Peter Rabe - Murder Me for Nickels

“Yaee!” I said.

“You can put your pants back on,” said Doctor Spire.

I did and went to the waiting room, or the other room Doctor Spire had, where Lippit was sitting in an easy chair facing the window. The phone was on the window sill and the instrument next to his ear.

“You got Davy?”

He nodded and waved me off. He was listening. If his face told what he felt, he was feeling confusion.

“Just a minute,” he said into the phone. He covered the mouthpiece and looked at me. “Where did you send that boy, the insane asylum?”

“Why do you ask?”

“He says he got there and one guy was sitting on the loading ramp with his legs pulled up and every time a female walked by he would moan like a hound dog. And…”

“That wasn’t Benotti.”

“And another one was sitting on top of a rack, like a monkey, and everybody should walk around the rack in a big circle so they wouldn’t step on his ears.”

“His ear.”

“Oh. That’s all right then. For a minute there, I thought somebody was nuts.”

“That wasn’t Benotti, either. Let me have the phone.”

“Of course not. Benotti’s in that fish tank over there, is what I think.” Then he gave me the phone.

“Davy?”

“Yes, Mister St Louis.”

“There were just those two?”

“And then they got picked up by a car.”

“You didn’t see Benotti then.”

“He was the one I guess they took off in the ambulance. That was before I got there.”

“You know where they took him?”

“Mercy Hospital.”

“Go over there, Davy, and try to find out how he is.”

“How am I going to do that? I mean…”

“Tell ‘em you’re his son, or a friend, anything like that. Find out how he is, when he’s getting out, that kind of thing. You know, do-it-yourself.”

“Yessir,” and he hung up.

I put down the phone and Lippit said, “I know. You hit him so hard he fell apart and one of him is on top of that rack and the other half of him is out there on that ramp.”

I took a cigarette out and smoked with one side of my face.

“He’s at Mercy. And please don’t say, at whose mercy.”

“I won’t.”

“And Davy will check back in at the club, to tell how the patient is doing. I myself,” I said, “want to go home.”

Lippit nodded. He got up but kept looking out of the window.

“If he’s out of commission,” he said, “we might swing it yet.”

“He’s more than one man.”

“His outfit is punks,” said Lippit. “I checked enough to know that. He’s the head and punks don’t have a head.”

My face hurt and I didn’t say anything.

“I’ll take you home,” he said. “Pat’s bringing the car.”

“Thank you. I got my own.”

“Maybe you didn’t notice,” he said, “but one eye is closing.”

Spire came into the room with a small box of pills.

“For the pain,” he said. “I just found them.”

I swallowed one of them and put the rest into my pocket. Pat drove up outside.

I felt I would rather drive with one eye or one arm than go with Pat right now, so when Lippit and I got out to the street I could take only about five minutes of Pat.

“Bu-ruther,” she said, and, “You know something, feller? You remind me of somebody I know, you poor thing.”

I took another one of those pain-killer pills and swallowed it.

“Where’s the car?” said Lippit.

She pointed across the street and started walking, but when I didn’t come Lippit stopped and she did, too.

“You with him or with me?” she asked him.

But Lippit was in no mood for banter. I don’t think he and she were over the chore I had witnessed that morning.

“Save it,” he said. “I’ve got enough troubles.”

“By the looks of it,” she said, “Jack is the one with the troubles. What was it, a sausage machine or Benotti?”

“A sausage machine,” I said. “Which looked like him.”

“You coming or aren’t you?” Lippit asked me. I told him I’d drive myself and, if possible, I just wanted to be left alone till next morning. Lippit said okay and all he would do before then is let me know what Davy had to say. Lippit looked serious when he said this, and sounded that way, so that Pat caught it.

“Things are bad?” she asked.

“They got the jump on me,” he told her. “Benotti sewed up our source of discs.”

She nodded and said, “Maybe you should have listened to Jack. The time he was arguing with you to plan all this long range.”

That night, in his apartment, she had been in the next room. He had told her to go to bed and she must have heard everything while we had been talking. It showed real interest on her part.

“Maybe there’s a way to reorganize all of this, and you can beat the freeze you got from the jobber.”

It showed real interest and that she was not only pretty.

Lippit nodded and did not seem to be listening, but when he took her across to the car he was holding her arm and they looked real close again.

I had just a few more troubles before getting home, such as not being used to driving with one eye puffing shut and such as the color of red over what little I could see. This included the green lights. I went stop and go by the yelling behind me. Then I went go when I should have gone stop because a street repair gadget was going yak-yak-yak down the street. It was breaking up the pavement, and then I broke up the traffic.

When the cop seemed distant and a little bit funny I realized that the pills were working. I was feeling no pain but the cop smelled no liquor so when I promised to park the car and walk home on foot he let it go at that and disappeared from view.

I wasn’t sure where I left the car, which meant I also wasn’t sure where I lived. I got there when the sun was going down, banged the door shut, got undressed, laid down on the bed. I was very thirsty but too lazy to get up. When the phone rang I reached over and put it on my stomach. I must also have put the receiver to my ear because then I heard Davy’s voice.

“Did I get you out of the bathroom or something?” he said. “I was just going to hang up.”

“No. Don’t. Where was I?”

“What?”

“Where were you, I mean.”

“Well, he’s at Mercy, all right.”

“Does he need it?”

“Mister St. Louis?”

“Yes, Davy.”

“Just let me talk. Okay, Mister St. Louis? I’ll tell you everything.”

“All right, Davy.”

“So he’s there in the hospital, and I told them I was his nephew…”

“Why nephew, David?”

“Because I wasn’t allowed to go into his room on account his family was there already. Family. See?”

“Yes, Davy. Please go on.”

“I’m trying. So I said we were plenty worried about this, on account of the family business, and how was he.”

“How was he?”

“Please, Mister St Louis. The family business, said the doctor, would have to be run by the family for a while, or by itself, he said, because Mister Benotti was in no shape for anything. Just for lying still on his back.”

“Ditto.”

“What?”

“Go on, Davy.”

“On account of his concussion in the head and the jaw being wired.”

I had an image of wiring for concussion or detonation or spark plugs, but said nothing about it.

“When is he going to be all tuned up again?”

“Not sure, Mister St, Louis, but not before two weeks.”

“Did you tell Mister Lippit?”

“Yes, sir. He was pleased.”

I relaxed on the bed, my martyrdom vindicated, because two weeks of an inactive opposition might well be all Lippit needed to get his business all squared away again. Somewhere along there Davy hung up. I felt pretty good on the bed, feeling no pain. It even seemed as if I could see out of both eyes again. I thought about this and that and it was a lot like a conversation. About spark plugs, plugged nickels, coin slots, slugged pickles, gauze tickles, red gore, locked door.