Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

She scowled angrily at Al as the detective brought him to a halt up against her counter.

“Got him, did you?” she said.

“Got me for what?” Al rasped. “What’re you talking about, lady?”

“I’m talking about the day’s receipts, wise guy. Is it on him?” she demanded of the detective.

“That’s what we’re coming to right now. Wait’ll I get a little help here.”

A boardwalk patrolman joined them and took over Al’s bodily custody, freeing the detective for the search. A second policeman came up and moved the close-packed crowd back. It required a stiff-arming of chests and a shoving between shoulder blades to get them to budge at all. It was like kneading dough, because as the policeman pushed them away in one place, they closed in again in another. Many climbed up on the boardwalk railing to get a better look.

The detective went through Al’s pockets as though his hands were a pair of miniature vacuum cleaners. He deposited everything on the concession counter. Al’s worldly goods did not amount to much. Monetarily they consisted of seven quarters, four dimes, three nickels, four pennies, and two subway tokens, all from the right-hand trouser pocket. He carried no billfold.

The detective then searched Al in places where there were no pockets. He ran probing fingers along the hem of his coat, up and down the linings of his sleeves (from the outside), felt along his ribs, and across the chest below his undershirt. He even made Al unlace his shoes and step out of them briefly, then get back into them again.

“What ’dje do with it?” he demanded finally.

“I never took it to begin with,” Al insisted.

The detective turned to the woman. “Did you see him grab it?”

“I didn’t really catch him in the act, no—”

“Then wadaya accusing me for?” Al protested hotly before she could even finish.

“Because who else could it have been? You were at my stand just the minute before.”

“Any other customers besides him?”

“Only a man and his two kids. But they had already left.”

“A man taking his youngsters on an outing doesn’t go in for lifting,” said the detective with good psychological insight, “if only because he can’t make a getaway. How much did it come to?”

“Two seventy-five.”

“You mean two hundred and seventy-five dollars?”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” she said crisply. “Y’don’t think I’d blow my stack like this over two bucks, do you?”

One of the boardwalk patrolman whistled. “You make that much in one day? I’d better change jobs with you, lady.”

“Don’t forget this is a three-day take — it’s a holiday weekend.”

What I can’t figure,” said the second beach cop, “is how could he take it out of the till without your spotting him, when the cash registers over there on the opposite side, over by you.”

He didn’t take it out of the till, I did,” said the woman testily, as though angry at her own carelessness. “I’ve been in this business twenty years and I never pulled a boner like that before in my life. But there’s a first time for everything, they say. See, I just finished stacking it to take home. I was due to go off, and my husband was coming on in another quarter hour or so. I don’t like to leave so much money in the drawer until we close down — we stay open until one in the morning, and it gets kind of lonely along here at that hour. So I snapped a rubber band around the bills. I had the drawer out, and I put the dough down for just a second, like this. I had a batch of franks on and they started to smoke up. So I took a step over to flip them, then took a step back. It was gone, and he was gone. Add it up for yourself.”

“Well, it’s not on him now,” the detective had to admit. “I’ve been all over him with a fine-tooth comb.”

“Look,” said the woman sharply, giving the cash drawer a quick ride out, then in again. “There’s my proof. You never yet saw a cash register drawer with only a few singles and some silver in it, did you? Where’s all my fives and tens? You know we break plenty of them during the day.”

“I’m not doubting you, lady. I’m only saying—”

“Well, he ditched it on the run, then.”

“Did you see him throw anything away?” one of the boardwalk police asked Al’s original captor.

“No, I was watching for that. I kept my eyes on his hands the whole time. He never moved them. All he moved was his feet.”

The two of them retraced the course of the flight, searching for the bundle every step of the way, while the third one remained at the stand, holding onto Al. They were still empty-handed when they came back.

“Of course it’s gone,” assented the woman, annoyed. “Somebody picked it up by now. How long do you think it’s going to lie there, anyway?”

“Nope, he never threw it,” the detective insisted. He gave Al a vicious shaking up. “Wha’d you do with it?”

“To do something with anything, you got to have it first,” Al protested, through teeth that would have rattled if they hadn’t been his own.

“That’s great,” said the woman bitterly. “George all the way. So whether you pull him in or not, I’m still out the dough. I stand here all day on my feet, and all I’ve got to show for it is a lot of salt air.”

“You’re covered, ain’t you, lady?” said one of the patrolmen knowingly.

“My insurance ain’t paying me back dollar for dollar,” she snapped at him.

“Well, in you come,” the detective told Al grimly, “whether we’ve found it or not.”

Al trotted along beside him but with his head slightly bowed, as if to say, This is my kind of luck .

Al’s wife’s sister was married to Joe Timmons, a doctor more or less. Al had never been able to figure out whether this made them brother-in-law or not. But anyway Joe was Rose’s brother-in-law. There could be no argument about that, and since the two of them, he and Al, got along fairly well, Al was willing to let it go at that.

Actually, Joe was a genuine enough doctor. He had attended Medical School and received his degree, but too much tinkering with bottles, of the kind that did not contain medicine, had given his status an aspect that was cloudy if not downright shady.

He was the sort of doctor who, at an earlier stage of medical progress, would have had a dingy office two flights up in some old tenement; in today’s world Joe had a dingy office just one flight up in a remodeled tenement, and kept three small ads of questionable ethics running in the far-back reaches of a number of spongy-papered magazines.

Joe Timmons came to see Al in his place of detention, and Al was so downcast, so preoccupied with his own troubles, that he didn’t even realize the visit was purely voluntary.

“Hullo, Joe, they get you too?” Al said dolefully without even looking up.

“What’s the matter with you?” said Joe impatiently.

“What’re you crying for?” Al had glanced up and seen Joe’s tear-smogged eyes. “I’ve took it before, I’ll have to take it again, that’s all.”

“Stop it, will you?” said Joe, more irritable than ever. “You know this is the ragweed season for me.”

“Oh,” said Al, remembering.

“Something’s got to be done about you,” Joe pronounced without further ado. “We were talking it over last night around the table, the three of us, over some cans of beer. Now if you go away this time you’re going to be away a long time, and you know it, Al. Rose is going to just naturally pine away — she’s really gone on you and no fooling. If Rose is unhappy, then Flo gets depressed. And if Flo gets depressed, then I have a miserable home life myself. So it’s a losing game all around. Anyway, I promised the two girls I’d see what I could do for you.”