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

finished
setting up the pins and hoisted himself up onto a seat
hidden away out of sight. Only his highly polished shoes showed, hanging down
over the black valley where the ball would stop.
                 Vigano
was studying me. “You’re wearing a wig,” he said.
                I said, “The story is, the FBI takes
movies of your visitors. I don’t want to be identified.”
                 He
nodded. “The moustache phony too?”
                 “Sure.”
                 “It
looks better than the wig.” He drank some beer. “You’re a cop, huh?”
                 “Detective
Third Grade,” I said. “Assigned in Manhattan .”
                 He
emptied the rest of the beer from the bottle into the glass. Not looking
directly at me, he said, “I’m told you don’t have any papers on you. Wallet, driver’s license, nothing like that.”
                 I
said, “I don’t want you to know who I am.”
                 He
nodded again. Now he did look at me. He said, “But you want to do something for
me.”
                 “I
want to sell something to you.”
                 He
squinted slightly. “Sell?”
                 I
said, “I want to sell you something for two million dollars cash.”
                 He
didn’t know whether he was supposed to laugh or take me seriously. He said,
“Sell me what?”
                 “Whatever
you want to buy,” I told him.
                 I
could see him deriding to get annoyed. “What bullshit is this?”
                 I
talked as fast as I knew how. “You buy things,” I said. “I’ve got a friend,
he’s also a cop. In our position, with what we know about how things work, we
can go anywhere in New York you want and get you anything you want. You just tell us what it is
you’ll pay two million dollars for, and we’ll go get it.”
                 Shaking
his head, seeming to be talking more to himself than to me, Vigano said, “I
can’t believe any DA in the world would be this dumb. This is a stunt you
worked out for yourself.”
                 “Sure
it is,” I said. “And how can it hurt you? Your boys frisked me on the way in, I
don’t have a recorder on me, and if I did it’s entrapment. I’m not crazy enough to just hand stuff over to you and expect two million
dollars in cash right back, so we’ll have to work out intermediaries, safe
methods, and that means you can’t possibly get picked up for fencing stolen
goods.”
                 He
was studying me hard now, trying to work me out. He said, “You mean you’re
actually offering to go steal something, anything I want.”
                “That you’ll pay two million for,” I
said. “And that we can handle; I’m not going to get you an airplane.”
                 “I’ve
got an airplane,” he said, and turned away from me to look toward the pins set
up at the far end of the lane.
                 I
could see him thinking it over. I felt I hadn’t said enough, hadn’t explained
it right, but at the same time I knew the best thing to do right now was keep
my mouth shut and let him work it out for himself.
                 The
fact was, he had nothing to lose, and he should be smart enough to see it. If I
was crazy or stupid or just a horse’s ass kidding around, it still wouldn’t
cost Vigano anything to tell me what he’d be willing to buy from me. So long as
I didn’t ask for an advance payment, it was strictly to Vigano’s advantage to
play along with me.
                 I
saw that understanding come into his face before he said anything. I watched him
work it out, slowly and cautiously, looking for traps and mines the way
somebody in his position would have to do, and I saw him come around finally to
the understanding that there was nothing