A Moment of Doubt by Jim Nisbet Page B

cups—deli food and coffee. The car was a mess inside, but not too dirty outside, according to the recent rains and the caliber of the neighborhood. But parking places were very difficult to find here, undoubtedly the vanguard of the detail had spent most of their shift lurking around waiting for someone to vacate a space, and not just any space. So, once they’d scored a good one, they would rotate shifts but not cars, let alone parking places. At this point, any number of cops had sat in that old Plymouth, watching their quarry down the street. By now, the inside of the car would smell like a bus station bathroom. The ashtray would be filled to overflowing with butts and gumwrappers. Coffee would have been spilled on the floors and seatcovers. The odors of mustard, chilidogs, onions, farts, cigars and cigarettes, newsprint, fried electronics would have mixed with the disgusting native odor of Plymouth upholstery to the extent that only a man who had been in there already for seven or eight hours could stand it, by virtue of being used to it. And there he was, behind the wheel, Martin Windrow himself. Unshaven, tie knot loosened, collar unbut-toned, head thrown back against the seat, sound asleep. His coat was thrown open, and you could see the ugly checkered grip of his pistol sticking out from under his arm against the white of his shirt. Any kid with time on his hands might have reached in the open window and blown out the guy’s brains with his own gun. His snoring mouth looked like the final hole in the final game of the U.S. Open. It’s a good thing for him there are no flies in California. Asleep on the job,
    . . . and who can blame him. Only a novice or a dedicated man can stand to stay awake on a boring and repetitive stakeout. It’s very cozy in a Plymouth in the sun on the lee side of the park, and a man gets tired of keeping a close eye on something he’d either rather fuck or try not to think about . . .
    Actually, Windrow drives a Toyota. Or did, until it was destroyed in an ass-kicking car chase in Ulysses’s Dog . Then he switched to a red ’64 Ford Fairlane V-8, a classic.
    But a disconcerting thought came to me as I stood there in the breeze, and a sudden chill racked my frame. The hookers had been in the neighborhood for a long time. Why had they not been busted before? Maybe they had. Perhaps I’d not heard about it. They were good neighbors, too. They belonged to the neighborhood association, which had gotten some trees planted along the sidewalks in front of our houses, and successfully fought against a liquor license being issued to a man who wanted to open a fern bar down on the corner. The hookers gave lots of quality candy to the local kids on Halloween, nary a razor-bladed bonbon or PCP-laced sucker in the lot. They caroled the eight blocks forming the square around the park every Christmas with members of the Episcopal choir, but otherwise never made too much noise or had to have the cops come tell them to turn down their stereo. They had tastefully if gaily painted their house just a couple of years ago, gave a fifth of cognac to the mailman and a case of beer to the garbagemen every New Year. They had even caught a cat burglar breaking into the house next door to them. The hookers were, by anyone’s standard, decent neighbors. One might go so far as to speculate that the neighborhood would rise up in arms, were the girls to get busted, but one also suspects the hypocrisy of one’s neighbors. Besides, hookers break the law.
    And the thought that chilled me, as I stood there in the wind, was: of course, they’re not the only ones around here breaking the law. Are they. Nope.
    At that precise moment, the cop in the Plymouth, whom I no longer was sure was in the vice squad, stirred in his sleep. A long arm stretched out of the window on the driver’s side, shooting its cuff, bent double, and presented the wrist with the watch back into the window