by Alex Wellen
“Gregory was an American hero, small fry,” Sid says. “Like a soldier, he always covered everyone ‘in the hole.’”
I start thinking about how many people this might mean.
CRASH!
I’ve been conditioned to panic when I hear this sound … especially here. But this time, the commotion isn’t coming from behind the pharmacy counter, but the front of the store. It sounds as if someone’s thrown a brick through our window. There is glass everywhere. The front door is hit with such force the bell flies off, sliding all the way down Aisle Five and landing right in front of our group.
“Nobody move!” the bandit commands.
From where I’m standing, I can’t see him, but I spot another dark figure file in quickly. Beatrice screams and then squats down to get out of the line of fire. Mildred knocks a shelf full of aspirin to the floor, but her walker is there to catch her. Neither Sid nor Cookie moves a muscle. Harvey Martin seems the most terrified of all. He’s frozen, next to me, arms by his side, chanting “Oh-my-God.” I don’t have a lot of faith that Sid’s gang is capable of taking these thugs down in a rumble.
I take a few steps to my left, peer down the aisle, and watch as a member of the local sheriff’s department struggles to free his foot from the door frame he just kicked in. The Keystone Cop can’t be more than twenty years old, five feet tall, with rippling muscles and a wide-brimmed hat. His gun pointed straight out, Sparky finally loosens his leg and tells everyone to “get down on the ground. NOW!”
In the split second that I realize that we’re being raided by the police and not robbed by desperados, I go from rattled to relieved and then back to rattled again. The last thing we need right now is the fuzz, and if Lara hadn’t just told me that our pharmacy insurance was three months in arrears (arrears, fun word), I might even welcome a break-in right now.
I throw up my hands and Sid slowly starts bending at the knees.
“Go ahead and shoot me,” Cookie advises the officer once he’s behind her. “Put me out of my misery. I’m too tired to get down. And this floor is filthy.”
“Sweetie!” Sid says, all concerned, but then he grabs his back in pain.
How are we going to explain this? How much did they hear? The last thing I remember saying before Sparky barged in was “insurance fraud.”
“Aw crap,” the police eyewitness shouts once he sees us. “False alarm. False alarm. Put down your weapons,” Manny cries.
In a panicked fit, Manny awkwardly reaches out and lightly swats down on the barrel of the officer’s gun.
“Dude, what the hell are you doing?” Sparky yells, spinning around. “You almost made me shoot this lady.”
Beatrice is still on the ground, her hand clutched to her chest. Mildred’s eyes dart around the room. We all have this guilty look on our faces.
Manny begins: “Sorry, sorry, I was driving by, saw some suspicious activity, knew the pharmacy was closed. I was worried you guys was being burgled.”
Manny squares off with the young officer who doesn’t know what to make of this pajama party. “Nothing to see here,” Manny repeats. “Andy works here.”
“Did you have to kick the door in?” I complain to the officer.
“We had 12-11 in progress,” Sparky says. “You expect me to knock?”
“Damn it, man, the door was open,” I lecture him.
“You really should get a burglar alarm,” the officer advises me.
“We have one. It wasn’t set because we were in here, you moron. Did you even try the door?” I ask.
He has no response to that.
“Someone tell me what the hell is going on here,” a second officer asks.
His nametag says “D. Fielding.” I’m pretty sure Paige and I graduated with this guy. He played baseball or football—definitely a sport where you throw something. Danny, Donny … Dudley! Dudley Fielding. It’s the thick brown mustache that threw me.
“Why are you all dressed like that,” Officer Fielding demands.
“It’s an orgy,” says Cookie.
Sid buries his face in his hands.
“We’re having a book club meeting,” Mildred insists suddenly.
“That’s right!” Beatrice remembers.
“Book club?” Dudley Do-Right asks skeptically. “I don’t see any books.”
“Who brings books to a book club?” Mildred complains.
“And what book are you reading?”
Like possessed game-show contestants, Beatrice, Mildred, and Harvey shout out different titles: Love in the Time of Cholera, He’s Just Not That into You, Who Moved My Cheese?
“You’re reading He’s Just Not That into Cholera Cheese?” Dudley asks.
“No, dum-dum, we’re all reading different books. That’s how this club works. Then we gather here in the dead of night and discuss them,” Cookie explains. “I bet the last thing you read was an eye chart.”
Dudley flashes her a look that would intimidate anyone but Cookie.
“All right, fellas, you’ve done your job here. Time we call it a night,” Martin informs them.
“Not so fast,” Dudley says, taking off his hat and patting down his bushy brown hair. “With all due respect, Mr. Martin, we’re not in high school anymore, and you’re not the boss of me.”
Dudley Fielding doesn’t say that last part.
With a mobster’s nod, Sid tells Harvey to get rid of them.
Principal Martin walks right up to Dudley. “Listen here, Mr. Fielding,” Martin says, dropping his voice two octaves. “I don’t think your parents—or rather, your supervising officer—would appreciate learning that you barged in here and terrorized a group of helpless elderly women during their book club meeting.” Mildred wags her finger at Dudley. “I think you and I need to have a little talk outside. Let’s go,” he demands.
Uh-oh, I smell detention.
Harvey pats both young bucks on the back and shows them out the broken door. Then he turns to us, shrugs his shoulders, and delivers a big wide grin. Manny, Sid, and I follow right behind.
“My bad,” Manny apologizes to us, daintily stepping over the shards of glass.
It’s hard to be too angry with him. He did what I hope any concerned Crockett resident would do, even if it was overkill.
“Oh man,” I say, wiggling the door side to side. The top hinge is busted. “That cop trashed it,” I complain to Sid. “It was unlocked, ya dumb ox!” I scream over to the officer.
From across the street, Harvey shushes me with his hand. Cookie, Beatrice, and Mildred make their way over to examine the damage, too.
“Who’s going to pay for this?” I mumble.
If we weren’t susceptible to a burglary before, we are now.
“I know this is a lot to take in,” Sid whispers to me.
“It’s broken. Geez, now we need to buy a new door.”
“Forget the door for a minute. We’ll patch that up in a jiffy. I need you to focus,” Sid informs me. “Gregory did a lot for this community, and we did what little we could to pay him back.”
“So the late-night phone calls? The house drive-bys?” I whisper back.
“People who need your help. Folks that depended on Gregory.”
“How many are there?”
Sid shrugs.
“Seriously, Sid, you’re good with numbers. Make an educated guess.”
“Twenty?”
The ladies exchange dubious looks. Harvey gives us the all-clear thumbs-up, and the two officers head back to their patrol car.
“Eighty?” Sid tries again.
“You don’t know how many do you?” I ask him.
“I don’t. I’d have to give it a good, hard think,” he admits.
Gregory’s late nights at the pharmacy, the free tabs, the doctors’ shopping sprees, the financial problems—I get it.
“And what exactly do you want me to do?” I ask the drug ring.
The motley crew stares back.
“We’ll walk you through the logistic
s more carefully,” Sid says, finally. “We’ll take your lead, but you’ve got piles of precious free samples stacking up in the corner there … you’ve got people who desperately need them … and you need money. We can all help one another.”
“Why would Gregory destroy himself like this? And how could you continue to take advantage of him?” I wonder out loud.
“Some of us were desperate, and Gregory was our life support,” Sid insists. “Misguided, maybe. But we tried to help.”
“I have to talk this over with Paige,” I say.
“No way,” Cookie yells.
“No one knows about this besides the people in this room,” Sid explains, firmly. “Not Lara, not Paige, no one.”
“Yeah, no one knows except every other senior citizen in town,” I reply flatly.
“The recipients of the co-pay assumed Gregory paid for the drugs out of his own pocket—that he was just being his same old generous self,” Sid says, tenderly. “After all, he was the Mayor of Pomona Street. He was beloved by this community. Let’s keep it that way. Help us or don’t, but do me one favor: preserve the man’s reputation, if for anyone, for my goddaughter.”
CHAPTER 17
Drug Mills
I HAVE this recurring dream where I’m Chewbacca.
It’s a beautiful fall afternoon in Crockett and I walk into Day’s Pharmacy. Gregory is busily working behind the counter. He zips around leaving streaks of light in his path. When my turn comes, to my surprise, Paige is standing at the register. She’s very polite, but doesn’t recognize me because of my costume. I try like the dickens to tell her it’s me, but nothing registers. My bad temper, or rather Chewy’s, gets the better of me. I moan and roar. I tug at my outfit, but soon realize this is no outfit—I am in fact a hairy brown monster. That’s when I ask Paige where they keep the aspirin (which is a silly question really, because everyone knows we keep it in Aisles Two and Five). In my head, the question is so clear, but apparently she doesn’t understand.
Then Gregory steps in. He’s healthier than ever. Wide-eyed, rosy-cheeked, and twenty pounds lighter, he demands: “You leave her alone, you fur ball. How many times do I have to tell you: we don’t serve your kind here.”
Somehow Gregory knows it’s me—me in Wookie’s clothing.
THE new normal is setting in. Having run out of rooms to clean and tears to cry, Paige has returned to her TV career, at least part-time, mostly working the daybreak shift. It’s been three days since Lara first came to us with her pathetic plan to collect on Gregory’s pharmacy tabs, and forty-eight hours since Sid’s drug ring approached me. I wonder if his crew has gang signs or a handshake.
Sid and I haven’t spoken or seen each other since the pajama party in the pharmacy, which is saying something. Normally we talk two or three times a day. I haven’t made a decision on whether to help him with the Day Co-Pay program. He told me to take my time, but I know I can’t take too long. Every minute I wait, someone, somewhere is getting sicker—or worse.
I hate not being in constant communication with Sid. These days I’m filled with anxiety. My instinct is to fear the worst. Gregory kept a pair of binoculars next to his chair. Probably the same ones he used to spy on me with Paige. Like a baby sleeping, I check on Sid all the time, to be sure he’s all right. Each time I peek through the blinds at his house, I half expect to see an ambulance out front.
For Cookie, it’s business as usual. Sometimes I catch her in the golden hour, stumbling around the block with a blue handkerchief tied around her head, walking Loki. Cookie still gardens, but less so now—we’re experiencing a rare heat wave. The only other times she leaves the house are to food shop around 2:00 P.M., and of course, to walk the dog one more time before dark.
This morning, she nearly took out a jogger’s eye with her bamboo cane. Cookie is half asleep, shuffling down her walkway with Loki. A jogger approaches from the west, iPod-oblivious. Moments before they collide on the sidewalk, Cookie swings the rubber tip of her cane millimeters from his face and tries to scream something, but her voice goes hoarse.
The near miss gets me thinking: Cookie needs a better cane. It’s the first dose of inspiration I’ve had in weeks. I’ve since begun working up ideas.
Last night, Lara came to me with her definitive list of pharmacy deadbeats. Lara thinks the biggest freeloaders will be first to show up when we reopen the pharmacy on Friday. She may be right. I managed to talk her down from 120 people to 60. In winnowing her list, I still couldn’t manage to eliminate key members of the Day Co-Pay drug ring, among them, Mildred Pritchard (no. 6), Sid and Cookie Brewster (nos. 13 and 26), and Beatrice Lewis (no. 33). According to Lara, every person on the list owes us between $500 and $2,000.
As for the stragglers in need of a free fix, but too afraid to show their faces at the pharmacy, I’m expected to chase them down. I don’t know what I’m going to say to these people. I assume the first shakedown is the hardest—probably something akin to “whacking” someone. At least that’s what they say in all the authentic mobster movies—it gets easier after you’ve offed your first, the thug reminisces wistfully. From there I suppose you go numb.
Maybe I just need a stiff drink. Or maybe I just need an easy mark—someone who I know can pay even if he isn’t on Lara’s list.
THERE are no drug prescriptions, no insurance forms, no receipts, and no records for Lara to trace back to Gregory’s primary physician, Dr. Brandon Mills. But Mills gave Gregory heaps of free samples, and in return, Gregory allowed Mills to ransack this pharmacy at whim. It was hardly a fair trade—that bastard took ten times as much as he gave, stuffing some of our most precious toiletries in that brown patent leather medical bag of his. I bet the disposable razor blades alone could cover three mortgage payments.
Dr. Mills, I regret to inform you that you are no longer a recipient of the Day’s Pharmacy lifetime shopping spree.
With a few keystrokes on my pocket calculator, I estimate the average cost per grab bag and multiply it by the total number of likely visits Mills made over the last five years. I’d put Mills’s bill as high as five grand, but I’ll ask for a thousand.
It’s Monday and apparently Dr. Mills has the day off. Semi-retired, Mills keeps office hours two days a week at his Crockett office and one day a week in neighboring Martinez; he spends the rest of his time at the Mira Vista Golf and Country Club, where Gregory was Mills’s guest and golf partner; that is, until Gregory’s health deteriorated, and the golf outings became luncheons.
Getting to Mira Vista Golf and Country is a fifteen-minute drive southwest to the bedroom community of El Cerrito. This is my first visit to the club. The clubhouse is spectacular. The Old English Tudor mansion sits atop the Contra Costa hills. The decadent entrance has dramatic vaulted ceilings supported by mammoth oak beams. The club prides itself on its exclusivity.
I inform the clerk at the pro shop that I am Mr. Free Razor Blades’ nephew. “Philippe” expects Dr. Mills to be finishing up a round of golf any minute now and encourages me to grab some lemonade in the members’ lounge. I thank him and plant myself in the golf cart return area.
Before long, Mills approaches. He’s yukking it up with the driver, a young, fit, blue-eyed, blond-haired Hitler-youth type. There is a faint family resemblance; unlike me, this teen could actually be Mills’s legitimate nephew.
I try to get their attention all businesslike, but regrettably the hand gesture has the look and feel of a Nazi salute. Even up close, Mills doesn’t recognize me in the slightest.
We say hello to each other and in the awkward silence I remind him of my name, occupation, and relationship to Gregory.
“I know,” Brandon snaps. He’s so annoyed already. “Are you a guest?”
Guest, trespasser.
“I need a few minutes of your time.”
“Is this a medical emergency?”
“No.”
“Then you need to set up an appointment through my office,” he says firmly.
Mills steps
out of his cart and instructs his nephew to grab the golf bags.
“You can’t just meander onto club grounds.”
And yet here I am.
“I need to talk to you about Gregory Day.”
“Richard, what do you say you get us a table for lunch,” says Mills.
“Will it be two or three?” he asks.
“Definitely two,” Mills says. “I’ll be less than a minute. Time me.”
The real nephew throws the second bag of clubs over his shoulder and heads for the clubhouse. Dr. Mills crosses his arms and waits for me to speak.
“I was wondering,” I say, working up the nerve. “I came across a prescription you wrote for Gregory. I know he had breathing problems, but I didn’t realize he also had bad cholesterol.”
Mills bends down to pull up his left sock. I’m talking to this man about serious matters and all he’s thinking is: Man, my sock feels loose. I need to pull up that sock. I’m going to pull up my sock.
“Is there a question?” he asks from down there.
“How bad was his cholesterol?”
“I have no idea, and I wouldn’t tell you if I could.” Mills rises. “Doctor-patient confidentiality survives death. Plus that information is reserved for family.”
“Paige and I are engaged to be married.”
“Good for you.” Mills shakes a fist in frustration. “Is that all?”
I want to push him. I want to knock him to the ground.
“Just one more thing,” I say, all Columbo-like. “We’re updating our books. How do you plan on settling your pharmacy tab?”
Mills’s eyes narrow, his nostrils flare. I think he’s about to punch me in the nose.
“I’m sorry if this makes you uncomfortable,” I say, uncomfortably. “But our records show you owe us money for Schick razor blades, Reach toothbrushes, and uh, toilet paper,” I say from memory.
“Toilet paper?”
“I can get you specifics, but over the last five years, you owe Day’s Pharmacy roughly”—I shoot high—“$3,000.”
