Murder Me for Nickels

by Peter Rabe

  We drove down to the service depot where Lippit had his trucks, storage, and a shop for repairs. It was just normally busy there and, with the coffee break on, even homey. We went past the work benches and the half dozen jukeboxes on dollies and on to the back where the foreman had a cubicle to himself. Lippit sat down at the desk and I stood around next to it.

  “Bu-rother,” Lippit said. “You’d think home might at least be as peaceful as work.”

  I lit a cigarette and said, “Don’t get married.”

  “That’s right. That’s why I don’t.”

  We dropped that nonsense when the foreman came in. He nodded and made a comment about the nice party from the night before.

  “Drop that subject,” I told him.

  Then he went to the urn in the shop and brought us some coffee. We sipped and Lippit said, “Anything?”

  “No,” said the foreman. “Just the usual.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like those machines from the Markus Company. We got a breakdown someplace. It’s one of those Markus machines.”

  “Junk,” said Lippit. “Bargains. I hate bargains.”

  “You got eight more on order,” said the foreman.

  “That’s been canceled,” I said. “A week ago, Walter?”

  “Yeah. I canceled a week ago.”

  “Nothing else much,” said the foreman. “Just Jimmy and Don are late.”

  “How long has that been going on?”

  “Well, not Don. He’s regular. Just Jimmy off and on.”

  “He’s no bargain, you know,” Lippit said into his coffee. “He just drives deliveries and could be replaced.”

  “He’s all right,” said the foreman. “Not what I’d call trouble.”

  Electrical repairs don’t make much of a racket and the sounds from the shop weren’t anything much. There was nothing to listen to and the three of us by the desk didn’t have much to say.

  “Late on what?” I asked the foreman. “What are the two drivers late on?”

  “Pickups,” said the foreman. “Today is change day.”

  “You mean it’s past ten in the morning,” Lippit wanted to know, “and nobody’s been out putting in the new records?”

  “Like I said, Don and Jimmy ain’t back yet from the jobber.”

  Lippit picked up the phone and called up our jobber. He asked for shipping and receiving and had an argument with the guy who handled our weekly order.

  “All fouled up,” said Lippit when he hung up the phone. “Lots of apologies but plenty fouled up.”

  “Don and Jimmy’s okay,” said the foreman. “Like I told you.”

  Nothing else went on that day, except routine which was handled by the shop. And some to-do about Lippit’s union. Nothing special, just what had to be done since Folsom was fired.

  But the next day I was busy, starting early in the morning. It was public relations work of a hopeless kind. Maybe two hours of that, and then I went to see Lippit.

  He was in that room he had in the club. He had been talking shipping rates with a trucking man and when I came in they were on the small talk. I took maybe five minutes of that and then I fiddled the radio. When I had it good and loud Lippit looked up, from the middle of a sentence about pennant prospects.

  “You’re bothering me, Jack.”

  “This is nothing,” I said. “Nothing yet.”

  “What?”

  “Business.”

  “So talk.”

  “Send him out.”

  Lippit sent the trucker out, after offering a guest dip in the pool, or a steam bath if the trucker preferred, but the trucker preferred to stay as he was. He left and Lippit said, “Turn down that damn radio.”

  “You like this kind of music?” I didn’t turn it off, just down.

  “That’s egghair music,” he said.

  “You make it sound terrible, Walter. Either say egghead, or longhair, but not the other.”

  “Whichever. I don’t get it.”

  “In that case, Walter, here is what I suggest you might do. Go to Casey’s Tap Room, on Adler, and listen to an Etude by Chopin with your beer. Or sit down in Morry’s Bowling Emporium and take in those wild licks by a cat called Handel. Or if your taste…”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute.”

  “You prefer Vivaldi?”

  “Which?”

  “Happy’s Icecream Parlor.”

  “Turn off that damn radio!”

  “That was Wagner’s Valkyrie. Moishe’s Delicatessen.”

  He said something but I didn’t catch it all because of the speed of his delivery. When he was done he got up and started to pace.

  “How’d all those crazy records get on those jukes?”

  “It’s what Don and Jimmy brought over.”

  “Don’t they look at the crap they pick up?”

  “You know damn well they don’t. We get the jobber’s list unless we ask for specials.”

  Lippit paced and mumbled.

  “It’s every place like that?” he asked.

  “Armenian folk music at the rec hall of Irish Patriots, Tosca at the Teens Tavern, which goes well with the malteds, and…”

  “Never mind.”

  He grabbed up the phone and called up the jobber but before he got really wild he banged down the receiver. It was cramping his style. He went down there in person and I was along. A fine performance, and he meant every word of it. And it worked. He got the jobber to pick up all the wrong records and it wouldn’t cost Lippit a cent.

  This was done. This was fine.

  But the next day it was still as far as it had gone. We now didn’t have a box with a full quota of records and most of them were without current hits.

  I went down to the jobber.

  The place was big and dark. It was in one end of a warehouse in a street full of truck terminals. The disc jobber, who supplied a territory including three towns, used space which was higher than wide, a long hall with racks which did not reach the ceiling, because the ceiling was two stories up. You can’t pile records very high. The weight adds up and the bottom ones break. The racks were all over the place, making long, criss-cross alleys. The office part was on the second floor of the attaching warehouse and I got up there by a metal staircase which wound up to the door which had been put through the wall.

  This place was all utility, too. Just a big room with factory windows, the walls green-painted cinderblock, a girl typing, a man with a desk full of ledgers, a wall of files, a half-glass partition. Bascot, the jobber, had his desk at that end.

  I walked in, and when the iron door clanked shut the girl looked up from her machine and stopped typing. She had the stoop, dry hair and glasses of the girl who would have her kind of job forever.

  I knew her and she knew me, but she didn’t say hello. She tried to smile but she only nodded, and because her machine had made the only sound in the office it was now very quiet.

  “Bascot in, girl Friday?”

  “Mister Bascot?”

  “Yes. Bascot. I don’t know about the Mister yet. I’ll first talk to him.”

  Then I heard the little sound a door makes when you try not to make any sound at all, the door on the other side of the partition, and I went in unannounced. He knew I was there, anyway.

  The door was just hissing shut on the pneumatic gadget and I walked past Bascot’s empty desk, empty chair, and out of his empty office.

  He was just partway down the stairs. They led out to the street or you could take a door which went back to the storage space.

  “Bascot,” I said. “I’m happy to find you in.”

  I could just see the top of his head and that he was trying to get out to the street.

  “Wait up. I’ll walk with you.”

  He didn’t want that. He turned to the door which went to the warehouse and there he went through this little act of just having heard me. Puzzled stop, look around at the air, distracted recognition.

  “Oh. St. Louis,” he said
.

  I caught up with him and tried to ease everything with a smile of gladness.

  “I almost missed you.”

  Maybe I should have first practiced the smile with a mirror, because by the looks of Bascot it had not come off. He seemed to think I was glad that I could now take a bite out of him.

  “I’m in a hurry, St. Louis. How about tomorrow?”

  Bascot, it was true, was always in a hurry. He had a big forehead with permanent wrinkles, worry wrinkles about having to hurry, and he had a nervous pout which he did with his mouth, very quickly and about every two minutes. It was meant to resettle his plate. And his clothes showed hurry. Tie half down, collar curled under, vest buttoned wrong. If there were such a thing as a set of two left-footed shoes, Bascot would wear them.

  “Today,” I said. “Because I’m in a hurry.”

  “All right Come in here.”

  Nasty, too. He went into the warehouse but didn’t open the door enough for me to get through. I had to open it again myself and when I was through he was standing there by a rack.

  In spite of the summer outside, the warehouse seemed chilly. That was because of the two-story ceiling. Or maybe it was Bascot’s manner.

  “You been giving me a lot of trouble,” he said. “That whole outfit of yours.”

  Clever too. He had taken the words right out of my mouth.

  I let the door slam shut first, left a pause, then stepped closer. That’s theatrics. It works with the nervous kind, such as Bascot.

  “You’re stalling Lippit,” I said. “Thirty per cent of your business, Bascot, is Lippit.”

  And a hundred per cent of Lippit’s coin depended on Bascot, so I shouldn’t have opened this way, maybe.

  “And a hundred per cent of…”

  I shouldn’t have opened this way. I told Bascot to shut up and not start out with this desperate talk because what I had come over for was strictly business and not his and my friendship.

  “I’m not trying to be personal,” he said. “I got nothing against you.”

  The dislike stuck out of him like his big, bony nose.

  “Why this crap?” I asked him. “Why this stall with the records and then nothing at all?”

  He stepped back into an alley of racks and picked at one of the marker cards on a shelf.

  “You don’t like the way I been giving service, St. Louis, then why in hell you been letting me service your outfit for all this time? And the first complaint you ever had, don’t come in here and act like a-act the way-” He gave up, all choked with nerves and bad temper.

  I put one arm on a shelf, which looks casual. “Please, Bascot. I just got this one question.”

  “What? What question?”

  “But I first want to apologize. I’m sorry, Bascot, for the way I sounded.”

  This embarrassed him and he frowned like a prune.

  “Okay, Bascot? I’m sorry.”

  “Okay, okay. Forget it.”

  “And the question is, why the runaround?”

  He blew his stack. He said he didn’t know about any runaround and hadn’t he paid for picking up all those wrong records and what in hell more did we want.

  “Service, Bascot That’s all.”

  “Service, service, service! You think all I got to do is supply your jukes?”

  As far as I was concerned, all he had to do was give me one straight answer. But he was much too uncomfortable for that.

  “I know,” I told him. “I know you’re under a lot of pressure.”

  “Damn right.”

  “Who’s doing it, Bascot?”

  “What? What in hell you talking about?”

  “Or, how is he doing it?”

  For a minute I thought he might open up, he looked that uncomfortable, but then he had a lot of habit to save him. He got nasty again.

  “Don’t come in here on no big horse, St Louis. I don’t owe you nothing and I don’t even know you. Lippit Enterprises is what I deal with and I deal with that outfit like with any other. Now why don’t you just get out of here and wait your turn.”

  “When?”

  “When what? What, more questions?”

  “When will that turn be, Bascot?”

  “You’ll be taken care of. Don’t worry.”

  “But I do, Bascot I’m worried about when it’s our turn to get the records we got on permanent order.”

  “You’ll get taken care of.”

  “I don’t mean it that way. I’m asking about the records.”

  “Soon as I get straightened out, that’s when. That soon.”

  He was getting very irritated and I myself didn’t find much humor left in the situation. Only he was more honest about it. He looked mean and ratty.

  “So you go on and get out of here, St. Louis, and tell Lippit to wait his turn.”

  “How long?”

  “Doomsday, for all I know!” he said, in just short of a squeaky scream.

  “That’s too long, Bascot.”

  It looked as if he were afraid of his own excitement, because instead of saying anything else, screaming maybe, he started to turn.

  I reached out and held him by the lapels.

  “Bascot. Listen to me, businessman. You make one fourth of the price of a record and you sell us a hell of a lot of them, every month. You drop us, Bascot, and who’s going to take up the slack?”

  He wouldn’t answer and strained at his clothes, but I yanked him up short.

  “Who, Bascot?”

  “Let go!”

  “Why don’t you answer, Bascot?”

  Bascot did not answer but somebody else did.

  “Because he only works here.”

  I looked over Bascot’s shoulder. Where the long warehouse got dim in the back, there was Benotti. He looked squat, even small, because he stood at the end of an alley made by rows of tall racks.

  They were like tool-crib racks, thin two-by-four skeletons with a lot of tiers which reached up higher than the head of a man. The warehouse had line after line of these racks and on the shelves were black stacks of records.

  I let go of Bascot. Benotti, at the end of the alley, started to walk. Once he stopped and laughed at me. He favored one foot, because of the jump off his porch, and when he stopped he held on to a rack for a moment, making the thin structure sway. It swayed with a small creak, which was the only sound in the warehouse for that moment, and then Benotti laughed again. He walked my way, feeling good. He had a wicked cut down one side of his nose-not as raw as when I had put it there-but he still looked chipper, or eager. Too eager.

  I forgot about Bascot and took a few steps toward Benotti, he walking from one end of the alley, me from the other.

  “He’s working for you?” I asked him.

  “Lock, stock and barrel.”

  No strong-arm in this maneuver. Just brains. Benotti had sewed up our source of records.

  Then I saw him move toward me, like before, and it was strong-arm again. I didn’t feel like coming any closer. I stopped and looked back, where I had left Bascot. He was no longer there and did not count. What counted were the two at the end of the alley, one man long and ugly and the other one short and ugly. Or maybe they only looked ugly to me because that was how my mood was turning.

  “Just crowd him,” said Benotti behind me. “He’s mine.”

  I stood still, not knowing what to do for the moment, and worried about feeling no spunk but instead clearly scared.

  “You wouldn’t consider,” I said, “talking this over?”

  I said it for a joke, to change from scared to a joke, but Benotti’s answer was as expected.

  “You stupid son of a bitch,” he said to me.

  “No?” I said.

  “No.”

  I said, “Tsk,” hoping it would sound like bravado and, “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.”

  Then I tried it like a monkey’s uncle. Up the side of the rack, to the top tier, while the thin, wooden structure gave a horrible creak. The damn thin
g swayed and I crunched some records. I could see Bascot again, far away, and of course all the others.

  Bascot didn’t say a thing. He just worked here. But Benotti cursed good and loud and the tall pug he had brought along tried it the way I had done it. The rack swayed and creaked. The short pug was running around the far end, waiting for me on the other side.

  “Just crowd him!” yelled Benotti. “Just do that and bring him to me.”

  The tall pug had big-knuckled hands and they came up on the top rim of the rack. I stepped on them.

  The man screamed but he didn’t let go. Good for him. I skittered to the other side of the rack, bent a little, and jumped over the alley.

  The rack behind me made a sound like a crate, then like a crate coming open, then like the same thing spilling its guts. Two-by-fours flying, records flying, maledictions flying, and the tall one underneath. At least I figured he was, while I was running.

  I ran the length of tiers, jumped from one to the other, with things creaking, crunching, swaying, and mostly falling down.

  It reminded me of a railroad yard, with sidings here, spurs there, and the whole thing in mid-air like a nightmare landscape.

  If I could make it to the far row of racks where the sliding door to the loading ramp showed-halfway open and the bright sunshine outside…

  But that was the rack which started swaying all by itself. The short pug showed on the top and somebody underneath was helping him up.

  I could run around a little bit longer, jump back and forth a little bit longer. No. I couldn’t.

  My rack swayed like crazy and I could see Benotti below. Like a Samson. He was rocking the thing and maybe two, three heaves more and I’d be the bottom man. The way he didn’t give a damn about stock falling to pieces, he really wanted me.

  So I jumped at the last minute and the short pug and I were on the same rack.

  We both had the same problem, keeping our balance. We moved as if there were a great deal of time.

  And Benotti walked up very slowly, watching which way the thing was going to fall. The tall pug was there, too. He was holding his wrist and it must have been hurting. We were all very quiet.

  “St. Louis?” said Benotti.

  “I’m busy.”

  “St Louis. You’ll get it one way or the other. You know that, St. Louis?”

  “It’s what keeps me busy.”