Murder Me for Nickels Page 6

  She nodded, barely looking up, and called, “Just a minute.” I could hear that through the window. Then she walked out of the office and came around to the double door. She clanked it and rattled it from the other side and then had it open.

  “I was wondering when you’d… Oh,” she said.

  “Good morning. I’m a little bit in a hurry, but if…”

  “I thought you were one of the fellows next door. From next door, I mean. With the coffee.”

  “No. As a matter of fact, there’s nobody next door, which is the…”

  “They always make the coffee over there,” she said again. She looked very disappointed.

  “There’s a little mix-up this morning. Nobody showed up yet and I need a little favor.”

  She tilted her head and looked suspicious. “Like what?”

  “This thing here,” I said, and nodded at the mixer on the platform. “I’d like it moved.”

  “You want me for that? ”

  It was five to eight.

  “It looks bigger than both of us,” she said.

  “What I mean is, you just open this door some more and I move it myself. In there, where you are.”

  “Why?”

  She didn’t open the door any further. I wasn’t the man with the coffee; I wasn’t anyone she knew. I heard a car at the end of the block, motor whining fast. I now talked at the same rate.

  “Look, the thing, the machine, it actually…”

  “It’s a mixer,” she said.

  “Yes, and it actually belongs next door, the Benotti place, but nobody is there and by some mistake or other the thing-mixer, got left …”

  “Mix-up.”

  “Yes. Please, don’t interrupt What I’m trying to mix you-eh, tell you…”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m the man who’s supposed to, who’s trying to just try and get that machine over there to over here, there, where you stand, and if you’ll just…”

  “You sound like that car out there.”

  The car was still whining in low and now that it was very much closer it slowed. I looked out to the street and wiped my hand across my face, but I wasn’t sweating. I never sweat. I just start shaking.

  There was a woman behind the wheel and when she had passed the loading entrance I could hear her turn the corner. It was about three minutes to eight.

  “Women drivers,” I said.

  “Makes you nervous?”

  “No.”

  “I could have sworn you were nervous,” she said.

  “Look, honey,” I said.

  “Do we know each other?”

  “No, but I feel that…”

  “Then don’t call me honey.”

  I took a deep breath, coughed slowly, and then smiled at her again. This was a simple smile, just harmless warmth.

  “That mixer belongs to Blue Beat Studios. I…”

  “I know.”

  “I’m connected with Blue Beat because I hustle talent for them.”

  “Aha,” she said, and nodded her head.

  “And I’ve got a session arranged, you know what a session is-?”

  “You’re a talent scout and I’m just the thing you’ve been looking for, and if I’d let you handle me…”

  “I don’t want to handle you!”

  “You don’t?”

  “Sweetsufferingsuffering, all I want is just for you to open up there, open up that gate wide so I can move, push I mean, that mixer…”

  “Well,” she said. “What now?”

  There was this panel truck. It went by the entrance, it stopped with the tailgate still showing, it went in reverse and backed around into the loading space and up to the ramp.

  “Eight o’clock,” she said. “We’ve got nothing to go out at eight this morning.”

  The canvas flaps opened in back and one, two, three, lump-muscled apes jumped out. Then two more from the cab, all lump-muscled and goonish.

  My own army counted five, but this wasn’t it. This was the enemy.

  “Good morning,” said the girl from Hough and Daly. “I was just saying, we have nothing for you this morning.”

  “It isn’t feeding time yet,” would have made much more sense. The three who had come over the tail gate went straight for the door where the girl was standing, but the bald ape who had come out of the cab yelled at them that they had the wrong door. “This way, idiots,” he yelled. “This way.”

  They all ran to the Benotti door and found that it was closed.

  “Nuts,” said one of them. “They been and gone.”

  “Idiot,” said the bald ape, “would they lock the door after theirselves?”

  This had all taken a minute or two and I kept looking out to the street where my own natives were supposed to show up. They were supposed to show up there and wait for my signal.

  Right then they might have showed up and I would never have known it. All the five apes, confused and left high and dry by the puzzle of that locked door, turned my way and brightened. This would be much simpler. This is one and we are five; something like that showed on their faces.

  I had an impulse to jump past the girl and slam the door shut behind me, but then they might bust down the door, and then I would have to explain to the girl and how would it look to her-any number of giddy reasons came to me and while none of them were any good I did the right thing, or the thing I had come for. I walked up to the mixer, leaned my hand on the top, and I even drummed up and down with one finger. That was as brave as I could get for the moment, that thing with the finger.

  “Get your hands offn that!” said the bald ape.

  “Yeah!” said one of the others.

  “Watch it,” I told them. “This thing stays intact.”

  “What he say?”

  “Idiot. He means it don’t get destructed.” They all stopped except for the bald ape. He came up to me, looked at the mixer, at my hand, at my face. “We got instructions,” he said. “Get your hands offn that because nothing around here gets destructed. We’re here to see to that.”

  I took my hand off and held it out to him. “Man,” I told him. “Am I glad you came.”

  He said, “Huh?” and didn’t take my hand, which was just as well, and then he didn’t know what else to say.

  It must have been about five after eight. I was now worried my army would show.

  “They’ve come and gone,” I said, “and am I glad you showed.”

  “Come and gone?”

  “Those goons. You know. They wanted to destructed everything here.”

  “Destroyed, you mean.” Then he folded his arms and looked me up and down. “Who are you?”

  “Benotti sent me. It almost didn’t work, because here they were and you weren’t here, and the reason he sent me was to let you know that this thing here, this mixer, this thing in particular should come to no harm.”

  “Oh yeah?” said one of them.

  The bald ape turned a little and said, “Quiet, idiot.” Then he turned back to me. “How come they come and went and nothing’s busted?”

  That’s when I saw one of my own stick his head around the brick wall and look into the loading space, at the ramp, and at me. Then he ducked away.

  He was waiting behind the wall, on the street, for the signal I was supposed to whistle; he was waiting for the rest of them to come up close and then they would rush us; he was talking it over with them, how best to save me. I myself was going out of my mind.

  “Nothing’s busted,” I started without knowing how to finish the sentence, “because I’m a Lippit man. What I mean…”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s like this,” I said slowly, as much to make him understand as to understand it myself. “Before you came, the Lippit goons came. And I saw this. I was here. So I fooled them into beating it out of here, the new word from Lippit, I told them, was to save their strength. I said this to them, and they thought I’d come straight from Lippit.”

  “I don’t get it. I don�
�t get it why Lippit should switch that way.”

  “Because the place was deserted when they came and that wasn’t part of the plan. The Lippit plan, you know, was blood, broken bones, fisticuffs.”

  “Fisticuffs?”

  “Quiet, idiot.” Then he looked at me again. “Why should I believe you?”

  “What, you need proof?”

  “Yeah. That. Because I don’t see nothing touched here or anything like that. Like nobody been here.”

  “ That’s the proof, friend,” and to flatten his reasoning completely, I called the girl over and said, “Tell him. There hasn’t been any trouble here, has there?”

  “Trouble?” she said.

  “There you are!” and I smiled at the bald one.

  I took a deep breath, finally, because progress had not been bad. The bald one thought I was a messenger from Benotti, the girl thought I was somebody with Blue Beat, and I thought that if my own animals would stay out of the way another few minutes, I could swing the rest. Namely, first get the mixer out, and the Benotti men, and then let my apes do the job they had come for.

  “Now the thing about this mixer,” I started, when the girl said, “This is the strangest thing,” and she looked past all of us.

  We all reacted to the unknown in different ways. I giggled, the bald ape did nothing, and the girl kept looking out to the street.

  “Somebody keeps looking around the corner,” she said. We all looked out to the street Nobody showed there for the moment but I was going further out of my mind.

  “Beany,” said the bald one. “Go out there and see who it is.”

  Beany went out there and we did not see him any more.

  But the bald one had meanwhile had time to think.

  “So you ain’t a Lippit man,” he said, “and you ain’t no Benotti man, either. Because there’s that few of us, and I should know you.”

  “Of course not,” said the girl. “He’s from Blue Beat.”

  “Blue which?” he said, as if three factors in all this were too much for his comprehension.

  They were just about that for me, more so every minute, and I talked fast.

  “This machine goes to Blue Beat. It’s got repairs done to it in Benotti’s shop and now it’s been pushed out here so it won’t come to any harm should the Lippit goons come. Because the first order on Benotti’s list is always, let the customer come to no harm. Right? And that is why…”

  “Where’s Beany?” somebody asked.

  “Never mind that idiot,” said the bald one.

  “Yes,” said the girl. “Here’s the tag,” and she looked at the tag which hung on the mixer. “Blue Beat is written on it.”

  The bald one unfolded his arms, linked his fingers, and cracked them. The sound was terrible. He looked at me all the time.

  “What we better do,” he said, “I think I know what we better do.”

  Meanwhile one of my crew was also looking around the corner.

  “What we better do is take this machine straight down to that whats-thename.”

  “Blue Beat Recording thirty-four ten Duncan Avenue and you take the freight elevator in back gently all the way and don’t bump it!”

  I got that out very fast and afterwards I didn’t dare say another word for fear I might wake up and find it was yesterday, for example, and I would have to go through all this again.

  When my army showed there were only three. The other two, and the enemy who was called Beany, were at that point tactically useless. But the three who were left did a nice and strategic job on the Benotti supply dump. There was hardly any noise and there was minimal interference. The girl from next door came around once, wondering if Franky had showed with the coffee, but I intercepted her at the door and walked her back to her own end of the line. I did this by promising her a fine cup of coffee. In that way she took her coffee break pretty early but then, she said, she had never been with a real talent promoter before.

  “Is it difficult work?” she asked.

  “Oh no. Easy.”

  “And you like it.”

  “Oh yes. Very.”

  “I sing, you know.”

  “Oh.”

  “And I look good, don’t you think? I mean, that’s important.”

  “Yes. But I don’t handle that kind of talent What I mean is, a voice on a record…”

  I didn’t get any further because she whammed me across the left cheek; it was, in a manner of speaking, the only stinging defeat of the morning’s action.

  Chapter 8

  When we were done I retired my army, disbursed mustering-out pay plus bonus of one bottle of beer, and called up Walter Lippit. Pat answered and the first thing she said was, “No.”

  “I haven’t even asked…”

  “You were going to ask if Walter is here and the answer is no.”

  “Maybe I was going to ask…”

  “Anything else, the answer is no, too,” and she hung up.

  I called up the club where he had that room and somebody answered to tell me Mister Lippit was in the steam room. That’s when I felt that the rest of the operations must be going all right.

  It was a nice forenoon with bright sun and a breeze to keep the heat down, at least till noontime. I put the top down on the car and drove to the club.

  There were athletes even at that hour. I could hear them make sports noises in the gym and that health odor of theirs came as far as the lobby.

  “Where is Mister Lippit at the moment?” I asked at the desk.

  “He maintains a room on…”

  I nodded and went up there but Lippit wasn’t in the room. There was a kid at the table, by the name of Davy, and he was supposed to hold down the phone. There hadn’t been any phoning he said, and Lippit was still in the steam room, or at the next stage, he said, which he thought might be the masseur.

  “You mean nobody’s checked in from the West Side or anything?”

  “There haven’t been any calls,” said Davy. “But I’ve called the West Side every hour, the way Mister Lippit said.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing.” The kid smiled politely but he was clearly impatient. He was rolling and unrolling a magazine about how to do it yourself-I couldn’t tell what-and I was interrupting him.

  “Did you reach Folsom?”

  “No. He’s not at the number I got. He’s out running things.”

  Good commander, that Folsom.

  “And he hasn’t called in either?”

  “No, Mister St. Louis.”

  Requiring no supervision, that Commander Folsom.

  I went downstairs and checked around for Lippit, but he was still sweating himself in the steam room. So I left.

  Perhaps it was the clear, pretty morning, but there seemed to be real peace on the West Side. Not that I had expected a war, but some war nerves, maybe. At least that. But Morry, in the bowling alley, was toting up last night’s receipts, and he was happy. Louie, who had a very clean looking patch on one side of his nose, was also happy, because he felt secure and protected. Then I went to a couple of bars, but bars always look peaceful in the forenoon. There were just the few who drink before ten in the morning, but they never talk and are silent types. There was peace. Dead, maybe, but peace.

  I went to the bar on Liberty and Alder where Folsom had one of the goon squads waiting. I didn’t see them at first because the place was so dark. There was the long bar, with one morning drinker and the bartender was doing a crossword puzzle. And there was a gray cat. She sat on top of the jukebox and her eyes were closed. Suddenly she gave a screech like a woman and flew off the machine. Somebody laughed. They were sitting behind the jukebox, at a round table, playing cards. But without much interest. One of them was laughing.

  The bartender came over with the cat on his arm. The cat was clawed into his shoulder as if she were afraid of the height.

  “Listen,” said the bartender. “Who done that?”

  The cat smelled a little bit of burnt fur and the bartende
r knew very well who had done that But he was short and thin and the one who was laughing was big and fat.

  “Phew,” he said, “what a stinker,” and threw his cigarette on the floor.

  It hit me on the shoe and I stepped back a little. Then I stepped on the cigarette and rubbed it out.

  “They been bothering you?” I said to the bartender.

  He knew me and didn’t know what to say. He knew that those punks and I worked for the same outfit, but he felt different about them and me.

  “It’s just the cat here, Mister St. Louis. They keep bothering the cat.”

  “We’re here to see nothing happens to jukeboxes,” said the big one, “and cats sitting on top of jukeboxes is not allowed. Right, fellers?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” they said, or something like that.

  “She just sits there,” said the bartender. “The light from underneath keeps her warm and she likes that.”

  “Not allowed,” said the big one.

  “Put the cat back up there,” I told the bartender.

  He did it and nobody said anything while this went on. There wasn’t any noise at all except for the slow scrape of the chair when the big one got up. He leaned one arm on the jukebox and looked at me.

  “So you’re that feller with the name,” he said. “New Orleans, wasn’t it?”

  I didn’t have to answer because he filled the space right after that crack with a long, phlegmy laugh. After a while it even sounded stupid to him and he let it die down. Then he talked as if he had never laughed before in his life.

  “Folsom’s been telling me about you, New Orleans.”

  “St Louis. And now I’m going to tell you about me.” I came just a little closer to make it more personal. “Folsom is running you and the rest of the apes, but the orders come from me. You sit down and hold still. You wait till you hear from Folsom before practicing your art and in the meantime no extracurricular activities. And leave that cat alone.”

  He looked at me and then at his buddies and I think he didn’t answer anything right away because he wasn’t sure of all the words I had used.

  Then he said, “You come all the way down here to tell me about that cat?”

  He hit the ridiculous part of the conversation right on the head and I didn’t feel very impressive. Which was no trick anyway. I’m just built average but he wasn’t. I felt I should talk about something else.