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

“Okay,” I said. “When do we start?”

“He closes fairly early Monday night. Any time after one, he might get there. We’ll have to leave pretty soon; it’s after midnight now.”

We had another drink, and then we left. We went by the Wacker and left Pop’s suitcase there. Then we went north on Clark to Oak, and over to LaSalle.

My uncle picked a deep doorway on the west side of LaSalle, just north of the corner, and we stood in there and waited. We waited almost an hour and only a few people went by.

Then Kaufman passed us. He didn’t look in the doorway.

We waited till he was just past, and then stepped out and went up alongside him, one of us on either side.

He stopped as abruptly as if he’d run into a wall, but, one of us holding each of his arms, we started him walking again. I took a look at his face, and then didn’t look again. It wasn’t nice to look at. It was the face of a man who thinks he is dead, and who doesn’t like it. It was just the color of the sidewalk under our feet.

He said, “Listen, you guys, I—”

“We’ll talk in your room,” my uncle said.

We reached the doorway.

Uncle Ambrose let go of Kaufman’s arm and went in first. He walked confidently down the hallway as though he knew where he was going. I remembered he said he’d been here before.

I walked third, behind Kaufman. Halfway down the hall, he lagged a bit. I touched the small of his back lightly with the end of my index finger and he jumped. He almost crowded Uncle Am, going up the stairs.

On the third floor, my uncle took a key from his pocket and opened the door of a room. He went on in and flicked the light.

We followed him, and I closed the door and leaned against it.

My part in this was over, except for leaning against that door.

Kaufman said, “Listen, damn it, I—”

“Be quiet,” my uncle told him. “Sit down.” He gave the tavern keeper a very light push that sent him to a sitting position on the edge of the bed.

My uncle paid no more attention to him. He walked over to the dresser by the window. He reached around the end of it and pulled the window shade down flush with the sill.

Then he picked up the alarm clock on the dresser. It ticked loudly; the hands stood at nine minutes of two. He looked at his own wrist watch and adjusted the time to a quarter of two. He gave each of the winding keys a few turns and then turned the button that turned the alarm hand. He set it for two o’clock, pulled up the little lever that turned it on.

“Nice clock you have there,” he said. “Hope it won’t bother your neighbors if it goes off at two. We have to catch a train.”

He opened the top left dresser drawer and reached in. His hand came out holding a little nickel-plated thirty-two revolver.

He said, “You won’t mind if we borrow this a moment, will you, George?” He looked across the room at me. “Dangerous things, guns, kid. I’ve never owned one and never will. They get you in trouble faster’n anything.”

“Yeah,” I said.

He spun the cylinder, broke the gun, and snapped it shut. He said, “Kid, throw me that pillow.”

I took the pillow from the bed and tossed it to him. He held the gun in his right hand and bent the pillow around it with his left.

He leaned back against the dresser. The clock ticked.

Kaufman was sweating. There were big drops on his forehead. He said, “You guys can’t get away with this.”

“With what?” my uncle asked him. He looked at me and grinned. He said, “Kid, you got any idea what this guy is talking about?”

I said, “Maybe he thinks we’re threatening him.” My uncle looked surprised. “Why, we wouldn’t do that. We like George.”

The clock ticked again.

Kaufman took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his forehead.

He said, “All right, shut that goddam alarm off. What do you want to know?”

I saw some of the tension go out of Uncle Am; I hadn’t realized it was there until it left him. He said, “You know what we want to know, pal. Just tell it your own way.”

“Does the name Harry Reynolds mean anything to you?” Uncle Am said, “Just keep talking. It will.”

“Harry Reynolds is a hood. He’s dynamite. Three weeks ago he was in my place, sitting at the back with a couple guys, when this Wally Hunter comes in for a drink. There are a couple guys with Hunter, too.”

“What kind of guys?”

“Just ordinary guys. Printers. A fat one and a little one. One I didn’t know, but Hunter called him Jay. The other one had been in with Hunter before; his name is Bunny.”

My uncle glanced at me, and I nodded. I knew who Jay would be.

Kaufman said, “They had just a drink around, and left, and one of the guys with Reynolds got up and left right after them, like he was going to follow them. Then this Reynolds comes over to the bar and asks me what the name of the guy who stood in the middle of the three of them was. I told him Wally Hunter.”

My uncle asked, “Did he recognize the name?”

“Yeah. I got it he hadn’t been sure till I told him the name and then he was sure, all right. He asks me where this Hunter lives, and I say I don’t know—which was the truth. He came in once in a while, maybe once a week, but I didn’t know where he lived.

“So he lets it go at that, has a few more drinks and they leave.

“The next day he comes back. He says he wants to get in touch with Hunter about something and next time he comes in I should find out where he lives. And he gives me a phone number, too, and says the minute Hunter comes in I should call that number and say Hunter’s there—but I shouldn’t say anything to Hunter about it.”

“What was the phone number?”

Kaufman said, “Wentworth three-eight-four-two. I was to leave a message if he wasn’t there. Same if I found out Hunter’s address from him; I was to call that number and leave the message.”

“You say this was the next day?”

Kaufman nodded. He said, “I take it he sent one of the boys to follow Hunter home, but he lost him. So Reynolds came back to get it through me. He let me know what’d happen if I didn’t—if he found out Hunter had been back and I hadn’t let him know.”

Uncle Am asked, “Did this Hunter come in again between that night and the night he was killed?”

“Nope, he didn’t come in for two weeks after that. Till the night he was killed. And that night everything happened like I told at the inquest except that I called the number. Hell, I had to. Reynolds would’ve killed me if I hadn’t.”

“You talked to Reynolds personally?”

“No, nobody answered the phone when I called that number. I called twice, once a couple minutes after Hunter came in, and again ten minutes after that. Nobody answered. I was damn glad. I didn’t want to get mixed up in it any more’n I had to keep Reynolds from burning me down. What’s your angle in this?”

Uncle Am said, “Don’t worry about our angle. We won’t get you in trouble with Reynolds. What’d you tell Reynolds when you saw him?”

“I didn’t see him since. He never came around. Hell, he wouldn’t. He got in touch with Hunter some other way. He—or one of his boys—must’ve been following Hunter that night, waiting outside while he was in here. He must’ve been—”

The alarm went off and all three of us jumped. Uncle Am reached behind him and shut it off. He tossed the pillow back on the bed and put the little thirty-two on top of the dresser.

He asked, “Where does Harry Reynolds live?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that phone number. Wentworth three-eight-four-two.”

“What’s his line?”

“Big-time stuff only. Banks, pay rolls, stuff like that. His brother’s in stir, doing life, for a bank job.”

My uncle shook his head sadly. He said, “George, you shouldn’t get mixed up with people like that. Who were the other lugs who were with Reynolds the night he was in your place last—the night Wally Hunter came in?”

“One was called Dutch. A big guy. The other one was a little torpedo; I don’t know his name. Dutch was the one followed Hunter out and lost him—I guess he lost him, or Reynolds wouldn’t had to come back the next day.”

My uncle said, “That’s all you can tell us, George? Now you’ve gone this far, the more the merrier—if you get what I mean.”

Kaufman said, “I get what you mean. If I knew any more I’d tell you, all right. I hope you find him, now. You got a phone number. Just don’t tell him where you got it.”

“We won’t, George. We won’t tell anybody. We’ll go now, and let you go to sleep.” He started to the door, and I turned the knob to open it. He turned back to Kaufman a moment.

He said, “Listen, George, I’m pretending to play along with the cops on this; I may have to give them something. They can find Reynolds easier than we can if the phone number is a bust. But you keep that phone number under your hat. If Bassett comes around to see you, give him everything you gave me except the phone number. You were just to get Hunter’s address, and Reynolds would come back for it. Only he didn’t.”

We went out and down the stairs, out into the clean night air.

I thought, we have a name now. We know who we’re looking for. We got a name and a phone number. And this time we were up against the big-time. Hoods; not mugs like Kaufman.

And we were going it by ourselves; Uncle Am wasn’t giving Bassett that phone number.

Under the street light on Oak Street, Uncle Am looked at me. He asked, “Scared, kid?”

My throat was a little dry. I nodded.

He said, “So am I. Scared spitless. Shall we level with Bassett or shall we have some fun?”

I said, “Let’s—try the fun.”