Peter Rabe - Murder Me for Nickels

“No!”

Her hands were still in the way. She was still holding the dress in front and I could feel her knuckles where she should be soft.

“Jack, if you don’t stop that,” she said, and later, with a little less breath, “Please, Jack. Walter wouldn’t like it.”

“He’d be mad.”

“I know That’s what I meant.”

“We won’t tell him.”

“You’re hurting my hands.”

“Move them.”

“No!”

I gave her a kiss and leaned her back on the couch. As soon as she noticed that maneuver she put back her hands, to keep herself up, but that left the dress mostly to its own devices. When she tried to take care of that error she had to move her hands and I got her down on the couch. And she couldn’t get her hands back in front because I was too close.

“Don’t get mad,” I said. “Because if you wriggle too much-”

She held still.

“Gimme a kiss.”

She moved her head to one side and I got her ear.

“No!”

I moved my hands away from her back so she would lie more comfortably. “-no.”

With that “no” I felt much less uncertain and I leaned up on my elbows and smiled down at her.

“Patty, if you’ll let me have that dress, like I said, I’ll be able to do…”

“I know what you want to do.”

“You sensed that, Patty. You just sensed that without my having to tell you a thing.”

“Don’t! Don’t move away, I’m all bare in front!”

“I sensed that.”

I stayed close to her because why move and because she was holding me that way. Then we didn’t talk for a while, but when I gave her a chance she said:

“I told you, Jack. You’re supposed to be there.”

“I’ll be late.”

“They’re going to wonder. And Walter, he’s going to wonder!”

“I’ll explain to him. I’ll explain why.”

“Don’t you dare!”

“Hold still.”

“Don’t you dare!”

“You think I’m crazy?”

“Yes!”

“I wouldn’t spoil that for you. Walter Lippit’s all right.”

“Don’t tell me about Walter!”

“You don’t think he’s all right?”

“Of course he’s all right!” she said. “I like Walter.”

“Don’t yell in my ear.”

“Better than you, I like him.”

“That’s only because you have never given yourself, and, of course, me, the most elementary chance which both you and I…”

“I don’t mean that, Jack St. Louis. Let me up. No! — I was talking about how he helps me.”

“Your career. Ah yes. Your career.”

“You know I’m a good singer.”

“You’re much better, given half a chance, in more elemental…”

“Stop using those words!”

“You’re much better, I meant, in…”

“I know what you mean.”

“And all good singers are fat.”

“That’s not true. I don’t have to be fat.”

“Not at all. This was my point.”

“Walter doesn’t talk that way about me.”

“He helps your career.”

“Seriously.”

“So could I, Patty. Seriously.”

She didn’t answer right away. I could tell by her face that I had made the mistake of getting her onto the one cold and serious subject of her life. She lay still.

“You’re kidding me,” she said.

“Ever hear of Blue Beat Records?”

I could tell she had. It wasn’t a big label, but a nice, little thing for the aficionados.

“You mean you could get me on that label?”

“I could get you a trial, maybe.”

Which had been the wrong answer. If I had said yes, she would have thought I was handing a line. When instead I had said the other, she pricked up her ears, because she had caught something serious. Which is what I mean when I say that I had made a mistake.

“Listen, Jack. I want to talk to you.” She rewound her arms on my neck and looked up at my face.

“I don’t want to talk to you, Patty, honest,” and I tried to get back to the lost subject.

She didn’t say “no” this time. She didn’t say anything for a while, and I didn’t, and it felt as if we were done talking. My collar felt tight and out of place and she must have felt the same way when it came to that dress with the busted zipper because she stretched and twisted up closer and to hell with the front of that dress.

Then it struck me what a mercenary minx she was.

“Patty.”

“Huh?”

“I got nothing to do with the record business.”

“Uh.”

“I said, I got no ins with the record business.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I mean it.”

“Your stud button is digging into me.”

“I, uh, I’m sorry.”

“Take it off.”

It was hard to take it off and it was harder to talk any more and I hardly cared any more what kind of a minx she was. I heard her kick off first one shoe, then the other.

“Listen, Patty.”

“Yes, Jack.”

“I meant that, what I said.”

“Yes, Jack.”

“So let me up.”

“I’m half naked.”

“What I mean is…”

“Yes, Jack. Yes, Jack.”

“About records…”

“I don’t give one damn, Jack!”

Before driving all the way down to the club I felt I should have a little bit more to show than the fine feeling I had about the brief bout with Benotti and the longer one with Pat. I stopped at the next open drugstore and went to the phone booth in back. I had part of a cigarette there and thought once more about the men who had shambled up Louie’s place.

One of them had smelled like a horse.

In this town there was only one tie-in with the rackets, and that was at the tracks. I’m not counting Lippit’s organization. I’m a member of that. I’m a businessman-a flexible businessman-but no racketeer. I am, granted, very flexible sometimes, which is the kick I am after and the reason Lippit pleases me, but I wouldn’t push someone like Louie. I’ll push a Benotti, be it business or no, but I’m no racketeer.

So one of them had smelled like a horse. I picked up the phone and dialed a man I knew, a good craftsman with a quarter-mile horse, with whom I had beer sometimes while we worked over a scratch sheet He was a trainer, local, and spent most of his working time out at the track.

I don’t know why they start exercising horses at four in the morning and the first explanation I would discount is what a trainer would say about that. It meant, in any case, that my man was already in bed. He groaned into the phone, that I should call back at four-thirty in the morning when he would be more himself, but I wasn’t a horse, I told him, and this would just take a minute.

“There is nothing good in any of the starts tomorrow,” he said.

“I’m not calling for that, Dinkham. I’m calling about the outfit that’s stringing the bets and the races.”

“That’s run from Chicago,” he said. “I got nothing to do with them.”

“But they got men out at the track, don’t they?”

“Nothing big,” said Dinkham. “Just handlers who bring in the ponies sometimes. The ponies that surprise everybody by winning. And bums.”

“What?”

“Bums. They give stable jobs to their bums what’s on the lam from someplace or what’s too wore out for the jobs they used to do.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m talking about them. I’m calling to ask if any new ones have come in, bums like that.”

“No. Listen, Jack, I got to get up at…”

“Wait, Dinkham. One more thing.”

I didn’t know of one more thing to ask him, being much disappointed with what he had said. It was a sad longshot to think that I could tie Benotti in with the syndicate, which worked out of Chicago, because one of his hoods had smelled like a horse. But Benotti, even with electrical shop, frame house, wife and kids, did not strike me like a lone electrician gone hog wild. The electrical shop showed that he was starting out with a long plan, and the rest showed that he was aiming to stay. And his bums showed-must show-that he might be well-connected.