James Cain - The Baby in the Icebox and Other Short Fiction

“This here,” said Mr. Kemper, “is a very rare case. This here interests me a whole lot.”

“Let’s talk about something else,” said Mr. Needles. “I... I... I don’t like this here. It’s got me worried.”

“Then let’s go down to City Hall, like I said,” said Mr. Kemper, “so we can see what time it is.”

OCTOBER 20, 1929

Vinny felt his mouth go numb as he entered the apartment and saw what was on the table. He stood for a moment moistening his lips as he stared at it.

“Piece of mail for you,” he heard his sister-in-law call. “Looks like a phonograph record.”

“Sure,” he replied, and was surprised at how casual he sounded. “I been expecting it. How’s everything?”

“O.K. Dinner’ll be ready in a few minutes.”

He picked up the record, went to his room, and sat down on the bed. He had been expecting it all right. Or hoping for it anyhow. Ever since that day in the store.

He hadn’t covered himself with glory that day, that was a cinch. He just hadn’t had the nerve to make the grade.

He had gone in to make one of those personal phonograph records, a record to send his brother Ike, who had moved to Cleveland. But he had had to wait.

Then the girl arrived. She was a pretty girl, and she sat down so close to Vinny that he could smell the fur of her little summer neckpiece. He wanted to speak to her, to start a little conversation that would lead to his asking her if she didn’t want to go with him and have an ice-cream soda. He opened his mouth to say it was hot, wasn’t it. Nothing came out of it. He tried to catch her eye, so he could shake his head and fan himself a couple of times with his hat. Then he would probably have the nerve to say it was hot. But she didn’t look at him.

Pretty soon the radio announcer came out, with his accompanist and the lady in charge. The girl stood up.

“But I think this gentleman was ahead of you,” said the lady in charge.

“’S all right,” said Vinny. “I’ll wait.”

When she came out she would probably stop to thank him or something for letting her go first. Then he could say it was hot, wasn’t it, a pretty good day for an ice-cream soda.

She came out with her record under her arm, stopped, started to speak, and fled without saying a word.

“It’s your turn now,” said the lady in charge.

He sat down in front of the microphone and took out of his pocket what he was going to say to Ike. He had it all written out, so he wouldn’t get rattled and forget it in front of the machine.

“When the red light goes on,” said the lady in charge, “it’s time for you to begin. I’ll turn it off ten seconds before the record is used up, so you’ll have time to finish.”

“All right.”

The red light.

“Hello, Ike! you old son of a gun; how are you and what do you think of this for pulling a fast one on you? It’s cheaper than calling up on the long-distance telephone, hey, Ike, you old son of a gun?”

It had seemed pretty funny when he wrote it out, but it sounded stale and flat now.

The red light out.

“Well, so long, Ike, this is all they allow me this time and don’t take any rubber nickels.”

“That’ll be seventy-five cents unless you want a package of needles, and that’ll make a dollar.”

“All right. Put the needles in.”

“A dollar, thank you. And now, if you don’t mind writing your name and address here in this book...”

“Aw, never mind about that...”

“Well, we usually ask for the name and address—”

“I know, so you can send me a lot of that advertising junk and—”

He stopped. Looking up at him from the book in a threadlike, feminine hand, were a name and address:

Miss Amy Clarke

130 East 35th Street.

“All right,” he said, and photographed this signature in his mind’s eye as he wrote his own beneath it. A fat chance he would forget it.

“Say,” he said innocently, “I believe I’ll make another record. Just remembered somebody else I want to send one to.”

“Why, surely.”

This time he sat down at the piano. He could play a little, well enough for this job anyhow.

The red light.

He started up “You’re the Cream in My Coffee.” It sounded lousy, but it would give her the idea. Then he stopped singing and turned to the mike. “I’m the guy,” he said with a guarded look at the lady in charge, “that wanted to speak to you today and didn’t. And that you wanted to speak to and didn’t. Believe me, I want to speak to you and if you feel the same way about it, you meet me at the Dreamland dance hall, up on a Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, on Saturday night, at...”

He mailed it, then spent three days of agony. Most of the time he felt like a sap, but sometimes he would play with the idea that the girl would go back to the store after she received the record, find the name and address after her own, and mail him a postcard saying “I’ll be there” or something like that.

Now, here it was Saturday night and instead of a postcard there was a phonograph record, addressed in the same threadlike hand.

Trembling he cranked up his phonograph and clipped a needle.

A few bars of piano music. An old tune. Where had he heard it?

A thin, pretty, trembly voice:

“Dinner’s ready,” called his sister-in-law.

“I don’t want any dinner!”

“But it’s ready!”

“Sorry. Can’t wait!”

Vinny was gone.

SEPTEMBER 15, 1929

Down in the country when they built the state road it was a couple guys worked on it name of Luke and Herb Moore. And they was brothers, but their old man was stingy and wouldn’t never give them nothing for their work. Because they didn’t hire out to the contractor direct, but drove teams for their old man and the contractor paid him and he paid them. And he got thirty-five cents a hour apiece for both them double teams, and paid them $12.50 a month for driving them.

So all them other guys that worked on the road was all the time giving them the razz, and letting on their old man must be pretty rich by now, account he’s got a big farm but don’t never spend nothing, and goes to church every Sunday but don’t never put nothing on the plate, and all like of that; until Luke and Herb got so they hated to see the old man show up on Saturday afternoon to sign the payroll. So along about the first of October they begun mumbling to each other in the lunch hour, and then they give it out they was going to do something that would make them other guys on the road look pretty sick. And what they was going to do was go on a bender. They had just got their month’s wages, and that was $25, and they was going to swipe one of the old man’s horses, after he had went in the house that night, and drive down to the railroad station what was about six mile away, and hop the 6:46 in to Washington, and then come back on the owl what got in at 12:22, and then drive on back and put the horse in the stable without the old man knowing nothing about it. Because they figured that $25 would pay for a pretty classy drunk, and then they would have a comeback if they heard any more of this tightwad stuff.

So they done it. They et some supper in a hurry, and then they sneaked out and geared the old man’s best horse to his new buggy, and then they walked the horse on the grass so the old man couldn’t hear them going by the house, and then they hit for the station. And on the way down they passed Will Howe and Heinie Williams, what was rolling the road in the nighttime on account it was getting late in the year and the contract had to be finished before frost, and Will and Heinie blowed the roller whistles for them and it looked like their trick was going to work. Them razzes would be changed to cheers. And they caught the 6:46, and down in Washington they must of put on a swell drunk act, because some people heard them arguing in the Union Station just before the owl pulled out, and Herb was for staying and spending the rest of their money, but Luke says no he wouldn’t give the old man the satisfaction of knowing they stole the horse.