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

           The
houses weren’t bad. They were old enough to have been built before plastics
were really big, which meant they were constructed fairly well, mostly of wood.
They had clapboard siding that had to be painted every few years, they had
half-basements for the utilities, the backyards were a pretty good size, and
there was a detached one-car garage at the rear of each and every property.
Gravel driveways separated the houses and defined the property lines, and every
house in three or four blocks in all directions looked exactly the same, except
for color of paint job or any special additions or changes that anybody might
have made. Neither Tom nor Joe had made any special changes, so they both had
the original basic house, just the way it had come from the architect’s drawing
board; only a little older.
                 Most
people put up fences along the sides of their backyards, mostly to keep little
kids inside, but Tom and Joe hadn’t done that Between Tom and his neighbor on the
right there was a basket-weave wooden fence put up by the neighbor, and between
Joe and his neighbor on the left there was a chain-link fence covered with
vines put up by that neighbor, but between their own two yards there was
nothing but the remains of a hedge planted by some previous owner of one of
their houses. The hedge had big gaps in it where they walked back and forth all
the time, and they could never agree who was supposed to keep it trimmed, so
nobody did, and it was gradually dying. And taking years to
do it.
                 In
every single house in the development that either of them had ever heard of,
the kitchen linoleum was all cracked and buckled. In a lot of houses, including
both of theirs, the basement leaked.
                 They
hadn’t done any more talking about the robbery idea since that one time in the
car, but they’d both been thinking about it. Not that it was real, not that
they thought they would actually commit a major robbery somewhere, but just
that it was nice to daydream about a possible way of getting themselves out of
this grind.
                 Joe
wasn’t thinking about the robbery idea at the moment, mostly because his mind
was taken up with the problem of the pool filter, but Tom’s mind was ticking
along on the subject, and all at once he said, “Hey.”
                 Joe
was sitting cross-legged on the ground, surrounded by hoses and washers and
nuts. He put a double handful of parts down, wiped his face with his hand,
drank beer, looked over at Tom, and said, “What?”
                 “What
do you think the Russians would pay for him,” Tom said, “if we kidnapped their
ambassador?”
                 Joe
squinted at him in the sunlight. “You serious?”
                 “Why not? Profitable and patriotic both.”
                 Joe
thought about it for a couple of seconds, and then he looked all around the
backyard and said, “Where the hell are we going to keep the Russian
ambassador?”
                 Tom
looked off toward his own yard next door. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s a problem.”
                 Joe
shook his head and went back to the pool filter. Tom drank some more beer. They
both thought their thoughts.

             Tom
     
     
     
                 The
squeal was at a junior high school; they’d found a missing teacher, dead.
                 It
was about eleven in the morning, a cloudy day that promised rain for later on.
Ed and I drove over in the Ford and parked in the school zone out front. It was
one of the old gray stone school buildings, three stories high* looking more
like a fortress than a place for kids. A concrete-covered play yard was on the
right, surrounded by eight-foot-high chain link fence. Nobody was in it.
                 A
recent fad among the kids has been to write nicknames on walls and