things on it to burly-boy. Finally burly pocketed the paper and they parted. Doc said, “Willie is selling that goon a job he's cased. You follow Smith, get his home address. I'll tail the other slob. Keep calling in: I'll leave a message for you at the squad room.”
Willie was an easy make; he had a rolling way of walking, like sailors are supposed to walk. He was living at a midtown flea-bag. I kept phoning Doc and around one there was a message to meet him at a Center Street bar. I found Doc eating steamed clams. He ordered some for me, said, “This place looks like a dump but the owner has a house on the inlet and digs his own clams. You don't have to worry about them being fresh. Where does Willie live?”
I told him and he said, “The big guy is set to knock over a ritzy house on the east side. Placed is closed up. The family has probably gone south for the winter.”
“Let's go.”
“Relax, kid. They won't try this until dark, about the time the rush hour dies down. Big boy lives in a tenement on Seventh Street. Around four we'll go down and wait for him to leave.”
“But suppose they try it sooner? Shouldn't we take a plant outside the house they're going to rob?”
“They won't attempt it before dark. Forced entries, like all crimes, follow a pattern. Nice bite to the air; let's take a drive.”
“But why wait? We can pick up Willie now, and with burly having the plans of the house on him...”
Doc dipped a clam in hot butter sauce, gave me one of his bored smiles. “Pick up Willie for what? And big boy has the plans of the house on him—maybe. So what does that prove?”
“Enough for a collar.”
“Bucky, any slob can make an arrest. It's a stand- up collar that counts, one that gets a conviction. Come on, let's go riding.”
“Wait until I order a cup of Java.”
Doc looked horrified. “Not here—it's dishwater.”
We drove around for a few hours, taking it easy, like tourists. We were on the River Driveway. There was a new Olds ahead of us with a man and woman in it, the woman driving. She was driving too slow, damn near coming to a stop to make the turn to the bridge that went out on the island. Doc said, “Follow them over the bridge.”
“Why?” I asked, making the turn.
“I'll give three to one she's a beginner. Once she crosses the bridge, she's outside city limits. Her beginner's permit isn't any good.”
“Neither are our badges.”
Doc lit a cigarette, taking the matches out of my pocket. “Don't worry about it.” We stopped at the end of the bridge and he took the wheel. After a few minutes he caught up to the Olds, passed it so closely the woman lost control, drove off the road, and stopped with such a jerk I thought she'd go through the windshield.
Doc pulled to the side of the road as I saw the man frantically trying to change places with the woman. We walked back to them. Flashing his badge (Doc called it a “potsy,” another sign of old age), Doc said, “Let me see your license, please.”
The man started to yank out his wallet but Doc told him, “Not you. She was driving.”
“I was at the wheel, officer, not my wife,” the man said, his face sickly. The woman's plain face was flushed a deep red, and she seemed on the verge of tears.
“You're a liar!” Doc snapped. “Get in your car and follow us to the station house. I was going to give you a break, but not when you try pulling that crap on me.”
“I have a beginner's permit and my husband has a license,” the wife wailed.
“Madam, then I have to arrest you for driving without a license,” Doc said softly. “You should know your permit isn't any good outside city limits. And not on the River Driveway, either, for that matter. Means you'll lose your license too, mister, and it will cancel out your insurance. I'm sorry, but that's the law.”
The man said, “Please, officer, I was only teaching her to drive. We didn't realize we were out of the city.”
“And if she had plowed into a car when she lost control of the car just now, killed somebody, what then? New car—at least you ought to be able to sell it for half what you paid,” Doc said, walking around to the rear of the car to take down the license number.
I was so dumb I wondered why he didn't get the number from the front plate, where we were standing. The husband followed Doc. The woman began to cry, and I said, “Take it easy.”
“My husband needs the car for his business!” she sobbed.
Doc and the man returned a few minutes later. Doc told me, “This is one of these things. I'm convinced the lady will be more careful next time. If we take this man's license away, he'll lose his job. Okay if we forget it?”
I said sure.
We turned around, headed back for town, and Doc took out a hundred bucks, gave me five tens and a wink.
At four we went to this tenement. Doc pointed out another lousy house on the other side of the street, said, “Go up on the roof and wait for me.”
I climbed up six flights to the roof, and a few minutes later Doc joined me, coming over the roof of the next house. We crossed a couple buildings until we were opposite the one we wanted. Doc made sure the roof door was open; then we took turns watching the house across the street. Doc poked around the roof, suddenly called me over. Inside an old roll of tar paper there was a paper bag full of cheap wrist watches, two boxes of cigars, unopened; another bag with candy bars, a card holding a dozen new pocket knives, and a used portable radio. Doc said, “Some kids looted a candy store. We'll come back for them.”
“Will we have time?”
“If we're lucky. The kids are waiting for dark, too.”
“Should I go down and call in for help?”
Doc looked at me like I was an idiot.
At ten to six, burly left the house across the street with some little fat guy. Doc said, “We've got time. Let's give the kids a half-hour.”
“But the goons might give us the slip. Hell with the kids.”
“What slip? We know where they're going. Know what they're doing now? Stealing a car.”
Some minutes later Doc asked what time I had on my watch. I held out my wrist and he said, “That's a kid's timepiece. Why are you wearing it?”
“It's a watch I won in my first amateur fight,” I lied. “I like to—”
Doc touched my arm for silence. Two big teen-agers opened the door, stepped out on the roof. They got their stuff from the tar paper—were probably going to sell it for two bucks, if they got that much. When we moved out from behind a chimney, they dropped the junk. One kid froze; the other took off. I chased him over a couple of roofs before flattening him with a judo chop on the back of his skinny neck. I dragged him back to where Doc was holding his gun on the other punk. Doc told me to go down and phone the local precinct for a radio car.
Twenty minutes later we had deposited the kids and their junk in a station house, were on our way uptown. We cruised by the house, a boarded-up whitestone that even sported a small lawn and a fence. There were a dozen cars parked on the street. Doc told me to drive slowly, and when we passed an old car with the hood loose, he said, “That's their getaway car. They had to jack open the hood to jump the ignition. Find us a place to park.”
I started to pull in next to a hydrant and Doc cursed, said, “We might as well pin our potsies to the windshield!”
I finally found a parking space around the corner. We walked back and took a plant in the doorway of a closed laundry store. It was cold and we had to wait over an hour before burly and his buddy crossed the street, each carrying an expensive suitcase. We jumped them. Burly didn't drop his bag fast enough so I dropped him with a right to the jaw. Doc blew his police whistle until the post cop came running. On the way to the station house we stopped at the flea-bag, picked up Willie without any trouble.
I was home by midnight, a little dizzy. In one day we had made five arrests and pocketed fifty bucks each.
Of course, we didn't do that every day, but we made plenty of arrests. Doc had a whole string of stoolies and often we were at the scene of a crime before it took place. Nor did we make extra money every day, but we did okay. Once we got a tip on a floating crap game, pocketed three hundred of the nine hundred dollars on the hotel rug. I thought it was risky but Doc said, “Stop slobbering. Sure, the desk lieutenant knows we held out some money—so does downtown—but they'd be surprised if we hadn't. It's expected. If you don't take what you can, it makes a lot of people uneasy. Just be careful you don't horn in on the big graft that goes up to the top, right to City Hall. This stuff is peanuts to them. They go for the organized shake, the big money that comes in as regularly as payday.”
Sometimes I thought Doc was being damn petty. Like once Doc spotted a parolee he remembered, coming out of a bar at night. He frisked the joker, took twenty dollars from his wallet, then let him go with a kick in the rear. I took my ten but Doc could tell I didn't like it. He told me, “Bucky, look at it this way: We're doing the guy a favor. And also doing our job. Don't forget, the biggest part of police work is preventing crime. Now, this fellow would have to finish three more years if we had turned him in.”
“Turned him in for what—taking a drink?”
“He was violating his parole by taking a shot at that hour of the night, not to mention the bar is a hangout for punks. But you're not following me, Bucky. The important thing is we reminded him to go straight. All parolees are tempted, so we merely acted as a brake on him. Isn't avoiding three years in the pen worth a couple of ten-dollar bills? We did him a favor.”
“As the saying goes, with pals like us he'll never need an enemy.”
Doc laughed and slapped me on the shoulder. “Don't worry, kid, he expected it. Why do you think he was
