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

“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.”

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?”