14b Lemons Never Lie (HCC-022) by Richard Stark

Author:Richard Stark [Stark, Richard]
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

[9]

22 22 22 22 22 22 22.

Grofield thought, I must be crazy. What the hell am I stamping the prices on these things for?

But he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t knowingly do a bad job; stamp the wrong price on each can, put the canned goods on the wrong shelves, put them up with no prices stamped on them at all. He had found the spot where Hal had been working, and had simply continued where Hal had left off. Spaghetti sauce. Twenty-two cents. Therefore: 22 22 22 22 22 22 22.

Light flickered at the perimeter of his vision. He turned his head and saw headlights sweeping across the parking lot out in front of the store. He was in the middle of the middle aisle, standing there next to the stock cart, the price stamper in his hand, the purple inkpad open in the stock cart’s tray. The shelves on both sides of him—what did they call them? gondolas?—they were higher than his head, but the aisle itself was rather wide and had a pale cream vinyl tile floor. He felt both exposed and hemmed in, that he could be seen but he couldn’t see, and it was difficult not to turn his back on those headlights and the expanse of windows.

I am a stock clerk, he thought. I must stay in character. For a long while, he had tended to visualize dramatic situations around himself wherever he might be, as though he were in a movie—even though he would never actually consent to appear in a movie—complete with sound effects and soundtrack music and cliché storylines. He’d drifted out of that habit in the last couple of years, maybe since getting his own theater, but now he consciously did it again, bringing back the old habit for the sake of calming his nerves and helping himself stay in character.

A spy movie. The Russians are watching the embassy, of course, and are confident they’ll track down the daring American spy before he manages to turn over the information. What they don’t know is that the spy has had a liaison of a romantic nature—ski lodge, fireplace, snow heavy on the roof, a wolf howling in the distance—with the embassy cook, a charming girl who is now his willing slave. And every day she comes to this market for fresh flounder. Today, with the flounder, she will receive—the microfilm!

But the headlights are approaching across the deserted parking lot. Has the NKVD learned what he’s up to? The American spy, secure in his disguise as a simple stock clerk, goes on pricing the cans of spaghetti sauce.

22 22 22 22 22 22 22.

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