The Risk Pool

yet,” my father said before disappearing into the alley alongside the bar. When Wussy drove off, there was nothing to do but follow my father.
    He had the window open by the time I caught up. Unbelievably, he had his hands cupped to offer me a leg up. Even more unbelievably, I put my foot in the stirrup.
    It was pitch dark inside, but I knew right where I was. The smell of the urinal would have been unmistakable from across the room. When you’re snaking head first down a wall and you’ve got nothing to grab onto except wet porcelain, that same urinal is not only unmistakable, it’s real, especially when its last visitor the night before had not taken the notion of brotherhood seriously. I found the handle and flushed.
    “You pissing upside down?” my father wanted to know.
    I told him to just let go of my ankles, and when he did, I cartwheeled to the floor.
    “There’s a light switch somewhere,” he advised.
    Actually, I could see fine once my eyes had adjusted. I went out into the bar, half expecting to meet somebody with a mop and broom, or maybe a shotgun, but I had the place to myself. The brown light from the pitted smoky windows along the front was ghostly. I went along the bar to where my father and I had been sitting, but there was no sign of my bag. Nor was it out in the entryway. “Check behind the bar, dumbbell,” my father called from the men’s room window, and that’s where it was, too, wedged in tight beneath the sink in a pool of water. I tried to remember what I’d packed on the bottom.
    When I got back to the men’s room, I heard my father talking to somebody and concluded that Wussy, who could be counted on to break any promise to go home, had returned. So I shoved my duffel bag out the window, climbed up on the urinal, and poked my head out into the alley. The person my father was talking to was the tiniest cop I’d ever seen. “Here’s our burglar now,” he said.
    “Yup,” my father said. “Get your cuffs ready.”
    I climbed through the window and dropped to the ground where they were standing.
    “Meet Andy Winkler,” my father said. “The only cop in Mohawk that wouldn’t have shot you in the head coming out that window and asked questions later.”
    I shook hands with the tiny cop, who grinned up at me good-naturedly.
    “This is my son, and he’s all right,” my father explained, “just like his old man.”
    “Ned, right?” Andy Winkler said. “We graduated together. Class of ’65? Good old Mohawk High.”
    That was when I’d graduated, all right, but I was damned if I could remember Andy Winkler. It didn’t seem to bother him though. “You was college entrance,” he said. “I was voc-ed.”
    “What’s that?” my father said. “Shop?”
    “You got that right,” Andy said, then gestured with both thumbs to his uniform. “Turned out I done better than they expected.”
    “Want to look through that bag,” my father suggested, “just so you know?”
    “Hell, Sammy, I wouldn’t insult you. Ned either.”
    “You’re the jewel of the force,” my father said. “Go slow.”
    “I will,” he promised.
    I was sure of it.
    “Too bad they aren’t all like him,” my father said when we got back in the car. I couldn’t tell if he was serious. “His only trouble is that people keep beating him up.”
    “He’s awfully small to be a cop,” I said.
    “Not really.” My father turned the key in the ignition and the big convertible roared to life again. “Just too good-natured. When guys figure out he won’t shoot them, they take advantage. I keep telling him all he’d have to do is shoot just one and then he wouldn’t get his ass kicked all the while. But he won’t listen.”
    “Why not let me drive,” I said. I didn’t know what part of town he lived in and the storied Angelo could be anywhere.
    “Nah,” he said, doing a U-turn in the middle of the street and heading toward the traffic light. We’d gone all of twenty yards when he pulled over to the curb and got out.
    “Forget something?” I said.
    “Nope,” he said, pointing to the dark line of windows above the jewelry store. “We’re here.”

32
    At my father’s suggestion, I called my mother from the pay phone at the cigar store and told her I was in Fultonville. I’d see her in half an hour.
    “Pretty excited, I bet,” my father said, as we climbed the stairs to his flat.
    In fact, she had squealed like a pig. She just couldn’t wait to tell Will, that old clairvoyant,