Murder Me for Nickels (7 page)

“Morning? You mean
this
morning?”

“They open at eight,” I said. “This morning.”

“Jack. Think of the time we lose if he does that. He won’t be finished.”

“Don’t ask why, Conrad, just get it out.”

He didn’t ask why and just said, “Oh.” Conrad, who knew of my double life, did not approve of me with Lippit But he would get the machine out, he said.

The mixer was in the Hough and Daly building. In Benotti’s shop.

Not everybody can repair something complex like a mixer. The man whom we had to pick for the job was very good but he was also working on repairs for Benotti. It had not been important at the time, but it was now.

The sure thing was, I didn’t want the machine wrecked in the morning. The long shot was, that it might somehow leak out how a Benotti man worked on a thing which belonged to St. Louis who worked for Walter Lippit.

“I’ll call him,” said Conrad, “and tell him he might as well stay up and get dressed.”

“And have the thing out of there before eight. Stress that, Conrad.”

“Maybe I should tell him he’d better stay away from the place himself, come that hour?”

“Please, Conrad, I don’t want to mix jobs,” I complained. “Okay?”

“Okay.” He coughed and said, “Maybe it’s time you got out of one business and go full time into the other?”

“All you know, Conrad,” I told him, “is that your machine’s got to be out of there, come eight in the morning. Just arrange that, nothing else.”

“You going to be there yourself?”

“Why?”

“Might be awkward if I send down anyone working for the studio and there you are, dressed up like a hood.”

He was much older than I and so took liberties now and then. All I said was, “I’m going to be there at eight in the morning. Come eight in the morning, I don’t want to see that thing sitting there. Aside from that, just leave me a, l, o, n, e.”

By seven I had lined up five bozos for a quick job on Benotti’s depot One was a Lippit trucker, large of muscle and small of head, two were from the local gym, long in training and short of cash, one was just somebody I knew, and the fifth was the same. And also large of muscle and small of head.

At seven thirty I walked down Marsh Avenue, and a quarter to eight I got to the Hough and Daly building. It was very large and used up half a block.

The first thing I came to was the loading ramp, set back from the street for about the depth of a truck. It put the ramp inside the building.

On the ramp was my mixer.

This wasn’t just twenty-five grand sitting there. This was a high-priced complication looking at me.

The big gadget, because of its weight, was built on rollers, and Benotti’s man, because of the phone call, had pushed the thing out on the ramp and had left it there. As a matter of fact, he had pushed it a little over to one side, where the Hough and Daly door was. Nice of him. Twenty-five grand of high-priced complication pushed over to one side a little.

Three of Benotti’s delivery trucks were parked side by side. I walked past them and up the steps to the ramp. At one end was a double door with glass panels halfway up where it said Benotti’s Service. I looked through the glass and saw nobody. The shop was empty.

It was ten to eight and they opened on the hour. Or they did all the other days. I had ten minutes to get the machine out of the way because at eight sharp my army of five was due.

There was a little more life on the Hough and Daly side of the building. The big double door to the ramp was still closed but the square window next to the door showed the inside of an office and a girl taking the cover off an adding machine. The girl was a little one, all made-up and pretty, as if she might enjoy working back here near the loading ramp. I myself thought I might enjoy working back near the loading ramp. I knocked at her window.

She nodded, barely looking up, and called, “Just a minute.” I could hear that through the window. Then she walked out of the office and came around to the double door. She clanked it and rattled it from the other side and then had it open.

“I was wondering when you’d…. Oh,” she said.

“Good morning. I’m a little bit in a hurry, but if….”

“I thought you were one of the fellows next door. From next door, I mean. With the coffee.”

“No. As a matter of fact, there’s nobody next door, which is the….”

“They always make the coffee over there,” she said again. She looked very disappointed.

“There’s a little mix-up this morning. Nobody showed up yet and I need a little favor.”

She tilted her head and looked suspicious. “Like what?”

“This thing here,” I said, and nodded at the mixer on the platform. “I’d like it moved.”

“You want
me
for
that?
”

It was five to eight.

“It looks bigger than both of us,” she said.

“What I mean is, you just open this door some more and I move it myself. In there, where you are.”

“Why?”

She didn’t open the door any further. I wasn’t the man with the coffee; I wasn’t anyone she knew. I heard a car at the end of the block, motor whining fast. I now talked at the same rate.

“Look, the thing, the machine, it actually….”

“It’s a mixer,” she said.

“Yes, and it actually belongs next door, the Benotti place, but nobody is there and by some mistake or other the thing—mixer, got left …”

“Mix-up.”

“Yes. Please, don’t interrupt What I’m trying to mix you—eh, tell you….”

“Who are you?”

“I’m the man who’s supposed to, who’s trying to just try and get that machine over there to over here, there, where you stand, and if you’ll just …”

“You sound like that car out there.”

The car was still whining in low and now that it was very much closer it slowed. I looked out to the street and wiped my hand across my face, but I wasn’t sweating. I never sweat. I just start shaking.

There was a woman behind the wheel and when she had passed the loading entrance I could hear her turn the corner. It was about three minutes to eight.

“Women drivers,” I said.

“Makes you nervous?”

“No.”

“I could have sworn you were nervous,” she said.

“Look, honey,” I said.

“Do we know each other?”

“No, but I feel that….”

“Then don’t call me honey.”

I took a deep breath, coughed slowly, and then smiled at her again. This was a simple smile, just harmless warmth.

“That mixer belongs to Blue Beat Studios. I….”

“I know.”

“I’m connected with Blue Beat because I hustle talent for them.”

“Aha,” she said, and nodded her head.

“And I’ve got a session arranged, you know what a session is—?”

“You’re a talent scout and I’m just the thing you’ve been looking for, and if I’d let you handle me….”

“I don’t want to handle you!”

“You don’t?”

“Sweetsufferingsuffering, all I want is just for you to open up there, open up that gate wide so I can move, push I mean, that mixer….”

“Well,” she said. “What now?”

There was this panel truck. It went by the entrance, it stopped with the tailgate still showing, it went in reverse and backed around into the loading space and up to the ramp.

“Eight o’clock,” she said. “We’ve got nothing to go out at eight this morning.”

The canvas flaps opened in back and one, two, three, lump-muscled apes jumped out. Then two more from the cab, all lump-muscled and goonish.

My own army counted five, but this wasn’t it. This was the enemy.

“Good morning,” said the girl from Hough and Daly. “I was just saying, we have nothing for you this morning.”

“It isn’t feeding time yet,” would have made much more sense. The three who had come over the tail gate went straight for the door where the girl was standing, but the bald ape who had come out of the cab yelled at them that they had the wrong door. “This way, idiots,” he yelled. “This way.”

They all ran to the Benotti door and found that it was closed.

“Nuts,” said one of them. “They been and gone.”

“Idiot,” said the bald ape, “would they lock the door after theirselves?”

This had all taken a minute or two and I kept looking out to the street where my own natives were supposed to show up. They were supposed to show up there and wait for my signal.

Right then they might have showed up and I would never have known it. All the five apes, confused and left high and dry by the puzzle of that locked door, turned my way and brightened. This would be much simpler. This is one and we are five; something like that showed on their faces.

I had an impulse to jump past the girl and slam the door shut behind me, but then they might bust down the door, and then I would have to explain to the girl and how would it look to her—any number of giddy reasons came to me and while none of them were any good I did the right thing, or the thing I had come for. I walked up to the mixer, leaned my hand on the top, and I even drummed up and down with one finger. That was as brave as I could get for the moment, that thing with the finger.

“Get your hands offn that!” said the bald ape.

“Yeah!” said one of the others.

“Watch it,” I told them. “This thing stays intact.”

“What he say?”

“Idiot. He means it don’t get destructed.” They all stopped except for the bald ape. He came up to me, looked at the mixer, at my hand, at my face. “We got instructions,” he said. “Get your hands offn that because
nothing
around here gets destructed. We’re here to see to that.”

I took my hand off and held it out to him. “Man,” I told him. “Am I glad you came.”

He said, “Huh?” and didn’t take my hand, which was just as well, and then he didn’t know what else to say.

It must have been about five after eight. I was now worried my army would show.

“They’ve come and gone,” I said, “and am I glad you showed.”

“Come and gone?”

“Those goons. You know. They wanted to destructed everything here.”

“Destroyed, you mean.” Then he folded his arms and looked me up and down. “Who are you?”

“Benotti sent me. It almost didn’t work, because here they were and you weren’t here, and the reason he sent me was to let you know that this thing here, this mixer, this thing in particular should come to no harm.”

“Oh yeah?” said one of them.

The bald ape turned a little and said, “Quiet, idiot.” Then he turned back to me. “How come they come and went and nothing’s busted?”

That’s when I saw one of my own stick his head around the brick wall and look into the loading space, at the ramp, and at me. Then he ducked away.

He was waiting behind the wall, on the street, for the signal I was supposed to whistle; he was waiting for the rest of them to come up close and then they would rush us; he was talking it over with them, how best to save me. I myself was going out of my mind.

“Nothing’s busted,” I started without knowing how to finish the sentence, “because I’m a Lippit man. What I mean….”

“Huh?”

“It’s like this,” I said slowly, as much to make him understand as to understand it myself. “Before you came, the Lippit goons came. And I saw this. I was here. So I fooled them into beating it out of here, the new word from Lippit, I told them, was to save their strength. I said this to them, and they thought I’d come straight from Lippit.”

“I don’t get it. I don’t get it why Lippit should switch that way.”

“Because the place was deserted when they came and that wasn’t part of the plan. The Lippit plan, you know, was blood, broken bones, fisticuffs.”

“Fisticuffs?”

“Quiet, idiot.” Then he looked at me again. “Why should I believe you?”

“What, you need proof?”

“Yeah. That. Because I don’t see nothing touched here or anything like that. Like nobody been here.”

“
That’s
the proof, friend,” and to flatten his reasoning completely, I called the girl over and said, “Tell him. There hasn’t been any trouble here, has there?”

“Trouble?” she said.

“There you are!” and I smiled at the bald one.

I took a deep breath, finally, because progress had not been bad. The bald one thought I was a messenger from Benotti, the girl thought I was somebody with Blue Beat, and I thought that if my own animals would stay out of the way another few minutes, I could swing the rest. Namely, first get the mixer out, and the Benotti men, and then let my apes do the job they had come for.

“Now the thing about this mixer,” I started, when the girl said, “This is the strangest thing,” and she looked past all of us.

We all reacted to the unknown in different ways. I giggled, the bald ape did nothing, and the girl kept looking out to the street.

“Somebody keeps looking around the corner,” she said. We all looked out to the street Nobody showed there for the moment but I was going further out of my mind.

“Beany,” said the bald one. “Go out there and see who it is.”

Beany went out there and we did not see him any more.

But the bald one had meanwhile had time to think.

“So you ain’t a Lippit man,” he said, “and you ain’t no Benotti man, either. Because there’s that few of us, and I should know you.”

“Of course not,” said the girl. “He’s from Blue Beat.”

“Blue which?” he said, as if three factors in all this were too much for his comprehension.

They were just about that for me, more so every minute, and I talked fast.

“This machine goes to Blue Beat. It’s got repairs done to it in Benotti’s shop and now it’s been pushed out here so it won’t come to any harm should the Lippit goons come. Because the first order on Benotti’s list is always, let the customer come to no harm. Right? And that is why….”

“Where’s Beany?” somebody asked.

“Never mind that idiot,” said the bald one.

“Yes,” said the girl. “Here’s the tag,” and she looked at the tag which hung on the mixer. “Blue Beat is written on it.”

The bald one unfolded his arms, linked his fingers, and cracked them. The sound was terrible. He looked at me all the time.

“What we better do,” he said, “I think I know what we better do.”