Free The Crossroads by John D. MacDonald

totals. All issued checks had to be accounted for. Once a month your inventory had to be checked against liquor sales.
    After he got the right idea, he managed to lift a blank bar check. He found a place where he could get a couple of hundred of them printed up, serial numbers and all. Every day when he’d go to work he’d take a couple or three along with him, slip them into the inside pocket of his white monkey jacket. Then he had the problem of picking the right bar customers. You wouldn’t want to waste one on a one-beer customer. The best deal was a couple who seemed all wound up in each other and had a lot of time and ordered hard liquor. Then you would slip in one of your own checks. Leave it right in front of the couple. Nobody ever noticed. When they were ready to go you totaled it on the machine, took their money, rang a zero and put the money into the machine and put the check in the pocket. You remembered the total and lifted it all when you closed out the machine at night. Never too heavy. Averaged around fifteen a night probably. An extra ninety a week, tax free. The organizationcould afford it. And, to make the inventory look all right—it never could come out right on the dime—you poured all the short shots you could all the time. A woman drinking a Collins is just as happy with a half ounce.
    So two months ago, at about six o’clock on a Saturday night, just as you’re slipping a tab for six sixty into the inside pocket of the monkey jacket, a big hand closes on your wrist. You look up and it’s Mr. Charles Drovek. You don’t even know how he got behind the bar so fast, much less how he got wise. He rips the jacket getting the tabs out, the one used one and the two unused ones.
    They take you out in back, in one of the storerooms off the kitchen. Drovek and John Clear. Cold turkey.
    “Have you been treated well?” John Clear asked.
    “Sure. I guess so. Honest, this was the first time I ever …”
    “Shut up, Brodey,” Drovek said. His face was red and his neck was swollen and those big shoulders were bulging the fabric of his shirt. He walked Brodey back against the wall. “You’ve been on the take for months. Maybe a couple of years. I couldn’t believe it. I had John double check. You’re a stinking, dirty, stupid little thief, Brodey. You aren’t worth the trouble it would take to stick you in jail where you belong. I would like to have you raise one hand, Brodey, or say one word. I would enjoy every minute of it. Go ahead.”
    “I’m not going to do anything.”
    “John, stick with him while he clears his locker out. Then get off the place, Brodey. This goes on every employee bulletin board in the place tomorrow morning, Brodey. We had a sneaking thief among us. He’s gone for good.”
    “Five years I’ve been …”
    “Shut up. You make me sick to my stomach.” Drovek turned and walked out of the room.
    “Come on, Brodey,” John Clear said. “Let’s get your stuff. Here’s your check. It covers through yesterday. No sad farewells to anybody.” He shook his head. “You were stupid, boy. It was a good job.”
    Those high and mighty Droveks. Polack bastards.
    He’d gone on a drunk in Walterburg for a while and then had tried to find a job. But the word had gotten around somehow. And how did you explain where you had been for five years? He knew that the smart thing to do would be go north. Try one of the big towns or resort areas. But he ached for a chance to get back at those Droveks. He had to do something to them. Set a fire. Something. Finally, when his money was running low, he got a counter man job in a dirty spoon diner eight miles south of the Crossroads, and he rented one of the Ace Cabins a couple of hundred yards away.
    Each night he thought of how good he had had it, and he would try to scrub the stink of stale grease out of his hair in the drizzling shower. Then he would lie on the bed and think about those Droveks. In his imagination he shot Chip in the