The Fabulous Clipjoint

by Fredric Brown

  “I suppose he lost whatever he’d pulled out of the newspaper.”

  “Huh? Oh, he’d lost that long before. He was working at the gambling joint. Dealing blackjack. He was fed up with Juarez by the time I got there, so he quit the dealing. He was picking up Mex and wanted me to head with him for Veracruz.

  “Kid, that was a trip. Veracruz is a good twelve or thirteen hundred miles from Juarez and it took us four months to make it. We left Juarez with a stake of, I think, eighty-five bucks between us. But that changed into about four hundred bucks Mex, and while it wasn’t much on the border, it made you rich when you got a hundred or so miles in, if you talked the lingo and didn’t get yourself into the sucker joints.

  “We were rich for half of that four months, filthy rich. Then in Monterrey we ran into some guys that were smarter than we were. We should have headed back for the border then, for Laredo, but we’d decided on Veracruz and we kept going. We got there on foot, in Mex clothes, what there was of them, and we hadn’t had a peso between us in three weeks. We’d damn near forgotten how to talk English; we jabbered spik even to each other, to get better at it.

  “We got jobs in Veracruz and straightened out. That’s where your dad picked up linotype, Ed. A Spanish-language paper run by a German who had a Swedish wife and who’d been born in Burma. He needed a man who was fluent in both English and Spanish — he didn’t speak much English himself — so he taught Wally how to run his linotype and the flat-bed press he printed the paper on.”

  I said, “I’ll be damned.”

  “What now?”

  I laughed a little. I said, “I took Latin in high school. Pop suggested Spanish when I started taking a language and said he could help me with it. I thought he remembered a little from having taken it in school himself. I never realized he could talk it.”

  Uncle Ambrose looked at me very seriously, as though he were thinking, and didn’t say anything for a while.

  I asked after awhile, “Where did you go from Veracruz?”

  “I went to Panama; he stayed in Veracruz for a while. There was something about Veracruz that he liked.”

  “Did he stay there long?”

  “No,” said my uncle shortly. He glanced up at the clock. “Come on, kid, we better get back to Kaufman’s.”

  I looked at the clock too. I said, “We got time. You said we’d get back at nine. If there was something about Veracruz he liked, and he had a job, why didn’t he stay there long?”

  Uncle Ambrose looked at me for a moment and then his eyes twinkled a little. He said, “I don’t suppose Wally would mind your knowing now.”

  “All right, give.”

  “He had a duel, and he won. The thing he liked about Veracruz was the wife of the German who ran the newspaper. The German challenged him to a duel, with Mausers, and he couldn’t get out of it. He won the duel all right; hit the German in the shoulder and put him in the hospital. But Wally had to get out of there quick. And privately, in the cargo hold of a tramp steamer. I learned from him later what happened. They caught him four days out and he had to work his passage swabbing decks when he was so seasick he couldn’t stand up. Wally never could stand the sea. But he couldn’t jump ship till they docked for the first time. That was in Lisbon.”

  “You’re kidding me,” I said.

  “Nope. Fact, Ed. He was in Spain awhile. Had a screwy idea he wanted to learn to be a matador, but he couldn’t get an in; you got to start at that trade really young and have some pull even then. Besides, the picador part disgusted him.”

  “What’s a picador?” I asked.

  “The lancemen, on horseback. Horses get gored almost every fight. They fill ’em with sawdust and sew ’em up so they can go back in. They won’t live anyhow, once they’re deeply gored, and so — Hell, skip it; I always hated that part of bull-fighting myself. Last card I saw though, down in Juarez a few years ago, they pad the horses and that part’s okay. A clean kill of the bull with the sword; that’s all right. It’s better than they do in the stockyards here, for that matter. They use a —”

  “Let’s stick to Pop,” I suggested. “He was in Spain.”

  “Yeah. Well, he came back. We finally got in touch with one another through a friend back in St. Paul we both happened to write to. I was with a detective agency then — Wheeler’s, out in L.A. — and Wally was in vaudeville. He used to be pretty good at juggling — oh, not a top act, even as jugglers go, but he was good with the Indian clubs. Good enough for a spot with a fair troupe. He ever juggle any lately?”

  “No,” I said. “No, he didn’t.”

  “You got to keep up on something like that, or you lose it. But he was always good at anything with his hands. He used to be a swift on the linotype. Was he still?”

  “Average speed is all,” I said. I thought of something. “Maybe it was because he had arthritis in his hands and arms for a while, quite a few years ago. He couldn’t work at all for a few months, and maybe that slowed him down from then on. That was while we were in Gary, just before we moved from Gary to Chicago.”

  Uncle Ambrose said, “He never told me that.”

  I asked, “Did you and he ever get together again, outside of visits, I mean?”

  “Oh, sure. I was in dutch with the shamus outfit already, so I quit and Wally and I traveled together with a medicine show. He did juggling and stuff, in blackface.”

  “Can you juggle?”

  “Me, no? Wally was the one who could use his hands. Me, I make with the mouth. I did spieling, and put on a vent act.”

  I must have looked pretty blank.

  He grinned at me. “Ventriloquism, to you mooches. Come on, kid, we really got to move on. If you want the story of my life and Wally’s, you can’t have it in one sitting when we got a spot of work ahead. It’s almost nine now.”

  I walked to Kaufman’s in a sort of a daze.

  I’d never known that Pop had been anything but a linotype operator. I just couldn’t think of him as a wild kid, bumming across Mexico, having a duel, wanting to be a bull-fighter in Spain, juggling with a medicine show, being part of a vaude-ville troupe.

  All that, I thought, and he died in an alley, drunk.

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  Chapter 7

  Kaufman’s place was busier. There were half a dozen men and two women at the bar, couples in two of the booths, and a pinochle game at a back table. The juke box was blaring.

  Our table, though, was empty. We sat just as we had before. Kaufman was busy at the bar; he didn’t see us come in or sit down.

  He saw us, and met our eyes watching him, a minute or so later. He was pouring whiskey into a jigger glass in front of a man at the bar and the whiskey came up over the rim of the glass and made a little puddle on the varnished wood.

  He rang up the sale, then came around the end of the bar and stood in front of us, hands on his hips and looking belligerent and undecided at the same time.

  He pitched his voice low. “What do you guys want?”

  Uncle Ambrose took it deadpan. There wasn’t a trace of humor in his face or in his voice. He said, “Two white sodas.”

  Kaufman took his hands off his hips and wiped them slowly on his apron. His eyes went from my uncle’s face to mine and I gave him the flat, level stare.

  He didn’t meet it long. He looked back at Uncle Ambrose.

  He pulled out a chair and sat down. He said, “I don’t want any trouble here.”

  Uncle Ambrose said, “We don’t like trouble either. We don’t want any. We wouldn’t make any.”

  “You want something. Wouldn’t it be a lot easier if you levelled?”

  “About what?” my uncle asked.

  The tavern-owner’s lips went together tight for a second. He looked like he wa
s going to get mad.

  Then his voice was calmer than before. He said, “I’ve placed you. You were at the inquest on that guy got slugged in an alley.”

  My uncle asked, “What guy?”

  Kaufman took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He said, “Yeah, I’m sure. You were in the back row, trying to keep outa sight. You a friend of this Hunter guy, or what?”

  “What Hunter guy?”

  Kaufman looked like he was going to get mad again, then he pulled in his horns.

  He said, “Lemme save you trouble. Whatever you want, it ain’t here. I ain’t got it. I levelled with the coppers and at the inquest. I don’t know a damn thing about it I didn’t tell ’em. And you heard it; you was there.”

  My uncle didn’t say anything. He took out a pack of cigarettes and handed it toward me. I took one, and he held it out to Kaufman. Kaufman ignored it.

  Kaufman said, “It’s all on the level. So what you coming in here for? What the hell do you want?”

  Uncle Ambrose didn’t bat an eyelash. He said, “White soda. Two glasses.”

  Kaufman stood up so suddenly that the chair he’d been sitting on went over backwards. Redness was spreading upward from his neck. He turned around and picked up the chair, pushing it back under the table carefully, as though its exact position there was a matter of importance.

  He went back of the bar without saying another word.

  A few minutes later the bartender, the tall skinny guy, brought our white sodas. He grinned cheerfully and my uncle grinned back. The little wrinkles of hell-with-it laughter were back around the corners of his eyes and he didn’t look deadly at all.

  Kaufman wasn’t looking our way; he was busy at the other end of the bar.

  “No Mickey?” Uncle Ambrose asked him.

  “No Mickey,” said the bartender. “You couldn’t make a Mickey with plain white soda so it wouldn’t taste.”

  “That’s what I figured,” said my uncle. He handed the slim guy a dollar bill. “Keep the change, Slim, for the baby’s bank.”

  “Sure, thanks. Say, the kid was nuts about you, Am. Wants to know when you’ll be out again.”

  “Soon, Slim. Better run along before his nibs sees us talking.”

  The bartender went back to the pinochle table to take their order.

  I asked, “When did all this happen?”

  “Last night. His evening off. Got his name and address from Bassett and went calling. He’s on our side now.”

  “Another hundred bucks?”

  My uncle shook his head. “There are guys you can buy, kid, and guys you can’t. I managed to put a little silver in his kid’s bank.”

  “Then that wasn’t a gag about the kid’s bank — I mean, about keeping the change out of the buck?”

  “Hell, no. That’s exactly where that change will go.”

  “I’ll be damned,” I said.

  Kaufman was coming to the near end of the bar again, and I shut up and went back to watching him. He didn’t look out way again.

  We stayed there until a little after midnight. Then we got up and walked out.

  When I got home, Mom and Gardie were asleep. There was a note from Mom asking me to wake her whenever I got up, because she wanted to start looking for a job.

  I was tired, but I had trouble getting to sleep. I kept thinking about what I’d learned about Pop.

  When he was my age, I thought, he’d owned and run a newspaper. He’d had a duel and shot a man. He’d had an affair with a married woman. He’d traveled across most of Mexico afoot and spoke Spanish like a native. He’d crossed the Atlantic and lived in Spain. He’d dealt blackjack in a border town.

  When he was my age, I thought, he’d been in vaudeville and was traveling with a medicine show.

  I couldn’t picture Pop in blackface. I couldn’t picture any of the rest of it, either. I wondered what he’d looked like then.

  But when I slept, finally, I didn’t dream about Pop. I dreamed about me, and I was a matador in a bull ring in Spain. I had black grease paint on my face and a rapier in my hand. And, mixed up like dreams are mixed up, the bull was a real bull — a huge black bull — and yet he wasn’t. Somehow, he was a tavern owner named Kaufman.

  He came running at me and his horns were a yard long, with points as sharp as needles, and they gleamed in the sunlight, and I was scared, scared as hell.…

  We went back to the tavern at three o’clock the next afternoon. Uncle Ambrose had learned that was about the time Kaufman came on. Slim went off duty then, and came back later in the evening when things got busy enough to need two men.

  Kaufman was just tying on his apron, and Slim must have just left, when we walked into the place.

  He just glanced at us casually, as though he expected us.

  There wasn’t anyone else there; just Kaufman and us. But there was something in the atmosphere, something besides the smell of beer and whiskey.

  There’s going to be trouble, I thought.

  I was scared, as scared as I’d been in my dream last night. I thought of it then, the dream.

  We sat down at the table. The same table.

  Kaufman came back. He said, “I don’t want trouble. Why don’t you guys move along?”

  My uncle said, “We like it here.”

  “Okay,” Kaufman said. He went back of the bar and came back with two glasses of white soda. My uncle gave him twenty cents.

  He went back of the bar and started polishing glasses. He didn’t look toward us. Once he dropped a glass and broke it.

  A little later the door opened and two men came in.

  They were big guys and they looked tough. One of them was an ex-pug; you could tell by his ears. He had a bullet head and shoulders like an ape. He had little pig eyes.

  The other one looked small, standing by the big guy. But only by contrast; a second look told you he was five-eleven or so, and would go one-eighty stripped. He had a face like a horse.

  They stopped just inside the door and looked the place over. Their eyes took in all the booths and saw they were empty. They looked everywhere except at us. My uncle moved in his chair, shifted his feet.

  Then they went over to the bar.

  Kaufman put two shot glasses in front of them and filled the glasses without their having said a word.

  That was the give-away, if there’d be any need for one.

  There was a growing cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. I wondered if my legs would wobble if I stood up.

  I glanced out of the corner of my eye at Uncle Ambrose. His face was perfectly still, his lips weren’t moving, but he was talking, just loud enough that I could hear him. It surprised me for a moment that his mouth didn’t move, until I remembered the vent business.

  He said, “Kid, I can handle this better alone. You go back to the can. There’s a window; get out of it and scram. Right now; soon as they’ve had a drink, they’ll make a play.”

  He was lying, I knew. Unless he was heeled there wasn’t a way on earth he could handle this. And he wasn’t heeled, any more than I was.

  I thought, I’m the one that’s supposed to be heeled. I’m the gun punk. I’ve got a new suit that looks like a hundred bucks and a new snap-brim hat. And I’ve got an imaginary thirty-eight automatic, with the safety catch off. It’s in a shoulder holster on my left shoulder.

  I stood up, and my legs weren’t rubber.

  I walked around back of Uncle Ambrose’s chair and started for the door of the men’s room, but I didn’t go there. I stopped short right at the end of the bar, and stood there where I could watch up the bar, front and back.

  I’d brought up my right hand and let it rest with the fingers just inside my coat, touching the butt of the thirty-eight automatic that wasn�
�t there.

  I didn’t say anything; I just looked at them. I didn’t tell them to keep their hands on the bar, but they kept them there.

  I watched all three of them. Most of all I watched Kaufman’s eyes. He’d have a gun back of the bar somewhere. I watched his eyes till I knew where it was. I couldn’t see it from where I stood, but I knew now just where he kept it.

  I asked, “You guys want anything?”

  It was the horse-faced one that answered. He said, “Not a thing, pal. Not a thing.”

  He turned his head to Kaufman. He said, “Nuts to you, George. For ten apiece we should play for keeps?”

  I looked at Kaufman. I said, “It was a dirty trick, George. Maybe you should move up the bar a few steps.”

  He hesitated, and I let my hand slide another inch inside my coat.

  He took three slow steps backwards.

  I walked behind the bar and picked up his gun. It was a short-barrelled thirty-two revolver on a thirty-eight frame. A nice gun.

  I swung out the cylinder and let the cartridges drop into dirty dishwater in one of the sinks built in back of the bar. I dropped the gun in after them.

  I turned around to pick a bottle off the back bar. In the mirror I caught Uncle Ambrose’s eye. He was sitting there at the table, grinning like a Cheshire cat. He winked at me.

  The most expensive stuff I could see was a bottle of Teacher’s Highland Cream.

  “On the house, boys,” I said. I poured them each a shot. Horse-face grinned at me. He said, “You wouldn’t want to give us our ten apiece outa the register, would you, pal? I figure we got it coming, from the dirty trick George played on us.”

  My uncle had stood up and was strolling over to the bar. He came in between Horse-face and the big guy. He looked tiny, standing there between them.

  He said, “Let me,” and took out his wallet. He took out two tens and gave one to each of the men on either side of him. He said, “You’re a right, fellas. I wouldn’t want to see you rooked on this deal.”

  Horse-face stuffed the bill into his pants pocket. He said, “You’re a right guy, mister. We’d just as soon earn this. Like us to?”