Read Online Murder Me for Nickels by Peter Rabe - Free Book Online Page B

around the brick wall and look into the loading space, at the ramp, and at me. Then he ducked away.
    He was waiting behind the wall, on the street, for the signal I was supposed to whistle; he was waiting for the rest of them to come up close and then they would rush us; he was talking it over with them, how best to save me. I myself was going out of my mind.
    “Nothing’s busted,” I started without knowing how to finish the sentence, “because I’m a Lippit man. What I mean….”
    “Huh?”
    “It’s like this,” I said slowly, as much to make him understand as to understand it myself. “Before you came, the Lippit goons came. And I saw this. I was here. So I fooled them into beating it out of here, the new word from Lippit, I told them, was to save their strength. I said this to them, and they thought I’d come straight from Lippit.”
    “I don’t get it. I don’t get it why Lippit should switch that way.”
    “Because the place was deserted when they came and that wasn’t part of the plan. The Lippit plan, you know, was blood, broken bones, fisticuffs.”
    “Fisticuffs?”
    “Quiet, idiot.” Then he looked at me again. “Why should I believe you?”
    “What, you need proof?”
    “Yeah. That. Because I don’t see nothing touched here or anything like that. Like nobody been here.”
    “ That’s the proof, friend,” and to flatten his reasoning completely, I called the girl over and said, “Tell him. There hasn’t been any trouble here, has there?”
    “Trouble?” she said.
    “There you are!” and I smiled at the bald one.
    I took a deep breath, finally, because progress had not been bad. The bald one thought I was a messenger from Benotti, the girl thought I was somebody with Blue Beat, and I thought that if my own animals would stay out of the way another few minutes, I could swing the rest. Namely, first get the mixer out, and the Benotti men, and then let my apes do the job they had come for.
    “Now the thing about this mixer,” I started, when the girl said, “This is the strangest thing,” and she looked past all of us.
    We all reacted to the unknown in different ways. I giggled, the bald ape did nothing, and the girl kept looking out to the street.
    “Somebody keeps looking around the corner,” she said. We all looked out to the street Nobody showed there for the moment but I was going further out of my mind.
    “Beany,” said the bald one. “Go out there and see who it is.”
    Beany went out there and we did not see him any more.
    But the bald one had meanwhile had time to think.
    “So you ain’t a Lippit man,” he said, “and you ain’t no Benotti man, either. Because there’s that few of us, and I should know you.”
    “Of course not,” said the girl. “He’s from Blue Beat.”
    “Blue which?” he said, as if three factors in all this were too much for his comprehension.
    They were just about that for me, more so every minute, and I talked fast.
    “This machine goes to Blue Beat. It’s got repairs done to it in Benotti’s shop and now it’s been pushed out here so it won’t come to any harm should the Lippit goons come. Because the first order on Benotti’s list is always, let the customer come to no harm. Right? And that is why….”
    “Where’s Beany?” somebody asked.
    “Never mind that idiot,” said the bald one.
    “Yes,” said the girl. “Here’s the tag,” and she looked at the tag which hung on the mixer. “Blue Beat is written on it.”
    The bald one unfolded his arms, linked his fingers, and cracked them. The sound was terrible. He looked at me all the time.
    “What we better do,” he said, “I think I know what we better do.”
    Meanwhile one of my crew was also looking around the corner.
    “What we better do is take this machine straight down to that whats-thename.”
    “Blue Beat Recording thirty-four ten Duncan Avenue and you take the freight elevator in back gently all the way and don’t bump it!”
    I got that out very fast