I was over at Carrie’s house five nights a week, and every Sunday was Timmy and Carrie Day. We were for the first time a couple in the public sense. She would hold my hand when we walked through the mall. We went to the parties at her friend’s houses, arriving and leaving together, and for my part, she kept a protective eye on me to make certain I’d didn’t flirt too much with her friends. I was always attentive to her, getting her a drink, or her coat before we left. She even talked about taking me to visit her mother in Massachusetts.
I did what I could to maintain the post New York glow, and that meant taking Carrie to dinners and trips. We went down to Noank and had lobster at Abbot’s in the Rough and up to Springfield to eat at the Student Prince. I even took her on a trip to Boston where we went on the Swan Boats and saw a baseball game at Fenway Park.
It did, of course, require that I supplement my income when I saw the opportunity. Instead of just taking dope, I needed cold hard cash. I didn’t steal from everyone. I was selective. I could only take from people who wouldn’t miss the money, and of course, I could only take it when no one else on the scene was looking.
Drunks were my favorite target, provided they hadn’t already been rolled before I got to them. We’d toss a drunk on the stretcher, and I’d pat him down looking for bottles, weapons, any injuries or, in my case now, hidden cash. Once Tom would start driving to the hospital, I’d fish their wallet out on the pretense of getting their ID and medical information. A twenty here and a twenty there, and pretty soon, you’re talking real money. I preferred the high-class drunk—the businessman on a bender to the homeless drunk on the street. I took two hundred dollars off a stockbroker who was babbling about his wife trying to take everything off him in the settlement. Well, that was two hundred dollars she wasn’t going to get.
One night we got called for a car that drove into a house. An old woman was watching reruns when a Ford pickup came barreling through her living room wall, stopping three feet from where she was sitting. We found the intoxicated driver still behind the wheel, honking his horn, and shouting, “Make way, coming through, coming through.” Once we got him out of the car and on our stretcher, he didn’t appear hurt. We were just taking him in as a precaution. Tom had me crawl back into the car to see if the steering column had been crumpled at all. As I was checking it, I saw on the floor, a bank envelope—the kind the drive-through teller gives you when you cash your paycheck. Three hundred sixty bucks. I figured, what did he need bar money for, he was going to be spending the next two weeks in detox.
Dead drug dealers were the jackpot. There was a turf war raging between the city’s rival gangs over various neighborhoods, and I profited on it. Responding to a shooting, Tom and I would throw the patient on the stretcher. I’d hop in the back with him briefly. My job was to cut the clothes off to expose for any injury, while Tom got his equipment out. Then I’d jump in the front and drive as fast as I could. I’d carry the bloody clothes into the trauma room afterwards, along with any personal effects, always after levying my surcharge. In one bloody night, I took six hundred dollars off a dealer shot at the corner of Enfield and Capen, and then two hours later got a grand off one who met his end at Albany and Deerfield. As a bonus, he had an ounce of reefer on him too.
I was growing bolder, but even I had my limits. Two masked men robbed a bank on Blue Hills Avenue. The alert teller hit the silent alarm, and the cops were pulling up as soon as they came out of the door. In the resulting foot chase, a good Samaritan tackled one of the robbers, upsetting the bag of cash. The robber punched the man in the head and kicked him, then grabbed handfuls of the packets and tried to escape, when a police dog tore into his side. When we arrived to treat the two men, there were packets of bills scattered all around us. I had never seen so much money. The area was taped off and police officers stood by. A TV camera crew was there. I spotted one packet in the robber’s front pocket. I figured there might be ten thousand dollars there. With that money, I could buy Carrie a car to replace her clunker, I could get her a big wedding ring with enough left over to take us to Hawaii for a honeymoon. On the other hand, I saw the footage on the evening news, my hand reaching for the money, my hand going into my pocket, another hand grasping my hand, iron cuffs being placed on my wrists, then I saw a thick massive hand grabbing my hand, and all of a sudden I was in a small cell with bars over the sunshine, with a roommate named Big Smoke, who smiled at me, and said, “You going to be the wife and I’m going to be the husband.”
“Officer,” I said. “Officer Winslow!” The cameras were on me now. “Officer, he’s got money in his pocket. Right here!” And I pointed to it.
“Aren’t you a good citizen,” he said, and then glared at me when his back was to the camera.
“Just doing my job, sir,” I said.
That night at the Brickyard, on the TV, they did a feature on the robbery and a little featurette on the EMT who pointed out the money in the robber’s pocket.
“It’s wonderful how we have such honest people out there,” said Denise D’Ascenzo, the news anchor, before going to the commercial break.
“I’m disappointed in you,” Fred said. “You could be on a plane to the Caribbean right now.”
“My Timmy’s a honest one,” Carrie said. “Although being on a plane to the Caribbean sounds nice. Imagine having that kind of cash for free spending. Maybe a little dishonesty now and then might not be so bad.”
“So, it’s okay if I go down to Uncle Al’s tonight, and get one of those special lap dances, so long as I don’t tell you about it.”
She slapped my shoulder. “Not that kind of dishonesty.”
Fred just shook his head at me.
For the next week, I had to endure comments of everyone telling me what they would have done with the money, and what a sap I was. It was good-natured ribbing, and I doubted any of them would have dared to do what I had not, but still I wondered if maybe I hadn’t missed a chance to be bold.