Murder Me for Nickels (11 page)

“Gone already? I didn’t give no orders for them guys to….”

“I was there,” I explained. “And the big one who was there—you know whom I mean?”

“I know that son of a bitch.”

“He got bored sitting around and he and his buddies went home. I was there when it happened.”

“Why in hell didn’t you stop them?” Folsom wanted to know.

“They were your men, Folsom.”

“Not any more they ain’t! They’re fired!”

I nodded, to show how I bowed to his verdict.

“You run down to the union hall,” Folsom yelled at his last lieutenant, “and if any of those creeps should show up there, you tell them what I said.”

“What,” said the man. “You said what?”

“They’re through! The whole pack of ‘em!”

He left, which was three down and none to go, when it came to the goons, but one to go when it came to trouble.

The jukebox played the last of the quarter, a little tune of goop and sentiment.

I walked up to the counter and Folsom did, too. He felt fine. He still had an audience.

“I think what I’ll do,” he said, “I’ll make this sucker here sign up for two machines.”

The young man looked from Folsom to me and then back again. Then he looked away. There was sweat on his forehead. I could see that he wished he did not have the baby right then. He stroked the baby’s back and didn’t say anything.

“Before Folsom here,” I said to the young man, “comes up with more, I want you to know, Herbie, that he’s strictly on his own.”

“That’s right,” said Folsom. “I’m handling this.”

“And if you want me to hold that baby a minute,” I said to the young man, “that would be fine, too.”

“Hold the baby?” said Herb.

“You mean you want him to sign something right away?” said Folsom.

“If he wants.”

Herbie had stopped patting the baby and his mouth was a little bit open.

“Like, maybe he doesn’t like your nose,” I said to Folsom, “and that would be a fine place for a signature. Or the rear end, something in big block letters printed there, maybe he’d like to leave his print there. Huh, Herbie?”

Herbie got it by now. He was grinning and rocking the baby again. Folsom, however, did not want to believe what he heard.

“Just a minute, just a minute,” he said.

“No,” Herbie told him. “Get out. And now.”

“Who’s running this!” Folsom yelled.

I said, “Not you, Folsom.”

“What?”

“You’re through.”

“You realize what you’re doing?” he said with a last snatch at the powerful dream he’d been having. “You’re not backing me up!”

“Turn around and I will, Folsom.”

He stepped back and looked mean as hell in his leather jacket.

“You been wanting to do this a while now, haven’t you, St. Louis?”

“That’s right.”

“You can’t stand me, can you?”

“Not since I first laid eyes on you, Folsom.”

“Izzatso?”

“It was fate.”

“I’m getting too big for you, huh?”

“No. I dislike you for no reason at all.”

Which was almost true. I like my dislikes and I don’t fool with them by asking where they might have come from.

“You know what I’m going to do?” said Folsom. “I’m going to let you just talk, St. Louis. Just talk, because that’s all it is.”

“Get out.”

“I’m going to walk out of here and keep handling this my way.”

“I’m going to take that leather jacket away from you, Folsom, and then nobody’s going to recognize you.”

“You’re asking for trouble!”

“You sent them away, don’t you remember? The whole zoo.”

He remembered. He worked his face and then he meant to walk out.

“I’m seeing Lippit,” he said.

“That’s what happened to the big one,” I said, “the one you just fired. He talked to Lippit Ask him about it.”

“You’re nuts—”

“City dog pound,” I said. “Try there. They’re using what’s left for the evening feeding.”

Folsom made for the door as if he meant to pay that visit.

“Just a minute.”

I walked after him and he stopped. He was boiling and not really worried about me, because all I did was talk. And I had my hands in my pockets. The juke box sighed the end of that thing it had been playing. It clicked a little and racked the record away.

“Folsom,” I said, “you didn’t pay for the background music.”

“Huh?”

“Four bits, Folsom. In the kitty.”

For no answer, after maybe a second, he started to turn for the door. Then he jerked and stopped. I had my heel on his foot.

“Four bits, Folsom.”

I’m sure he wanted to hit me. At least he was thinking about it. I didn’t move my heel but hefted some weight on top of it and what that does to the nervous system is like an electric blue charge going all up and down.

“And all this suffering for a quarter,” I said to him. I also took my hands out of my pockets.

He took out a quarter. I took my heel off his foot and let him put the coin on the counter.

When he limped out he didn’t say a word. End of the Folsom service. But if there is anything that makes me uneasy, it’s a coward who doesn’t talk.

Chapter 10

I
swarmed after that, all over the neighborhood, trying to spread trust and cheer. Folsom was gone, Benotti didn’t show, and the fever, so to speak, was going out of the thing. I ran into Lippit after a while who was in a high fine humor, and even the cop appointment for the afternoon didn’t worry him. He was, after all, running a legitimate business, and if the police wished to keep an eye on the neighborhood, that was so much for the better. Benotti would be the troublemaker, not he, and as for the Folsom menace, good riddance.

“I am happy,” he said, “about everything.”

“I’m tired.”

“And that little eight o’clock raid in the morning,” he said, “masterful.”

I had mixed feelings about that in particular and felt that the whole thing had been much too frantic to be called masterful.

“Like a well-planted leak,” said Lippit. “Made Benotti pull back all over.”

“I would like to go home and get some sleep, Walter.”

“Calls for a party,” he said. “Last one was a dud anyway.”

Then he said I looked like hell and why didn’t I go home and get some sleep.

“You’ll see the captain in the afternoon?”

“I’ll speak to the captain,” he said.

“You’ll keep an eye out for Folsom, next twenty-four hours?”

“Don’t worry. It’s my union.”

“You’ll keep checking Benotti doesn’t wake up all of a sudden?”

“Christ, you’re nervous,” and he told me to beat it “But show at ten this evening,” he said. “Little party.”

“I’m not wearing a tux again.”

“Beat it,” and I did.

What kept me from feeling as untroubled as Lippit was the fact that I knew more than Lippit.

Or course there had been a leak. Except there had been a leak before the little eight-in-the-morning affair.

I drove a ways toward home, then stopped at a drug store. I phoned Blue Beat Recording and asked for Conrad. He took a while and I wondered why I hadn’t called from home, from my bed. At least I could have been lying down.

“Blue Beat Recording,” he said.

“I know. This is Jack.”

“I know.”

“You got the mixer, Conrad?”

“Yes. This morning. But who were those guys. Jeeze, what guys!”

“Reason I’m calling, Conrad, to let you know there wasn’t a soul at that Benotti place this morning. Not a soul, you understand.”

“I understand.”

“I thought you would. What all did you tell Frank, when you called him?”

“I just tried to tell him to get our mixer out of there, but you know how it is, he wanted to know why, and how come this call at four in the morning and….”

“You mean he wasn’t a, l, o, n, e, either?”

“What was that?”

“Never mind. What did you tell him?”

“Well, you know. Just a hint, and that I couldn’t tell him more.”

“Must have been a fat hint. Obese, even.”

“Anyway, we got the machine. What else is there?”

“Nothing, I hope. Like, for instance, in that hintful conversation you had, you didn’t just happen to drop my name, did you?”

“Of course not, Jack. You sound tired, Jack, you know that?”

“Yes. I know that. I just called to be sure I can sleep well.”

“Go ahead.”

I said good-bye and was about to hang up when he said to hold on a minute, one more thing.

“Speaking of names, there was somebody wanted to know your name.”

“What’s this, what’s this?”

“You sound tired, Jack. All I….”

“I know I’m tired but I don’t know what you’re talking about. What was all this?”

“I said: Speaking of names—like when you asked me did I tell him your name—”

“The point, Conrad. Please.”

“Somebody called up to ask what your name was. This girl.”

“
What
girl?”

“There’s this girl works at Hough and Daly, this little one—I mean not so little, if you know what I mean, but short—anyway, you know whom I mean?”

“Yes, Conrad, I know whom you mean. This girl works at Hough and Daly, this little one. What else?”

“She said, what about this guy who came in the morning to pick up that mixer, this guy—and she kind of described you—very friendly description….”

“I want to go to bed, Conrad.”

“And she says this guy says he’s an agent and talent promoter and if it was true.”

“And then you said, Conrad? What did you say, Conrad?”

‘“No,’ I said. ‘No.’”

“Ohmyeverlovingsaintedname.”

“What?”

“That’s all there was to the conversation?”

“Then she said, ‘Well, of all the—.’Just like that. Well, of all the, and then she hung up.”

I exhaled a long malediction and then hung up, too. Now she figured I had been lying. Now she might wonder who I was. She might wonder enough to ask Franky, maybe, the guy who had worked on the mixer, or just enough to talk about it in general: the queer thing that had happened to her in the morning when this guy came over and pretended he was somebody else, and how come at the same time the Benotti shop got messed up while this no-good pretender took her out for coffee.

By far the neatest thing would be if she thought that I was a talent promoter. I would have liked that best. I know she would have.

The Hough and Daly ramp was busy this time of the afternoon. I pulled my car up to the platform, got an argument from a foreman, said something to him which I don’t remember, because the foremost thing in my mind was get in and get out and get a few hours’ sleep.

I looked through the window into the office and she was there doing work on an adding machine. She had a piece of a doughnut in her mouth and a coffee cup in one hand. With the other one she was working the machine. Very busy. She never looked up. There was a fan over her desk which made her short hair jump and flutter and which flattened her blouse up against her front. But flat isn’t really the word.

She looked up, saw me, and bit into her doughnut. Then she got up and came to the window.

“Well, of all the!” she said.

I said, “Hello, honey,” and smiled a warm, tired smile, only half of which was a fake.

“Don’t you honey me, you—you promoter.”

“But I don’t know your name. I came back because I didn’t have a chance to ask you this morning.”

“A lot of strange things going on here this morning,” she said.

“And when you called the office you didn’t leave your name, either.”

That, of course, gave her pause. She said, “Now I don’t know how much fake you are and how much promoter. If there is a difference.”

“There’s this fool working at the office, at the recording place, and when you called up….”

“I’m just wondering who’s the fool around here.”

“Not you, honey.”

“Doris.”

“Not you, Doris.”

“Then why am I talking to you?”

“To get the true slant on everything, Doris.”

“And you have that.”

“As I will show you.”

“And what’s in it for you, promoter?”

“Your talent. And call me Jack.”

“I knew it would be. Or John. Something like that.”

“So I’d like to look into this, Doris. For instance, this evening.”

“Into what?”

“Your talent.”

“No, John.”

“Jack.”

“No, Jack.”

“Just to talk about talent.”

“You mean singing.”

“That’s right. Everything like that.”

“No. Not everything.”

“All right You want to limit yourself, all right.”

“My god. You’re compliant.”

“Just tired.”

“Do you often get tired like this, Jack?”

“Just afternoons. Then, comes evening time, and I’m a new man, mostly.”

“All right,” she said. “We’ll see. We’ll see what we’ll talk about.”

I said, “All right, we’ll see what we’ll talk about.” And for a fact I couldn’t think of something more definite. I was that tired.

I met her at nine that evening in a downtown bar and how tired I must have been to have left the topic so all up in the air. She had a dress on which did nothing to interfere with the girl underneath, and the girl underneath knew all this very well. When she saw me she smiled and the message was, maybe we’ll share the knowledge. I got up on the stool next to her and she said, “Hi, promoter.”

Her tone was an arm’s length tone of voice. Business was on.

I gave her hand a squeeze, sniffed at the glass she was holding. That was all business, too. Scotch and ice.

“Let’s sit in a booth,” I said.

“You can let go of my hand. No.”

“Scotch and ice,” I told the bartender.

She swiveled around a little, so we would face each other, and we composed smiles for each to see. What they looked like, I think, was friendly joy. What it covered in her case I wasn’t sure. I think it meant, caution, speed traps.

“You have the first requisite,” I told her. “The first requisite for a performer. You arouse interest, Doris.”

“You too, Jack.”

“Why, how nice. You want to sit in a booth?”

“No. For instance, what was going on this morning, at the Benotti place?”