I drove home-an upstairs apartment with large windows-sat down on the bed and looked at the telephone.
Much too late to do any calling. But much to do. And getting that wrecking job away from Folsom, getting to do that delicate thing by myself, was just part of the problem. What the problem came down to, if Benotti’s repair place got wrecked proper, I would lose money.
I have a rule about money, which goes: make it, spend it. It’s the nearest thing to a rule which fits the way I’ve been living through one job or another, until I put in with Lippit. After a while with Lippit, and what with the business we built, there was money left over. What I mean is, I wasn’t used to spending that much and I didn’t have the time, anyway.
That’s how I got to own Blue Beat.
This studio taped only the rare jazz for the aficionados. Naturally, the place was going broke. I had bought the place for what always comes out as a mixture of reasons: I had the dough; I saw a bargain; I like jazz; I know some of the rare musicians, whether they’re known or not. Sew it all up and call it a gamble, and maybe I got Blue Beat because of that. The Lippit operation by then was getting boring, and smooth.
Then Blue Beat made money. We only taped what we liked, but this time it paid. Next for the action, I bought up what was left of a pressing plant on the ground floor where we started pressing our own records and also did jobs for the rest of the studios in the area. Nothing big, but it didn’t lose money. The whole works was Loujack, Inc., Jack St. Louis on the top of the stock pile, but silently.
I’d rather not mix friends and business, and as for Loujack I wanted Walter Lippit to be just a friend. He knew that the outfit was there, the way you know there’s a lamp post down the street, but so what. He didn’t know-there were few who did-that Loujack was me. That would have been different. That would have been less like a lamp post down the street and more like uncle Walter Lippit observing the doings of his favorite nephew. Next, kindly interest. Next, this being all in the family, he might have dreamt dreams about mergers and empires and since Lippit was not much of a dreamer, next thing, he would grab. I’m not against Lippit-friend of mine-but I myself don’t like to be grabbed.
I sat on the bed and looked at the telephone. It was three A.M., but I picked up the phone and called Herbie who did the errands at Blue Beat.
It rang a long time and then I got disturbed. “Yessir?”
“Herbie, this is Jack. I’m sorry to be…”
“Honey, please!”
“ What? ”
Then there was sudden, dead calm in the earpiece which meant Herbie had his hand over the phone. When he came back on he did with a fierce whisper.
“Jack? It’s three o’clock!”
“I know I’m…”
“I’m not a, l, o, n, e.”
“What’s the matter, she doesn’t know how to spell?”
“I don’t know.”
I took a deep breath and started all over.
“I’ve got to know, Herbie, if you went over to Hough and Daly yesterday.”
“Yesterday? I didn’t do any pick-ups or deliveries yesterday. Today I did, though.”
“It’s after twelve, Herbie. That’s why I asked…”
“Oh. Yesterday. Yes. I took the recording equipment to the Rushmore Hotel, for that session with…”
“Did you go to Hough and Daly, Herbie?”
“Oh. Yes. But I didn’t pick up the mixer. Just the spools Conrad ordered and the new cable. Did you know about the new cable?”
I didn’t know about the new cable and I didn’t care about the new cable. I only cared about the mixer, and that hadn’t been picked up.
Herbie said, “Yes, honey,” again.
“I didn’t say anything,” I told him.
“I didn’t mean-what I was saying-”
“Tomorrow,” I told him. “Spell it for me tomorrow,” and I hung up.
I sat on the bed and worried about the mixer. This is a machine about the size of a portable bar and a good recording studio can’t do without it The one we used at Blue Beat cost twenty G’s plus. The wires come in from the pickups where the session goes on, the wires go out to the tape where everything is recorded. In between is the mixer, and it mixes. With a good operator listening in and working the dials a bull moose can come out like a choir of angels. Without the mixer a violin can drown out a drum.
Our machine was in the Hough and Daly building because it was getting repairs. A little job costing nine-o-five seventy. But the price wasn’t worrying me, only that the machine wasn’t back at the studio. It was after three A.M., and I looked at the phone and said, “Conrad, I’m sorry, and I hope you are only asleep.” Then I rang him up.
He answered very quickly.
“Conrad, I’m sorry…”
“Godammit, Jack, go to hell,” and he hung up on me.
I looked at the dead phone and thought Conrad should have been asleep. He wasn’t a kid like Herbie and working ten, twelve hours a day running Blue Beat Recording should have put Conrad to sleep long ago.
I called him up again.
“Conrad, don’t hang up again,” I said first thing.
He said, “Yes, honey,” rather softly, and then directly into my ear, “Jack, dammit, I thought I made clear that I wasn’t a, l, o, n, e.”
“Yours can’t spell either?”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. Listen, Conrad, it’ll only take a minute.”
“All right,” he said. “What the hell. But don’t ever do this again.”
“I won’t. I just talked to Herbie and…”
“This hour?”
“He wasn’t asleep either. Nor a, 1, o, n, e.”
“Gee,” said Conrad, “I didn’t know he was married.”
“You listening?”
“Yes.”
“He said he didn’t pick up the mixer yesterday.”
“I know. It cuts our schedule to pieces but it wasn’t really promised for yesterday. More like today. Noon, maybe.”
“That’s too late, Conrad. You got to get it out of there before then.”
Conrad mumbled something and then he said, “You sound very anxious. Something wrong?”
“Yes.”
“I warned you,” he said. “Don’t tell me the details, but I warned you.”
Conrad, who ran Blue Beat for me, was the only one who knew that I owned the recording studio and the pressing plant on the first floor. I was in and out of the studio, but the rest of the crew, like Herbie the driver, only knew that I sometimes brought talent over. It explained why I showed up in the place, why I was interested in getting the mixer back, because without that machine there could be no sessions.
Conrad, of course, knew much more. I said, “I want you to call that guy for me, Conrad. The one who’s working on the mixer. And tell him to get it in shape extra early. If he can’t finish it, he should at least tie up the guts, get the thing out of that shop before regular starting time in the morning.”
“Morning? You mean this morning?”
“They open at eight,” I said. “This morning.”
“Jack. Think of the time we lose if he does that. He won’t be finished.”
“Don’t ask why, Conrad, just get it out.”
He didn’t ask why and just said, “Oh.” Conrad, who knew of my double life, did not approve of me with Lippit But he would get the machine out, he said.
The mixer was in the Hough and Daly building. In Benotti’s shop.
Not everybody can repair something complex like a mixer. The man whom we had to pick for the job was very good but he was also working on repairs for Benotti. It had not been important at the time, but it was now.
The sure thing was, I didn’t want the machine wrecked in the morning. The long shot was, that it might somehow leak out how a Benotti man worked on a thing which belonged to St. Louis who worked for Walter Lippit.
“I’ll call him,” said Conrad, “and tell him he might as well stay up and get dressed.”
“And have the thing out of there before eight. Stress that, Conrad.”
“Maybe I should tell him he’d better stay away from the place himself, come that hour?”
“Please, Conrad, I don’t want to mix jobs,” I complained. “Okay?”
“Okay.” He coughed and said, “Maybe it’s time you got out of one business and go full time into the other?”
“All you know, Conrad,” I told him, “is that your machine’s got to be out of there, come eight in the morning. Just arrange that, nothing else.”
“You going to be there yourself?”
“Why?”
“Might be awkward if I send down anyone working for the studio and there you are, dressed up like a hood.”
He was much older than I and so took liberties now and then. All I said was, “I’m going to be there at eight in the morning. Come eight in the morning, I don’t want to see that thing sitting there. Aside from that, just leave me a, l, o, n, e.”
By seven I had lined up five bozos for a quick job on Benotti’s depot One was a Lippit trucker, large of muscle and small of head, two were from the local gym, long in training and short of cash, one was just somebody I knew, and the fifth was the same. And also large of muscle and small of head.
At seven thirty I walked down Marsh Avenue, and a quarter to eight I got to the Hough and Daly building. It was very large and used up half a block.
The first thing I came to was the loading ramp, set back from the street for about the depth of a truck. It put the ramp inside the building.
On the ramp was my mixer.
This wasn’t just twenty-five grand sitting there. This was a high-priced complication looking at me.
The big gadget, because of its weight, was built on rollers, and Benotti’s man, because of the phone call, had pushed the thing out on the ramp and had left it there. As a matter of fact, he had pushed it a little over to one side, where the Hough and Daly door was. Nice of him. Twenty-five grand of high-priced complication pushed over to one side a little.
Three of Benotti’s delivery trucks were parked side by side. I walked past them and up the steps to the ramp. At one end was a double door with glass panels halfway up where it said Benotti’s Service. I looked through the glass and saw nobody. The shop was empty.
It was ten to eight and they opened on the hour. Or they did all the other days. I had ten minutes to get the machine out of the way because at eight sharp my army of five was due.
There was a little more life on the Hough and Daly side of the building. The big double door to the ramp was still closed but the square window next to the door showed the inside of an office and a girl taking the cover off an adding machine. The girl was a little one, all made-up and pretty, as if she might enjoy working back here near the loading ramp. I myself thought I might enjoy working back near the loading ramp. I knocked at her window.
She nodded, barely looking up, and called, “Just a minute.” I could hear that through the window. Then she walked out of the office and came around to the double door. She clanked it and rattled it from the other side and then had it open.
“I was wondering when you’d… Oh,” she said.
“Good morning. I’m a little bit in a hurry, but if…”
“I thought you were one of the fellows next door. From next door, I mean. With the coffee.”
“No. As a matter of fact, there’s nobody next door, which is the…”
“They always make the coffee over there,” she said again. She looked very disappointed.
“There’s a little mix-up this morning. Nobody showed up yet and I need a little favor.”
She tilted her head and looked suspicious. “Like what?”
“This thing here,” I said, and nodded at the mixer on the platform. “I’d like it moved.”
“You want me for that? ”
It was five to eight.
“It looks bigger than both of us,” she said.
“What I mean is, you just open this door some more and I move it myself. In there, where you are.”
“Why?”
She didn’t open the door any further. I wasn’t the man with the coffee; I wasn’t anyone she knew. I heard a car at the end of the block, motor whining fast. I now talked at the same rate.
“Look, the thing, the machine, it actually…”
“It’s a mixer,” she said.
“Yes, and it actually belongs next door, the Benotti place, but nobody is there and by some mistake or other the thing-mixer, got left …”
“Mix-up.”
“Yes. Please, don’t interrupt What I’m trying to mix you-eh, tell you…”
“Who are you?”
“I’m the man who’s supposed to, who’s trying to just try and get that machine over there to over here, there, where you stand, and if you’ll just…”
“You sound like that car out there.”
The car was still whining in low and now that it was very much closer it slowed. I looked out to the street and wiped my hand across my face, but I wasn’t sweating. I never sweat. I just start shaking.
There was a woman behind the wheel and when she had passed the loading entrance I could hear her turn the corner. It was about three minutes to eight.
“Women drivers,” I said.
“Makes you nervous?”
“No.”
“I could have sworn you were nervous,” she said.
“Look, honey,” I said.
“Do we know each other?”
“No, but I feel that…”
“Then don’t call me honey.”
I took a deep breath, coughed slowly, and then smiled at her again. This was a simple smile, just harmless warmth.
“That mixer belongs to Blue Beat Studios. I…”
“I know.”
“I’m connected with Blue Beat because I hustle talent for them.”
“Aha,” she said, and nodded her head.
“And I’ve got a session arranged, you know what a session is-?”
“You’re a talent scout and I’m just the thing you’ve been looking for, and if I’d let you handle me…”
“I don’t want to handle you!”
“You don’t?”
“Sweetsufferingsuffering, all I want is just for you to open up there, open up that gate wide so I can move, push I mean, that mixer…”
“Well,” she said. “What now?”
There was this panel truck. It went by the entrance, it stopped with the tailgate still showing, it went in reverse and backed around into the loading space and up to the ramp.
“Eight o’clock,” she said. “We’ve got nothing to go out at eight this morning.”
The canvas flaps opened in back and one, two, three, lump-muscled apes jumped out. Then two more from the cab, all lump-muscled and goonish.
My own army counted five, but this wasn’t it. This was the enemy.
“Good morning,” said the girl from Hough and Daly. “I was just saying, we have nothing for you this morning.”
“It isn’t feeding time yet,” would have made much more sense. The three who had come over the tail gate went straight for the door where the girl was standing, but the bald ape who had come out of the cab yelled at them that they had the wrong door. “This way, idiots,” he yelled. “This way.”
They all ran to the Benotti door and found that it was closed.
“Nuts,” said one of them. “They been and gone.”
“Idiot,” said the bald ape, “would they lock the door after theirselves?”
This had all taken a minute or two and I kept looking out to the street where my own natives were supposed to show up. They were supposed to show up there and wait for my signal.
Right then they might have showed up and I would never have known it. All the five apes, confused and left high and dry by the puzzle of that locked door, turned my way and brightened. This would be much simpler. This is one and we are five; something like that showed on their faces.
I had an impulse to jump past the girl and slam the door shut behind me, but then they might bust down the door, and then I would have to explain to the girl and how would it look to her-any number of giddy reasons came to me and while none of them were any good I did the right thing, or the thing I had come for. I walked up to the mixer, leaned my hand on the top, and I even drummed up and down with one finger. That was as brave as I could get for the moment, that thing with the finger.
“Get your hands offn that!” said the bald ape.
“Yeah!” said one of the others.
“Watch it,” I told them. “This thing stays intact.”
“What he say?”
“Idiot. He means it don’t get destructed.” They all stopped except for the bald ape. He came up to me, looked at the mixer, at my hand, at my face. “We got instructions,” he said. “Get your hands offn that because nothing around here gets destructed. We’re here to see to that.”
I took my hand off and held it out to him. “Man,” I told him. “Am I glad you came.”
He said, “Huh?” and didn’t take my hand, which was just as well, and then he didn’t know what else to say.
It must have been about five after eight. I was now worried my army would show.
“They’ve come and gone,” I said, “and am I glad you showed.”
“Come and gone?”
“Those goons. You know. They wanted to destructed everything here.”
“Destroyed, you mean.” Then he folded his arms and looked me up and down. “Who are you?”
“Benotti sent me. It almost didn’t work, because here they were and you weren’t here, and the reason he sent me was to let you know that this thing here, this mixer, this thing in particular should come to no harm.”
“Oh yeah?” said one of them.
The bald ape turned a little and said, “Quiet, idiot.” Then he turned back to me. “How come they come and went and nothing’s busted?”
That’s when I saw one of my own stick his head 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 and afterwards I didn’t dare say another word for fear I might wake up and find it was yesterday, for example, and I would have to go through all this again.
When my army showed there were only three. The other two, and the enemy who was called Beany, were at that point tactically useless. But the three who were left did a nice and strategic job on the Benotti supply dump. There was hardly any noise and there was minimal interference. The girl from next door came around once, wondering if Franky had showed with the coffee, but I intercepted her at the door and walked her back to her own end of the line. I did this by promising her a fine cup of coffee. In that way she took her coffee break pretty early but then, she said, she had never been with a real talent promoter before.
“Is it difficult work?” she asked.
“Oh no. Easy.”
“And you like it.”
“Oh yes. Very.”
“I sing, you know.”
“Oh.”
“And I look good, don’t you think? I mean, that’s important.”
“Yes. But I don’t handle that kind of talent What I mean is, a voice on a record…”
I didn’t get any further because she whammed me across the left cheek; it was, in a manner of speaking, the only stinging defeat of the morning’s action.