Peter Rabe - Murder Me for Nickels

“What trouble?”

“Beatings. That kind of thing.”

“Benotti showed?”

“Nobody showed, which is why the fight, Mister Lippit said.”

I said okay and hung up. I had told this to Lippit, how the natives were restless, but horsing around in the swimming pool had been more important, so now Sahib Lippit had to look into the unrest himself. I got dressed fast to see how he was doing.

It looked much the same in the bar at Alder and Liberty. The cat was on the jukebox. Actually, that’s as far as it went with the similarity.

None of the apes was trying to play cards. They were standing around. There wasn’t even one drinker at the bar and all the barstools were turned over. A lot of the bottles in back of the bar had rolled over and broken their little necks. The bartender had a mouse under one eye but nobody paid any attention to him.

The big one stood at the jukebox, like before, and Lippit stood in the same place where I had been standing for the earlier argument. This argument though, was different. “Yes, sir,” said the big one to Lippit.

“And I don’t give one damn,” Lippit was yelling, “what you think is a good reason to blow your stack.”

“Yessir, Mister Lippit. Only this one here,” and he looked at the bartender, “says not to hang around any more and to get out. And that’s not what Folsom explained to us.”

“He explain to you what you got hired for? And don’t yessir me again.”

“He did, sir.”

“You’re to beat up the opposition, not the customers!”

“Folsom was here and I explained to him how things were going. About this one here saying we should get out.”

“So he said to break up the joint?”

“He said, keep him in line. Didn’t he say keep him in line?” and the big one looked at his pack mates.

They all said, yessir, he said keep him in line.

“You mean to tell me, you son of a bitch,” Lippit was yelling, “you just did your duty?”

“Yessir.”

“You had too goddamn much fun to be doing your duty!”

“I don’t like you to be calling me no son of a bitch, Mister Lippit,” said the big one.

He wasn’t using the same tone of voice he had been using with me. So it wasn’t that. But Lippit has a completely different boiling point than mine, and even an alien chemistry in the brain. Everything he did made sure sense to him, and I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it.

“When I’m done,” he roared, “I want everybody to get out of here quiet as a mouse!”

“Yessir.”

“And I want you mice to take that mouse here with you, when I’m done!”

He then proceeded to get done.

The ape was bigger but Lippit was better. He swung at the other one’s head but didn’t bother to connect. He did make a connection with the solar plexus. The ape said, “Whoof.”

But the whoof seemed to be the only damage because the big one hauled out immediately and got into a crouch. Maybe he had been a boxer some time ago. He took that kind of stance. Except his swing spoiled it. The swing opened him up again and Lippit didn’t seem to care whether or not he got hit. He walked in there and flicked at an eye. This put him too close for any real damage.

The swing curled up around the back of his head, and the only problem for Lippit was to get his distance again.

This was a problem because the ape held on.

Hit the ribs? Muscle. Hit the kidneys? Muscle. Hit the head? Break your knuckles.

Lippit solved this by ducking his head. He ducked it right into the big one’s nose. But before the other one thought of letting go, Lippit had to do this thing several times. It went wham, wham, wham, and then squish.

The big one let go just enough for another type grip-maybe he had also been a groaner at some time-but that was enough for Lippit. Lippit liked distance for his style. He got his distance by slamming his hands on the ears of the other one. Open hands. They make a tremendous racket inside the head, and if it does not break the eardrum, it at least feels like it.

To the ape it suddenly felt as if there was a great space inside his head after all, hollow maybe, but a space with room for the racket to roll around.

While this went on inside, Lippit commenced work on the outside.

He kept worrying the other one’s eye. He himself caught a rocker high on the arm-I thought for a while he’d go lame there for the rest of the fight-and he caught a very solid jolt square in the chest. This winded him.

But he didn’t need much wind for the jabs he was placing. I had seen Lippit fight once before, but he didn’t place a thing on that occasion, only plowed each time. That was how he preferred it. This time he didn’t plow, he just jabbed. The ape’s eye closed and his nose bled and the way he didn’t worry about his guard any more, his face must have been getting anesthetized. He still had plenty of wind but he couldn’t see so well. He hit the top of Lippit’s head, the side of his shoulder and his forearm a few times. He threw several roundhouses, but they just whistled.

There were three of those. Each time Lippit let it go by, and answered with one of his jabs. The way he kept worrying the big one, he interfered with his breathing. Each time the ape tried to take a big breath, Lippit jabbed him.

This happened three times. At the end of the third time the big one was rasping for breath, blind with blood and his strangled rage, and careless.

He stumbled back and Lippit finished him. He just plowed into his head, then close under the other’s basket, on the head again, and then on the tip of the chin.

The last made a crash when it connected; it made a crash when the ape fell.

He was a great mess and spread out on the floor.

“All right,” said Lippit He was plenty winded but still plenty loud. “Like I said. You mice, you take this mouse, and you scoot outa here, willynilly.”

They did and Lippit leaned on the bar. He was breathing hard.

“It was that last lap in the pool,” I said to him.

“Shut up, will you?” he spat on the floor. “Gimme a drink,” he said to the bartender.

“Yessir.”

“Don’t you start that now!”

Then he flipped down that drink and right away had another.

“Lousy mess,” he said. “And it wasn’t even Benotti.”

“Yessir,” I said.

Lippit almost choked but then he just spat on the floor again.

“Got to keep order,” he said. “Can’t have some animal taking over.”

Then he had a big glass of water.

“I better find Folsom,” I said.

Lippit slammed down the glass, wiped his mouth, hitched his pants around.

“You take the section north of Liberty, and I’ll look south.”

“What’ll I do with him, if I find him?”

“Tell him I want to see him. Tell him what just happened here to his zoo. And if he’s got any back talk in mind, just use your own judgment.”

“May I use your example?”

“Don’t overreach yourself, Jack.”

“I’ll take it easy. What with the walking I did, back and forth alongside that pool…”

“Don’t drop any third socks,” he said. I left.

While I was looking for Folsom I found something else. Two bars were closed and three ice cream places. The machines make a lot of coin in the ice cream places. They were all closed because of the rumble in the neighborhood. Lippit would be wild about this piece of information. Or maybe he knew about it already. South of Liberty isn’t much different from north of Liberty.

I’m a conservative driver. That is, I like to drive fast but I rarely do where there’s law around. So it was a shock when I got stopped by a cruiser which rolled up next to me after a perfectly legal turn. Pull over, stop, look out of the window, surprised and eager. That’s the formula. Next, weary cop, hitching pants, pulling pencil, face cool and legal.