Swag by Elmore Leonard Page B

never realized it before. Hold up one or two places a week, make more money than he could spend, and live in a thirty-unit L-shaped authentic California apartment building that had a private swimming pool and patio in the crotch of the L and was full of career ladies laying around waiting for it.
    It sounded good.
    Didn’t it?
    Yeah, Stick guessed it did.

6

    THEY LIKED SUPERMARKETS. GET A polite manager who was scared shitless and not more than a few people in the store, that was the ideal situation, worth three or four gas stations even on a bad day. The only trouble with supermarkets, they were big. You never knew who might be down an aisle somewhere.
    They hit the Kroger store in West Bloomfield early Saturday morning.
    It looked good. No customers yet. The checkout counters were empty. The only person they saw was a stockboy stamping prices on canned goods. Stick asked him for the manager, saying he’d been called about a check that’d bounced and he wanted to cover it. He followed the boy to the back and waited, holding the swinging door open, seeing the manager back there talking to a Budweiser deliveryman and a few of the checkout girls drinking coffee. When the manager and the stockboy came out, Stick let the door swing closed. And when the manager said, “May I have your name, please?” Stick said, “No sir,” taking the Smith from inside his jacket, “but you can give me your money.”
    The manager said, “Oh my God,” and the three of them paraded up to the front where Frank was waiting. Frank got the cash register key from the manager and headed for the checkout counters. Stick and the manager and the stockboy went into the cashier’s enclosure, Stick bringing a Kroger bag with him.
    The manager kept saying, “Oh my God.” He told Stick he’d only been manager here one week. Stick said well, he was getting good experience, wasn’t he? The stock-boy was a heavy-boned, rangy kid who kept staring at him, making him nervous, until Stick told him to lay on the floor, facedown. He told the manager to clean out the cash drawer and open the safe. The manager had to get a piece of paper out of his wallet with the combination written on it, then kept missing numbers as he turned the dial and would have to start over again; but finally he got it open and pulled out a trayful of bills and personal checks. When he started to count the bills, Stick told him never mind, he’d do it later. The manager thanked him.
    â€œWhat about these?” the manager said, picking up the checks.
    â€œKeep ’em,” Stick said.
    â€œI appreciate that very much,” the manager said. “I really do.”
    â€œJust the bills,” Stick said, “no change. You can keep that, too.”
    â€œThank you,” the manager said. “Thank you very much.”
    Frank was at the third checkout counter, digging the bills out of the cash register and stuffing them in a Kroger bag. He looked up to see a woman with hair curlers pushing a cart toward him. He was taken by surprise and his hand went into his jacket for the Python. He’d looked down the aisles and hadn’t seen anyone in the store. The woman began unloading her cart—coffee, milk, bread, and a few other items—not paying any attention to him. Frank brought his hand out of the jacket. The best thing to do was get rid of her, fast. He said, “How’re you this morning?” and began ringing up the groceries, not looking at her. She was a pale, puffy woman with a permanent scowl etched in her face. And the hair curlers—in case anyone thought she wasn’t ugly enough she had light-blue plastic curlers wrapped in her light-blue hair.
    The woman squinted at him. “You’re new.”
    â€œYes, ma’am, new assistant manager.”
    â€œWhere’s your white coat?”
    He was going to say that a jacket and sunglasses was the new thing for assistant