Murder Me for Nickels Read online

  And that was all the pitch Lippit gave the man, because what else was needed? Lippit could afford to be a pig without acting like one, since there was no competition. And he could leave a few things unsaid. Like the down payment, for security, part of which was not returnable. Like what was willful damage? And like when is a repair more than fifty a month? And what do you think happens when you say no to all this, Mister Stonewall?

  Probably nothing, as a matter of fact, since Lippit had not acted the pig in a very long time.

  “So you read this thing over,” said Lippit, “and you look at the contract, Mister Stonewall, and I’ll send a crew over tomorrow so you can look at the machine.”

  “You mean you’re going to put your machine…”

  “You want to try it out, don’t you?” said Lippit. “And if there’s something you don’t understand, Jack St Louis here will be over tomorrow and explain away what is troubling you.”

  Which was all the pressure Lippit ever needed these days, my going around and explaining things. It was not the same as in the beginning, but at this point it made quite enough money. It was faintly boring for Lippit and me, but we never talked about that, just about money. Not that he and I had been broke that time we joined up, but there had been more action.

  I want three things from my work. It’s got to move, it’s got to make money, and I’ve got to like whom I deal with. All this was true with the Lippit deal, was still almost true, except that it had lost a great deal of motion. As with Mister Stonewall’s bar. Mister Stonewall, now with contract and statistics in hand, had not even opened his mouth through all of Lippit’s spiel. And tomorrow, Mister Stonewall would have one of the new machines. Then Mister Stonewall did open his mouth.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think I want one.”

  Lippit had already started to go. He smiled, as if he hadn’t heard right, and put his big hands on the bar, gently.

  “What?” he said. “You said what, Mister Stonewall?”

  “I-uh, don’t find the deal very attractive.”

  Lippit looked at me, as if to apologize for his friend, Mister Stonewall. Then he looked at Stonewall.

  “I didn’t make clear that this costs you nothing? What I mean is,” said Lippit, “ if you take my machine, then it costs you nothing?”

  I think Stonewall got the tone all right, but Lippit was still quietly smiling, which was no theatrical trick with him but real amusement at how stupid Mister Stonewall was acting. However, Stonewall must have thought it meant Lippit was deaf. He said the same thing again. He said:

  “I don’t find the deal very attractive.”

  Lippit sighed, being bored, and I was bored. Lippit said, “You got a better deal?”

  “Yes.”

  “How so?”

  “There was a-there is this Mister Benotti who was here.”

  All of a sudden the boredom was gone.

  But Lippit looked at his watch and then pushed away from the bar.

  “Just look over the contract,” he said, “and then we’ll talk more tomorrow.”

  He smiled, waved, and walked out. I had never seen him smile that much, leave that abruptly, or delay things for later.

  I nodded at Stonewall and walked after Lippit. At the last moment, I thought, Stonewall looked as if he wanted to talk some more, which was no wonder, seeing how he had been left up in the air. I could appreciate that, because I felt the same way.

  Chapter 2

  He was waiting for me by his car which was built so long and low that when he leaned up against it he practically sat on the roof. He leaned like that and was clicking one thumbnail against his front teeth.

  “That was the real touch of class,” he said, “you walking in there with that monkey suit on.”

  “I notice how it helped.”

  “Maybe blue jeans tomorrow,” he said, which was the sort of no-account comment he sometimes made, making you wonder about his humor and his intelligence.

  “Ever hear of him before?” was the next thing he said.

  “Huh?”

  “Benotti.”

  I had, of course, heard of Benotti before, the four times he had done outside repairs and that other time, which had nothing to do with Lippit.

  “Yes,” I said. “Four jobs,” and told him about Morry having called for this outside repair man.

  “He still sound like a repair man to you?”

  “Mostly. Plus trying to place some machines of his own.”

  “I’m sure he’s new in town,” said Lippit, “though that don’t mean he hasn’t heard about me.”

  “Maybe Benotti’s just stupid.”

  “Yes,” said Lippit. “That would be nice.”

  Then he got into his long, low car, which put his head at about the level of my knees, and when he had the motor going he looked up at me and said, “Before the party, Jack, run on over to Louie’s.”

  “Which Louie’s?”

  “Delicatessen. He was due for a new stack today and for a collection. And our man couldn’t get in.” He drove off and left me standing there in my workday tuxedo.

  Louie’s restaurant was way off on the East Side, and the errand could as easily have waited till morning. Except Lippit, not having talked much at all after Stonewall, must have been preoccupied with that repair man’s dumb stunt, or with his party that evening, or maybe with his girl, Pat. That would have been my reason, though the thought was useless. I got into my car and drove over to Louie’s, where he sold matzo balls, pizza, Danish pastry, and klops. I think Louie, in that way, took care of all the minorities on that side of town.

  The restaurant was dark and two couples stood in front of the door, complaining and arguing. I couldn’t make out the language. I left the car and walked past these people when one of them looked at me and said, “Gangster-”. That lousy tux again. I had no time and went up the back stairs.

  Louie had three rooms on top where he lived alone. At first he wouldn’t open.

  “It’s Jack,” I said through the door. “Honest, Louie.”

  “How do I know?”

  “Come on, Louie. I’m in a hurry.”

  “That’s Jack,” and he opened the door.

  I didn’t recognize Louie. One ear was big and purple, one cheek was big and purple, and one eye was all gone where the purple cheek had blown up all over it. I said, “Jeesis Christ,” and closed the door.

  Louie just nodded and sat down in the plush easy chair he had in the room. There was a lot of furniture that color. Like his cheek.

  “Benotti?” I said.

  “He was all right the first time,” Louie said.

  “When you told him no.”

  “And the second time he said he was sorry I don’t understand the polite-type English he talks.”

  “And then he talked that kind,” I said, and nodded at Louie’s face.

  Louie sighed for an answer. He raised his hand to his face because he had a gesture of stroking his nose, but halfway up he decided against it.

  “This can’t go on,” he said. “All this for who’s gonna put a jukebox in my place, I ask you?”

  I walked back and forth in the room a few times, around all the furniture, because I certainly didn’t know what to say to Louie.

  When it came to a thing like Benotti, the fact was, we were hardly set up for a thing like that any more. The man had blossomed out on us just a little too fast. He’s a backlot electrician; he’s a hustler who wants to put a jukebox into a bar; then suddenly he turns into a hood who strongarms one of my customers. And all this time, neither Lippit nor I knew who Benotti was.

  “Jack,” said Louie. “I’m real sorry, but this can’t go on.”

  I nodded but his good eye wasn’t turned my way and he just heard the silence and thought I was thinking.

  “So you got something figured?” he asked me.

  I didn’t have anything figured. I said, “Have you seen a doctor, Louie?” but that wasn’t the right reply for what he w
anted to know, namely what would Lippit and I do about this and how would we help Louie.

  He asked all that, a small old man with his face beaten up, sitting there in his old furniture and me shiny and bright with a tuxedo and no answers.

  “Not to speak of,” he said, “what this kind of thing’s gonna do to your organization.”

  I stopped pacing and feeling like hell. “You didn’t have to say that, Louie. A lousy thing like that.”

  I felt angry now, which was better than feeling like hell, because mostly it makes me active. There was a phone in the room and I called up a doctor. I gave him Louie’s address and told him to hurry it up. Then I put the phone down and sat down opposite Louie.

  “Now from the beginning,” I said. “This Benotti comes in, gets a no answer, then beats you.”

  “Not that fast. First he told the others they should mess up my place.”

  “Others?”

  “Three others. They and Benotti come in at the slack time, which is ten in the morning. They lock the door and pull the blind down that says Closed, and then like I said.”

  I thought about the three others and wondered whether that would change the picture again.

  “These three,” I said to Louie. “Did you know any of them?”

  “I have never, and I hope I will never…”

  “All right.” Then I wondered how to put it. “Did they-I mean speaking off-hand-did they look like, let’s say, electricians?”

  Louie’s good eye looked at me for a moment and then closed. “I don’t know what electricians look like, Jack, but these didn’t look like no electricians.”

  “Like what, then?”

  “One stunk from liquor,” said Louie, “one stunk from horses…”

  “Horses?”

  “Horses. And the other-you should pardon the expression-to me he just stunk.”

  They had broken some glass in the counter, twisted legs off the tables, had stolen a salami each. And the one who “just stunk” had mixed all the herring salad together with antipasto and two jars of British preserves.

  “How would you know what a horse smells like?” I asked Louie.

  “Because I was born in Russia. And at the time I was born in Russia…”

  “All right, Louie,” and I kept wondering what there was in all this that could add to the picture. Benotti himself, was all I could think. I’d have to go see him.

  “Benotti beat you, Louie?”

  “Yes. Slow. He wasn’t mad.”

  “And the others, wrecking the place?”

  “They weren’t mad either.”

  “Maybe I should look at the place downstairs. Maybe they dropped something.”

  “No. I looked. Just the newspaper.”

  “What?”

  “One had the Herald in his pocket. There was something, at first, about the newspaper. Should they use the newspaper, one of them said, and kept rolling it up, if you get the picture…”

  “I do.”

  “But Benotti said nix, after thinking about it, and he said to let it show because it makes a better example.”

  Then the doctor came. He took one look at Louie and told me to boil water. I put the water on, in the nook where Louie did his cooking, and I got the picture much more clearly now, of Benotti and his three men. Not a bum among them, because they were much too well-trained. They wrecked the place with method, and they knew about the trick with the rolled paper, how you can beat up a man with the paper so it hurts like hell but no marks left to show for it. Just the pain. Who they were I did not know, but I knew what they were. They knew their way and they were hoods.

  Louie was making small sounds while the doctor fingered him, and I left. It was time for Benotti.

  Chapter 3

  Benotti’s place of work had a listed number but nothing was listed for his home. I knew where he rented space for his shop-in the building of Hough amp; Daly, Electric Supply. That outfit was big, and we dealt with them, and I even knew the night watchman. I drove down to Hough amp; Daly, all shut down for the day. Benotti’s place, a big room off the loading ramp, was also shut tight. I had a two-minute chat about nothing with the old man who watched the plant and the offices, then I left with Benotti’s address.

  I went back to the east side. I had to slow down when I got to the neighborhood because it was a warm night and there were great bundles of children all over the street I gave up and parked halfway down the block and walked the rest of it.

  All the frame houses were alike. Two stories, porch in front, lawn in front of that, sprinkler going. Or a man in shirt sleeves doing the watering. The house I wanted had nobody in front but I could see the light on the back porch and went there.

  They were all in the kitchen, four kids, a fat wife, and Benotti in his undershirt The shirt looked like a joke. The serious part was all the muscle. He had no neck because of the muscles, and his arms showed no bones on account of the muscles. In a suit he might have looked short and fat, but this way I knew better. Nevertheless, I knocked on the screen door.

  Benotti got up from the table and came over to see who it was. He peered through the screen like something at the zoo.

  “Mister Benotti?” I said. “I’m Jack St. Louis.”

  We had never met but he knew who I was. I don’t know how much he knew, but I did not approve of his reaction because he looked at me through the screen and started to laugh. Hahaha, he went and came out on the porch.

  “Good evening,” I said.

  Benotti turned back to the door and told his kids to stay at the table and to his wife he said that he’d be right back in. No. She needn’t put the food back in the oven.

  “Wellsir,” he said to me. “Jack St. Louis,” and looked me all up and down. “You all dressed for the funeral?”

  I had thought, on the way over and while cooling off from that last sight of Louie, maybe I’ll just talk to the man, clever extraction of news, background, information. Talk to him and-who knows-maybe we’ll get along. But with his looks and his attitude, I had a hard time with that plan. I waited till he was done laughing again and then I said, “No. I came to talk to you in polite English.”

  “He talks fancy, like an actor. May I have your autograph?”

  “All right.”

  It is a matter of chemistry in the nerves that the other guy can never react fast enough to get out of the way, if you don’t telegraph. I never do. So I gave him my autograph willynilly, very anxious for speed, because I wanted to get two in while the getting was good.

  He went ratatat on the clapboard behind him with the back of his head and then he said, fairly loud, “Eat your supper in there! I’ll be right in.”

  He was just warning those kids in the kitchen to mind their old man. To me he said, “All right, you.”

  I got while the getting was good. I got right back to the porch railing because I don’t like to give a man an advantage, especially if I just hit a man and nothing happens. I got out of the way of his short swing for fear it might break something inside of me, and the next move, if he wanted me, would have to be his.

  He came as expected and this time I let him do all the work. He ran into my fist. I thought my wrist would snap. I jumped over the railing. He jumped over the railing.

  I was getting worried by now and feeling doubtful, which is the worst state of all. None of the clean tricks had worked, and next he would ruin me.

  When he came down I fixed it so he would land on one foot. While he was busy with balance I tried for his face again but with the edge of the hand this time and none of those Queensberry locations. When he ducked away from that he ducked into my knee with a sound like a watermelon. This snapped him back up and when that angle was right I whipped across with one elbow. Benotti said, “Gaa,” or something.

  We were both breathing hard but Benotti was down. We had pretty well torn up the flowerbed. He was down and I was up but I couldn’t think of a single damn thing which would sound significant. “Stay away from Louie,” I s
aid, and walked off.

  The kids and the mamma were in the kitchen. They were eating, like the old man had told them.

  Chapter 4

  I was over an hour late when I got to Lippit’s apartment and not much to show for it. I had managed to learn nothing new since being with Louie, except how Benotti looked through a screen door and then how he looked on the flowerbed. And that he and I were not apt to be friends. Also, I had lost a button on the front of my jacket.

  I rang the bell and hoped that the party was fine, busy and not too attentive. Pat opened the door and I could hear this was a very quiet party. The first thing everybody would notice, I had lost a button.

  “Hi, Jack,” she said. “You’re late.”

  “Yes. Is everybody…”

  “You lost a button.”

  “All right.”

  “Aren’t you coming in?”

  She left the door open for me and walked through the little anteroom holding one arm bent on her back and her hand to the top of her zipper. The zipper ran up her midline but not very high up so as to show more of the girl. Similarly, in front. It wasn’t a formal, because her pretty legs showed, but it was one of those five to ten numbers, to cover cocktails, dinner and whatever you do at ten in the evening.

  “You’ve got to help me with my zipper,” she said and walked on ahead into the front room.

  “What kind of a party-” but she didn’t hear me, having passed through the door.

  It was a very quiet party. When I was through the door I saw that there wasn’t any party. Just Patty and me.

  “Aren’t you coming in?” she said again.

  “Am I early or late?”

  “You’ve got to help me with my zipper.”

  “In other words, I’m that early.”

  “Late. They’re gone.”

  “What kind of a-”

  “Jack. For heaven’s sake, I can’t stand here and hold this thing forever.”

  I closed the door, leaned up against it for an effective moment, and smiled at Pat She didn’t smile back but she looked good just the same. She was holding the dress front and rear but that didn’t matter too much because Pat had a figure you look at, and you try to discount what she’s wearing.