Cops and Robbers by Donald E. Westlake

Author:Donald E. Westlake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Media
Published: 2018-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

Tom

Until the second Joe reached out and grabbed Eastpoole’s elbow and said, “Hold it,” I still hadn’t been one hundred per cent sure we were actually going to go through with this. Maybe it had been necessary that I keep some doubt in my mind, maybe that was what had made it possible for me to go on moving along through all the preparations and then get out of bed today and come to New York and in real life start step by step to do the things we’d decided on. That small uncertainty had been a kind of escape hatch for me, I suppose, to keep me from getting too nervous and frightened of what we had in mind.

Well, now the escape hatch was gone. We were in it now, we’d started. If there was anything we hadn’t thought of, it was too late to think of it. If there was any fact that we should know that we hadn’t picked up in our studies, it was too late to find it out. If there was any flaw in our plan, anything at all, it was too late now to fix it. It would fix us instead.

The first part, escorting Eastpoole to his office and keeping him calm and tractable, hadn’t been too bad. It wasn’t that different, really, from dealing with a suspect about whose guilt you weren’t really sure, but who could possibly make things very tough if he weren’t handled just right. It was like a variation on a part of my job I already knew about, so I could almost let automatic responses do it for me.

Besides, Joe and I had been working together at that point. I don’t know if my presence made things easier for him, but his presence definitely made things easier for me. Seeing him in the same position I was in, knowing we were locked into this together, had made it easier to keep moving.

But now I was on my own. Eastpoole’s secretary, that he’d called Miss Emerson, was walking with me through offices filled with people. What if she suddenly panicked, started to scream? What if her fright was only an act, and she was just waiting her chance to pull a fast one? What if a thousand different things happened that weren’t supposed to happen? I hadn’t the first idea how I’d handle it if she didn’t obey orders, and I wasn’t sure anymore what was the best way to treat her to make sure she would obey. Her physical being, walking beside me, terrified me, and all I knew for sure was that I couldn’t let her know how nervous I was. It would either throw her into a complete panic or make her start thinking she could outsmart me, and I didn’t want either of those things to happen.

There was a sexual element, too, which surprised me; I hadn’t expected anything like that. I don’t mean my sexual instincts are dead, or that my awareness is limited to Mary.

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