He was waiting for me by his car which was built so long and low that when he leaned up against it he practically sat on the roof. He leaned like that and was clicking one thumbnail against his front teeth.
“That was the real touch of class,” he said, “you walking in there with that monkey suit on.”
“I notice how it helped.”
“Maybe blue jeans tomorrow,” he said, which was the sort of no-account comment he sometimes made, making you wonder about his humor and his intelligence.
“Ever hear of him before?” was the next thing he said.
“Huh?”
“Benotti.”
I had, of course, heard of Benotti before, the four times he had done outside repairs and that other time, which had nothing to do with Lippit.
“Yes,” I said. “Four jobs,” and told him about Morry having called for this outside repair man.
“He still sound like a repair man to you?”
“Mostly. Plus trying to place some machines of his own.”
“I’m sure he’s new in town,” said Lippit, “though that don’t mean he hasn’t heard about me.”
“Maybe Benotti’s just stupid.”
“Yes,” said Lippit. “That would be nice.”
Then he got into his long, low car, which put his head at about the level of my knees, and when he had the motor going he looked up at me and said, “Before the party, Jack, run on over to Louie’s.”
“Which Louie’s?”
“Delicatessen. He was due for a new stack today and for a collection. And our man couldn’t get in.” He drove off and left me standing there in my workday tuxedo.
Louie’s restaurant was way off on the East Side, and the errand could as easily have waited till morning. Except Lippit, not having talked much at all after Stonewall, must have been preoccupied with that repair man’s dumb stunt, or with his party that evening, or maybe with his girl, Pat. That would have been my reason, though the thought was useless. I got into my car and drove over to Louie’s, where he sold matzo balls, pizza, Danish pastry, and klops. I think Louie, in that way, took care of all the minorities on that side of town.
The restaurant was dark and two couples stood in front of the door, complaining and arguing. I couldn’t make out the language. I left the car and walked past these people when one of them looked at me and said, “Gangster-”. That lousy tux again. I had no time and went up the back stairs.
Louie had three rooms on top where he lived alone. At first he wouldn’t open.
“It’s Jack,” I said through the door. “Honest, Louie.”
“How do I know?”
“Come on, Louie. I’m in a hurry.”
“That’s Jack,” and he opened the door.
I didn’t recognize Louie. One ear was big and purple, one cheek was big and purple, and one eye was all gone where the purple cheek had blown up all over it. I said, “Jeesis Christ,” and closed the door.
Louie just nodded and sat down in the plush easy chair he had in the room. There was a lot of furniture that color. Like his cheek.
“Benotti?” I said.
“He was all right the first time,” Louie said.
“When you told him no.”
“And the second time he said he was sorry I don’t understand the polite-type English he talks.”
“And then he talked that kind,” I said, and nodded at Louie’s face.
Louie sighed for an answer. He raised his hand to his face because he had a gesture of stroking his nose, but halfway up he decided against it.
“This can’t go on,” he said. “All this for who’s gonna put a jukebox in my place, I ask you?”
I walked back and forth in the room a few times, around all the furniture, because I certainly didn’t know what to say to Louie.
When it came to a thing like Benotti, the fact was, we were hardly set up for a thing like that any more. The man had blossomed out on us just a little too fast. He’s a backlot electrician; he’s a hustler who wants to put a jukebox into a bar; then suddenly he turns into a hood who strongarms one of my customers. And all this time, neither Lippit nor I knew who Benotti was.
“Jack,” said Louie. “I’m real sorry, but this can’t go on.”
I nodded but his good eye wasn’t turned my way and he just heard the silence and thought I was thinking.
“So you got something figured?” he asked me.
I didn’t have anything figured. I said, “Have you seen a doctor, Louie?” but that wasn’t the right reply for what he wanted to know, namely what would Lippit and I do about this and how would we help Louie.
He asked all that, a small old man with his face beaten up, sitting there in his old furniture and me shiny and bright with a tuxedo and no answers.
“Not to speak of,” he said, “what this kind of thing’s gonna do to your organization.”
I stopped pacing and feeling like hell. “You didn’t have to say that, Louie. A lousy thing like that.”
I felt angry now, which was better than feeling like hell, because mostly it makes me active. There was a phone in the room and I called up a doctor. I gave him Louie’s address and told him to hurry it up. Then I put the phone down and sat down opposite Louie.
“Now from the beginning,” I said. “This Benotti comes in, gets a no answer, then beats you.”
“Not that fast. First he told the others they should mess up my place.”
“Others?”
“Three others. They and Benotti come in at the slack time, which is ten in the morning. They lock the door and pull the blind down that says Closed, and then like I said.”
I thought about the three others and wondered whether that would change the picture again.
“These three,” I said to Louie. “Did you know any of them?”
“I have never, and I hope I will never…”
“All right.” Then I wondered how to put it. “Did they-I mean speaking off-hand-did they look like, let’s say, electricians?”
Louie’s good eye looked at me for a moment and then closed. “I don’t know what electricians look like, Jack, but these didn’t look like no electricians.”
“Like what, then?”
“One stunk from liquor,” said Louie, “one stunk from horses…”
“Horses?”
“Horses. And the other-you should pardon the expression-to me he just stunk.”
They had broken some glass in the counter, twisted legs off the tables, had stolen a salami each. And the one who “just stunk” had mixed all the herring salad together with antipasto and two jars of British preserves.
“How would you know what a horse smells like?” I asked Louie.
“Because I was born in Russia. And at the time I was born in Russia…”
“All right, Louie,” and I kept wondering what there was in all this that could add to the picture. Benotti himself, was all I could think. I’d have to go see him.
“Benotti beat you, Louie?”
“Yes. Slow. He wasn’t mad.”
“And the others, wrecking the place?”
“They weren’t mad either.”
“Maybe I should look at the place downstairs. Maybe they dropped something.”
“No. I looked. Just the newspaper.”
“What?”
“One had the Herald in his pocket. There was something, at first, about the newspaper. Should they use the newspaper, one of them said, and kept rolling it up, if you get the picture…”
“I do.”
“But Benotti said nix, after thinking about it, and he said to let it show because it makes a better example.”
Then the doctor came. He took one look at Louie and told me to boil water. I put the water on, in the nook where Louie did his cooking, and I got the picture much more clearly now, of Benotti and his three men. Not a bum among them, because they were much too well-trained. They wrecked the place with method, and they knew about the trick with the rolled paper, how you can beat up a man with the paper so it hurts like hell but no marks left to show for it. Just the pain. Who they were I did not know, but I knew what they were. They knew their way and they were hoods.
Louie was making small sounds while the doctor fingered him, and I left. It was time for Benotti.