The Assistant by Bernard Malamud

supper and wandered restlessly in the foggy streets, feeling cramped in the chest from his long days in the store and because his life hadn’t changed much since he had come here. As he passed by the cemetery, he tried to keep out of his mind the memory of the holdup but it kept coming back in. He saw himself sitting with Ward Minogue in the parked car, waiting for Karp to come out of the grocery, but when he did his store lights went out and he hid in the back among the bottles. Ward said to drive quick around the block so they would flush the Jew out, and he would slug him on the sidewalk and take his fat wallet away; but when they got back, Karp’s car was gone with him in it, and Ward cursed him into an early grave. Frank said Karp had beat it, so they ought to scram, but Ward sat there with heartburn, watching, with his small eyes, the grocery store, the one lit place on the block besides the candy store on the corner.

    â€œNo,” Frank urged, “it’s just a little joint, I got my doubts if they took in thirty bucks today.”
    â€œThirty is thirty,” Ward said. “I don’t care if it’s Karp or Bober, a Jew is a Jew.”
    â€œWhy not the candy store?”
    Ward made a face. “I can’t stand penny candy.”
    â€œHow do you know his name?” asked Frank.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œThe Jew grocer.”
    â€œI used to go to school with his daughter. She has a nice ass.”
    â€œThen if that’s so, he will recognize you.”
    â€œNot with a rag around my snoot, and I will rough up my voice. He ain’t seen me for eight or nine years. I was a skinny kid then.”
    â€œHave it your way. I will keep the car running.”
    â€œCome in with me,” Ward said. “The block is dead. Nobody will expect a stickup in this dump.”
    But Frank hesitated. “I thought you said Karp was the one you were out after?”
    â€œI will take Karp some other time. Come on.”
    Frank put on his cap and crossed the car tracks with Ward Minogue. “It’s your funeral,” he said, but it was really his own.
    He remembered thinking as they went into the store, a Jew is a Jew, what difference does it make? Now he thought, I held him up because he was a Jew. What the hell are they to me so that I gave them credit for it?
    But he didn’t know the answer and walked faster, from time to time glancing through the spiked iron fence at the shrouded gravestones. Once he felt he was being followed and his heart picked up a hard beat. He hurried past the cemetery and turned right on the first street after it, hugging the stoops of the stone houses as he went quickly down the dark street. When he reached the poolroom he felt relieved.
    Pop’s poolroom was a dreary four-table joint, owned by a
glum old Italian with a blue-veined bald head and droopy hands, who sat close to his cash register.
    â€œSeen Ward yet?” Frank said.
    Pop pointed to the rear where Ward Minogue, in his fuzzy black hat and a bulky overcoat, was practicing shots alone at a table. Frank watched him place a black ball at a corner pocket and aim a white at it. Ward leaned tensely forward, his face strained, a dead butt hanging from his sick mouth. He shot but missed. He banged his cue on the floor.
    Frank had drifted past the players at the other tables. When Ward looked up and saw him, his eyes lit with fear. The fear drained after he recognized who it was. But his pimply face was covered with sweat.
    He spat his butt to the floor. “What have you got on your feet, you bastard, gumshoes?”
    â€œI didn’t want to spoil your shot.”
    â€œAnyway you did.”
    â€œI’ve been looking for you about a week.”
    â€œI was on my vacation.” Ward smiled in the corner of his mouth.
    â€œOn a drunk?”
    Ward put his hand to his chest and brought up a belch. “I wish to hell it was. Somebody tipped my old man I was around here, so I hid