and) Robbers (missing pg 22-23) (v1.1)

           “I
thought it over,” Joe told him. He was beginning to wake up despite himself,
though he was still in a bad mood. He said, “What I’d really like to do is get
Grace and the kids out of this country entirely. But completely out, before it
goes to hell altogether.”
                 “Where’s
this you want to go?”
                 “Saskatchewan.”
Joe made a vague gesture, as though pointing northward. “It’s in Canada,” he
said. “They give you land if you want to be a farmer.”
                 Tom
gave him a grin of surprise and disbelief. “What do you know about farming?”
                 “A
hell of a lot less than I’ll know next year.” They were now on that part of the
Expressway lined on both sides with cemeteries, and Joe brooded out at it all.
It’s like somebody’s idea of a sick joke, all those tombstones stretching away
on both sides of the Expressway just a couple miles from Manhattan; like a
parody of a city, in bad taste. Neither of them had ever mentioned it to the
other, but those damn cemeteries had bugged them both from time to time, over
the years of driving back and forth. And the funny thing was , they bothered the both of them more in the daytime than at night. And more on sunny days than rainy days. And
more in the summer than in the winter.
                 This
was a sunny day in July.
                Neither of them said any more until
they were past the cemeteries. Then Joe said, “I’m really thinking about that,
you know. Just pack everybody in the car and take off for Canada. Except with
my luck, it’d break down before we got to the border.”
                 “Not
if you had a million dollars” Tom said.
                 Joe
shook his head. “There are times,” he said, “I almost believe we’re gonna do
it.”
                 Tom
frowned at him. “What’s the matter with you? You’re the one that’s done it already.”
                 “You
mean the liquor store?”
                 “What
else?”
                 “That
was a different thing,” Joe said. “That was—” He moved his hands, trying to
think of the word.
                 “Small-time,”
Tom said. “I’m telling you to think bigtime. You know what Vigano had?”
                 Small-time wasn’t the word Joe had been
looking for. Irritated, he said, “What did he have?”
                 “His own bowling alley. Right in the
house.”
                 Joe
just stared. “A bowling alley?”
                 “Regulation bowling alley. One lane. Right in the house.”
                 Joe
grinned. That was the kind of high life he could understand. “Son of a bitch,”
he said.
                 “Go
tell him crime doesn’t pay,” Tom
said.
                 Joe
nodded, thinking it over. He said, “And he told you securities, huh?”
                 “Bearer
bonds,” Tom said. “Just pieces of paper. Not heavy, no
trouble, we turn them right over.”
                 Joe
was wide awake now, interested, his irritation forgotten. “Tell me the whole thing,”
he said. “What he said, what you said. What’s his
house look like?”

           Joe
     
     
                 To
me, Broadway in the Seventies and Eighties is the only part of Manhattan that’s
worth anything at all. Paul and I cover that area in the squad car a lot, and I
kind of like it The people are maybe a little
uglier-looking than the average, but at least they’re human; not like the
freaks in the Village or the Lower East Side. Midtown has all the pretty
people, all those marching men in their suits and good-looking secretaries out
wandering around during lunch, but that isn’t where they live. There isn’t anything human or livable in that area at all;
it’s just stone and