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own a great bar that served fish and chips and had two big-screen TVs for
Monday Night Football
and March Madness. Or they’d be working in their daddy’s business, knowing that, thanks to the time they spent in the EEPD, they could bully with impunity any neighbor who dared complain that their music was too loud and they were drinking too much beer. They wore Keanu Reeves sunglasses and walked around with a swagger and a smirk. They liked nothing better than writing up tickets and lecturing drivers who were making somewhere around fifty times their salary. Although they had holsters—cool, black, shiny leather holsters—they didn’t carry guns. They kept cell phones in their holsters, because that would be the single most helpful tool they could carry in case there was ever an emergency.
    Which there wasn’t.
    East End Harbor did not have a lot of emergencies. The occasional case of food poisoning. Plenty of arguments about the level of noise and the amount of garbage generated by the club in the back of the town’s public parking lot. Constant and heated council meetings about the difference between a roundabout and a traffic circle. Politicians came to the Hamptons to raise money and they’d sneak into East End Harbor for a photo op, which raised the town’s blood pressure. A few months ago the vice-president had come, along with several cabinet members. They’d had to shut down Main Street and it caused a hellacious traffic jam, and several store owners went ballistic over the lost business. But that was the extent of it. There were no real emergencies.
    Justin didn’t carry a gun either.
    He did have one, though, back at the station. And it was at times like this—when they tauntingly called him “Westwood,” because he was always looking to avoid confrontation, because he shied away from anything remotely violent and was, let’s face it, out of shape and as far from being a Dirty Harry–type cop as they could imagine—that he was glad he didn’t have his gun handy. He had not kept up on the latest mandatory prison sentences, but he was fairly sure it would still be a lot of years for shooting his fellow police officers in cold blood.
    He took a step toward the two cops—one was named Gary; he didn’t have any idea what the other one was called, even though they’d been working together for at least six months—but he was interrupted by the shrill beep of a car horn. Justin turned back toward the honk and saw an old lady, her car stopped in the middle of the street, frantically waving for him to come over. When he reached her, he tried to say “Can I help you?” but she didn’t give him the chance.
    “There was a truck on my street this morning!” the woman screeched when he was still several feet from her car. There were two cars behind her now. Justin knew the drivers would wait patiently for all of about one minute. Then they’d start honking or sticking their heads out the window to roll their eyes impatiently or ask what the hell was taking so long.
    “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said as politely as he could.
    “I’m in a no-truck zone!” she yelled. “There shouldn’t be any trucks in a no-truck zone!”
    “What street are you on?” he asked. “If I know where you are, maybe we could—”
    “I’m on Harrison Street! And no trucks are supposed to cut through on Harrison Street!”
    “You’re Mrs. Dbinsky,” he said.
    “How’d you know that?”
    “You call us every day to complain about the trucks on Harrison Street.”
    “Yeah? Well, a fat lot of good it does! Every day there’s another truck!”
    “The thing is, Mrs. Dbinsky, even though it’s a no-truck zone, that doesn’t mean that no trucks are allowed. They can come to make deliveries.”
    “These trucks weren’t making deliveries! They were just driving around, making noise! You know how little my street is? And you know how big those trucks are? The
walls
are cracking in my house from those goddamn