You got those fuckin redneck cops down there, they beat the shit out of you in their crummy local jails and then sent you to work on the road gang forever. Forget about appeals, forget about paroles, you worked paving roads or cutting down forests all day long in the blazing sun and then you went back to the stockade where you ate chitlins and hog shit and got buggered by a big black nigger. That was what Colley thought the South was like. Southern cops and Southern jails, anyway. He’d had no real experience with either, but that was what he imagined it would mean, getting busted down there. So he wanted to do the robbery while they were still in Jersey, and before they crossed over into any of the Southern states. On the road map, it looked as if they had to cross into Pennsylvania before heading South, and he supposed Pennsylvania was okay, though he preferred Jersey. One thing for sure, Virginia sounded Southern as hell, and he didn’t want no redneck Virginia sheriff shooting him in the leg with a Magnum. So it would have to be either Jersey or Pennsylvania, and of the two he preferred Jersey.
What he decided to hold up was a diner. This was Sunday, and there wasn’t much choice. Unless you wanted to go in a church someplace and steal either from the poor box or the basket while it was being passed, why then, you were limited to either a place serving food or else a gas station. The gas stations nowadays, they had these safes stuck in concrete and the attendant stashed the money down inside them except for chicken feed he needed to make change, and a big sign said ATTENDANT DOES NOT KNOW COMBINATION TO SAFE, so that let out a gas station. It had to be an eating place of some kind, and Colley figured if he found himself an all-night diner, then the receipts from Saturday night might still be in the register, and maybe he could get himself a pretty good score instead of like, say, he hit a restaurant that had just opened for lunch, there’d be nothing in there but checks that had got paid at lunchtime. Anyway, it was still too early for lunch, and they’d probably be out of Jersey before lunchtime, so he kept his eye open for a diner that had a sign out front saying it was open all day and all night. He was in no hurry, long as they found one before they got out of Jersey. Never mind Pennsylvania, he had definitely decided now that it would be Jersey.
The day was bright and clear and cool after last night’s rain. Great day for a robbery, you came out running, there was no danger of the car skidding off a wet pavement onto the sidewalk or into a lamppost; your driver hit the gas pedal and off you went. Jeanine was a good driver, he was grateful for that. Before he got busted and sent to Sing Sing that time, he had once used a girl driver on a job. She was a girl he was shacking up with, she seemed like a pretty level-headed broad and the times he’d been with her in a car she seemed to handle the wheel pretty good. Day of the job it was like a Keystone Kops comedy; this wasn’t the job he finally got busted on, but it was a miracle it didn’t turn out to be the biggest bust in the history of New York State. He had to smile, thinking of it now, though it certainly wasn’t funny at the time.
He was working alone at the time; he had always worked alone before he threw in with Jocko. When he first started he even used to do his own driving, but then later he began cutting a man in for ten percent and that way had a car waiting at the curb for him. He had lost a very good driver just four weeks before he’d started shacking up with this girl; guy moved to California. The girl’s name was Carter, that was her first name. She was a Wasp from New Canaan, Connecticut, she’d gone to prep school and college; she was looking for thrills, Colley guessed. Carter Hewlitt. She told Colley she’d been named after a mystery writer, Carter Dickson. She said her mother was a big mystery buff and loved reading Carter Dickson. She asked Colley if he’d ever heard of a mystery writer named Carter Dickson. Colley told her he didn’t read mysteries and they got into a big argument about it. That was the night he told her he was an armed robber and that he was involved in real-life crime and didn’t have time for reading any bullshit mysteries. She said, “These happen to be very good mysteries. These are locked-room mysteries.”
He didn’t know what a locked-room mystery was, and he didn’t bother asking her. They started talking about going in places with a gun then, and she didn’t seem shocked at all by what he did for a living, and she didn’t seem scared either that maybe he’d pull a gun on her, blow her New Canaan brains out now that she knew he was a thief. In fact, she seemed very excited by all of it. He had the feeling she couldn’t wait to go home and tell her mother all about the dashing crook she’d met. Be even better than Carter Dickson. Anyway, two weeks later she drove for him on this job. Everything inside the place went like clockwork. This was a place sold office supplies, copying machines, typewriters, expensive items like that. Colley figured there’d be at least a couple of grand in the register, and whereas it turned out there was only six fifty, that wasn’t bad either for an hour’s work, counting commuting time. It was the commuting time that nearly blew the job.
He came running out of the store with the money in a dispatch case, and he could see Carter sitting at the wheel of the rented car, her head craned over her shoulder, blond hair cut short, blue eyes alert. He heard the car starting. Great, she was on her toes, it was going like clockwork. He threw open the curbside door and climbed in, and grinned, and Carter grinned back and tossed her short blond hair and rammed the car into gear and instead of going forward, where there was a clear space, backed up into a laundry truck instead. Bam, they hit the truck, it had one of those very high bumpers, it smashed in the trunk of the car. Carter mumbled “Shit!” under her breath in a very refined New Canaan Wasp way, and then fiddled with the stick, and threw it out of reverse and into neutral and then into gear again, and looking straight ahead of her through the windshield, let out the clutch and stepped on the gas and the car backed up into the laundry truck again, right into the high bumper again.
By this time people were beginning to gather on the sidewalk to watch this cute button of a girl trying to park the car — they thought she was trying to park the fuckin thing instead of drive it away from a holdup! Colley had his gun in his hand below the window on his side, he was just waiting for the owner of the store to come out and start yelling cop. He had just beat the guy for more than six hundred bucks, the guy was either on the phone yelling cop or else he’d come out on the sidewalk and start yelling it in person to whoever’d listen. Carter tried again. She said to the gear shift, “Come on, motherfucker,” in not such refined New Canaan Wasp tones, and then rammed the stick into what she hoped was first, and let out the clutch and stepped on the gas, and lo and behold, they were off and running at last.
“What’s so funny?”
“Huh?”