Murder Me for Nickels (21 page)

“Yessir. You said it.”

Talking to Lippit? What a yes-man, that Folsom.

“Like I said, you stupid jerk, and no other way!”

He was not talking to Lippit. Stupid? Not Lippit A jerk, yes, but not stupid. Folsom was talking to one of his men.

“Nine o’clock,” Folsom was saying, “and that puts it right after the time when they close the building. Yes, that’s when I want it, or else that shop is lousy with people.”

Back on the candy shop beat?

“I don’t care about the help. I want the machines busted, the merchandise, and those masters. I said masters.”

I heard you the first time, Folsom, and if you’re following orders, boy, then boss Lippit is more than clean out of his head. He is clean out of every thing, including the more powerful instincts, such as the one about making money.

“Where? When?”

Ask again, Folsom. I didn’t get it either.

“Franklin,” he yelled, and Franklin said, “Yeah.”

“We gonna be done here before maybe an hour?”

“Yeah.”

A very intelligent beast, this Franklin. A four letter word, twice repeated, and making it sound the same way each time.

I could hear Folsom hang up and then I saw him come back.

“He hasn’t got any schedule,” Folsom told Franklin. “He’s just drifting around, here and there, like he does. Except for his two o’clock swim at that club.”

“That’ll be fine,” said Franklin. “Fine.”

“We gonna be done?”

“Why not be done? He’s yours, anyway.”

A lot of “he’s” in that conversation, except with the last “he” they were looking at me.

The other “he” was Lippit.

It closed out the inventory. Item: Break up my pressing plant, though that was nothing personal. Because, Item: Ruin the masters so that Lippit’s disc supply would again be cut off. Item: Get Lippit himself. That was business, and personal, because Franklin would be doing that job. Item: Very personal. Folsom to be done with me within the hour.

Now Folsom had me and then he would get Lippit. But first, me. He came at me, hoping I could take it for an hour.

Chapter 19

I
whipped the bottle at him so he stunk from liquor. I kicked out my foot and missed. I swung out with the glass club and missed. I stepped out of the way and missed.

When you’re drunk everything is sure and nothing works. Then I felt sober but still nothing would work and the main thing was still sure. It was their turn.

And there was no point in talking because everyone knew what would happen next.

Franklin held my arms from behind and breathed quietly into my ear. Folsom stood in front, also quiet, because he was feeling around in his pockets. The leather jacket had six outside pockets and he went through all of them. It made a slippery sound every time he put his hands in and out. He found his gloves. He put them on and smiled at his hands while he did this.

I felt I was the noisiest one, breathing. My breath rustled in and out, in and out, and I could do nothing about it. It went all by itself, the way everything else did. For a moment it seemed as if I might decide whether to be drunk or sober, but that wasn’t up to me, either. Everything felt swimmy one moment and very clear the next. I would see the ceiling and then I wouldn’t. I could see the lake, and then not. Only the light stayed the same, bright and painful, outside the window, on the rug, on the wall. Some of it shimmered around on the ceiling.

Folsom looked black in the light, like a very big menace. He had his gloves on and stepped closer, and there was nothing for me to do. When it seemed to Franklin as if I meant to move, my arms hurt. I meant to do nothing. I wished I were more drunk.

Folsom stroked the gloves down his fingers and looked at my face.

“I hear Benotti did that,” he said, and he touched the patch.

“Trouble with Benotti,” he kept talking, “he’s always too sure.”

He stroked the gloves and then, with one finger, he stroked the patch. It itched.

“Can’t be just luck, you getting him twice. Don’t you think so, St. Louis?”

I had a horrible feeling inside, as if everything was melting together.

“Of course, the third time, when he’s out of the hospital, that will be different.”

“Listen,” said Franklin. “I can’t hold him like this so easy very long. He’s taller than me.”

“What’s the matter, he’s too strong for you?”

“He ain’t too strong for me. He ain’t doing nothing. It’s the angle.”

“Try and hold out a little longer, huh, Franklin?”

Franklin said, “Go to hell,” into my ear, but I think he meant it for Folsom.

“Let’s see how that cut is healing, huh? Before we change all that again.” And he ripped off the patch.

I don’t know what he saw. I could only see his face. Close and pale, with hard lines.

The lines seemed to get soggy and his skin changed a queer yellow, and liquor had never affected me like this. But it wasn’t the liquor.

“Whassamatter?” said Franklin.

“Shut up—”

“You gonna be sick or something, Folsom?”

“Just shut up—”

He stepped away and looked somewhere else. He was breathing deeply to get himself back in hand.

“I mean, you don’t look right,” said Franklin.

“Goddammit, you never heard of nobody can’t stand the sight of blood? Some people just can’t stand the sight of blood and it’s got nothing to do with anything!” His voice wasn’t strong, but high and insistent. “Some’s born that way and it don’t mean nothing at all! You understand that, Franklin?”

“No.”

“Whadda ya mean, no!”

Franklin bent around to look at the side of my face and then he straightened up again.

“I don’t see no blood. Mostly healed there, anyways.”

“But it’s gonna bust open!”

This was almost a scream, as if about some great injustice. And then he screamed more, loud and obscene, and he started hitting my middle.

Wild, though. It must have been wild because he let it go almost anywhere. Cursing and screaming all the time, at the big man, too.

“Hold him, damn you, hold him! You made me hurt my wrist!”

“To hell with—” or something like that from Franklin, and I felt him let go of me.

For the rest of it, I seemed to fly all over the room. Drunks land easily. I wasn’t that drunk, but I played it up. It helped with his wild swings, with the sound when I hit the wall, with the business of spending his rage.

How it really happened, I don’t know.

There was much less light in the room, but more heat. The sun was lower. I couldn’t see if the patterns were still on the ceiling because I was lying down on the rug. There was chintz next to my face, from an easy chair, and I didn’t move my head because it felt fairly comfortable. I could see less that way, but he couldn’t see me too well from that angle, either.

The sky was reddish outside, over the lake, and Folsom, in a chair by the window, looked hunched and dark.

I lay still because it felt pretty good that way. It felt like after a sleep, nothing worse, and if I had fainted before it had not been for very long. I had come out of the faint and then had gone back to sleep. This hurt and that hurt, but the rest wasn’t bad.

And Folsom was so sure, he sat reading at the other side of the room. Or maybe I was too sure about being all in one piece.

When I moved I found out about our arrangement. For lack of a weightier word, it was ridiculous.

When I moved, my leg went just so far and then jerked. And Folsom jerked because his chair jerked. Which was because of this line. He had it tied to my ankle and to the leg of his chair.

“If you got any funny ideas because Frank isn’t here, then I’ll….” And blah, blah, blah, more of the same.

He gave an experimental yank to the line, he held on to his chair, he straightened up to get the gloves off the window sill.

I went gaw, or gawk, or something stagey like that, and it meant that I had passed out again. He thought that was best and believed it. He sat down again, and I was glad for the time. I had no idea when the big guy would come back, but before then I wanted to think this through in peace. Think, while the big one was down at the club. Beating Lippit? Killing him?

I hadn’t thought about Lippit at all. I had thought about getting drunk, passing out, rolling away from the punches, all that. Busy with details. No time for any grand concept of Lippit. About how much of a bastard he was, or a fool. Was this thing his idea, was it Folsom’s—

He was getting his at the club. I didn’t mind the thought.

Then I had busy thoughts about the rope, Folsom and me. I was getting stiff. I had a buzzing in my ear, the smell of dust in my nose. The buzz was something else. I knew that when it stopped. When it slammed the door, when the feet were coming.

If you want to get killed, St. Louis, then move now.

“Franklin? That you, Franklin?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” said Franklin.

He came into the room and when he passed me he must have looked down.

“Still out?”

It sounded as if he thought I might answer. Then he kicked my foot.

“He’s fainted again. How was yours?” said Folsom.

“That’s a shame. That’s a damn shame,” said Franklin. He sounded much meaner than when he had left.

“I had to beat him down again,” said Folsom. “How was yours?”

“It stunk.”

He said it so hard, each letter came out all by itself. Then he went to the couch and sat down.

“He been out long?”

“What’s the matter with you?” Folsom asked him. He sounded mean too, like a rat without teeth.

I could have told him what was the matter with Franklin. He had missed feeding time. Lippit hadn’t been there. Like a baby dracula running short on gore he felt edgy and uncomfortable and would get worse in time.

“He wasn’t there, huh?” said Folsom.

Franklin was cracking his knuckles.

“What a lousy place, anyways. Was I supposed to get something done there?”

“What’s the matter? All the athletes make you feel like a twirp?”

Folsom shouldn’t have asked that. Not that he would get it in the neck for that crack, but I would, in a while. The big one was cracking his knuckles.

“Don’t you got to go?” he asked Folsom.

“Yeah. Soon. Soon’s I finish this cigarette.”

I was hoping it was king-size.

“You don’t know where he is?” Folsom asked.

“No.”

“They didn’t know at the club?”

“How would they know.” He spat on the floor, worked his foot over it “You know what they know?”

“Who?”

“You know what clomps is?”

“Which?”

“Forget it.”

Franklin, I saw, was looking out of the window, and Folsom was smoking.

“Didn’t you talk to anybody?” he asked a while later.

“Yeah. One guy says to me, ‘You wanna give somebody athlete’s foot?’ and the….”

“Which?”

“Athlete’s foot! Don’t you know from athlete’s foot?”

“You mean you got that?”

“Go to hell, will ya?”

There was smoking and the knuckles cracked once.

“You were saying,” said Folsom.

“That’s all there was. Then the other one, he wants to know do I want to crush somebody’s toes.”

“What kind of a way is that to talk?”

“Bunch of creeps down there, is what I say.”

“He said that and that’s all? You let that go by like that?”

“What else? He was some kind of a guard.”

Folsom put his cigarette out. I could hear it. Franklin got up and took a deep breath.

“How long you gonna be?”

“I don’t know. Till I’m done. And you stay here, understand that?”

“Yeah. I’m staying here.”

“And take it easy, hear? This ain’t your home.”

“I’ll take it easy.”

Then Folsom left. Folsom with the mean heart, the black gloves, the sick instincts. I would rather have had Folsom.

The big one sat down in the chair for a while. It was fairly dark in the room now, and the remaining light outside was bluish.

Once in a while he looked my way and said something. Once he called me a name and gave a jerk on the rope. Mostly he waited. So did I.

He was heavy. He held the chair down like a stone. Perhaps he would get up. When he was halfway up, maybe….

He kept sitting. The car was gone outside and I could hear the water make sounds under the dock.

If a motor boat came, I might even scream. They wouldn’t hear it. If a car stopped—then I felt myself tremble. It hummed like before and I heard the car. Folsom. He forgot something. Maybe one of his gloves.

The steps were so soft I had to think of a cat.

“Are you alone?”

“Huh?” said Franklin.

But he didn’t get out of the chair. He looked at Pat coming in and watched how she walked.

Smooth and leisurely. She had soft shoes on, with no heels at all, and a summer dress which was like a bathing suit at the top. She stopped and put one hand on her hip.

“Something wrong with him?” and she must have been looking at me.

“Naw,” said Franklin. “Just passed out.”

I could hear her walking away and I opened my eyes again.

“You alone?” she said.

“Sure. Why you ask?”

“Call me Pat.”

“Sure. Why you ask?”

I could see her against the window. She shrugged. She rested against the window sill, next to the chair, and her shoulders had a sheen from the light by the window when she leaned back on her arms.

“Just so,” she said. “You know.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

She had smooth, bare arms. She folded them so that the line between her breasts became deep and high.

Franklin looked at her and knew what he wanted, but he wasn’t sure what she was after.

“You come out here often?”

“No,” she said. “Usually there’s nobody here.”

“Except today.”

“Yes. I know. I heard you talking to Walter.”

“Oh. You know where he is?” The question brought back the big one’s interest.

“No. Do you care?”

He shifted in his chair but didn’t get up.

“Well, one way only,” he said. “Just so he don’t show up here.” Then he laughed.

She laughed too. “Would I come?” she said.