Manhunt. Volume 9, Number 1, February 1961

Hold-Up by Jess Shelton

He saw a young man with a brown paper bag in one hand and a gleaming switchblade in the other burst through the liquor store door and dash down the street. He gave chase and discovered there was more to this hold-up than met the eye.

I seen this kid running from the liquor store with a open knife in his hand, a switchblade, I think, and in his other hand a brown paper bag, and the guy from the liquor store was yelling but the kid took off down Laclede, where it was dark, down toward Weirdville. So I went after him. I don’t know why I did. Maybe it was some kind of compulsion like the headshrinkers talk about, or something else, who knows? But when I seen the kid running like that, all I could think of doing was to run after him. I didn’t even think right then about being a hero or nothing like that, like bringing back the money, just running.

The guy from the liquor store ran to the corner and stopped, and yelled at me, “Mister, it ain’t worth it! Don’t get cut for nothing!”

I heard him but kept on running. The kid, about twenty, tall with greasy wavy hair, a beat blue shirt and faded jeans and tennis shoes, ducked between two rickety buildings halfway down the block. Just before he disappeared he glanced back, his yellow eyes narrowing when he looked at me. I cut into the dark passageway right after him and trotted along the broken cement walk between the old buildings, my shoes clumping with a crazy racket.

Suddenly somebody squawked. I crashed into two hot bodies. Two teenage kids necking. I grabbed the boy. “Who is he?” I gasped.

“You a cop?”

“Who is he?”

“I ain’t telling no cop.”

“I ain’t a cop.”

“You chasing him?”

“What his name? Where’d he go?”

“Sammy,” said the girl. She was breathing hot. She pulled her boy friend away from me, stood between us pointing her pert chin sarcastically toward my face. “Sammy Barlow. Maple and Twenty-Third.”

“Damn you!” boyfriend hissed, I don’t know if it was at her or me.

But I took off again, through a cluttered backyard, past an open garbage can from which a profusion of rats scurried, and to the alley. He wouldn’t go back up toward Grand Avenue, because he’d come out on the street just half a block from the liquor store, and by now there’d be cops around. He went east down the alley, or else he went straight through the other yards up to West Pine. Then I heard some kids roar with laughing far down at the end of the block, so I started running down the alley. There was a juke joint there, a half dozen guys standing around in front of it, all of them laughing under the red and yellow neon lights with the green bugs and the white moths flurrying over their heads in the hot summer night.

“Hey, boy, you racin’ somebody?” one of them shouted to me. They all giggled.

Another one said, “There’s a man with a cause!”

“Sammy Barlow,” I panted. “He came past here. Where’d he go?”

“Hoydehoy! What makes Sammy run? Hey, maybe he’s takin his lunch home to Mama!”

“He robbed a store!”

One of the bigger kids walked over to me and put his face close to mine. His eyes were yellow fire. “Smart man, he don’t rob nothin, hear that?”

“He robbed it,” I growled back. “I seen him run out with a knife in his hand and a bag in the other.”

“A bag?” somebody giggled. “Man, he was takin his girl friend for a walk!”

“Cut it out!” Their laughing infuriated me. “I can call a cop if you want it that way!”

“Call a cop?” said the bird with his face close to mine. He put a big hand on my shoulder. He was strong. “Why don’t you just take your problem to Sammy, man?”

I jerked away from him. “Maybe I’ll do just that!” I spat back. “I know where he lives!”

“Hey, cat, you do? You birds, hear that? Pussycat here knows!” The kid grabbed me again when I started away, raised the palm of his hand, ducked histrionically when I started to throw a swing at him, and said, “Pussycat, you don’t got to go to Sammy’s house!”

“Why not?” I demanded, ready to swing.

“Cause I’m here, Mister.” The voice was basso, practically right behind me.

I spun about. He was leaning against the wall of the juke joint, on the alley side. In one hand he held the paper bag. In the other hand was the switchblade, the long blade scattering reflections from the red and yellow neon sign up above. Sammy wasn’t more than twenty, a clean looking kid, with good features now crossed up by a mixture of frown and grin. I don’t know why, but I liked him sort of, even if he did have the bag of money in one hand and the glittering knife in the other.

“Give me the money, Sammy,” I told him.

Somebody in the crowd laughed, but stopped when Sammy looked past me at whoever it was. Sammy said, “Man, you ain’t a cop. You’d have a gun out by now if you was.”

“I seen you come from the liquor store,” I said. “I’ll take the money back.”

“Sure you will, Pussycat.”

“I mean it.”

“Hey,” somebody giggled. “Pussycat’s a hero. Sure ain’t no cop.”

“No, man. Cops ain’t heroes like pussycat.”

“Old Pussycat, he just chases little birds, don’t he?”

I was still looking at Sammy. “I want the money,” I said.

He grinned again. “Pussycat, that’d hurt lots of people’s feelings. You don’t want to go hurt people’s feelings, do you?”

“Hey, Pussycat,” the big boy who had faced me before said. “How come you run after him?”

“I just seen it and I run, that’s all.”

“Just run? Just take off like a hero every time some cat runs down a alley?”

“Go to hell,” I told him. I heard a shuffling of feet, the kids moving in a circle around me. I said to Sammy, “Give me the bag. I’ll take it back to the guy at the liquor store, and nobody’ll know. Lots of kids like you do stupid things sometimes, but once that guy gets his money back, you can forget it.”

The others laughed, but Sammy’s face became serious, his eyes troubled. “Man,” he said quietly, “you was crazy to come running after me. You don’t know, Mister.”

“Give me the money,” I said. “I’ll forget your name.”

Sammy’s eyes narrowed and he shouted “No!” at somebody behind me just a second before one solid fist smashed into the back of my head. All I could think of was that he tried to stop it, and that nobody had put a knife in me. Then I spun down to the cement of the alley.

I woke up more than an hour later. For a while after I started to hear sounds and opened my eyes and could see where I was, I lay on the concrete, my head feeling like somebody had used a battering ram on it to knock out half my brains. I pushed myself up to a sitting position and asked: What brains? I couldn’t have been more stupid if I’d stood on my head in the middle of the streetcar tracks on Grand Avenue. Running after some punk who robbed a liquor store, stupid! Dumb! Kids are robbing liquor stores and grocery markets every day in St. Louis, but I had to play hero. Like I was a cop or something. Stupid!

I groaned for a little while before I got to my feet, and when I stood up I had to shake my head and rub my face with my hands to keep from getting dizzy. I staggered back for a few steps until I could walk straight, and went out on the street by the juke joint. The red and yellow neon lights were still flashing, the green bugs and white moths were still fluttering about, and the kids inside were having a real gay time. But out on the street was nothing and nobody. I pushed open the screen door of the juke joint, stood there wobbly for a minute with all the cats and broads staring at me, and went to the bar.

“Gin and beer,” I said to the fat bartender. He had bloodshot frog eyes in a sweat shining face. He nodded dumbly, brought me the gin and beer, and stood looking at me even after I paid him. “What you got to stare at?” I demanded.

“You lay off them boys,” he said.

“What boys?”

“You know what boys, smart man. Just lay off.”

“They clobbered me. Who’s to lay off?”

He stared at me with his bloodshot frog eyes. “They was put up to it, man. You lay off.”

Gulping down the rest of my beer, I shoved the glass across the bar at him and got out of the place. When I slammed the door behind me the kids all started talking again. The street was still empty. Sammy lived at Maple and Twenty-Third, if I could believe what the little broad had told me in the alley. I started to walk up toward West Pine, but when I got to the corner I stopped. I thought for a change. Already, for no reason, I had run after a guy and wound up getting my head boomeranged. Why try again?

Sammy was a good enough kid. I could remember his face. And he didn’t want the other punks to pound me, but they did it before he could stop them. Still, it wasn’t my concern. I turned and walked up West Pine to Grand Avenue, wondering all the time: What did Sammy mean when he said I didn’t know? What did the bartender mean when he said they were put up to it? Talk? Coverup? You could always count on one kid covering up for another one, I guess.

I looked at the sign on the front of the liquor store before I went inside. It said: Kelly’s Liquor. Inside was a guy behind the counter, bald-headed, what hair he had left was a cross between gray and red. He had a big nose and little pig eyes set close together. He was serving a broad about forty, who was buying a carton of cokes and two boxes of snuff. I knew what they did with it. They dumped a half box of snuff into a bottle of coke, shook it up, and drank it. They said it gave them kicks. Who knows.

When the broad left, the guy looked at me. I said, “You Kelly?”

“Kelly Burke,” he said.

“Maybe you don’t remember me. It was only a couple of hours ago.”

“Sure!” he said, putting on a false grin. “You was the guy run after that punk stuck me up!” He squinted his pig eyes. “Looks like you lost him. How’s about me giving you a sawbuck for your trouble?” He pressed a key on the green brass cash register, the machine rang, and he held a sawbuck out toward me.

I shook my head and glanced around. “The cops gone now?”

“They was here and left. Happens too often to guys like me who’re close to rough neighborhoods.” He forced another one of his grins. “Hazards of the business, I guess. Come on, take the money.”

“No, thanks.” There was something about this creep that made even his money seem distasteful. “I just came to tell you something. The kid’s name. Sammy Barlow. He lives over on Twenty-Third and Maple.”

Kelly pursed his lips and nodded silently, his eyes dropping as he replaced the sawbuck in the cash register. “That helps one hell of a lot. Thanks again. Say...”

“Yeah?”

“Can I get your name and address? You know how the cops and insurance companies are.” He grinned. “Anybody seen what happened, they want to know.” I gave him my name and address. He raised his eyebrows and repeated the address: “3245 West Pine? Hey, that ain’t a bad neighborhood.”

“It’s a rooming house,” I said.

He stuck his hand over the counter. I shook it queasily. He said, “You sure you won’t take that sawbuck?”

I got away fast. The fresh air tasted good, and I couldn’t figure why. Maybe just because I was out, when I shouldn’t have been mixed up in it all in the first place. I had a distantly rumbling worry about the mess, but I closed my mind to it as I walked the ten blocks west on West Pine to the place where I lived. I said I had been stupid, got myself knocked in the head for it, but dumped it all right back in the lap of the guy whose business it was. Kelly Burke would phone the cops, they’d pick up Sammy, and that’d be all.

Sammy was a good looking kid. Crazy maybe, pulling armed robbery. Crazy wild bunch he hung around with, what could you expect? Comes running out of a liquor store with a bag of money in his hand and a knife in the other hand, stupid kid, should’ve put the knife away when he was on the street, and maybe nobody’d know he had a bag full of money. It was too obvious.

I almost fell on my face as I stepped off a high curb. I wasn’t watching where I was walking, I was getting so interested in my thoughts.

Obvious... about the bag of money. But all I saw was a paper bag. I didn’t see any money. Yes, I did. I saw money in Kelly Burke’s cash register just a few minutes ago, and now it was only about two and a half hours since it all started. Where could Kelly get a bundle of cash this time of night, when all the banks were closed? And why wasn’t he more shook up? Most guys would close up for the night if a kid with a gleaming knife come in and pulled a robbery.

I tried to push it out of my mind again. It was only a couple blocks farther to my house, so I tried to concentrate only on walking, noticing people and cars, not thinking at all. But I couldn’t really stop thinking, because I was involved. I would have been involved even if I hadn’t stupidly run after Sammy at first, because he was a kid in trouble, and whenever a kid’s in trouble, everybody’s involved. I noticed a couple kids walking ahead of me, slower than I was walking. Boy and girl, arms around one another’s back as they strolled. Good sight. Catty corner across the street a beat car parked by the curb and shut off its lights. More kids, probably, stopping there for a while to neck. I grinned at myself and was feeling good.

The feeling changed two minutes later when I was going up the sidewalk to the porch of the house where I had a room. Something moved on the lawn and I turned quickly when a thick voice said,

“Hi Pussycat.”

It was three of the ones who’d been outside the juke joint, one of them the big guy who clobbered me. Three tough kids, and three neat switchblade knives open in the darkness. Then they rushed me, cutting ahead toward the porch, but I spun about and, yelling at the top of my lungs, ran into the middle of the street, with cars zooming past, and kept running right down the white line in the middle. I heard above the horns honking at me the sounds of their angry voices, glanced back once and saw them heading for the car they had parked on the side street. They’d get me once they were able to get out in the traffic. I kept running, waving my hands over my head and screaming like a lunatic. Then brakes were screeching and some guy hollered at me. The guy in the fifty-three Buick was middle aged, mad, and scared.

“Give me a lift!” I shouted.

“Get in, you nut!”

And I got in, panting, my throat hurting, and he took off. When I looked back there was too much traffic for me to make out the car the kids were driving. “Thanks, Mister,” I told him.

“Sure.” He glanced suspiciously at me, probably expecting to see a gun. “Where you want out, the nuthouse?”

“Some guys are after me. You going to Kings Highway?”

He grunted. “I’ll take you back to the County Home on Arsenal Street if you want,” he snickered.

“Just let me off at Kings Highway so I can call the cops.”

“OK,” he said. “OK, OK.”

It took us about four minutes to get out to Kings Highway. He stopped at a red light, I saw a bar, and I jumped out of the Buick and didn’t even say thanks. I was sure the kids hadn’t seen me, not with the bunch of people on the sidewalk there. When I got inside the bar and ducked into the phone booth I could think again.

Everything made sense. The only creep who knew where I lived was Kelly Burke, so he had to be the guy who tipped off the kids. Otherwise, why would they be waiting for me with knives? All of which meant one thing: the robbery was a phony, and Kelly was in on it. Maybe he was insured. He’d pay the kids to put cm the act, ditch his cash for a while, and call the cops but not give a description.

I put a dime in the phone and dialed the eighth precinct. When the tired sergeant’s voice answered, I said, “There was a stickup at Kelly’s Liquor Store on Grand and Laclede about two hours ago.”

“What’s your name, Mister?”

“Right?”

“I can’t give out police infor—”

“You want to know something about it or not?”

“Go ahead, sir. Where you at now?”

“You got a call about the holdup?”

“OK, Mister, so we got a call. Usual thing. Look, you give me your name and address, and—”

“Did you get a call since then?”

“I can’t give out police information, sir.”

“OK, I’ll give you some. Almost an hour ago I told Kelly the name of the guy who stuck him up.”

“Now, ain’t that nice. You didn’t bother to call us.”

“Did Kelly call in again?”

The police sergeant was quiet for a moment. I heard some muffled voices. Then he said, “What was the guy’s name, Mister?”

“Then Kelly didn’t call?”

“What was the guy’s name?”

“Kelly had some guys try to knife me ten minutes ago! Look, officer, my name is—”

A hand reached over my shoulder and pushed down the phone hook, and a voice said, “Pussycat.” The tip of a knife was tickling my neck just under my right earlobe.

I turned slowly. Behind the big kid were his two buddies, standing side by side and staring back at the customers in the bar, waiting to see who’d be first to come over and tell them to get out. Nobody moved.

“Come on, Pussycat,” said the big guy. “Kelly wants to see you.”

They had me right in front of a bunch of people, so it wouldn’t do any good even to make noise. They sat me in the back seat of the car, one of them on each side; of me while the third one drove.

“Man, that pussycat’s a hero,” the driver said. The other two laughed.

I said to the big kid, “Look, you’re just getting in deeper, letting Kelly use you like that. He makes most of the loot while you guys take all the chances.”

The big kid said, “Pussycat’s a real good hero.”

“He’ll turn Sammy over to the police. When the chips are down, he’ll—”

“Why, Pussycat?”

I swallowed. “I told them that I told Kelly who robbed the store, but Kelly didn’t call in. They’ll wonder why.”

“Sligo,” the big kid hissed at the driver. “You put us off in the alley back of Kelly’s, then go get Sammy. You tell that boy to sneak in quiet, hear me?” He pushed his big fist against the side of my face and grinned. “Pussycat, you ain’t got much more chance.” It wasn’t cold, but I shivered anyhow.

From the back room, when the liquor store cleared of customers, the big kid called out to Kelly. The man grinned at me. “Always got to be some buttinski around,” he said. He gestured toward the two kids. “Just keep him back here for a while. Later on we’ll figure how to make him keep his fat mouth shut.”

“The cops been here?” said the big kid.

Kelly grinned. “Early. You know.”

Kelly went back out front to the store. The jingle bell on the door rang a moment later. Customers, buying whiskey. A guy getting a pack of cigarettes and making some remark about the hot weather. Quietly the back room door opened and Sammy came in, gave me a sober look and leaned against the partition wall between the store and the back room. The front door opened again. Two men, walking heavily.

“Hello, Kelly.”

“What’s up, Sergeant?”

“Who’s the name of the kid who did it, Kelly?” This from the other officer.

Kelly laughed nervously. “I wish I knew,” he said. “I’d nail the little—”

“A guy told you, didn’t he, Kelly?”

“Somebody’s telling you boys fairy tales.”

“OK,” said the sergeant. “You better close up and take a ride with us.”

“Hey, I’m running a business!”

“You’re withholding evidence. Come on.”

Kelly’s voice dropped. All of us in the back room strained to hear it. He said, “Listen, officers, it’s a tough neighborhood. Even if I did know.”

“Get your hat, Kelly.”

“OK,” Kelly whispered. “I was scared to tell, understand?” He was breathing quickly. We heard one of the cops scratch a match and light a cigarette. Kelly said something else, but outside a streetcar was going down Grand Avenue, and we only caught the last couple words: “...Maple and Twenty-Third. Look, you guys—”

“Hang around,” said the sergeant. The front door tinkled, Kelly waited a minute, and then he hurried to the back room.

“Now, look, kids.” He was already putting on a paternal grin. “I had to tell them cops about Sammy, but nobody else! If this character...” He saw Sammy then. His mouth hung open.

“Get him!” Sammy yelled when Kelly dashed back toward the partition door. The big kid got Kelly by the back of his collar. I saw two knives slashing through the air and, with all of them screaming and stabbing, I leaped for the alley door, kicked Sligo in the leg before he knew what was happening, and ran yelling around the side of the building.

The two cops were just starting their car. They jumped out and ran at me, but I shouted, “I’m the guy who called! They’re all in there now!”

“Hey, you stop!” roared one of the cops. “Hey!”

I was halfway across Grand Avenue, ducking through traffic, with drivers honking and cursing at me, so I didn’t look back until I got to the sidewalk. One of the cops was running around back, the other one rushing into the front of the liquor store. The cop inside fired his gun at the floor, hollered something, and the kids came out with their hands on the backs of their heads. Kelly didn’t come out. That was enough for me.