"Westlake, Donald E as Stark, Richard - Parker 14 - Slayground 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Westlake Donald E)

Two


DUNSTAN WAS terrified. "Joe," he said, "this is different, this isn't the same thing at all."

"It's more dough," O'Hara told him, "that's what it is. Our piece alone will be more than that whole envelope Caliato gave me." The siren was whining above their heads, O'Hara had both hands on the steering wheel, they were tearing after a fantasy down Brower Road.

Dunstan said, "Joe, we'll have to kill him. Don't you realize that?"

"Who said anything about kill? You don't think he'll give up when he sees he's trapped?"

"Joe, we couldn't bring him in. Don't try and tell me dumb lies, I can think as good as the next man. We take his money away and bring him downtown and all he has to do is open his mouth once."

O'Hara looked troubled, as though he didn't want to hear what Dunstan was saying. "So we'll work something out," he said. "We don't have to bring him downtown. We trade him, we take the suitcase and let him go."

"We couldn't take the chance, and you know it." Dunstan shook his head, blinking at the roadway in front of them. "Besides, Caliato won't let him go. He wouldn't stand for it."

"Caliato isn't running us," O'Hara said angrily.

Dunstan looked at him, but he had sense enough not to tell O'Hara the truth. O'Hara had to know it anyway, just as much as Dunstan did. Caliato ran O'Hara exactly the way O'Hara ran Dunstan, which had nothing to do with seniority in grade or time on the force or age or anything else. It was pecking order, that's all, pure pecking order. O'Hara was dominant over Duns tan, and they both knew it. And Caliato was dominant over O'Hara, and they both knew it.

In point of fact, O'Hara did have age and seniority on the force over Dunstan. Dunstan was twenty-seven years old, four years on the force. The Army had made him an MP during his three-year enlistment -- they'd trained him in the field of his choice, as a refrigeration engineer, but after tech school they'd made him an MP -- and when none of the other jobs he'd gotten after the Army had worked out, he'd just naturally drifted into the police force. He didn't expect to be commissioner ever, he didn't expect even to be a precinct captain at any time in his future. All he expected was a quiet life on the force, fairly decent pay with under-the-counter bonuses, and no trouble.

This armored-car robber struck Dunstan as trouble, huge threatening trouble. Being in on the grease that lubricated the day-to-day affairs of the police department was pleasant, and since nearly a quarter of the force was in on it to some extent or other -- including a lot of higher-ups -- it wasn't really dangerous, Dunstan had no objections there. But this armored-car robber, that was something else again.

He tried once more. "I've never killed anybody in my life, Joe," he said. "I couldn't just shoot a man down like that. Make him surrender, and then just shoot him down. Christ, Joe, I don't think you could do a thing like that either."

"I wouldn't," O'Hara said. "If it came to that -- and I say if it came to that -- you know Caliato would handle it. That sort of thing doesn't bother him, he's done it before."

"I don't like it," Dunstan said, stubbornly. "I don't want to be in on it."

O'Hara gave him a quick look, then glared out at the road again. "You want to come down sick? Call in, tell them you're throwing up, I have to take you home."

Dunstan frowned. "I don't know what to do," he said.

"Go home."

"I'd still know about it. Joe, maybe what we ought to do is call in and tell the truth. We can say he circled back, we just saw him going into the park now."

"What good does that do us?"

"Maybe there's a reward. If there's a lot of money, then there probably is a reward."

O'Hara grimaced, facing straight ahead. "I can see Caliato standing still for that," he said. "Do we split this great reward with him? 'Here, Caliato, here's twenty bucks for your trouble, thanks for watching the pigeon while we drove around the countryside.'" He shook his head. "Sometimes, Paul, you don't make much sense."

Dunstan didn't have anything else to say, so he just sat there and chewed on a knuckle and watched the road unreel in front of the windshield. The siren kept howling, but you got used to that pretty soon, you no longer really noticed it. After running with the siren for a while, sometimes you'd turn it off and all of a sudden the air would be humming, you'd feel almost dizzy, as though now there was a noise and before there'd been silence.