by Peter Rabe
“Come on down, and maybe I’ll tell Lee not to break your back first.”
Lee looked like he could. At the moment he seemed to be walking on all fours.
“Deal, St. Louis?” Benotti was saying.
“Too many jokers, Benotti. Three is too many jokers,” and that was the end of the play.
He jumped. Or he flew, maybe. He did a thing like a football tackle and the best I could do was to let him have one leg instead of both.
I fell back and he fell forward and he was holding my leg before breaking it off. I stomped on him with my free foot I kicked him on the head and the bastard took it. I kicked him on the head and he snagged my other leg.
The rack was pretty steady now, because we were lying down. There was little movement, because Lee just moved in small ways, here and there, to get the right grip before he started to twist.
I held still and felt the pain.
I just thrashed with one arm. It did not help me turn out of his grip but it broke the record I had in my hand. A broken record can be a lot like a knife.
And when I felt the sharp pain in one foot and it shot up my leg I doubled over. It was partly reflex, and then I sliced off Lee’s left ear.
I don’t think he felt it at first. He held on worse than before and I’m sure I made a weird sound, which made him look up. This caused the ear to flop down the side of his face and some blood too, which got into his mouth. Suddenly Lee screamed and screamed.
I got one leg out and kicked the scream back down his throat.
When I got free I couldn’t stand. I got to the edge of the rack and saw Benotti down there and the tall pug next to him. They stepped back. Because of the screaming I could not hear what was said. Benotti said something and then the tall one reached into his pocket. He came up with a gun.
I was winded and hurting and would have liked to pass out. It felt like the right solution, to pass out.
“You got him?” I heard Benotti.
“Any time you say,” said the tall one.
The passing out hadn’t worked, nothing funny was left in any of this. Then I felt the rage balling up inside me, which is always the last thing that happens to me. I had to hold it, keep it balled, because what could I do with it up here besides breaking more records.
“Benotti,” I said.
He looked up and grinned. My voice must have sounded strange and he was grinning about that.
“It talks,” he said. “What?”
“Benotti. I can’t match that.”
“I know.”
“Lemme come down, Benotti.”
“I wish you would.”
“I’m beat, Benotti.”
“That will be. By and by.”
I looked at his face and it got more and more ugly. It was ugly and mean and if I had nothing else but my teeth I would want to chew it down to a pulp.
“Please, Benotti. My foot’s busted,” I said.
“I know.”
“What’s in it for you now, Benotti? I can’t do a thing.”
“Come down and I’ll show you.”
“Benotti,” I said. “Honest to God. I’m afraid.”
This startled him, but then it only made him meaner.
“Don’t be,” he said. “I’ll let you come all the way down, and no interruptions.”
My bad foot tingled, which was fine, but when I moved I made out it was crippled. I came down the side of the rack, slow as a sloth. It gave me time. It showed me how Benotti and his man with the gun meant to play it.
What Benotti saw was a scared man with a bad foot. It would give him time, which was what he wanted. He would play it his way, slow and with pleasure, and that’s how they placed themselves. Benotti stood back, and the tall one stood ahead with the gun. When I let myself down to the floor I slid all the way to my back.
“Naw, naw, naw,” said Benotti. “Up. For this you stand up.”
“He said stand up,” said the tall one.
“Help me,” and I held out one hand.
It guided the tall one and he came close enough.
A man on the ground can be worse than any other way. All you have to do is think of all of you, and not just your two fists.
When he bent to grab hold of my hand he never straightened up again. I kicked up as if the target was the moon and the tall one wasn’t going to be good for much that really mattered, for I don’t care how long a time. He didn’t even make a sound, just air. And I was done lying down.
I got my leg out of his crotch, snapped at the gun which he meant to drop anyway, and before the tall one was down I was up. Benotti didn’t have all of it straight yet, but I meant for him not to wait too much longer.
“Hey!” he said, “hey!” when I jumped up with the gun.
I have never shot anyone, and I don’t think shooting’s easy. It isn’t like throwing a stone, or a punch, or anything like it. You press the trigger, and the thing is out of hand. It’s out of your hand; something else does your hating, and you either fear the damage you’ll do or you know ahead of time that you’ll be left as before; same hate, same rage, just a bullet gone. And someone dead whom you did not even touch.
Benotti rushed me. While I stood around he made his rush. He cracked me across the side of the face and before the pain even came I felt like going to pieces. I had held back too long. I rocked across the aisle, hit a rack, and cracked open. That ball inside, is what I’m talking about Then I was almost done and so was Benotti. My reach is better and I had the pistol.
I pistol whipped him, and I hit and hit, not a watermelon, or a sack, but always Benotti.
He was just short of raw meat when I left him and was done.
Chapter 12
I got out of there with a limp in my leg and a crick in my neck and what my face looked like I didn’t find out until later. But nobody bothered me on the way out The three who counted weren’t bothering anybody.
I got in the car and put up the top. Privacy mattered right then. I jockeyed the car out of there, around all the trucks which seemed to be jackknifed all over the place, and bouncing the brakes every time some kid from an office ran across the street, with coffee or a folder of papers. My timing wasn’t very good. I had thought I was done when I left that warehouse, but I was still jerking as if somebody was jabbing at me.
Two blocks away I stopped by a telephone booth. First I called Davy, the kid who read do-it-yourself things and held down a phone for Lippit. Lippit wasn’t there, he said, but that wasn’t why I had called.
“You got a car over where you are, Davy?”
“Yes, Mister St Louis.”
“Jump in and drive over to the jobber’s warehouse, Davy, moving as if you were background only, and check out Benotti for me.”
“You want me to tangle…”
“I don’t mean that Just see where he goes. Like, an ambulance might pick him up and you follow along to see where it’s going.”
“Gee.”
“Yes. And wherever he goes, try and get a line on how he feels. Try…”
“I mean, Mister St. Louis, if an ambulance is gonna cart him away, I figure he can only feel one way, which is not very good.”
“I want to know how much no good.”
“All right Wait!”
“What?”
“I never seen that Benotti. How will I know…”
“The one you can’t recognize,” I said, and let him work out the rest for himself. After all, do-it-yourself…
Then I called Lippit. He was at the union hall, talking rates and kickbacks most likely, and when the girl at the telephone said she’d send somebody up and get Lippit I told her never mind, she should have him come over and join me at this and that address. I didn’t feel like standing around in the telephone booth.
I called Spire after that, Doctor Spire, who was a legitimate doctor but with a practice so small, it assured a patient of immediate service. He was in, reading something on sleeping sickness, but if I came right over, he said, he woul
d see me forthwith.
“And why the hurry,” he wanted to know. “Are you bleeding to death?”
That profession makes a man callous. I said no, but wanted to be damn sure he was still awake when I got there.
“You bringing a girl,” he said, “or what?”
Callous profession. I hung up.
Last call was to Hough and Daly, and I would like to speak to the girl in shipping-receiving.
“Shipping-receiving,” she said.
“Doris?”
“That depends on who you are.”
“Your friend, Jack.”
“Ah! The Ripper.”
“The Ripped. Which is why I’m calling, little sweets, to beg off this evening.”
“You’re sick.”
“Jeez, you sound matter-of-fact.”
“Why, Baaibee,” she said, “you thickumth? That better?”
“Now I am sick.”
She didn’t want to let go our evening appointment and more talk like that, but I didn’t feel in any shape for the next twenty-four hours. Her boss walked in and she had to hang up. Then I drove down to Doctor Spire’s place.
He had a two-room place over a grocery store. His office was there and his living quarters. There would not have been enough space if he had put the one in the first room and the other into the second, so instead his rooms overlapped in function. The waiting room was also the living room or the library, there being chairs, bookshelves, medical journals all over a table. This was, I think, the only waiting room where the patient could read up on the competence of his physician. The other room was more versatile even, or more cluttered. Examination table, fish tank, instrument closet, pots and pans, autoclave, hot plate, bed, with more journals on it.
When I rang, he opened the door and said, “Yes?”
“St Louis,” I said. “You don’t remember?”
“Jack?” and then, “God!”
“Just Jack is fine. Let me in.”
He let me in and told me to sit on the table in the second room. I sat carefully, not being alone on this table. The fish tank was there, murky and mysterious, and instruments under glass, some kelp under glass, and something else under glass which I was afraid to ask about.
Spire was short and bald, a tired egg. Before he came over for a close look he put his white coat on.
“Don’t want to get all spotted up,” he said, and then stood close up to my face.
“What do you see?”
“Tissue. Red and blue.”
Callous as hell. He put a thermometer in my mouth, wet cotton on various parts of my face.
“Soak things down to bedrock,” he said. “So I know what’s what.”
“Bedrock? You drilling for oil?”
“All right. Bone then. Down to the bone.”
Then the bell rang and he let me sit there like that.
It was Lippit. He came in and up to the table and stopped there, by the sound of it.
“What is this?” he said to Spire. “You preparing a mummy?”
Spire laughed. It sounded like Dracula.
“Did you, ah, achieve something?” Lippit asked.
Spire took off the cotton and dabbed here and there.
“No,” I said. “But Benotti did. He owns Bascot’s.”
Lippit swore. He kept this up for a while and the doctor daubed here and there. Each little dab with a tuft of cotton felt very much worse than Benotti slamming me.
“Does Bascot look the same as you?” Lippit asked me.
“No. But Benotti does.”
“Hold still,” said Spire. “I’m anointing.”
He did that and something else with a piece of tape, so that a cut on the cheekbone would heal shut straight.
“I think I’ll go over there,” said Lippit, “and have a talk with that man. Can’t have him jumping all over my help.”
I answered something which caused the doctor to tell me to shut up or I’d end up with my tongue sewed to my nose, and Lippit should also stop talking for a moment. “It’s not good for the patient,” said Spire. We had silence for a while.
“What’s in here?” Lippit asked.
“Don’t you put your finger in it,” said Spire.
Lippit took his finger out of the tank.
“I can’t see anything in there,” he said. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been meaning to change the water.”
Then he packed gauze to one side of my face and explained about cleanliness; to keep my hands off that thing and to come back two days later for another grease job and a check.
“You can get off the table. And take your pants down.”
He was a doctor so I didn’t question it. He prepared a shot-the ampule was next to the mayonnaise in the refrigerator, the syringe was where the dishes were, and the needle-he couldn’t find the needle for a while.
“Explain to me about Benotti,” said Lippit.
I explained about Benotti and about how all the stock got broken.
“Maybe we can sway Bascot back our way,” Lippit said.
“Bascot is nothing. The way I see it, he sold out.”
“There’s a few stop-gap things we can do,” Lippit said. “I’ll try having records shipped from Chicago.”
“That’s all Benotti needs for a helping hand. He’ll deliver faster and cheaper.”
Lippit knew that. He said nothing and thought.
“I got to think of something,” he said. “Skip the jobber, maybe.”
“I don’t think the manufacturers will sell to you. Bascot’s got the franchise.”
“Skip the manufacturer maybe. Make my own.”
It was harebrained and he didn’t expect me to answer. I was just as glad.
“You got the needle yet?” I asked the doctor.
“No.”
“Keep your pants on,” said Lippit.
“Maybe in the fish tank,” I said. “You thought of that yet, Doctor?”
“Yes,” said Spire.
While Spire kept looking, Lippit kept thinking.
“We can buy through stores for a short while,” he said. “I’ll make up a data sheet with volume that’ll rock their inventory.”
“And your till.”
“I know, I know. Just to keep Benotti from getting that first foothold. Then we think of something else.”
“I know. Manufacturing.”
Spire found the needle. I don’t know where he found it and didn’t ask, but he had it on the syringe and told me to turn around.
“He can kill us in no more than a month,” Lippit said.
He talked very quietly, and as if he were thinking. This is how he talked when he was worried and when everything he thought of was very serious.
“I’m going to look into this manufacturing thing, dumb as it sounds. On a special deal, maybe I can rent masters from the big companies.”
A master is the means by which the manufacturer makes the gold. It’s the original print that makes all the records, and to lend that thing out is like agreeing to go out of business.
I didn’t answer Lippit on that, but thought I might cheer him with something else.
“Call your secret room at the club,” I told him, “and find out if Davy is back. Maybe he’s got something.”
“Do-it-yourself? How to sing your own records?”
“Yaee!” I said.
“You can put your pants back on,” said Doctor Spire.
I did and went to the waiting room, or the other room Doctor Spire had, where Lippit was sitting in an easy chair facing the window. The phone was on the window sill and the instrument next to his ear.
“You got Davy?”
He nodded and waved me off. He was listening. If his face told what he felt, he was feeling confusion.
“Just a minute,” he said into the phone. He covered the mouthpiece and looked at me. “Where did you send that boy, the insane asylum?”
“Why do you ask?”
“He says he got there a
nd one guy was sitting on the loading ramp with his legs pulled up and every time a female walked by he would moan like a hound dog. And…”
“That wasn’t Benotti.”
“And another one was sitting on top of a rack, like a monkey, and everybody should walk around the rack in a big circle so they wouldn’t step on his ears.”
“His ear.”
“Oh. That’s all right then. For a minute there, I thought somebody was nuts.”
“That wasn’t Benotti, either. Let me have the phone.”
“Of course not. Benotti’s in that fish tank over there, is what I think.” Then he gave me the phone.
“Davy?”
“Yes, Mister St Louis.”
“There were just those two?”
“And then they got picked up by a car.”
“You didn’t see Benotti then.”
“He was the one I guess they took off in the ambulance. That was before I got there.”
“You know where they took him?”
“Mercy Hospital.”
“Go over there, Davy, and try to find out how he is.”
“How am I going to do that? I mean…”
“Tell ‘em you’re his son, or a friend, anything like that. Find out how he is, when he’s getting out, that kind of thing. You know, do-it-yourself.”
“Yessir,” and he hung up.
I put down the phone and Lippit said, “I know. You hit him so hard he fell apart and one of him is on top of that rack and the other half of him is out there on that ramp.”
I took a cigarette out and smoked with one side of my face.
“He’s at Mercy. And please don’t say, at whose mercy.”
“I won’t.”
“And Davy will check back in at the club, to tell how the patient is doing. I myself,” I said, “want to go home.”
Lippit nodded. He got up but kept looking out of the window.
“If he’s out of commission,” he said, “we might swing it yet.”
“He’s more than one man.”
“His outfit is punks,” said Lippit. “I checked enough to know that. He’s the head and punks don’t have a head.”
My face hurt and I didn’t say anything.
“I’ll take you home,” he said. “Pat’s bringing the car.”
“Thank you. I got my own.”
“Maybe you didn’t notice,” he said, “but one eye is closing.”
