I began helping the druggist to pick up a box of penny pencils. I nodded to him to go on.
“They told me to close the store. I had to go downtown with them to headquarters. They kept me there all afternoon looking at pictures of guys who do holdups. Front views and side views — hundreds of them and lots of nice-looking fellows, too, like you see in respectable places. I can’t identify anybody and so at last they let me go home.”
I picked up a sign. It read “Three for a cent.” I asked: “Where does this go?” He pointed to a box of hard candies.
“Look,” I said, “everybody that’s held up has to do that.”
The druggist dropped his hands helplessly. “But that’s not all, mister. I had to go back in the morning to look at some suspects in the lineup. I told Burke I couldn’t be bothered. I had my business to look after. You think Burke cares? He doesn’t give a hoot! I was there in the morning. Mister, that goes on for two months. Every time they arrested somebody I had to shut up my store and go down to headquarters to look at him and see if he was the fellow that held me up. It hurt my business plenty. After the first two months Burke let up but I still got phone calls or he would drop around to show me photos of suspects. After six months they let it drop.”
We had everything cleaned up. It was all penny, nickel and dime stuff — junk that kids buy. The druggist was sweating. As he put a striped-blue sleeve to his forehead, I asked: “What about the second holdup?”
“All the fellow got was ten dollars. I had dropped my insurance — what’s the use of having insurance if the police think you got it for crooked work — and I almost didn’t call the police.”
“Ah, but you were a good citizen and you did exactly what you were supposed to do?”
“That was how I figured it out. This time Burke wanted to know again if I had insurance. No, sir, not me. I had no insurance. Burke said, what’s the matter? I had insurance the last time — did the company refuse me because I put on phony holdups?” The druggist put his head between his hands and rocked it back and forth. “I tell you, mister, I just about went crazy. They started me on the same old business again — go down to headquarters, look at lineups, look at pictures! Sometimes I got so desperate I almost told Burke ‘That’s the one!’ just to get rid of him. Sometimes I think that’s what Burke wants me to do so he can wipe it off the slate.”
A little girl walked in, traded the coin in her dirty hand for candy, and walked out. I was still sore at the two thugs who had kicked me around. Now I was sore for letting myself be sorry for the druggist — and at the druggist for making me sorry for him.
“It still doesn’t make sense to me not to call the cops when there’s a holdup,” I said.
The druggist’s eyes were pleading. “Mister, you’ve got to see it my way. I don’t mind losing the money. Those three — they got fourteen dollars. That hurts, sure. But it hurts more if I have to keep closing my shop. My children are small and my wife can’t run the place. Burke has almost let up on me about the second holdup. But if he knows three fellows — not just one — held me up, he’d hound me until he made me identify somebody, right or wrong.”
A shadow fell across the counter, cast by a huge man who had cop written all over him. He was tall but his breadth of shoulder, waist and hips, made him look squat. A gray snap-brim hat sat squarely on his big, square head. His frosty gray eyes rested briefly on me, then on the druggist.
Listlessly, the druggist said: “Hello, Mr. Burke.”
Burke pointed to a cigar box and helped himself to three, but made no effort to pay for them. He clipped one, put the cigar to his mouth, lighted it and puffed. Suddenly he pulled a photo from his pocket and shoved it in front of the druggist’s face. “This look like the mug who held you up five months ago?”
The druggist shook his head.
“Does it look like the guy who was in here a year ago?”
The druggist looked anxiously. “Some, but that fellow had a mustache — a little, hair-line one.”
Burke jammed the cigar in his mouth. Taking out a pencil, he quickly sketched a mustache on the photo. “Is that him?” The druggist studied the altered picture. “No.” “Sure?” “Yes.”
Impatiently, Burke put the photograph away. “You better show downtown at ten in the morning. We got some suspects for you to look at.”
The druggist nodded wearily. Burke stood there for a second, eyeing me, “What happened to you?” he asked, indicating my jaw with his cigar. I rubbed the sore spot and a speck of dried blood came off on my hand. I didn’t say anything and Burke, growling, asked the question again. He had a low boiling point. Well, so did I. I started a smart answer, but the druggist’s eyes stopped me.
“I was in an argument,” I said.
“Looks like you tost it,” Burke snorted.
I glanced at the druggist. “Yeah, I guess I did.”
Burke stood in the doorway. To the druggist, he said: “You be there at ten A.M.” To me, he said: “Better be careful about getting into arguments.” He left. The druggist was relieved but I was burning.
“Look.” I said, “I came in here for some tobacco.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, smiling. “It’s on the house.”
I slapped my money on the counter. “The hell it is. Who do you think I am — Burke?”
“Oh, no, I...”
I pushed the tobacco in my pocket and walked out. The druggist knew damn well I wasn’t Burke, And he also knew damn well that the photograph Burke showed him wasn’t of any guy who had been in there a year ago or five months ago. It was a perfect likeness of a guy who had been there ten minutes ago — Broken Nose.