Murder Me for Nickels

by Peter Rabe

  “Plant?” I said.

  “He’s never seen a place like this,” said Pat. “Upstairs or downstairs.”

  She didn’t object to any of Conrad’s explanations and she didn’t even protest when they were getting too technical. Conrad’s pride was getting involved. She soothed him with a smile but the smile didn’t do the same thing for me. Lippit, in the meantime, had gotten up from the piano stool and was looking around the place. His interest, he must have felt, would help to get rid of the awkwardness. “And what’s this for?” he asked Conrad, and Conrad showed him what this was for and what that was for.

  I took Pat’s arm and we stood fairly close.

  “Patty,” I said, “stop looking so benign.”

  “What’s the difference. You know how I feel.”

  “Honey, believe me I’m sorry.”

  “But I believe you, Jacky. I do believe you.”

  “About the record, you can believe that, too.”

  “About what I said yesterday, Jacky, you can believe that, too.”

  “You don’t mean about the couch, do you?”

  “Sure,” she said. “That, too.”

  She smiled and gave the good side of my face a small pat and so help me, the girl had a lot of appeal.

  “I’ve get nothing against you,” she said. “Just like you’ve got nothing against me.”

  “I don’t, you know.”

  “I do know. You’re a bastard, Jacky, but you did have a lot of fun on that couch, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know what that’s got to do with anything and besides, you didn’t seem to be suffering any yourself.”

  “I wasn’t, and that’s what it’s got to do with,” she said. “And now, off to the wars.”

  She took her arm out of my hand, blew me a kiss, and walked out to the room where Lippit and Conrad were.

  When I got there Lippit must have seen everything, or maybe Conrad, in his technical pride, was getting to be too much to take, because Lippit was saying, “And what about the downstairs part, Mister Conrad?”

  “Downstairs? This is all there is.”

  “Maybe this is all he knows,” said Pat, which was when I came up, with thoughts of saving the situation.

  “But Jack knows,” said Pat. “You do know what’s next, don’t you, Jacky?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “What’s next is very important, Lippit. I’ve been thinking about it while we were sitting there, with that music.”

  “It inspired you, didn’t it, Jacky?” she said.

  “Quiet a moment. Walter, I’d like to see you alone. This is business.”

  “I was going to tell him about this business,” said Pat “Are you trying to steal my thunder?”

  I sure as hell was trying to steal her thunder and tell Lippit that I had this idea, about how to get records, without middleman profits even, and all because I would try very hard, my very damnedest as a matter of fact, to get my influence to bear on the management of this studio-this management whose members I had gotten to know personally-and what with the friendship I had with them, there wouldn’t be anything they wouldn’t do for me. Such as the following, very clever arrangement.

  I didn’t make it that far, because Lippit didn’t like to be puzzled and soon Pat took it from there.

  “Thunder,” he said. “What are you two talking about?” And none too friendly about it.

  “It’s about records,” said Pat.

  And what wasn’t, at this point?

  “I’ve thought it over, about the records,” she said, “and I think there was something in what Jacky was saying.”

  What had I said now?

  “You mean about making that record over?” Lippit asked her.

  I glowed with hope.

  “Yes. I’m going to do something about that.”

  She took my arm and squeezed it. She took Lippit’s arm, too, and perhaps squeezed it, but she was mostly smiling at me, and I thought why was such a beautiful creature such a conniving one at the same time.

  Or maybe not any more. With her hand through my arm, leaning up a little, reminding me of the more beautiful things which she was capable of-why should I spill even as much to Lippit as that I was thick with the management?

  If Pat would say nothing, I would say nothing, and about Lippit’s record troubles, I’d handle that in some other way. I’d get the records for him, the way I had been thinking, but he wouldn’t have to know how. I liked Lippit. His business was my business and I wouldn’t want him to go under. But Loujack, Inc., was mine and not his.

  “Listen,” said Lippit. “You go into that singing business some other time, okay Pat?”

  “I’ll go into that singing business some other time,” she said, and so I wouldn’t miss the double meaning she said it straight at me.

  Hope aflame now.

  “Because I got to get back,” said Lippit. “And so does Jack.”

  “Yessir, that’s right,” I said, and led them to the door.

  “And on the way down,” said Lippit, “we can look at the downstairs part of the business.”

  “I wouldn’t, Walter. I…”

  “I would,” said Pat.

  We went to the downstairs part of the business.

  We looked at all the downstairs part of the business. The foreman down there was an old man with the black dust from the record processing in all his deep wrinkles and he answered the questions for Lippit It could have been a sightseeing tour. If Pat hadn’t been along. If her Cheshire-cat smile hadn’t been along.

  We looked at the blanks, at the presses, the cooling racks, at the labeling machine, and the packing table. The place smelled like hot plastic and a machine made a hiss now and then. Nice and peaceful. Then there was nothing else to see.

  “Very interesting,” said Lippit.

  “Yes,” said Pat. “Are we ready to go?”

  I felt like falling flat on my back, like a puppy maybe, overcome with relief. Or did she mean she’d keep me dangling that much longer before singing her song to Lippit. I still felt like falling flat on my back, to beg for the coup de grace, this time.

  “Listen,” said Lippit, “you think I could ask the old man for a cup of coffee? I see they got this urn back there. No breakfast yet, this morning…”

  Naturally, on account of my influence, we got a cup of coffee each, a sweet roll each, and sat on the loading ramp in back.

  I figured three minutes for the sweet roll, four minutes for the coffee, and since the two would overlap, I figured five minutes, perhaps, before Pat would leave one way and Lippit and I the other.

  “Ah,” said Lippit. “That hits the right spot,” and he drank coffee.

  “Yes,” I said.

  After a moment he said, “Interesting place, this here.”

  “Yes,” said Pat. “Very.”

  “I don’t think it’s interesting,” I said, “and we’re wasting time with the business that really matters. Tell me about the South Side, Walter.”

  “Yeah,” he said, and drank coffee.

  Three more minutes, I figured. Three more and the coffee break would be over.

  “I’m not too worried about that,” he said. “I got guys hanging around just in case. It’s the price of the records worries me.”

  “Let’s go back to the club,” I said and put my cup down. “I got a notion about that. How to beat that angle.”

  “I know,” he said. “Get out of the business, for instance.”

  He put his cup down and Pat put hers down and then she said, “You think, Jacky, with the pull you have in this company, we could all get another cup of coffee?”

  I did not think I could go through another five, or let’s say, three and a half minutes like this, even without sweet roll time. So I said no, I didn’t want to take advantage. “What we need,” said Lippit, “with Bascot out of the question, is a fake jobber. We set up a fake territory, excluding this one, and then ship to here. Something on that order.”

  “If you can’t
even get a cup of coffee,” Pat was saying, “how did you ever manage the recording session for me, Jacky?”

  “It was hard,” I told her, and to Lippit I said, “You have a wonderful idea there, Walter. Let’s leave and talk about this.”

  “It would even be better,” said Pat, “if you could work in the name of an outfit that’s already established. Wouldn’t that help, darling?” and she said it to Lippit.

  He looked at her and then at me and said, “You know, she’s smart. You know that?”

  “I know that,” I said and got up.

  “Of course, it would have to be a real friend,” said Pat. “So it wouldn’t cost you so much, buying into it.”

  “Yeah,” said Lippit, and he got up too. “Comes a point, you need a friend.”

  “It would have to be another jobber,” I said, “and there aren’t any.”

  “Like hell it would have to be another jobber,” said Lippit. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” And he laughed.

  He started down the steps of the loading ramp and I helped Pat down the steps because they were steep and she was wearing heels.

  “You’re not looking well,” she said close to my ear. “Like a skinned cat, sweetie.”

  Lippit stopped, halfway down.

  “I just had an idea,” he said.

  “Ohsaintcheshire smile upon me,” I said with the bad side of my face.

  “How well,” Lippit said and looked at me, “how well do you know this outfit?”

  “If you mean about the coffee and could…”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Yes. Don’t be stupid,” said Pat.

  “Gallows humor,” I said and did a laugh with that one. “As a matter of fact, Lippit-keep walking, won’t you? — I was saying before, I wanted to talk to you about the delivery problem. A little wrinkle I thought up while lying in bed yesterday and maybe the very thing…”

  “Don’t be so secretive, Jack. Don’t you think he’s being secretive, Walter?” said Pat.

  “What did he say?”

  “He’s got this wonderful surprise for you, Walter. I think that’s what he’s trying to say.”

  “You know about it, too?” he asked her.

  “He confided in me,” she told him, “at one time when he and I discussed singing. You remember the time we discussed singing, Jacky?”

  “Watch your step there,” I said and looked down. “The last one is a bad one.”

  I watched her pretty leg reach out and make it easy.

  “As a matter of fact,” she was saying, “I was so surprised at the time, it put me flat on my back.”

  She was twisting me proper, just as she had promised. She was getting her own back, but only up to a point. There she stopped.

  The thing was, she was letting me tell it to Lippit, myself Which, at this point of no good coming my way from any where, made me cherish the girl out of all proportion to her misdeeds.

  “Well?” said Lippit. “Well?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I know this outfit well.”

  “Come on man, tell me. Are they big? Are they easy? I mean suckers?”

  “Easier than that, Walter. There’s only one. One big sucker.”

  “Good!” He looked rapacious. “Let’s go down to the club. We got to work this thing over.”

  “He’s been worked over.”

  “The sucker?”

  “Yeah. Me.”

  Chapter 16

  I didn’t pay too much attention to Pat then, but she seemed content with her morning and left us to go to the club together. Lippit was frowning some-nothing definite yet, since he clearly had to catch up with a great deal. We were walking down the parking lot in back of the building when a window opened up on the fourth floor.

  “Jack? Hey, Jack!”

  Conrad was leaning out. I could tell by the hair.

  “Can you hear me?” he yelled.

  “If it’s important.”

  “There’s this girl on the phone, Jack. You remember this girl, works for Hough and Daly? She says you promised her…”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tape her. Right across the mouth, tape her,” which shows what a state I was in.

  Lippit and I drove without talking, most of the way. There was just a little conversation, designed to show me the new lay of the land.

  “Pretty nice for us, huh, Walter? This new development.”

  “Yeah. Quite a surprise.”

  He didn’t explain that any further. I drove and he sat. I said a few more things, like, “How about breakfast, Walt? I don’t think that coffee was enough,” and he’d say, “No, I think I’ve had enough. I think I’ve had all I wanted.” Or, one other time, I tried comments on Benotti developments, and what did he think of those South Side goings on, and he said there were no goings on. The Benotti business, that business at any rate, was all pretty much in the open at this point.

  So he kept digesting away in allegorical fashion and by the time he and I got to this club of his, the business between him and me was pretty much in the open. At the entrance I held the door for him and he said, “You go in first, you son of a bitch. I don’t want to get stabbed in the back.”

  Whereupon I told him, “Crisis brings the cleverness out in you, doesn’t it. And who’s ever heard of stabbing an ox?”

  We walked across the lobby when he said, “I don’t know who. But there’s always the idiot who’ll try anything no sane person would do.”

  And we walked up the stairs to the tune of, “I can see you building up to a shining example of that, buddy Lippit.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere beyond a punch in the nose.”

  “Is that the motto of the physical culture department?”

  “Don’t let your brains interfere with your good sense, boy.”

  “Spoken like a biceps!”

  He opened the door at the top of the stairs and we went into his long, misplanned room. First he yelled at Davy to get the hell out of there, and then he yelled at Davy to stick around outside somewhere, within calling distance. Anywhere within a two-block radius, I was going to add, but I didn’t want the wrong kind of levity now.

  We sat down at the table, he on one side, I on the other, and the only good thing was all the feelings showed plainly.

  “So what was your plan, right-hand man?” said Lippit.

  “The plan was,” I said, “to help you keep playing your jukeboxes.”

  “Was that the reason you snuck around behind my back and set yourself up in a legitimate business?”

  He used the expression like a dirty word and I felt I should make one thing clear right away.

  “Just remember it’s mine, Lippit. Not yours.”

  “Sure. And you just remember that I got the union that can rock your boat.”

  “How’s that going to help you?”

  “It would make me feel just fine. The way I feel, it would make me feel just fine.”

  “You gonna run this talk on spite or on what?”

  All this helped a lot with the pressure and after a while we got down to the business again.

  “You were saying, close friend of mine. You were explaining how all this was helping the partnership.”

  I said, “All right. This is the notion. As long as Bascot is too scared to go against his agreement with Benotti, for that length of time, you don’t have a jobber.”

  “Are you building up to the news, or is this it?”

  “And no jobber, no jukebox music.”

  “And you don’t draw your pay.”

  He still had to talk that way, but he sounded much calmer. I, myself, had to think hard, because the thoughts were still new to me.

  “The wrinkle is,” I said, “maybe we won’t need the jobber.”

  “At least you said we. At least that, St Louis.”

  And at least, he was using my name and no adjectives.

  “Now,” I said, “we talk about my business.”

  I wanted that reminder in there, know
ing Lippit’s type of co-operative thinking, so he had to say again that I should not forget about his union while I was talking like a capitalist. Having balanced the big-power talks, he let me go on.

  “It goes so. The record goes from manufacturer, to jobber, to us. We don’t have a jobber and we don’t have a franchise. And we haven’t got time to ask a manufacturer for a franchise. Instead this: We press our own records, and use what we press.”

  “Something stinks,” he said. “You know something stinks?”

  “I know. We can’t press records except from a master. We are a manufacturer without the big masters.”

  “But you’re going to keep us going in spite?”

  “Just listen.”

  “You’re going to squeeze discs for me?”

  “I can’t. I don’t have the masters.”

  “And I don’t have a jobber. And I can’t buy from the manufacturer who’s got the masters, which make the discs, which built the house that Jack built.”

  “And now that we’ve heard from wee little Walter with the nursery rhymes, comes more business.”

  “All right,” he said. “Second verse.”

  “What sometimes happens in the business,” I told him, “is that one manufacturer rents a master to another manufacturer.”

  “To lose money, of course. The one with the gold mine master wants to lose money.”

  “Make money. All it means to the owner is to get more records pressed than his own plant is putting out.”

  “Your pressing plant rents a master and pays the owner as much as a jobber would for each record sold?”

  “For every record I press off a master I pay the owner the price per record he would get from the jobber.”

  “And that’s the reason, I suppose, why everybody does it that way, huh, boy wonder?”

  “No. Not everybody is doing it, because everybody else is not a friend of yours. That’s how my outfit is going to do it.”

  “Break it down,” he said. “So I can hear the money.”

  “The outfit who owns the master gets two cents a side, regular records.”

  “All right Let’s say four cents the record.”

  “The artist gets three cents, musicians’ union gets two cents, pressing in ten thousand lots costs fifteen, and the jobber gets thirty-one.”