D. Champion - Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 30, No. 2 — July 1947)

“You see,” said Sackler to Woolley, “you have a confession and an assault charge. And that cleans up everything for you.”

“Thanks,” said Woolley without gratitude. He grinned broadly and added, “I’ll just take the three of you in.”

“The three of us?” said Sackler,

“My very words.”

“On what charges?”

“Earnshaw for murder, Capelli for assault, and you for being in possession of counterfeit money.”

A warning bell hammered in my skull but I wasn’t quite sure exactly what it meant.

“Me?” said Sackler. “Counterfeit money?”

“Yes. You have an envelope in your pocket containing a hundred dollar bill which is counterfeit.”

“Me?” said Sackler again. I felt my stomach go suddenly empty. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” went on Sackler. “Whatever gave you that impression?” He glanced over at me and smiled, “Ah, I get it. Joey told you that. Joey is always kidding the department, Inspector. I’ve often spoken to him about it. I haven’t a hundred dollar bill in my possession. I’ll even waive my civil rights and permit you to search me.”

“I’ll take you up on that,” snapped Woolley, advancing upon him.

By this time I’d figured it out. I had the phony bill. And if I opened my mouth and said Sackler had given it to me I’d be the guy in illegal possession of a counterfeit note.

Woolley finished his examination of Sackler’s pockets and scowled in my direction. Sackler said, “If you’re thinking Freuh gave me a hundred dollars, you’re wrong. He gave me two five hundreds which I’ve banked. The bank would have spotted it if they were bad. Besides, those plates are for hundreds. No, Joey was just kidding you, Woolley. Weren’t you, Joey?”

He took a deep drag on a cigarette and watched me speculatively, like a scientist watching a guinea pig. Woolley was staring black murder at me. I took a deep breath and did the only thing I possibly could.

I said: “I was only kidding, Inspector,” then I laughed the hollowest laugh this side of Woodlawn Cemetery.

Woolley took a deep breath. He cursed me by bell and book. He fumed, raved and shouted. I stood with my head bowed and took every word of it. At last he grabbed his two glaring prisoners and took them from the room, leaving me alone with Sackler and my sorrow.

He said, rubbing it in: “One certainly enjoys a smoke after a layoff, Joey. You really should quit smoking yourself sometime.”

I said: “You rat, how did you know? How did you do it?”

He threw me his most perfect superior smile.

“It was obvious, really from the day Freuh was in here. There was a T man on his tail. He knew he’d be picked up and searched at any moment. He wanted to get rid of his sample phony bill for a day or two, so he gave it to me.”

“But he gave you a grand besides?” I inquired.

“That was to shut me up and lull my suspicions. He gave me a legitimate thousand bucks to find out a simple thing — the whereabouts of Dworkin, which Freuh knew himself all the time. Then he offered me a hundred to do something utterly impossible, knowing I’d have to return his hundred when I couldn’t do it.”

“You mean there is no such quotation?”

“Of course not. Freuh made it up. He’s not a literary man, and the quotation stinks. He planted the hundred on me. Then he went down, threw himself into the T man’s arms, got pinched and searched. He was clean. He would have come back the next day and got his hundred.”

“And lost his grand?”

“What of it? Those plates were magnificent. He and Capelli would have made a fortune with them. I always thought that hundred dollar bill was phony. After I examined the plates and saw they were devised to make bills of that denomination, I knew it was.”

“So you planted it on me?”

“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.”

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?”