Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 48, No. 1, January 2003

A brief inspection told me that five of the six stores were represented by trash receptacles, The Wedge’s alone being absent. I looked around another time to make sure that I wasn’t under observation, then I carefully maneuvered the barrel marked Return To Catterson Fur down onto the floor. It was filled to the top with innocent looking trash, mainly paper, and after a moment of indecision I decided not to dump it. Instead I sifted down into its contents with my hands.

My arms are long, and I was penetrating close to the bottom, trying to detect anything at all promising with the touch of my fingertips, when at last I felt the surface of a plastic bag with a soft, fur-like substance beneath it. I eased my arms up and out and stepped back to consider whether I should dump the receptacle after all or simply take everything — carts, barrels, and contents — in charge as potential evidence.

The forklift was roaring again across the way, but all at once I became conscious of another sound coming from behind me, with the result that I turned just fast enough to duck slightly, so that the mop handle Mike Cooksey was swinging at the side of my head struck me at an upward angle straight across the forehead.

My glasses flew wide, I fell back against the barrel, my knees folded, and I toppled, not totally unconscious, onto my face. Then I must have blacked out.

“Mi-i-s-ter!” I heard a voice yell. “Senyor! Mi-i-s-ter!” Someone was shaking my shoulder. Then I felt a pain across my forehead and down into my neck, and I jolted into consciousness. I opened my eyes — not that I could see too much when I opened my eyes — and realized that I was on my back, which meant that someone had turned me over, the someone being a Hispanic-looking man whose mustachioed face was bent over me. I raised a hand to my forehead and felt blood there — but not much — and the memory of what happened came back to me.

“You okay?” said the man. “You need a... medico?”

“My glasses...” I said, pushing up on an elbow and feeling a new wave of pain across my forehead.

“Glasses...” he said. “Ah!” He pointed to his eyes. His face moved out of my sight range then returned. “Bad luck, mister. These glasses are busted.” He handed the frames to me half filled with shards and splinters.

My next thought was for Cooksey. “Where’s the man who hit me?” I asked, trying out of habit to look around.

“Cooksey? That man, he runs fast, I can tell you. I see him hit you — then I come fast, on forklift. Cooksey, he goes out the door like... a rabbit!”

“The exit door?”

“Si. Yes.”

“I need to get to a phone,” I said.

“And water.”

“Yeah, and water.” He helped me up. “What’s your name?” I asked.

“José. They call me Joe, but I am José Ortíz.”

“Well, José, you’re a darned good man. I’m R. J. Carr. Glad to meet you.”

I followed him to a dispatcher’s desk along the back wall. “Teléfonó,” he said. “I go to bring the water.”

I dropped into the chair by the desk and put my face down on my arm for a second. That was a mistake — the pain surged through my head. I jerked it back up, then pulled the telephone over near me where I could see the buttons and punched in the number of the security office around a corner fifty feet away. “Is Malin there yet?” I asked, peering at my watch. It read nine forty-two.

“No. Was he supposed to come in?”

“Yeah. This is R. J. Carr. I was assaulted on my way to meet him by Mike Cooksey, one of the maintenance men. You didn’t spot Cooksey shooting out of here by the loading dock door, did you? On the closed circuit camera?”

“I can check.”

“Don’t bother. Have someone sweep through the parking lot — you’ve got his car make and license number in the employee file. Also his address. I’ll want that in a few minutes. If Frank shows up, tell him I’m at the loading dock.” I hung up and noticed Ortíz standing beside me holding a large paper cup full of water. “Thanks,” I said. I gulped the water down, then I punched in my home phone number.

“Hello,” said a clear, feminine voice.

“Hi. It’s me.”

“Yes?”

“Can you get Mrs. Andersen to come up for a while and stay with the kids?” Dorothy Andersen was a widow who lived in our basement flat. “I’ve broken my glasses — smashed to smithereens — and you’re going to have to bring me another pair or I’ll never get this done.”

“What happened? Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m okay — just a little blind. There’s a pair in my top dresser drawer, or maybe the bedside table. Bring it to the loading dock on the west side of the mall. A man named José Ortíz will show you in. Treat him nice. He saved me from a beating.”

“R. J.!”

“I’ll tell you when you get here.”