Murder Me for Nickels (18 page)

Conrad put the tone arm down.

“There’s a lot of hard work in this,” he said.

He meant that every which way and we took it according to taste and inclination.

First thing, a drum came on, going ratatat, and then a belter who shattered the glasswool off the ceiling.

Conrad took the record off and said, “Sorry. That was the wrong one, of course.”

“Of course,” said Pat.

Lippit smiled like a father and I fingered my patch. Very hot under that patch there.

Conrad came back with another disc. “I had to cut a few others things late at night,” he was saying. “That’s why this happened. The lady’s song,” he said to Lippit, “is a tender thing. There’s beat, I grant you, but mostly from the lilt.”

Smiles. Tone arm down.

Three beats by the instrumental, nice and normal. Then the vocal cut in.

We all waited around for a while, to get this thing straight, but nothing changed to make it any clearer.

This did not lilt. It loped. Nothing ugly. Friendly, actually. Like a friendly bear loping. I don’t have any exceptional ear for tone but my guess was, Pat was singing about one and a half registers lower. She mewed like something asleep and she buzzed like a bee and she growled like a bear.

Conrad told me later that she was about two registers lower than normal.

“What’s that strange instrument?” Lippit asked.

“Just a minute, just a minute,” said Conrad, and flipped the switch for a different speed. Pat sounded like Pat now.

When you could hear her. It was hard to hear her because the orchestra was going just a little bit crazy. There was the part which you might call “Revolt of the Mosquitoes,” and then the part which you might call “Tarantella of the Hornets.” But all more than life-size. It made Pat sound like the one who was abnormal.

“Ah,” said Lippit. “Eh—One of those modern things. Very.”

“Conrad,” I said, “better turn …” but he was doing just that at the moment, turning it off, and it stopped the music and all of us into one large silence. I don’t think any of us wanted to talk after that.

Conrad took the record off and looked at it as if he had never seen one before. Lippit touched his tie, waiting for everyone else to talk. We were the experts. I looked at Pat and it didn’t look good.

She didn’t look hurt, puzzled, upset, anything. She sat still and smiled. It might even have looked like a mysterious smile, though it didn’t to me. She looked at her hands in her lap, checking the polish on her nails. I think she was checking the nails, plain and simple, to see if they were sharp enough.

“You understand what happened,” said Conrad. “I got screwed up with the speeds.”

“He was doing ten jobs at the same time, yesterday,” I explained. “He worked till after one in the morning.”

“Oh,” said Lippit. He seemed glad there was this explanation. Or that it was over.

“What must have happened,” Conrad was saying, “when I taped the background for the Chuck Morty record and then afterwards I took it off and….”

“All we’ve got to do,” I said, “is do the thing over. That’s all. Okay, Patty?”

“I knew,” she said, “I knew there was some explanation.”

“Sure, Patty. And a simple one, too.”

“Well,” said Conrad, “I wouldn’t just say simple, you know, because if it had been that simple I would have caught it and this wouldn’t have happened. What must have happened….”

“Of course not,” said Pat. “How could it be a simple explanation. But I knew there would be
some
explanation.”

She was smiling all that time. Every so often she looked down at her hands, the way I’ve described it, but everything must have seemed good and sharp to her because she looked up and pushed her chair away.

“What we’ll do,” I said, “we’ll tape it right over. All right, Conrad? Set it up and….”

“No,” said Pat. “That’s awfully sweet of you but Walter here doesn’t have the time. Walter has to get back and attend to things and before that, I told him he might like to look at the plant.”

“Plant?” I said.

“He’s never seen a place like this,” said Pat. “Upstairs or downstairs.”

She didn’t object to any of Conrad’s explanations and she didn’t even protest when they were getting too technical. Conrad’s pride was getting involved. She soothed him with a smile but the smile didn’t do the same thing for me. Lippit, in the meantime, had gotten up from the piano stool and was looking around the place. His interest, he must have felt, would help to get rid of the awkwardness. “And what’s this for?” he asked Conrad, and Conrad showed him what this was for and what that was for.

I took Pat’s arm and we stood fairly close.

“Patty,” I said, “stop looking so benign.”

“What’s the difference. You know how I feel.”

“Honey, believe me I’m sorry.”

“But I believe you, Jacky. I do believe you.”

“About the record, you can believe that, too.”

“About what I said yesterday, Jacky, you can believe that, too.”

“You don’t mean about the couch, do you?”

“Sure,” she said. “That, too.”

She smiled and gave the good side of my face a small pat and so help me, the girl had a lot of appeal.

“I’ve get nothing against you,” she said. “Just like you’ve got nothing against me.”

“I don’t, you know.”

“I do know. You’re a bastard, Jacky, but you did have a lot of fun on that couch, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what that’s got to do with anything and besides, you didn’t seem to be suffering any yourself.”

“I wasn’t, and that’s what it’s got to do with,” she said. “And now, off to the wars.”

She took her arm out of my hand, blew me a kiss, and walked out to the room where Lippit and Conrad were.

When I got there Lippit must have seen everything, or maybe Conrad, in his technical pride, was getting to be too much to take, because Lippit was saying, “And what about the downstairs part, Mister Conrad?”

“Downstairs? This is all there is.”

“Maybe this is all he knows,” said Pat, which was when I came up, with thoughts of saving the situation.

“But Jack knows,” said Pat. “You do know what’s next, don’t you, Jacky?”

“Yeah,” I said. “What’s next is very important, Lippit. I’ve been thinking about it while we were sitting there, with that music.”

“It inspired you, didn’t it, Jacky?” she said.

“Quiet a moment. Walter, I’d like to see you alone. This is business.”

“I was going to tell him about this business,” said Pat “Are you trying to steal my thunder?”

I sure as hell was trying to steal her thunder and tell Lippit that I had this idea, about how to get records, without middleman profits even, and all because I would try very hard, my very damnedest as a matter of fact, to get my influence to bear on the management of this studio—this management whose members I had gotten to know personally—and what with the friendship I had with them, there wouldn’t be anything they wouldn’t do for me. Such as the following, very clever arrangement.

I didn’t make it that far, because Lippit didn’t like to be puzzled and soon Pat took it from there.

“Thunder,” he said. “What are you two talking about?” And none too friendly about it.

“It’s about records,” said Pat.

And what wasn’t, at this point?

“I’ve thought it over, about the records,” she said, “and I think there was something in what Jacky was saying.”

What had I said now?

“You mean about making that record over?” Lippit asked her.

I glowed with hope.

“Yes. I’m going to do something about that.”

She took my arm and squeezed it. She took Lippit’s arm, too, and perhaps squeezed it, but she was mostly smiling at me, and I thought why was such a beautiful creature such a conniving one at the same time.

Or maybe not any more. With her hand through my arm, leaning up a little, reminding me of the more beautiful things which she was capable of—why should I spill even as much to Lippit as that I was thick with the management?

If Pat would say nothing, I would say nothing, and about Lippit’s record troubles, I’d handle that in some other way. I’d get the records for him, the way I had been thinking, but he wouldn’t have to know how. I liked Lippit. His business was my business and I wouldn’t want him to go under. But Loujack, Inc., was mine and not his.

“Listen,” said Lippit. “You go into that singing business some other time, okay Pat?”

“I’ll go into that singing business some other time,” she said, and so I wouldn’t miss the double meaning she said it straight at me.

Hope aflame now.

“Because I got to get back,” said Lippit. “And so does Jack.”

“Yessir, that’s right,” I said, and led them to the door.

“And on the way down,” said Lippit, “we can look at the downstairs part of the business.”

“I wouldn’t, Walter. I….”

“I would,” said Pat.

We went to the downstairs part of the business.

We looked at all the downstairs part of the business. The foreman down there was an old man with the black dust from the record processing in all his deep wrinkles and he answered the questions for Lippit It could have been a sightseeing tour. If Pat hadn’t been along. If her Cheshire-cat smile hadn’t been along.

We looked at the blanks, at the presses, the cooling racks, at the labeling machine, and the packing table. The place smelled like hot plastic and a machine made a hiss now and then. Nice and peaceful. Then there was nothing else to see.

“Very interesting,” said Lippit.

“Yes,” said Pat. “Are we ready to go?”

I felt like falling flat on my back, like a puppy maybe, overcome with relief. Or did she mean she’d keep me dangling that much longer before singing her song to Lippit. I still felt like falling flat on my back, to beg for the
coup de grace
, this time.

“Listen,” said Lippit, “you think I could ask the old man for a cup of coffee? I see they got this urn back there. No breakfast yet, this morning….”

Naturally, on account of my influence, we got a cup of coffee each, a sweet roll each, and sat on the loading ramp in back.

I figured three minutes for the sweet roll, four minutes for the coffee, and since the two would overlap, I figured five minutes, perhaps, before Pat would leave one way and Lippit and I the other.

“Ah,” said Lippit. “That hits the right spot,” and he drank coffee.

“Yes,” I said.

After a moment he said, “Interesting place, this here.”

“Yes,” said Pat. “Very.”

“I don’t think it’s interesting,” I said, “and we’re wasting time with the business that really matters. Tell me about the South Side, Walter.”

“Yeah,” he said, and drank coffee.

Three more minutes, I figured. Three more and the coffee break would be over.

“I’m not too worried about that,” he said. “I got guys hanging around just in case. It’s the price of the records worries me.”

“Let’s go back to the club,” I said and put my cup down. “I got a notion about that. How to beat that angle.”

“I know,” he said. “Get out of the business, for instance.”

He put his cup down and Pat put hers down and then she said, “You think, Jacky, with the pull you have in this company, we could all get another cup of coffee?”

I did not think I could go through another five, or let’s say, three and a half minutes like this, even without sweet roll time. So I said no, I didn’t want to take advantage. “What we need,” said Lippit, “with Bascot out of the question, is a fake jobber. We set up a fake territory, excluding this one, and then ship to here. Something on that order.”

“If you can’t even get a cup of coffee,” Pat was saying, “how did you ever manage the recording session for me, Jacky?”

“It was hard,” I told her, and to Lippit I said, “You have a wonderful idea there, Walter. Let’s leave and talk about this.”

“It would even be better,” said Pat, “if you could work in the name of an outfit that’s already established. Wouldn’t that help, darling?” and she said it to Lippit.

He looked at her and then at me and said, “You know, she’s smart. You know that?”

“I know that,” I said and got up.

“Of course, it would have to be a real friend,” said Pat. “So it wouldn’t cost you so much, buying into it.”

“Yeah,” said Lippit, and he got up too. “Comes a point, you need a friend.”

“It would have to be another jobber,” I said, “and there aren’t any.”

“Like hell it would have to be another jobber,” said Lippit. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” And he laughed.

He started down the steps of the loading ramp and I helped Pat down the steps because they were steep and she was wearing heels.

“You’re not looking well,” she said close to my ear. “Like a skinned cat, sweetie.”

Lippit stopped, halfway down.

“I just had an idea,” he said.

“Ohsaintcheshire smile upon me,” I said with the bad side of my face.

“How well,” Lippit said and looked at me, “how well do you know this outfit?”

“If you mean about the coffee and could….”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Yes. Don’t be stupid,” said Pat.

“Gallows humor,” I said and did a laugh with that one. “As a matter of fact, Lippit—keep walking, won’t you?—I was saying before, I wanted to talk to you about the delivery problem. A little wrinkle I thought up while lying in bed yesterday and maybe the very thing….”

“Don’t be so secretive, Jack. Don’t you think he’s being secretive, Walter?” said Pat.

“What did he say?”

“He’s got this wonderful surprise for you, Walter. I think that’s what he’s trying to say.”

“You know about it, too?” he asked her.

“He confided in me,” she told him, “at one time when he and I discussed singing. You remember the time we discussed singing, Jacky?”

“Watch your step there,” I said and looked down. “The last one is a bad one.”

I watched her pretty leg reach out and make it easy.

“As a matter of fact,” she was saying, “I was so surprised at the time, it put me flat on my back.”

She was twisting me proper, just as she had promised. She was getting her own back, but only up to a point. There she stopped.