The Fabulous Clipjoint by Fredric Brown (free ebook reader TXT) 📕

“It’s a hell of a view,” I told him.

“That’s what I meant, kid. When you look out of a window, when you look at anything, you know what you’re seeing? Yourself. A thing can look beautiful or romantic or inspiring only if the beauty or romance or inspiration is inside you. What you see is inside your head.”

I said, “You talk like a poet, not a carney.”

He chuckled. “I read a book once,” he said. “Look, kid, don’t try to label things. Words fool you. You call a guy a printer or a lush or a pansy or a truck driver and you think you’ve pasted a label on him. People are complicated; you can’t label ‘em with a word.”

I was still standing at the window, but I’d turned around to face him. He got up off the bed and came over by me. He turned me around to look out the window again and stood there by me with his hand on my shoulder.

He said, “Look down there, kid. I want to show you another way of looking at it. The way that’ll do you some good right now.”

We stood there looking down out of the open window into the steaming streets.

He said, “Yeah, I read a book once. You’ve read this too, but maybe you never really looked at things the way they are, even if you know. That looks like something down there, doesn’t it? Solid stuff, each chunk of it separate from the next one and air in between them.

“It isn’t. It’s just a mess of atoms whirling around and the atoms are just made up of electric charges, electrons, whirling around too, and there’s space between them like there’s space between the stars. It’s a big mess of almost nothing, that’s all. And there’s no sharp line where the air stops and a building begins; you just think there is. The atoms get a little less far apart.

“And besides whirling, they vibrate back and forth, too. You think you hear noise, but it’s just those awful-far-apart atoms wiggling a little faster.

“Look, there’s a guy walking down Clark Street. Well, he isn’t anything, either. He’s just a part of the dance of the atoms, and he blends in with the sidewalk below him and the air around him.”

He went back and sat down on the bed. He said, “Keep looking, kid. Get the picture. What you think you see is just bally, a front with the gimmicks all hidden if there are any gimmicks.

“A continuous mess of almost nothing, that’s what’s really there. Space between molecules. Enough solid, actual matter, if any, to make a chunk about the size of a—a soccer ball.”

He chuckled. “Kid,” he said. “You going to let a soccer ball kick you around?”

I kept standing there looking for another minute or so. When I turned around he was laughing at me, and I found myself grinning.

“Okay,” I said. “Shall we go down and kick Clark Street around for a change?”

“Chicago Avenue. A spot near Orleans. We’re going to scare hell out of a guy named Kaufman.”

I said, “He’s run bar in a tough neighborhood for a lot of years. What kind of threat would scare a guy like that?”

“None. We’re not going to threaten a damn thing. That’s what’ll scare him stiff. It’s the one thing that will.”

“I don’t get it,” I told him. “Maybe I’m dumb, but I don’t get it?”

“Come on,” he said.

“What are we going to do?”

“Nothing. Not a damn thing. Just sit in his place.”

I still didn’t get it, but I could wait. We went down in the elevator.

As we crossed the lobby, he asked, “Can you use a new suit, Ed?”

“Sure, but I’d better not buy one now. I’m losing time off work.”

“It’s on me. You need a dark-blue, pin-stripe cut so it’ll make you look older. You need the right kind of a hat. It’s part of the job, kid, so don’t squawk. You got to look like a gun punk.”

“Okay,” I said. “But I’ll owe you for it. Someday I’ll pay you.”

We got the suit, and it cost forty bucks. That was nearly twice what I’d paid for my last one. Uncle Ambrose was particular about the style; we looked at quite a few before he found the one he wanted.

He told me, “That isn’t too good a suit; it won’t last very long. But while it’s brand new, before it gets dry-cleaned, it looks like an expensive suit. Come on, we get a hat.”

We got a hat, a dilly of a snap-brim. He wanted to buy me shoes, but I talked him into settling for a shine; the ones I had were nearly new and looked good once they were shined. We got a rayon shirt that looked like silk, and a snazzy tie.

Back at the hotel, I changed into the new stuff and took a gander at myself in the mirror on the bathroom door.

Uncle Ambrose said, “Wipe off that grin, you dope. It makes you look sweet sixteen.”

I straightened out my face. “How’s the hat look?”

“Swell. Where’d you get it?”

“Huh? Herzfeld’s.”

“Try again and think harder. You got it in Lake Geneva the last time I took you up there. We were a little hot then, or we thought we were. We holed out a week till Blane wired us the heat was off. Remember the hat-check girl at the roadhouse?”

“The little brunette?”

He nodded. “Coming back to you now, huh? Sure, she bought you that hat after yours blew out of the car that night. Why shouldn’t she? You spent about three hundred bucks on her that week. Hell, you wanted to bring her back to Chi with you.”

I said, “I still think I should have. Why didn’t I?”

“I told you not to, see? And I’m the boss; get that through your head and keep it there. Kid, you’d have fried two years ago if I didn’t look out for you. I keep you from getting too big for your pants. Sure, I—Goddam it, get that grin off your mug.”

“Yeah, Chief. What would I have fried for?”

“The Burton Bank job for one thing. You’re always too quick on the trigger. When that teller reached for the button, you could’ve shot his arm as easy as killing him; you were only a few feet away.”

I said, “The bastard shouldn’t have reached.”

“And the time I had you take care of Swann when he got out of line. What’d you do? Just plug him? No, you had to get fancy about it. Remember that?”

“He got funny. He asked for it.”

He looked at me and shook his head. His voice changed. He said, “It ain’t bad, Ed. But you’re too relaxed. I want you stiff, jumpy. You’ve got a heater in that shoulder holster, and it’s loaded. The weight of it there won’t let you forget it. Keep that heater on your mind, every minute.”

“Sure,” I said.

“And your eyes. Ever watched a guy’s eyes after he’s had about two reefers? And before he’s smoked more than that?”

I nodded slowly.

He said, “Then you know what I mean. He’s the king of the universe, and he’s hot as a G string. But he’s like a coiled spring, tied down by a thin thread. He can sit still with a kind of unholy calm, and still make you afraid to touch him with a ten-foot pole.”

“I think I got it,” I told him.

“Keep your eyes like that. When you look at a guy, you don’t glare at him like you want to kill him. That’s ham stuff. You just look through him like he wasn’t there, like you don’t give a damn whether you shoot him or not. Look at him like he was a telegraph pole.”

“How about tone of voice?” I asked.

“Nuts to tone of voice. Keep your trap shut. Don’t even talk to me, unless I ask you something. I’ll do the talking and it won’t be much.”

He looked at his watch and got up off the bed. He said, “It’s five o’clock, shank of the morning for this neighborhood. Let’s go.”

“Will this take all evening?”

“Maybe longer.”

I said, “I want to use your phone, then. It’s kind of private. Will you go on down and wait for me in the lobby?”

He said, “Sure, kid,” and went on out.

I called home. If Mom answered I’d have hung up. I didn’t want to talk to Mom before I found out what Gardie had told her.

But it was Gardie’s voice.

I said, “This is Ed, Gardie. Is Mom around, or can you talk?”

“She went to the store. Oh, Eddie—did I—make an awful fool of myself?”

It was going to be all right.

I said, “Kind of, but let’s forget it. You got tight, that’s all. But no more, savvy? You try that again and I’ll take a hairbrush to you.”

She giggled a little. Or it might have been a giggle.

I said, “Does Mom know you drank that whiskey?”

“No, Eddie. I woke up first. I felt like hell—I still don’t feel so good. But I managed not to show it—Mom woke up feeling awful herself, so she didn’t notice. I told her I had a headache.”

“What happened to that bright idea about teaching her a lesson?”

“I forgot, Eddie, I clean forgot. I felt so lousy all I thought about was keeping out of Mom’s way. I just couldn’t have stood her bawling me out, or crying, or whatever she’d’ve done.”

“Okay,” I said. “So forget the idea permanently. Both ideas, if you know what I mean. You remember what you did when you were drunk?”

“N-not exactly, Eddie. What did I do?”

“Don’t kid me,” I said. “You remember all right.”

Unmistakably, this time, it was a giggle.

I gave up. I said, “Listen, tell Mom I won’t be home till late, probably, but not to worry. I’ll be with Uncle Am. I might even stay with him over night. So long.”

I hung up before she could ask any questions.

Going down in the elevator, I tried to get my mind back in the groove. Uncle Ambrose had been right in picking the clothes and the hat. I looked twenty-two or twenty-three in the elevator mirror, and I looked like I’d been around.

I stiffened up, and made my eyes hard.

My uncle nodded approvingly as I walked across the lobby toward him.

He said, “You’ll do, kid. Damn if I’m not a little leery of you myself.”

We walked north to Chicago Avenue and turned west. We went past the police station. I kept my eyes straight in front.

As we crossed diagonally over at Chicago and Orleans, heading for the Topaz beer sign, my uncle said, “All I want you to do is this, Ed. Don’t talk. Watch Kaufman. Follow my leads.”

“Sure,” I said.

We went into the tavern. Kaufman was drawing beers for two men at the bar. There was a man and woman sitting in a booth at the side; they looked married. The two men at the bar looked a little drunk in a sleepy sort of way, like they’d been drinking beer all afternoon. They were together, but weren’t talking.

Uncle Ambrose headed for a table at the back, sitting so he could face the bar. I pulled a chair to one side of the table, so I could face the same way.

I watched Kaufman.

He wasn’t, I thought, particularly pleasant to look at. He was