It Took A Thief

Posted On January 7, 2021

Cleaning ashtrays was not my favorite part of the job. But this was back in the day when everybody smoked – outdoors, indoors, even while shopping – and by closing time those ashtrays were pretty full. They weren’t really ashtrays – more like vertical aluminum cylinders about the size of scuba tanks, supporting trays full of sand. They were placed every 30 feet or so around the store. As our last customers checked out, I’d go around with a piece of cardboard scooping out the butts, some still glowing with embers, before grooming the sand back into a smooth, orderly surface, ready for the morning customers. A little moment of zen.

As a stock boy, I’d work a few nights a week after my high school classes, and the occasional Saturday or Sunday. Alan, the assistant manager, was my immediate boss. He was a wiry, chain-smoking thirty-something New York transplant with a dry sense of humor. He took me under his wing, and under his direction I got to do all sorts of jobs, from restocking sardine cans to checking toilet paper inventory. At dinner time he’d give me some cash to pick up take-out for us, perhaps a couple of falafel sandwiches. Extra tzatziki for him please. We were a good team!

The store was called Drug World, a moniker that by today’s standards conjures up images of a warehouse-sized structure full of pharmaceuticals. Oxycodone? – aisle 9. Methamphetamine? – aisle 21, halfway down on the left. But back then it was all pretty innocent. We catered to the septua- and octo- genarians who retired to the sunny clime of south Florida, keeping them supplied with their Mylanta, statins, and antibiotics. 

Pharmacy notwithstanding, Drug World was really more of a variety store or a mini-department store. We had everything – books, magazines, food, clothes, perfume, you name it. One day we had a customer who needed help in the luggage department. Alan got on the store intercom and paged “Larry to the luggage department, Larry to luggage.” It rolled easily off his tongue, maybe too easily. From that day forward, my nom de guerre became Larry Luggage…“Lug” for short. Maybe not the most simpatico nickname, but I was proud of my new honorific nonetheless!

I found five twenty-dollar bills on the floor one night. They were folded and slightly crumpled as if someone had stuffed them into their pocket. That was a lot of dough for a kid, and I was tempted to keep the money, but in a moment of altruism I turned it in to Mr. Rosean, the General Manager. “Oh, there’s my cash!” he said, a little too enthusiastically, offering no explanation as to how he misplaced it. He rewarded me by slipping one of the twenties back into my hand. I knew if it really was his he never would have given any of it to me, being the miser that he was. More than once Mr. Rosean had promised me a raise – a whopping 15-cents an hour increase – but it never happened. When I finally had the nerve to ask him about it, he fired me, right there on the spot. Fortunately, Alan came to my rescue. I was his right-hand man, he told Mr. Rosean, and he couldn’t get by without me. Job reinstated! (but no raise).

One weekday evening I was home doing homework when the phone rang. The following conversation ensued:

“Lug? It’s Alan.”

“Hi Alan – what’s up?”

“Uh, I need a favor…”

“Ok. What’s going on?”
“Well, I’ve got a little problem. I went out to buy a pack of cigarettes, and I got pulled over. I didn’t have my wallet or license with me, so they took me to jail. They won’t let me leave until someone brings me my wallet.”

< long pause >

“So, Lug, I need you to go to my apartment and get my wallet. It should be on my nightstand. But there’s no spare key, so you’re going to have to break in. Once you get it, bring it here to me. Can you do that for me Lug? Oh, and um, listen – I’m taking care of my neighbor’s dog.” 

Alan lived in a small efficiency unit. The apartment had a jalousie door – the kind of door comprised of overlapping horizontal panes of glass that can be cranked open or closed. Under cover of darkness, it was surprisingly easy to wedge my hand between the closed panes of glass, push the screen out of the way, and reach inside to unlock the doorknob. The only setback was my slimed hand, courtesy of the slobbering beast inside. Once in the apartment I actually had a weird sense of accomplishment! Is this what a thief feels like after a successful caper? As I pondered my promising career in burglary, the dog escaped. Luckily Fido hadn’t gone far, and I was able to corral him back into the apartment. Alan’s wallet in hand, I headed to jail!

I returned to work the next afternoon, but Alan was nowhere to be found. In fact, he never returned. I knew my job pretty well by then, so I had no problem going about my business, but it still seemed weird to be there without Alan present. No more intercom pages of “Lug to the food aisle” or “Lug to toiletries.” No more Alan slipping me cash to run down to the other end of the mall to bring back dinner. Others noticed his absence too, of course, but his whereabouts remained a mystery, subject to whispered speculation. 

As my time at Drug World wound down and I prepared to go off to college, my last weeks as a stock boy passed uneventfully. That is until one night around closing time. I was making my rounds cleaning the ashtrays when I heard a loud boom from the far end of the store, near the office. Most of the employees had gone home by then, but the few of us left converged in the office, where the door of the locked file cabinet containing the cashier’s tills had been kicked in. The tills were empty, and the day’s proceeds were gone. We had been robbed! An investigation by law enforcement ensued but weeks passed without any information forthcoming. Eventually a culprit was apprehended and charged. The rumor was that it was Alan.

I found it hard to believe. Alan? Was he really a thief, or a junkie desperate for cash to support his habit? Perhaps his excursion to buy cigarettes that night wasn’t quite as innocent as it seemed. Was I somehow his unwitting partner in crime? I never saw Alan again, nor heard any more about him. I hope the rumors were wrong and he went on to have a decent life. I’ll never know for sure. But rather than remembering him as a thief, I choose to remember him as a good person, the guy who saved my job and bought me falafel sandwiches.

© 2021 L. Wechsler.   All rights reserved.