Anyway, there was just this little stack of bills, most of them ones, and I put them on the bar, and the second one came over and took them and stuffed them away in his topcoat pocket.
I said, “Hey, wait a second. That isn’t funny.”
“That’s right,” said the first one. He looked mean, and he was still aiming the gun at me.
For the first time I began to take it serious. I said, “You aren’t going to kill me.”
“You got it,” said the other one.
“And here it comes,” said the first one, and Patrolman Ziccatta, the cop on the beat, came in saying, “Hey, Charlie. You’re open late.”
So what should I of done? Should I of said, “Patrolman Ziccatta, these two men just come here to rob and murder me, and that one there has my night’s proceeds in his topcoat pocket and that other one there just stuck a big mean-looking gun quick back in his topcoat pocket when you came in,” is that what I should of said? You think so? These associates of my Uncle Al, I should finger them to the police, never mind what for? You think so?
That just shows you don’t know the situation.
My Uncle Al would kill me, I blew the whistle on two of his associates like that. I mean with no fooling around, bam!
I mean, it’s all well and good with Patrolman Ziccatta right there and everything for the moment, but what about tomorrow? What about next week? How do I live? Where do I live? What do I do with myself?
More important, what does Uncle Al do with me?
These two guys, now, they weren’t kidding, they’d come here to kill me, I finally got that through my head, but let’s sit down and think about this thing a minute. There’s no reason why the organization should want me killed, so it’s got to be somebody made a mistake somewhere, right? Now, when somebody makes a mistake what you do is you don’t throw the baby out with the bath water, what you do is you see can you rectify the mistake. Right?
So what I had to do was I had to stay alive some way or another until I could get to a telephone and call my Uncle Al — which he would really love, two-thirty in the morning and everything, but this time I would say I got a legitimate excuse, I mean after all — and then I could tell my Uncle Al what was up and he could maybe rectify the mistake.
So I didn’t say anything to Patrolman Ziccatta except, “Just closing up now, just this minute.” Then I looked at the two mean types and I said, “Sorry, gents, you got to go now.”
They looked from me to the patrolman, and then they looked at each other, and I could see everything they were thinking. They were supposed to kill me, but they couldn’t kill me right this minute unless they killed Patrolman Ziccatta too, and killing a uniformed policeman in the performance of his duty is a very dangerous thing to do and maybe going too far just as a sidelight in the rubbing out of a nephew, so maybe for the moment they should call it off. Maybe for the moment they should go outside, and wait for Patrolman Ziccatta to go away, and then they could come back and kill the nephew in the privacy of his own home.
I saw this going through their heads and running back and forth between their eyes, and then the first one said, “Okay, barkeep. See you later.”
“Yeah, barkeep,” said the second one. “See you later.”
They went on out, and Patrolman Ziccatta came over and leaned on the bar and said, “There’s quite a wind blowing up out there.”
Now, it was only the eleventh of September, and it might have been breezy outside but it wasn’t exactly the North Pole, but I knew what Patrolman Ziccatta really meant and what I was supposed to do about it, so I said, “Let me give you something to warm your bones.”
“Well, thanks, Charlie,” he said. He always acted surprised, and we ran through this same business almost every night.
I got a four-ounce glass from under the bar, and filled it about two-thirds with bar bourbon, and slid it over in front of the patrolman. He kind of slouched against the bar, and turned his back to the big plate-glass window that faced the street, and he held the glass in close against his chest so it couldn’t be seen from outside, and he took quick nips from it, one right after the other. Nip. Nip. Nip. Like that.
Past him, I could see those two guys across the street, standing in front of the men’s clothing store over there and talking together like they were any two guys you might see anywhere.
I said, “I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll hold the fort, Charlie,” he said, and went nip, nip, nip.
I walked on down to the end of the bar, and raised the flap and went through, and past the jukebox and the shuffleboard bowling machine game and the restroom doors, and through the rear with NO ADMITTANCE printed on it, and into the back room, piled high with beer and whiskey cases. One thing I always had, I always had a good inventory.
I turned on the light back there and checked the back door that the two locks and the bar were all secure, and checked the double locks on the three windows, and everything was okay. I left the light on and went back up front and Patrolman Ziccatta was standing by the front door. “You left your cash register open, Charlie,” he said, and pointed his nightstick at it.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”
“One of these days, you’ll get yourself robbed here,” he said. “Well, good night, Charlie.”
“Good night,” I said.
He went out and I locked the door right after him. Those two guys were still across the street. Patrolman Ziccatta strolled away down the sidewalk, practicing with his nightstick. He was getting so he could twirl it pretty good now, didn’t drop it very much at all any more.
I turned off the neon beer signs in the window, and walked down the long narrow room to the back again, and switched off the indirect lighting there, so now only the backbar displays were still lit and those were left on all night. I looked down the long dim length past the plate-glass window and across the street, and saw the two of them step down off the curb and start this way. There wasn’t any traffic out there, there wasn’t anybody but those two guys.
I went into the back room, where the light was already on, and up the creaking stairs to the second floor. I could actually hear my heart. In my ears, I could hear it.
Up on the second floor I had this really very nice little three-room apartment, with a living room in front and a kitchen in back and a bedroom in the middle. The only way up there was the staircase from the storeroom downstairs to the kitchen upstairs, and then you had to walk through the bedroom to get to the living room, all of which didn’t help any romantic mood any time I took a girl up there, but I didn’t get to take too many girls up there anyway so it didn’t make that much difference. The only thing, it was a pretty nice place, and convenient, but no playboy penthouse.
I went up there now and turned on the kitchen light before I clicked the switch at the head of the stairs that turned off the light down in the storeroom. I shut the door at the head of the stairs and turned the key in the lock and left the key in there to delay them if they figured to pick the lock. Except why should they pick the lock when they could just shoot it off?
Well. I hurried through to the living room, where the phone was. The whole place was its usual mess — the bed unmade, magazines all over the floor, the door standing open and ugly between the bedroom and the bathroom, underwear scattered around — the whole usual mess I was always telling myself I would clean up the next chance I got and never did. But this time, of course, I never even noticed the mess or thought about it or anything. I just hurried into the living room, turning on every light I came to, and quick called my Uncle Al at his apartment on East 65th Street in Manhattan.