The Fabulous Clipjoint

by Fredric Brown

  When it went off and woke me up, there were voices in the living room. I put on the rest of my clothes and went out there. Mom and Gardie were home and Bunny was with them. They had just finished eating, and Mom said, “Hello, stranger,” and wanted to know if I wanted to eat. I said I’d just get myself a cup and have coffee.

  I got a cup and pulled up a chair. I couldn’t get over looking at Mom. She’d been to a beauty parlor, and she sure looked different. She had on a black dress, a new one, but it made her look better than I’d ever seen her. She had on a little make-up, but not too much.

  Gosh, I thought, she’s really pretty when she’s fixed up.

  Gardie looked pretty good, too. But her face got a little sullen when she looked at me. I had a hunch she was holding it against me about the wallet business, and my little scrap with Bobby Reinhart.

  Bunny said, “They’re talking about going to Florida, Ed, as soon as they get the insurance money. I tell ’em they ought to stay here, where they got friends.”

  “Friends, nuts,” Mom said. “Who outside of you, Bunny? Ed, I hear you were in Gary this morning. Did you see the old place?”

  I nodded. “Just from the outside.”

  Mom said, “It sure was a dump. This flat’s bad enough, but it sure was a dump, in Gary.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  I put sugar and cream in the coffee Mom poured for me.It wasn’t very hot so I drank it right down. I said, “I got to meet Uncle Am. I can’t stay.”

  Bunny said, “Gee, Ed, we were counting on you to play some cards. When we found you were home, Madge looked at your clock and found you were going to wake up at seven. We thought you’d stick around.”

  I said, “Maybe I can bring Uncle Am back with me. I’ll see.”

  I stood up. Gardie asked, “What are you going to do, Eddie? I don’t mean now, I mean in general. You going back to work?”

  “Sure,” I said, “I’m going back to work. Why not?”

  “I thought maybe you’d want to come to Florida with us, that’s all. You don’t, do you?”

  I said, “I guess not.”

  She said, “The money’s Mom’s. I don’t know if you know, but the policy was made out to her. It’s hers.”

  Mom said, “Gardie!”

  “I know that,” I said. “I don’t want any of the money.”

  Mom said, “Gardic shouldn’t of put it that way, Ed. But what she means is you’ve got a job and everything, and I’ve got to finish putting her through school and —”

  “It’s all right, Mom,” I told her. “Honest, I never even thought about wanting any of the money. I’m doing all right. Well, so long. So long, Bunny.”

  Bunny called out, “Wait a second, Ed,” and joined me in the hall by the door. He pulled out a five-dollar bill. He said, “Bring your uncle over, Ed; I’d like to meet him. And bring some beer back with you. Out of this.”

  I didn’t take the bill. I said, “Honest, Bunny, I can’t. I’d like you to meet him, but some other time. We got something to do this evening. We’re — well, you know what we’re trying to do.”

  He shook his head slowly. He said, “There’s no percentage in it, Ed. You ought to let it lay.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe you’re right, Bunny. But now we’re started; well, we’re going to see it through. It’s goofy I guess, but that’s the way it is.”

  “Then how about letting me help?”

  “You did. You helped plenty, getting that listing for us. If anything else comes up, I’ll let you know. Thanks a lot, Bunny.”

  At the hotel, I found Uncle Am shaving with an electric razor plugged in beside his bureau mirror.

  He asked, “Get sleep?”

  “Sure, lots of it.” I took a look at his face in the mirror. It was a little puffy and his eyes were slightly red-rimmed. I said, “You didn’t, did you?” “I started to, and Bassett came around and woke me up. We took each other around for a drink and pumped each other.”

  “Dry?” I asked.

  “I don’t know how dry I got him — I think he’s holding something back, but I don’t know what. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised, Ed, if he’s running a ring-tailed whizzer on us. But I can’t figure where.”

  “And how did he do with you?”

  “Not so bad. I told him about Gary, about the trial, about the extra dough Wally had — I gave him everything but the Milan Towers address and phone number. I got a hunch he’s holding back something more important than that.”

  “As for instance?”

  “I wish I knew, kid. Have you seen Madge?”

  “She’s going to Florida,” I told him. “She and Gardie. Soon as they get the insurance.”

  He said, “I wish ’em luck. She’ll land on her feet, kid. That money won’t last her over a year, but she’ll have another husband by then. She’s still got her figure and — she was about six or seven years younger than Wally, if I remember right.”

  “She’s thirty-six, I think.”

  Uncle Am said, “Bassett and I had a drink or two and then I got rid of him and there wasn’t enough time left to sleep before you’d get here, so I went over and cased the Milan Towers. I made a start for us.”

  He came over and sat on the bed, leaned back against the pillow. He said, “There’s a girl living alone in Apartment Forty- three. Name of Claire Raymond. Tasty dish, the bartender says. Her husband’s away; the bartender thinks they’re separated. He even thinks she got walked out on; but the rent’s paid till the end of the month so she’s staying there alone for that long, anyway.”

  “Did you find out if —”

  “Yeah, Raymond is Reynolds. He fits the description, anyway. And he’d been in the bar with a couple of friends that could be Dutch and Benny.”

  “Benny?”

  “The torpedo. I got his name from Bassett; Bassett had looked up what the cops had on them, and gave me some dope. Benny Rosso. Dutch’s last name is Reagan, if you can figure that out. None of them has shown at the Milan for about a week — that’d be from a day or two before Wally’s death.”

  “Figure that means anything.”

  He yawned. “I wouldn’t know. We’ll have to ask ’em sometime. Well, I guess we might as well get going.”

  I said, “Relax a minute. I got to go down the hall.”

  “Okay, kid. Don’t fall in.”

  I went down the hall, and when I came back he was sound asleep.

  I stood there a minute, thinking. He’d been doing ninetenths of this by himself, with me playing tagalong. Didn’t I have the brains or nerve to do something by myself for once? Especially when he needed sleep and I didn’t.

  I took a deep breath and let it out and said to myself, “Here goes nothing,” and I turned out the light.

  I got out without waking him up, and I headed for the Milan Towers.

  | Go to Contents |

  Chapter 11

  I slowed down on the way, because it came to me I didn’t know what I was going to do. It was pretty early in the evening, too, and I was hungry, so I stopped and ate. When I was through eating, I still didn’t have any idea.

  But I went on to the Milan Towers.

  There was a cocktail bar in the corner of the building, connecting with the lobby. I went in and sat down at the bar. It was swanky as hell. I’d been going to order beer, but I’d have felt foolish ordering beer in a place like that.

  I tilted my hat back a little and tried to feel tough.

  “Rye,” I told the bartender. I remembered George Raft, as Ned Beaumont in the movie, The Glass Key, always ordered rye. I tried to feel like George Raft had acted.

  The bartender spun a shot glass expertly along the bar and filled it from an Old Overholt bottle. “Wash?”
<
br />   “Plain water,” I told him.

  I got back thirty-five cents out of the dollar bill I put on the bar.

  I thought, I don’t have to be in any hurry to drink it. Without turning around, I studied the place, using the mirror back of the bar. I wondered, why do all bars have mirrors? I should think when a man’s getting tight, the last thing he’d want to watch would be himself in a mirror. At least the ones who drink to get away from themselves.

  In the mirror I could see through the door that led into the lobby of the hotel. I could see a clock in there. The dial of the clock was backwards in the mirror and it took me a little while to figure out that it was a quarter after nine.

  At half-past nine, I thought, I’ll do something. I don’t know what, but I’ll get started.

  The first step will be to go out in the lobby and phone upstairs. But what am I going to say?

  I wished now I’d either waked Uncle Am or waited for him. Maybe I was going to make a botch of things. Like I did taking a poke at Reinhart.

  I looked around the place again, in the mirror. Down at the other end of the bar a man sat alone. He looked like a successful business man. I thought, I wonder if he is. For all I know, he might be a gangster. And the little, dark, Italian fellow sitting alone over in the booth, might be a commission merchant, although he looked like a torpedo. He might even be Benny Rosso. I could ask him, but if he is, he’s heeled and I’m not. And maybe he wouldn’t tell me.

  I took a sip of the rye and it tasted lousy, so I drank it down to get rid of it, and got hold of the chaser before I desecrated that sleek and shiny bar by exploding across it. I hoped nobody had noticed my lack of dignity in that dive for the water.

  I looked at the backwards clock in the mirror and it looked like three thirty-one, so I figured it was nine twenty-nine.

  The bartender was coming back my way, but I shook my head at him. I wondered if he’d seen me almost choke on the drink. I felt silly, but I sat there one more minute and then I got up and started for the lobby door. I felt like my shirttail was hanging out and everybody was looking at it.

  I was going to stutter into the phone and mess everything. It was the juke box that saved me. It was between the bar and that door, against a square pillar in the middle of the room. It was bright and shiny and gaudy, even in that swanky barroom. I stopped to look over the numbers on it and fished a nickel out of my pocket.

  I picked a Benny Goodman out of the lot and dropped my nickel. I stood there watching the machine slide the platter out of the stack and bring down the needle.

  I closed my eyes when it started to play and stood there taking in the introduction, not moving a muscle, but giving to the music with all of my body, with all of me, letting go inside.

  Then I opened my eyes again and walked out into the lobby, riding on the high wail of the clarinet, drunk as a lord. Not from the rye.

  I felt swell. I didn’t feel like a kid, I didn’t feel foolish, and my shirttail was in again. I could handle anything likely to happen and most things that were unlikely.

  I stepped into the phone booth and dialed W-E-N-3-8-4-2. I heard the buzz of the phone ringing.

  The click of the receiver and a girl’s voice said, “Hello?” The voice I’d liked last night.

  I said, “This is Ed, Claire.”

  “Ed who?”

  “You don’t know me. You’ve never met me. But I’m calling from the lobby downstairs. Are you alone?”

  “Y-yes. Who is this?”

  I asked, “Does the name Hunter mean anything to you?” “Hunter? It doesn’t.”

  I asked, “How about the name Reynolds?” “Who is this?”

  “I’d like to explain,” I said. “May I come upstairs? Or would you meet me down in the bar for a drink?”

  “Are you a friend of Harry’s?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t know you,” she said. “I don’t see why I should see you.”

  I said, “That’s the only way you’ll get to know me.”

  “Do you know Harry?”

  I said, “I’m an enemy of Harry’s.”

  “Oh.” It stalled her for a minute.

  I said, “I’m coming upstairs. Open the door but leave the chain on it. If I don’t look like a werewolf — or any other kind of wolf — maybe you’ll unhook the chain.”

  I hung up before she could tell me not to. I thought I had her curious, enough so to let me in.

  I didn’t want to give her time to think it over, nor time to make a phone call. I didn’t wait for an elevator; I hotfooted it up three flights of stairs.

  She hadn’t phoned anybody, because she was waiting at the door. There was a chain on it, all right, and she had the door open four inches on the chain and was standing there looking out. That way she could see me walking down the hall and get a better look then by opening it after I knocked.

  She was young, and she was a knockout. Even through four inches of open door, I could see that. She was the kind of girl that could make you whistle twice.

  I managed to get down the hall without stumbling on the carpet.

  Her eyes stayed neutral, but she took the chain off the door when I got there. She opened it, and I went in. There wasn’t anyone waiting back of the door with a sandbag, so I went on into the living room. It was a nice room except that it was a little like a movie set. There was a fireplace with brass andirons and a stand that held a dainty, shiny poker and shovel, but there’d never been a fire in the fireplace. There was a comfortable looking sofa in front of it. There were lamps and drapes and curtains and things; I can’t describe it, but it was a nice room.

  I walked around to the front of the sofa and sat down. I held my hand out to the empty fireplace and rubbed them as though I were warming them.

  I said, “It’s a braw night. The snow is seven feet deep on the boulevard. My huskies gave out before I reached Ontario. The last mile I had to crawl on hand and knee.” I rubbed my hands some more.

  She stood there at the end of the sofa, looking down at me, arms akimbo. They were nice arms for a sleeveless dress, and she was wearing a sleeveless dress.

  She said, “I take it you’re not in a hurry?”

  I said, “I must catch a train a week from Wednesday.”

  She made a little noise that might have been a well-bred snort. She said, “I suppose we might as well have a drink then.”

  She bent down and opened the cabinet to the left of the fireplace and there was a row of bottles in it and a row of glasses. There were jiggers and stirring spoons and a shaker and — as God is my witness — there was a miniature freezing compartment at one side with three rubber trays of ice cubes.

  I said, “What, no radio in it?”

  “The other side of the fireplace. Radio-phono.” I looked that way.

  I said, “I’ll bet you haven’t any records.”

  “Do you want a drink, or don’t you?”

  I looked back at the row of bottles, and decided against anything mixed; I might be expected to mix it myself and not know how to. I said, “Burgundy goes well with a maroon carpet. It doesn’t make spots if you spill it.”

  “If that’s all that worries you, you can have crème de menthe. The furnishings aren’t mine.”

  “But you have to live with them.”

  “Not after next week.”

  I said, “Then to hell with Burgundy. We’ll have crème de menthe. Anyway me, I will.”

  She took a pair of tiny liqueur goblets from the top shelf and filled them from the crème de menthe bottle. She handed me one.

  I saw a teakwood cigarette box on the mantel. I gave her one of her own cigarettes and lighted it for her, lighted one for myself and then sat down and took a sip of the liqueur. It tasted like peppe
rmint candy and looked like green ink. I decided that I liked it.

  She didn’t sit down. She stood leaning back against the mantel, looking at me.

  She was still neutral.

  She had jet-black hair that managed to be sleek and wavy at the same time. She was slender, almost as tall as I. She had clear, calm eyes.

  I said, “You’re beautiful.”

  A corner of her mouth twitched a little bit. She asked, “Is that why you telephoned up, to tell me that?”

  I said, “I didn’t know it then. I’d never seen you. No, that wasn’t why I wanted to talk to you.”

  “What do I have to do to get you started talking?”

  “Liquor always helps,” I said. “And I’m a sucker for music. Do you have any records?”

  She took a deep drag on her cigarette and let the smoke out her nostrils, slowly. She said, “If I asked you how you got that black eye, I suppose you’d tell me you were bitten by a St. Bernard.”

  I said, “Nothing but the truth. A man hit me.”

  “Why?”

  “He didn’t like me.”

  “Did you hit him back?”

  I said, “Yes.”

  She laughed. It was a full, honest laugh. She said, “I don’t know whether you’re crazy or not. I can’t decide. What do you really want?”

  I said, “Harry Reynolds’ address.”

  She frowned. “I don’t have it. I don’t know where he is. I don’t care.”

  I said, “We were talking about phonograph records. Do you have —”

  “Stop it. I want to know; why are you looking for Harry?” I took a long breath and leaned forward. I said, “Last week a man was killed in an alley. He was my father, a printer. I’m an apprentice printer. I’m not as old as I look. My uncle is a carney. He and I are trying to find Harry Reynolds to turn him over to the police for killing my father. My uncle would be here with me, but he’s asleep. He’s a swell guy; you’d like him.”

  She said, “You do better in monosyllables. You were telling the truth about that black eye.”

  I said, “Then shall we try monosyllables again?” She took another sip of the liqueur, watching me over the rim of the tiny glass.