Jane Haddam - Gregor Demarkian 12 - Fountain of Death by Jane Haddam

eat,” the man said. “You could leave without paying for anything. That wouldn’t be a good idea.”
    In the big stores, they were subtler than this, Nick thought. The store detectives followed you at a distance. The saleswomen hovered inches away from your elbow, but they were smart enough never to actually accuse. They had been trained in the ins and outs of lawsuits. Nick was hungry to the point where his stomach hurt. He hadn’t had a chance to eat anything substantial all day. He wasn’t hungry enough for this. He looked at the bags of Lay’s potato chips and sighed.
    “Forget it,” he said. “I think I’ll just get out of here.”
    “No,” the man at the counter said. “No, Jerry, don’t let him out of here until you see what’s under his coat.”
    The one called Jerry looked to the counter and then back to Nick. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Maybe that’s not a bad idea. Maybe I want to see what’s under your coat.”
    “Of course,” Nick said, still calm, still pleasant. “And if there doesn’t happen to be anything under my coat, anything that belongs to you, that is, I think I’ll just go see my lawyer.”
    “Don’t listen to him,” the man at the counter said. “Those people don’t have lawyers. They only got drug lawyers.”
    “I want to see what’s under your coat,” Jerry said.
    “No.”
    Move. Countermove. Impasse. Nobody knew what to do next. Nick put his hands in the pocket of his jacket—it really was only a jacket; where did these two jerks think he was supposed to be hiding a lot of bulky packages of snack food?—and started to walk toward the front door. When he got to the counter, he nodded to the man who was standing there, he didn’t know why. The man reached under the cash register and came out with a gun.
    It happened that fast. Move. Countermove. Impasse. Gun. The man behind the counter was hysterical and shaking. Nick Bannerman was scared to death.
    “Jesus Christ,” Nick said.
    “I want to see what’s under your coat,” the man behind the counter said. “Make him take his coat off, Jerry. I want to see what’s under his coat.”
    “Calm down,” Nick said. “I’m taking off my coat.”
    Nick unzipped his jacket and opened the flaps, so that the man could see. Then he took the jacket all the way off and laid it down on the counter.
    “There,” he said. “There’s nothing to see.”
    Jerry picked up the jacket and searched through it, feeling the pockets, feeling the lining. Then he put the coat down and turned away.
    “There’s nothing in it,” he told the man behind the counter.
    The man behind the counter got a mulish, angry look on his face. Nick thought he might be borderline mentally retarded. He was definitely dangerous.
    “There has to be something in it,” he insisted. “He’s been in here for five minutes. He has to have taken something.”
    “No,” Jerry said. “No, he didn’t.”
    “Search his pants,” the man behind the counter said.
    Nick picked up his jacket and put it back on again. “These pants are tight as hell,” he said. “I couldn’t hide a piece of Saran Wrap in them.”
    “Search his pants,” the man behind the counter repeated.
    Jerry reached across and grabbed the gun by the butt. He pushed at his brother’s hand until the gun was pointing at the ceiling. “Get out of here,” he told Nick. “We don’t want no niggers in here.”
    “The neighborhood is full of them,” the man behind the counter said. “They’re taking over. There isn’t going to be anybody else left.”
    Fighting this would only mean getting shot by the man behind the counter. The man behind the counter wanted to shoot something. He wanted to do it right away. Nick didn’t think he’d ever heard anybody call him that name before, never in his life. He’d heard about black people being called that name. He’d just never heard anybody actually use it.
    Nick walked out of the store. He was still hungry as hell. He was still