Murder Me for Nickels by Peter Rabe Read Free Book Online

Jack?”
    “Ah—no.” I got up and stood in the room, looking at her, at the furniture, all for the touch which showed how little this bothered me. “Not strange at all,” I said, “because he and I don’t have anything to do with that outfit.”
    “Then why did you mention it?”
    “The better to get you with, little Red Riding Pat,” and then I laughed to keep her from answering and then she laughed too, light and merry, because the door in the hall opened right then and next Lippit was there.
    “What are you doing up?” he said to Pat.
    “I had to open the door for Jack. He was early.”
    “Yeah. He keeps doing that today.”
    “We were talking,” she said.
    “And laughing. Go to bed, huh, Patty?”
    “Jack was telling me something about little Red Riding Hood. And the wolf. Remember that story, Walter?”
    “Yeah, sort of.”
    “The wolf got clobbered,” she said and went off to bed.
    Lippit made two drinks and I sat on the couch now, relaxing a little. He came over and sat down too and when he gave me my drink he said, “Let’s talk business,” and I said, “Christ, yes.”
    He sipped on his drink and I took one gulp of mine and let the rest of it warm while I told him how all of it looked to me. That Benotti was no smalltime repair man, and also not somebody crazy who thought he could buck Lippit’s set-up. But that he was somebody smart, with backing, who thought he could buck Lippit’s set-up. I told him that the tie-in might be Chicago, and that Lippit, with his background, should be able to check it from there. He said yes, he would, though for the moment it made little difference to the way he would handle this thing.
    “We’re going to do this up brown,” he said. “We’ll clobber him.”
    It wasn’t Lippit’s kind of word, but like a lot of things, Pat had just put it into his head. I myself wished he hadn’t used it.
    I said, “You know how big Benotti is?”
    “He lives in a frame house with used furniture.”
    “So is your furniture.”
    “But I don’t live on the East Side.”
    “He’s been living on the East Side I don’t know how long and has been running a repair shop all that time, and we haven’t paid any attention to him for just that reason. That’s why he’s been running it that way.”
    “Likely,” said Lippit, and looked at the ceiling. “And I just told you, Jack, that his size makes no difference right now, the way we’re going to clobber.”
    “His size would make a difference in how hard we have to—er, clobber.”
    “Not for long,” he said and took a nip from his glass. “What we’ll do is this.”
    Lippit often said “we” when he didn’t mean it. I put my drink down, put my cigarette out, and sat back. What came next would be mostly instructions.
    “He’s big enough,” said Lippit, “or thinks that he’s big enough, to buck our servicing. With Stonewall he’s also tried putting a machine in the place, which may be a sign of what he plans for the future. But right now what he’s setting up for is to buck our servicing. Then he’ll take over.”
    “Hm.”
    “Just listen. Therefore, first off we fix it so he doesn’t have anything to service with.”
    “Tit for tat?”
    “Right, but don’t talk like a baby. Here’s how, Jack. We hit the workers; we hit his goons, and we hit the supplies. One, two, three, get it? One, two, three days, and no more Benotti.”
    I just nodded, because I didn’t like it.
    “Here’s one at a time,” he kept on. “I was late because I arranged about the workers already. I called Folsom. He’s getting a team set up to sit at the phones. They’re gonna call up Benotti’s service men—we know some of them—and give them a hard time with those telephone calls.”
    “At three in the morning.”
    “Sure at three in the morning. Don’t you know it’s much scarier at three in the morning? Imagine you’re asleep in bed and the phone rings. There’s this voice, like from a beast, and it