The doctor cracked before dawn. He'd inked the dead man into her ledger a day early, so something would be written down. The pills were for a sailor whose knife wound a hospital would report. The dead man carried them. A gray car crawled past, lights off.

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The pharmacist counted the stranger's cash twice: $2,400, exactly her back rent. The computer forgot the dead dockworker. Her ink ledger didn't: 120 strong painkillers, no cancer, and the doctor signed for them himself. She called him. He wasn't surprised.

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Night pharmacist by the docks, three a.m. A man comes in from the rain bone dry, leaves cash, walks out with an old regular's prescription in his coat. That regular's coat came out of the harbor an hour ago. Now the computer says he never existed. Somebody paid.

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At 3 a.m. a man who walked in dry out of the rain paid a dockside pharmacist to forget an old regular's sleeping pills. They'd already pulled the old man's coat from the water.

A noir story, told here as it happens. Reply and the story hears you.
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