Peter Rabe - Murder Me for Nickels

“I’m sorry. How about coming out now, Walter.”

“Can’t do that.”

“Listen. You’re just as winded now as you expect to be after all those licks…”

“Laps.”

“All right All right!”

Then came the turn again. The two swimmers were still standing at that end of the pool and they were watching me. One of them held a sock.

“You’re pacing him too fast,” said one of them. “That’s not good for him, his age.”

“You dropped this,” said the other one. He draped the sock over one of my fingers somewhere and then it was Lippit’s turn again.

“Okay?”

“Very smart.”

“What those guys say, something about my turns?”

“They think you should stop swimming. They think you’re pacing me too fast.”

“Very smart. But I can’t laugh now. I’ll swallow water.”

I quickly tried to think of a joke, a real killer of a joke, but nothing came to me. And my fingers felt as if they had been doing all the walking.

“You swim, Jack?”

“Some. Mostly summers.”

“That’s not enough, Jack. You need exercise.”

“I get that. I really do, Walter.”

There was more health talk from him and then no talk at all, this being the last lap. He had to concentrate and I tried not to concentrate on anything at all, hoping for sheer blankness to relax me. This time there was no smart turn at the end of the lap, but a wild thrashing for ultimate speed and then a great slap of the hands on the tiles. Lippit stood up in the water and breathed like a pump going. The two swimmers were still standing there.

“You made it,” said one of them.

“Made it? What in hell do you mean, made it?” said Lippit.

“We mean him there,” said one of the swimmers and he nodded at me. “We had this bet on he’d let go the clomp.”

But Lippit was still offended. He climbed out of the pool and huffed and puffed a few times. Then he and I walked to the door.

“Who’s he think he’s kidding with that accent,” said Lippit. “Like he was some kind of a lord or something?” He snorted water. “What were you clamping, anyway?”

“I was clamping clomps.”

Lippit just gave me a look and then one of the swimmers caught up with us. He was holding a sock. I said, “Thank you,” and, “just hang it on the same place,” and then we went into the locker room. While Lippit took a shower I sat on a bench and unbent my fingers. When he came back and got dressed I was well enough to dry my feet.

“Your toes look all right now,” he said.

“Yes. I was going to ask you about that.”

“But what’s the matter with your fingers?”

I said, “Walter. I wouldn’t worry about that. It’s probably just the angle, you know? I mean it isn’t like having the wrong toes or too many feet or something like that, right?”

“Christ. You are huffy today.”

“I just don’t want any more talk about it. Like I’m a freak.”

I bent down for my things and it now turned out I had two shoes, one clomp, and three socks.

Lippit saw this but said nothing. He turned away and coughed into his towel the way anyone might who’d been swimming more than was good for his age.

We sat in that room over the swimming pool and sent the kid out to bring us some lunch. There had been one call from Folsom. He had called to say he was checking around and that he had everything under control. And there had been no action. Lippit and I sat at the table and I smoked a cigarette. He was tapping his pencil.

“By the clock,” he said, “there should have been something by now.”

“It’s maybe because Folsom scared everyone off. Or because you ripped Benotti’s phone out of his wall.”

Lippit didn’t appreciate that humor and just gave me a look.

“Did you check Chicago?” I said.

“Yes. I checked Chicago. They want my racket and sent Benotti.”

“You still think he’s an idiot?”

“No. He’s not an idiot, but this is not Chicago. I got the organization here and the bums I’m using for strong arm have union zeal. Benotti’s bums are just bums off the street.”

“That’s not likely.”

“He brought along four or five, to draw less attention, and the rest he picked out of the local gutter. That can’t match us, you know, Benotti or no Benotti.”

“And he’s who?”

“Out of retirement, so they’d have somebody down here I wouldn’t know. As if I knew gangsters or something,” he said.

“It sounds lame, Walter, to think they sent him down so you wouldn’t recognize him. Who was he?”

“I never knew him,” said Lippit. “And he was in slot machines someplace, a place I don’t even know.”

“You know how he set that up, before he retired?”

“I should give a damn,” he said.

“Maybe we should give a damn. Maybe he came down here while you didn’t know him and then when we got on to him, like now, it’s already too late. He’s already made his set-up and doesn’t care any more.”

“Like what? Pushing my drivers around?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. And I do think that just muscle isn’t enough whether you use it or he. And that maybe Benotti is no idiot and has more plans than that.”

The kid came back with a tray of coffee, ham on rye, and pickles to go with it. Lippit started eating and never took up what I had been saying. After years of a free ride with this business, maybe he was too confident and worse than retired. When we talked again he was only interested in what went on today.

“How did yours go this morning. Smooth?”

“Yes,” I said. “Very.”

“Anybody get hurt?”

“One of theirs, two of ours, but just minor.”

“And the rest?”

“What do you mean the rest? Like are they dead?”

“You didn’t have much sleep last night, I bet. How much sleep did you have, Jack?”

“None.”

I ate and he ate and then he said, “Of course they told Benotti afterwards, about what had happened, and that explains it.”

“Wouldn’t you think Benotti would hit right back when he heard about his stuff getting all busted?”

“Anyway, he didn’t,” said Lippit. “So much the better.”

I drank coffee and had another cigarette.

“Did you hear anything I said at the pool?”

“I think you said ‘very smart’ most of the time.”

“And I mentioned about Folsom’s crew, you remember?”

“You don’t like Folsom, do you.”

“He’s got a bunch of gorillas sitting around there, pining to do damage, and nothing’s happening. I’m worried about them, not Benotti.”

“I don’t like Folsom either,” said Lippit, “but this type of job is fine for him.”

“I don’t care if it’s fine for him. What I’m worried about, is he doing it right.”

“That’s what I meant. Now stop fidgeting.”

Then he said what I needed was some sleep and I should go home and get some and not get on his nerves. He’d stay at the phone in the meantime because he had some other work to do anyway, and he got his briefcase off the floor and took stuff out. Papers, folders, that kind of thing. I sat a while longer, smoking, and when he started to make business calls I suggested, just reasonably suggested, he should stay off that phone and give the incoming calls a chance at a time like this. Then he blew his stack. Lippit does that without transition. I was too jumpy to listen, so I went home.

I undressed, went to sleep immediately, woke up immediately. The phone.

“This is Davy, Mister St Louis.”

“Yes.”

“Mister Lippit said for me to tell you he’s down at the place on Liberty and Alder, straightening out some trouble, and you should come, too.”