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

going to be any trouble or not. It wasn’t too likely anybody
would try to break them loose from us, but it was just possible some enemies of
theirs might take a shot at them while they weren’t surrounded by their
bodyguards. So a lot of precautions were taken, including transporting them in
two different unmarked cars, with three officers in each car.
                 I
was driving one of the cars. I was alone in the front seat, and Vigano was
squeezed in the back seat with Ed on his left and a detective named Charles
Reddy on his right We drove downtown without any
incident, and then we had to take them up to a hearing room on the fourth
floor. Arrangement had been made ahead of time, so we were met by a couple of
uniformed cops at the side entrance and taken to an elevator already waiting
for us.
                 Vigano
and Sambella were very similar types; heavy-set, florid, their faces fixed in
that expression of contempt that people get when they’ve been bossing other
people around for a long time. They were expensively dressed, but maybe
overdressed, the stripes a little too dominant on their suits, the cufflinks a
little too big and shiny. And too many rings on their
fingers. They smelled of after-shave and cologne and deodorant and
haircream, and they weren’t fazed a bit.
                 Nobody
had said a word all the way down in the car, but now, once we were in the
elevator and headed up for the fourth floor, Charles Reddy suddenly said, “You
don’t seem worried, Tony.”
                 Vigano
gave him a casual glance. If it bugged him to be called by his first name he
didn’t show it. He said, “Worried? I could buy you and sell you, what’s to
worry? I’ll be home with my family tonight, and four years from now when the
case is over in the courts I won’t lose.”
                 Nobody
said anything back. What was there to say? “I could buy and sell you.” All I
could do was stand there and look at him.

             6
     
     
     
                 They
both had the day off, and were at home. There was a birthday party going on in
the kitchen of Joe’s house. It was his daughter Jackie’s ninth birthday, and
the kitchen was crammed with kids and mothers, a lot more of them than the room
could really hold. But nobody seemed to mind. The kids seemed to enjoy being
squeezed in together like that, and the mothers were having a good time
pretending to be working too hard.
                 Joe
stood in the kitchen doorway, watching with a little grin on his face. He got a
kick out of the racket and the mess the kids were making, and he also liked
looking at the mothers’ bodies as they moved around trying to keep things
organized. It was a hot day anyway, and the kitchen was small, and everybody
was sweating, and nobody was wearing a lot of extra clothing in the heat. The
women were very sexy moving around, with their hair plastered to their
foreheads and their faces shiny and their dresses wet in the small of the back
and their legs making brushing sounds against each other as they walked.
                 Joe
had a little fantasy going in the back of his head, in which he would catch the
eye of one of the mothers and give her a little come-here kind of head gesture,
and she’d come over and say, “What is it?”
                 “Telephone,”
he’d say.
                 “For
me?” she’d say.
                 “Come
take it in the bedroom,” he’d say. (He grinned to himself at that sentence, he
really liked it.)
                 So
they’d go into the bedroom and she’d pick up the phone and turn to him a little
confused and say, “There isn’t anybody here.”
                 And
he’d grin at her, and maybe wink, and say, “I know. What do you say we rest a
minute?”
                 And
she’d grin back, and give him a look, and say, “What do you