Peter Rabe - Murder Me for Nickels

“He would. True to type.”

“He left Benotti because the crap there was worse than here, when you used to be in the picture.”

“Or because he came to think that Benotti might not be the winning side?”

Folsom was dying to say something then, but Lippit was still going.

“Well, he came back with the goods that really opened the door. He came up and he showed that he’s no rat, compared to you.”

“Mister Lippit I don’t…”

“What? You don’t like me to call you a rat? There’s nothing but rats, Folsom, nothing but! You think there’s such a thing like doing business with angels? There’s no such thing!”

“They play harps,” I said. “Not jukeboxes.”

“Idiots play jukeboxes,” he said, which showed what he thought of his customers. “But you really got to be the worst kind of idiot to start playing around with me! Tell him, Folsom.”

His chance, and he was too stirred up by the emotion of it He let out a sound like a crow, smiled at Lippit, then got cut off again.

“First thing he learns at Benotti’s,” said Lippit, “was that queer thing about the day when we all thought there was going to be a rumble.”

“The day he made his own, including enemies?”

“You got your last little laughs now, St. Louis, so I won’t interfere. I’m talking of the time when Benotti held still. When he pulled all his brain busters off the street.”

“Maybe he was afraid of Folsom.”

“When I tell you to run down and get me some cigarettes, do you run down because you’re afraid?”

“Because I love you, Lippit.”

“Because I pay you! Because I’m the head man!”

“That compares to Benotti?”

“He pulled his hoods back because he was told! The head man says pull, and he does it.”

“I’m mystified.”

“I just bet! Because you tipped him to lay low!”

“I’m mystified,” I said again, to cover the blank astonishment. “Your stupidity mystifies me.”

“That’s what I found out,” said Folsom. “That you tipped it that day, and Benotti should lay low.”

“That’s right. Benotti and me have been ever so close, to the tune of a gash here, an X-ray there, and I pay his hospital bills.”

“Then how come,” Lippit asked me, “you had such a sweet, easy time breaking down Benotti’s supply place?”

“On your orders.”

“I’m laughing. Now you laugh this off, St. Louis. Who carted your high-priced recording machine back to that record place where you make funny records?”

I didn’t need to answer. Those had been Benotti men, and Lippit seemed to know that, too.

“Would you say they’d just up and say yessir to a Lippit man when he asks them to lay down on their job and instead do him a personal favor of cartage?”

It looked bad. I took the cap off the bottle I was holding in my hand and took a long swallow. Then I said, “So help me, they were stupid and it just worked out that way.”

“A dumb answer doesn’t make you look any more honest, St. Louis.”

“I didn’t say I was honest. I say I didn’t double-cross you.”

“Is that why I didn’t know until now how you tied up all kinds of helpful little businesses?”

I wanted to say that it had never hurt him, that it had nothing to do with him, and that it was now going to pot so we could handle Benotti. But he had it down, ironclad, his way. I took another drink.

And I made up a few nasty sayings in my head, of which the most innocent went something like, a friend in business is no friendly business is no friendly business is, and so on in three-quarter time.

“What’s next with him?” Folsom was saying.

“I haven’t got the time,” said Lippit.

“If you want…”

“Like I said,” Lippit told him, and then he got up.

He went into the back room and when he came back he was tying his tie.

“You still here?”

“I didn’t think we were through.”

“Beat it.”

“Walter. Listen to me-”

“Beat it, before I spit and hit the rug by mistake.”

By dint of too much at one time and the liquor on top of it I went fairly dead inside and so managed to just turn and go. I left.

I went downstairs and if nothing else was going to stay whole I’d do just the little bit I could do for sanity and get down to the Duncan building. Stop those lousy runs of pressings, stop that lousy run on my pocket, send the masters back, close the shop, take a break, let the time move over a little. I walked all the way down, for the exercise, and made up a song which had a rhyme and didn’t need reason. It went: The reason I’m partial to strippers, is because they look dressed in slippers. There was more, but it didn’t rhyme.

I went to the parking lot, found my car, got my keys out of my pocket.

“And now give it to me.”

He was polite enough, so I gave them to Folsom. Also Franklin was standing behind me, big enough. Then we all drove off in my car, Folsom the chauffeur, and I sat in the back and had another drink.

Walter Lippit had a pretty place out in the country. We have country with hills, with woods, with fields, and with lakes. Lippit, because of enough money, had all of this. The house wasn’t big but sat pretty. All the landscapes came together where he had built it and the lake came even close enough to make shiny patterns on the living room ceiling.

I sat with the view of the lake and a hill. I might have had the view with the fields or the woods, except Folsom and Franklin had decided it this way. No difference to me. I sat in the room with the chintz and the pine paneling, and my closest friend was the bottle I held.

The light patterns on the ceiling were getting independent. Folsom and Franklin were in the same room, but I didn’t want anything from them. I just sat.

“Watch him,” said Folsom.

“He’s drunk,” said Franklin.

Folsom came around to the front of the chair and stood looking at me. Then he slapped my face.

“Yeah. He’s drunk.”

I kept sitting.

Franklin went to look out of the big window and looked bloated against all that light. And peaceful, I should think. He was feeling all right.

Folsom went into the next room-woods view from that one-and maybe was reading the paperbacks. Lippit had a library there. Nothing but paperbacks, in case it rained over the weekend.

The patterns on the ceiling were like cold water all over.

He wasn’t reading in there. He was on the phone. He was muttering and cackling at the country exchange but they only listen in on connections which have been completed. Before that happened, it took a while. Leisure. All is slow leisure and country-type pleasure, and the reason I would marry a stripper, she’d look good in even one slipper-

Now the ceiling moved, and not the patterns.

I looked away from there and listened. I even put the bottle down. Spill on the rug, if you want, but not on my pants.

“Yeah. No. I’m not in town. No.”

That was clear enough, and true to boot.

“It comes off like we said. Yessir, like we said.”

Maybe he meant my head? Where would I then have the hangover? In thin air?

“Yessir. You said it.”

Talking to Lippit? What a yes-man, that Folsom.

“Like I said, you stupid jerk, and no other way!”

He was not talking to Lippit. Stupid? Not Lippit A jerk, yes, but not stupid. Folsom was talking to one of his men.

“Nine o’clock,” Folsom was saying, “and that puts it right after the time when they close the building. Yes, that’s when I want it, or else that shop is lousy with people.”

Back on the candy shop beat?

“I don’t care about the help. I want the machines busted, the merchandise, and those masters. I said masters.”