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

Never Call the Cops by Ed Edstrom

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?”

“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?”

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.