EVEN GARY KNEW what was happening with the pool players.
But he hadn’t noticed the couple from the bar stand up.
Gary leaned in close to his brother and said, “You take the one closest to us. Then move on to the other one at the
far end of the pool table. I’ll make sure no one touches your soda.”
Rob appreciated his brother staying calm in a tense situation. But he was also speaking the truth. Gary wasn’t a
fighter. Thankfully, most people weren’t.
Rob didn’t know who was a bigger threat: the pool players or the couple, now st epping along the bar toward them.
Both of the pool players were standing in front of them, still holding their cues. The first guy was slapping his cue
into his hand like a baseball bat. It was pretty clear what was about to happen.
Rob glanced over at the bartender, who was trying his hardest to pretend not to see anything. This had the potential
to get ugly.
Then a wide beam of sunlight hit the two pool players right in their faces as the front door opened. For a moment,
Rob worried these four had brought in even more reinforcements. Then he looked over to the door and saw that it
was a uniformed county sheriff’s d eputy.
The d eputy’s leather creaked under his phenomenally wide stomach. He nodded to the bartender, then looked at the
couple standing now near the end of the bar. They almost immediately turned and st epped out the front door.
The d eputy continued to stroll down the bar toward the Trillings and stopped in front of Gary.
“Hey, Gary. Lillian called me about the fire at your car lot. Did you want
to make a r eport?”
Rob watched the pool players ease back toward the table, then casually walk out the front door. He finally let out a
sigh of relief.
Gary told the huge d eputy, “We looked at the security footage and couldn’t identify anything about the truck that
threw the burning packet into my Corvette.”
“Nothing that gave you a hint? What make and model was the truck?”
“Ford F-150. You can’t see the tag or anyone inside the truck.”
Rob stayed silent as the d eputy took out a hard-sided pad and wrote a few notes. When he finished, he looked up at
Gary, snapped his not epad shut, and said, “I’ll write a r eport so there’s something on record.” He nodded and turned
toward the door.
Rob couldn’t contain himself any longer. “Wait a minute. That’s it?
You’re not even gonna look at the security footage yourself?”
The d eputy turned and looked at Gary. He didn’t say anything.
Gary said, “Kirby, this is my brother, Rob. He’s a cop with the NYPD.”
Kirby said, “I’ve heard about him.” Then he turned and looked directly at Rob for the first time. “How many cops
are in the NYPD? Like, over thirty thousand, right?”
Rob shrugged. “Something like that.”
“Right now there are nine of us on shift covering an area a little bigger than all of greater New York. Don’t tell me
how my job should be done.
Tell me what you can do to help me. Everyone is screaming for police help and we don’t have enough resources to
go around. So you can take that New York attitude and stick it up your ass. You guys are no better than the
Californians who move here and tell us how we should do things.”
The d eputy turned on his heel and marched out of the sports bar.
“He’s got a point,” Rob said. “I have no idea how their d epartment’s set up or what their operational policies are.”
“He’s just a little touchy. I wouldn’t worry about it,” Gary reassured his brother. “But maybe don’t go all New York
on us and start telling everyone else how to live their lives.”