Chapter 5

THE LITTLE MOM-N-POP STORE was Tim & Janet’s Quik-Pik. Most of the rear shelves were overflowing with jug wine and beer stacked in cardboard cases. A giant cooler ran the length of the back wall. Two of the four aisles were dedicated to munchies. Beside the cash register stood a bottle of pickled eggs as large as a small child. Tim & Janet’s also stocked such necessaries as cigarettes, sanitary napkins, hot dogs, and stroke-books.

The night man was a pimple-pocked dude who attended the Portland branch of the University of Maine during his days. His name was Harry Nason, and he was majoring in animal husbandry. When the big man with the dented forehead walked in at ten minutes of one, Nason was reading a book from the paperback rack. The book was called Big and Hard. The late-night rush had dried up to a trickle. Nason decided that after the big man had bought his jug or his six, he’d close up and go home. Maybe take the book along and beat off. He was thinking that the part about the traveling preacher and the two horny widows might be good for that when the big man put a pistol under his nose and said, “Everything in the register.”

Nason dropped the book. Thoughts of beating off left his mind. He gaped at the gun. He opened his mouth to say something intelligent. The kind of thing a guy being stuck up on TV might say, if the guy being stuck up happened to be the hero of the show. What came out was “Aaaa.”

“Everything in the register,” the big man repeated. The dent in his forehead was frightening. It looked deep enough for a frog-pond.

Harry Nason recalled — in a frozen sort of way — what his boss had told him he should do in the event of a hold-up: give the robber everything with no argument. He was fully insured. Nason’s body suddenly felt very tender and vulnerable, full of bags and waters. His bladder loosened. And all at once he seemed to have an absolute assful of shit.

“Did you hear me, man?”

“Aaaa,” Harry Nason agreed, and punched NO SALE on the cash register.

“Put the money in a bag.”

“Okay. Yes. Sure.” He fumbled among the sacks under the counter and dumped most of them on the floor. At last he managed to hold onto one. He flipped up the bill-holders in the cash drawer and began to drop money into the bag.

The door opened and a guy and a girl, probably college kids, walked in. They saw the gun and stopped. “What’s this?” the guy asked. He was smoking a cigarillo and wearing a button that said POT ROCKS.

“It’s a hold-up,” Nason said. “Please don’t, uh, antagonize this gentleman.”

“Too much,” the guy with the POT ROCKS button said. He started to grin. He pointed at Nason. His fingernail was dirty. “Dude’s ripping you off, man.”

The hold-up man turned to POT ROCKS. “Wallet,” he said.

“Dude,” POT ROCKS said, not losing the grin, “I’m on your side. The prices this place charges…and everybody knows Tim and Janet Quarles are, like, the biggest right-wingers since Adolf —”

“Give me your wallet or I’ll blow your head off.”

POT ROCKS suddenly realized he might be in some trouble here; for sure he wasn’t in a movie. The grin went bye-bye and he stopped talking. Several zits stood out brightly on his cheeks, which were suddenly pale. He dug a black Lord Buxton out of his jeans pocket.

“There’s never a cop when you need one,” his girlfriend said coldly. She was wearing a long brown coat and black leather boots. Her hair matched the boots, at least this week.

“Drop the wallet in the bag,” the hold-up guy said. He held the bag out. Harry Nason always thought he could have become a hero at that point by braining the hold-up man with the giant bottle of pickled eggs. Only the hold-up man looked as if he might have a hard head. Very hard.

The wallet plopped into the bag.

The hold-up man skirted them and headed for the door. He moved well for a man his size.

“You pig,” the girl said.

The hold-up man stopped dead. For a moment the girl was sure (so she later told police) that he was going to turn around, open fire, and lay them all out. Later, with the police, they would differ on the hold-up man’s hair color (brown, reddish, or blond), his complexion (fair, ruddy, or pale), and his clothes (pea jacket, windbreaker, woolen lumberjack shirt), but they all agreed on his size — big — and his final words before leaving. These were apparently addressed to the blank, dark doorway, almost in a moan:

“Jeezus, George, I forgot the stocking!”

Then he was gone. There was a bare glimpse of him running in the cold white light of the big Schlitz sign that hung over the store’s entrance, and then an engine roared across the street. A moment later he wheeled out. The car was a sedan, but none of them could ID the make or model. It was beginning to snow.

“So much for beer,” POT ROCKS said.

“Go on back to the cooler and have one on the house,” said Harry Nason.

“Yeah? You sure?”

“Sure I’m sure. Your girl, too. What the fuck, we’re insured.” He began to laugh.

When the police asked him, he said he had never seen the stickup guy before. It was only later that he had cause to wonder if he had not in fact seen the stickup guy the previous fall, in the company of a skinny little rat-faced man who was buying wine and mouthing off.