“Sure. After you told Woolley I had it. It enabled me to call off our bet, let me smoke again and for free. It also got a dangerous piece of money out of my possession. I knew Woolley would pin the rap on me when he thought I had it in my pocket.”
“Well,” I said bitterly, “you haven’t done badly at all. You’ve collected three grand and done nothing. One of your clients is in the can and the other in the next world. And you’re smoking again without losing your bet.”
He registered a complacency only equalled in the British Colonial office. “No, I didn’t do so badly, Joey.” He fumbled in his pocket and produced his little bag of tobacco. He looked at me for a thoughtful moment, then for the first time in his life made what to him was a supreme and generous gesture. He held the bag out to me.
“Here, Joey,” he said. “Try one of mine.”
Never Call the Cops
by Ed Edstrom
The little druggist just couldn’t afford another holdup. The burglaries didn’t bother him — it was what happened when he reported them to the law that got him down!
I knew that something was wrong the second I walked into the junky little drugstore. There wasn’t anyone behind the counter and the three young men in the place were too alert to be loafing.
“I want some tobacco,” I announced. “Anyone here to sell it?”
The mean-faced, squint-eyed youth at my right side said mirthlessly: “Right now we’re running this place.” The broken-nosed but amiable-looking one at my left laughed. So did their partner, a handsome lad, dressed in a zoot suit.
What might have been the end of a broom handle was jabbed into my right kidney. I knew it was a gun. Squint Eyes said: “Just keep quiet and do what you’re told and you won’t get in no trouble.” I started to raise my hands as I thought holdup victims were supposed to do. Broken Nose slapped my face. “Damn it, do you want everybody on the street to see you?”
They marched me back to the stockroom. Broken Nose opened it with a mocking imitation of the doorman’s bow. Squint Eyes booted me toward Broken Nose. He steadied me, then helped me over the threshold with a short right to the jaw. As I landed sprawling in the darkness, Squint Eyes warned: “Any noise and we shoot.” I could hear them moving a display case against the door.
It hadn’t been necessary for Squint Eyes to kick me. Broken Nose’s blow was an extra indignity, too. He probably was some stumblebum trying out his Sunday punch. I got to my feet and peeked through the door crack. I meant to tag those guys — and good.
Suddenly I became conscious of a breathing that was not my own. “Who is it?” I whispered.
“I’m the owner. Are they still there?”
I looked. Zoot Suit was standing guard at the door. His partners were dumping drawers behind the counter. The cash register was open. Squint Eyes and Broken Nose held a quick conference, then walked out of the store followed by Zoot Suit.
“They’re gone.”
We were out of the stockroom, blinking in the light.
“I hope they didn’t get my stuff,” the owner said. His head was bald, except for a gray fringe above the ears; his face might have been chubby and innocent, like a child’s, if it hadn’t been for cheeks and jaw that sagged with an expression at once tired and quizzical, and to that extent adult.
“What stuff?” I asked. Details of the holdup would be important when we were ready to give our information to the police.
The druggist looked at me sadly without hurry. “Funny how little the public knows about the drugstore business,” he said. His blue eyes peered across the gold rims of his glasses with humorous resignation. “Now you take how many people come in here for a paper or a box of tissues or a soda — public’s in my store all day and half the night — but what do they know about the business?”
“We’re ignorant, all right,” I said. “Now let’s get going here and call the cops.”
The druggist turned his back and rummaged in a secret corner.
“They didn’t get it!” he said. “They didn’t get it!” He smiled triumphantly. “There’s some things it pays to know how to hide.”
“Didn’t get what, for heaven’s sake!” I asked him.
“You know. My drugs. All us druggists get an allotment. If they’d found that — and that’s what most of those guys are always after — then I’d have the federals down on my neck as well as the local cops.”
He stood staring at me with a hopeful but apprehensive twinkle, as if he regarded the situation as completely explained, but was afraid that probably I would not.
“We’ll start with the local boys,” I said, and I headed for the phone booth in the corner.
Now the druggist was really frightened. “Mister,” he said, “you aren’t going to call the station?”
“I sure as hell am.”
“But they didn’t take any of your money?”
“No, but they didn’t have to push me around like that. I can identify those lads and believe me, if I get the chance, I’m going to.” I moved toward the phone again. The little druggist made his first show of energy. He moved quickly over to intercept me, with a kind of scuttle like a pet rabbit, and laid a hand as soft as a pink muffin on my arm.
“Please, mister do me a favor. Don’t call the police.”
I brushed his hand away. “What’s the matter with you? You must be doing something illegal to be afraid to call the cops.”
“Illegal, mister? Me?” He was pathetic in his pretense of injured dignity, and at the same time his little blue eyes were looking me over with a calculating persistence; I could see his brain trying to figure out what line to take with me.
“Mister, I just can’t afford to call the cops again. I don’t just mean dollars-and-cents afford. I mean what they do to a fellow when they get here. I ain’t got much help these days, and the drugstore is all I’ve got to live on.”
I fastened on the word he meant me to notice. “Call the cops again? What do you mean, again?”
“Mister, this isn’t the first time I’ve been held up. It’s the third time. I called the police the first two times and I’m telling you, mister, I couldn’t take it a third time.”
I shook my head. “I don’t get it.”
The owner was picking up his merchandise. “I’ve got to clean up here before some policeman walks in.”
I rubbed my aching jaw. “I hope one does. It’ll save me the trouble of calling the cops.”
“If you’ll just listen,” the druggist said, his chubby face frowning and worried looking. “It ain’t just the money. That fellow that held me up the first time — all he got was nineteen dollars. I never keep more than thirty-forty dollars in the till.”
“Just enough to keep a holdup guy in spending money on his way to the next drugstore, huh?”
“Aw, mister... don’t be like that, please. You’ve got to understand what the police do to you when you report a robbery.”
“They do what they’re hired to do. They look for the guys.”
The druggist shook his bald head. “That first time, the plainclothesmen from the holdup squad downtown came to my store. One was a big man, named Burke. He wanted to know if I had insurance. Sure, I had insurance. So Burke accused me of pretending to be held up so that I could collect on the insurance.”
My face must have reflected my suspicion.
“Honest, mister. Burke and the fellow with him kept at me for half an hour. I nearly went crazy. Then they decided: All right, I had been held up. They wanted a description. I couldn’t give them one.”
“You got a look at the guy, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but he was just somebody with his hat pulled down over his face. I couldn’t even remember what color suit he was wearing. I was too excited to notice. Well, that got Burke going again — it was funny I couldn’t give a description. So I made one up and it satisfied Burke.”