Peter Rabe - Murder Me for Nickels

Conrad himself was in the holy of holiest, a closet with fan, light, chair, and the mixer. There was a mike on top of the mixer and another window showed the recording room. Conrad, who had curly hair, gray and blonde, was pushing the headphone back down over his ears. The claim goes that his hair is so wiry, it not only pushes the headphone up and away from his ears, but causes special static. He tapped the mike and said, “Sorry, sorry, sorry!”

The combo in the recording room stopped one after the other.

“Milton,” he said, “I get a nice ping on your pickup but your bass washes out. Move your mike down.”

The pianist did.

“And Skinny is early all the time. You’re early on the bridge and on the break. You got to follow the fiddle.”

Skinny was on the horn and there was an argument. I could see through the window but I couldn’t hear it.

“I got the earphones turned off,” Conrad said into the mike, “so don’t waste your breath.” Then he smoothed them down and said, “I just want you to be better than that West Coast clan. You’re good as them, but I want you better.”

Talk rough and carry a lollypop, is the way you do it with musicians, was Conrad’s opinion.

“All right, this is live,” he said. “You take two, you four, and Skinny builds it for eight. After that, just get back together.”

I sat around in the room with the sink and waited for Conrad to finish. But he jockeyed the combo till they looked ready to drop. “It’s got to sound tired,” I could hear him say. He was working them up to it.

Once I talked to an agent who dropped in for coffee and once I got a word with Conrad, but not enough to make sense.

“What’s the name?” I asked him when he stopped the music again.

“‘I got nothin’ but want a little more.’”

“I don’t mean the piece. The girl.”

“Nice. But I meant to talk to you about that.”

“That’s why I’m here. I want to…”

“Later.”

He put the headpieces down over his ears and talked to the mike again.

I had coffee, I watched the clock, I told Herbie to be sure and let me know soon as she showed. He said, “Why? Are you worried?” and I said, “Yeah. I’m worried.” He liked that and patted his hair and I went down to the restaurant, nervous.

I used the phone there and called Lippit but he wasn’t around. The foreman told me one of the drivers had spotted a Benotti man on the South Side run, and Davy said Lippit was at the jobbers. I called his apartment on an off-chance but Pat didn’t know anything and was in a hurry to hang up on me. I took a short walk and before two o’clock went back to the studio.

Herbie was grinning and grimacing. “Oo-man,” he said.

“Is Conrad done?”

“No. But…”

“Bring her out here,” I said. “She and me are leaving.”

“Sorehead,” he said, and went to get Doris.

I sat on the desk and when Herbie opened the door again I got up and got ready with a busy smile. I should have been readier than that. Pat walked in.

I asked her to come down to the restaurant with me and she said no. I asked her to step out into the corridor with me and she said no. I suggested that she wouldn’t get anyplace here, if I walked out and left word to ignore her, and she said, “I had a notion you might be pretty important in this place.”

“Yes mam,” said Herbie, the idiot. “Mister Conrad listens to him.”

She came with me, as far as the restaurant downstairs, after I left word for Conrad to come down when he was done taping.

Pat looked gorgeous and sharp. She looked gorgeous because she couldn’t help it and she looked sharp because she was. We sat in the booth and had iced tea and neither of us bothered to play dumb any more.

“How much of the place do you own?” she asked.

“Some of it.”

“Enough to cut me a very good disc?”

“Listen, Pat…”

“I’ve been. The time on the couch, the time at the party, just now in the office, and one other thing. I walked into the wrong place at first. Downstairs here, where they boil all that black stuff and press the records. They said, no, Mister St. Louis rarely comes down here. But try Blue Beat, upstairs.”

“You could have walked into the restaurant here and they might have told you the same thing.”

“You own the restaurant, too?”

She was guessing. I told her that and sipped iced tea.

“Of course,” she said. “Would you like me to ask Walter to come help me guess? The way business is going, he might just be interested enough. The downstairs and the upstairs might just tickle his fancy.”

“I don’t see why.”

“I don’t either, Jack. Maybe a pressing plant and a recording plant can’t do him any good whatsoever. But it’s worth the question, don’t you think?”

I couldn’t think of a single glib thing to say and she had me. She had me because she was sharp. She had me because it was clear I didn’t want Lippit to know about any of this.

“So, the reason I’m here,” she said, “is to get a big, healthy boost and get a start as a singer.”

“You’re making ready to sing pretty good without anyone’s help.”

“I’d rather sing pretty. Not nasty.”

I looked at my iced tea-I didn’t like iced tea-and thought, why not let her sing. The only reason I had tried to keep her away wasn’t a good one any more. She just about knew what I owned in this building. And if I didn’t let her sing pretty, she’d do it nasty and Lippit would know what I owned.

At first, I had just kept it from him as a matter of principle, because Lippit would have wanted in. Next stage, I kept it from him because I had kept it from him, which would have made him sore. And he would want in. Last stage, he would want in for sure. I had a notion how it could save his skin with the Benotti trouble.

I said, “All right, Patty. You called it.”

“You’ll make me sound pretty?”

“So you won’t talk to Lippit nasty.”

She was a charmer. She had one sweet smile and a frank little squeeze of my hand, reaching over the table, and what did she want, after all, but to be a singer. When over a barrel, I got this rule: Trust ‘em. It’s simpler, for the time being.

I checked the time and thought Conrad ought to show pretty soon. I told Pat not to drink any more tea for the moment, because it would make her throat too insensitive. She liked hearing that, since it showed my solicitude and because it sounded like professionals’ lore. We felt almost friendly.

“Jacky,” she said, “I don’t want you to think that time on the couch-you remember that time-I don’t want you to think that was all for just this.”

“Oh, no.”

“Just to prove it to you, Jacky, we can do it again sometime.”

The logic stunned me and I almost said, oh no, again. Instead I said nothing. I sat and felt nervous with the unreal sense of peace and accord. Conrad should show about now. There would be trouble with Conrad and that would take care of the unreal feeling. Or I could call up Lippit. He should be done at the jobbers. Call Lippit and let him take care of the sense of peace. It would either turn out a joke, or who knows, maybe he had been solving things, while I hadn’t.

I went out to the lobby and called upstairs. Conrad was still in his fiberglass sanctum but would wrap things up in a minute or so.

I called the club and got Davy on the phone. No, Lippit hadn’t finished, but had called about something. He had wanted somebody to bring down the folder on last month’s deliveries.

He was still talking to Bascot He hadn’t been thrown out, driven off to the hospital, or anything like that. He was still talking and maybe it looked good.