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

At half-past nine, I thought, I’ll do something. I don’t know what, but I’ll get started.

The first step will be to go out in the lobby and phone upstairs. But what am I going to say?

I wished now I’d either waked Uncle Am or waited for him. Maybe I was going to make a botch of things. Like I did taking a poke at Reinhart.

I looked around the place again, in the mirror. Down at the other end of the bar a man sat alone. He looked like a successful business man. I thought, I wonder if he is. For all I know, he might be a gangster. And the little, dark, Italian fellow sitting alone over in the booth, might be a commission merchant, although he looked like a torpedo. He might even be Benny Rosso. I could ask him, but if he is, he’s heeled and I’m not. And maybe he wouldn’t tell me.

I took a sip of the rye and it tasted lousy, so I drank it down to get rid of it, and got hold of the chaser before I desecrated that sleek and shiny bar by exploding across it. I hoped nobody had noticed my lack of dignity in that dive for the water.

I looked at the backwards clock in the mirror and it looked like three thirty-one, so I figured it was nine twenty-nine.

The bartender was coming back my way, but I shook my head at him. I wondered if he’d seen me almost choke on the drink. I felt silly, but I sat there one more minute and then I got up and started for the lobby door. I felt like my shirttail was hanging out and everybody was looking at it.

I was going to stutter into the phone and mess everything.

It was the juke box that saved me. It was between the bar and that door, against a square pillar in the middle of the room. It was bright and shiny and gaudy, even in that swanky barroom. I stopped to look over the numbers on it and fished a nickel out of my pocket.

I picked a Benny Goodman out of the lot and dropped my nickel. I stood there watching the machine slide the platter out of the stack and bring down the needle.

I closed my eyes when it started to play and stood there taking in the introduction, not moving a muscle, but giving to the music with all of my body, with all of me, letting go inside.

Then I opened my eyes again and walked out into the lobby, riding on the high wail of the clarinet, drunk as a lord. Not from the rye.

I felt swell. I didn’t feel like a kid, I didn’t feel foolish, and my shirttail was in again. I could handle anything likely to happen and most things that were unlikely.

I stepped into the phone booth and dialed W-E-N-3-8-4-2. I heard the buzz of the phone ringing.

The click of the receiver and a girl’s voice said, “Hello?” The voice I’d liked last night.

I said, “This is Ed, Claire.”

“Ed who?”

“You don’t know me. You’ve never met me. But I’m calling from the lobby downstairs. Are you alone?”

“Y-yes. Who is this?”

I asked, “Does the name Hunter mean anything to you?”

“Hunter? It doesn’t.”

I asked, “How about the name Reynolds?”

“Who is this?”

“I’d like to explain,” I said. “May I come upstairs? Or would you meet me down in the bar for a drink?”

“Are you a friend of Harry’s?”

“No.”

“I don’t know you,” she said. “I don’t see why I should see you.”

I said, “That’s the only way you’ll get to know me.”

“Do you know Harry?”

I said, “I’m an enemy of Harry’s.”

“Oh.” It stalled her for a minute.

I said, “I’m coming upstairs. Open the door but leave the chain on it. If I don’t look like a werewolf—or any other kind of wolf—maybe you’ll unhook the chain.”

I hung up before she could tell me not to. I thought I had her curious, enough so to let me in.

I didn’t want to give her time to think it over, nor time to make a phone call. I didn’t wait for an elevator; I hotfooted it up three flights of stairs.

She hadn’t phoned anybody, because she was waiting at the door. There was a chain on it, all right, and she had the door open four inches on the chain and was standing there looking out. That way she could see me walking down the hall and get a better look than by opening it after I knocked.

She was young, and she was a knockout. Even through four inches of open door, I could see that. She was the kind of girl that could make you whistle twice.

I managed to get down, the hall without stumbling on the carpet.

Her eyes stayed neutral, but she took the chain off the door when I got there. She opened it, and I went in. There wasn’t anyone waiting back of the door with a sandbag, so I went on into the living room. It was a nice room except that it was a little like a movie set. There was a fireplace with brass andirons and a stand that held a dainty, shiny poker and shovel, but there’d never been a fire in the fireplace. There was a comfortable looking sofa in front of it. There were lamps and drapes and curtains and things; I can’t describe it, but it was a nice room.

I walked around to the front of the sofa and sat down. I held my hands out to the empty fireplace and rubbed them as though I were warming them.

I said, “It’s a braw night. The snow is seven feet deep on the boulevard. My huskies gave out before I reached Ontario. The last mile I had to crawl on hand and knee.” I rubbed my hands some more.

She stood there at the end of the sofa, looking down at me, arms akimbo. They were nice arms for a sleeveless dress, and she was wearing a sleeveless dress.

She said, “I take it you’re not in a hurry?”

I said, “I must catch a train a week from Wednesday.”

She made a little noise that might have been a well-bred snort. She said, “I suppose we might as well have a drink then.”

She bent down and opened the cabinet to the left of the fireplace and there was a row of bottles in it and a row of glasses. There were jiggers and stirring spoons and a shaker and—as God is my witness—there was a miniature freezing compartment at one side with three rubber trays of ice cubes.

I said, “What, no radio in it?”

“The other side of the fireplace. Radio-phono.” I looked that way.

I said, “I’ll bet you haven’t any records.”

“Do you want a drink, or don’t you?”

I looked back at the row of bottles, and decided against anything mixed; I might be expected to mix it myself and not know how to. I said, “Burgundy goes well with a maroon carpet. It doesn’t make spots if you spill it.”

“If that’s all that worries you, you can have creme de menthe. The furnishings aren’t mine.”

“But you have to live with them.”

“Not after next week.”

I said, “Then to hell with Burgundy. We’ll have creme de menthe. Anyway me, I will.”

She took a pair of tiny liqueur goblets from the top shelf and filled them from the creme de menthe bottle. She handed me one.

I saw a teakwood cigarette box on the mantel. I gave her one of her own cigarettes and lighted it for her, lighted one for myself and then sat down and took a sip of the liqueur. It tasted like peppermint candy and looked like green ink. I decided that I liked it.

She didn’t sit down. She stood leaning back against the mantel, looking at me.

She was still neutral.

She had jet-black hair that managed to be sleek and wavy at the same time. She was slender, almost as tall as I. She had clear, calm eyes.

I said, “You’re beautiful.”

A corner of her mouth twitched a little bit. She asked, “Is that why you telephoned up, to tell me that?”

I said, “I didn’t know it then. I’d never seen you. No, that wasn’t why I wanted to talk to you.”

“What do I have to do to get you started talking?”

“Liquor always helps,” I said. “And I’m a sucker for music. Do you have any records?”

She took a deep drag on her cigarette and let the smoke out her nostrils, slowly. She said, “If I asked you how you got that black eye, I suppose you’d tell me you were bitten by a St. Bernard.”

I said, “Nothing but the truth. A man hit me.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t like me.”

“Did you hit him back?”

I said, “Yes.”

She laughed. It was a full, honest laugh. She said, “I don’t know whether you’re crazy or not. I can’t decide. What do you really want?”

I said, “Harry Reynolds’ address.”

She frowned. “I don’t have it. I don’t know where he is. I don’t care.”

I said, “We were talking about phonograph records. Do you have—”

“Stop it. I want to know; why are you looking for Harry?”

I took a long breath and leaned forward. I said, “Last week a man was killed in an alley. He was my father, a printer. I’m an apprentice printer. I’m not as old as I look. My uncle is a carney. He and I are trying to find Harry Reynolds to turn him over to the police for killing my father. My uncle would be here with me, but he’s asleep. He’s a swell guy; you’d like him.”

She said, “You do better in monosyllables. You were telling the truth about that black eye.”

I said, “Then shall we try monosyllables again?”

She took another sip of the liqueur, watching me over the rim of the tiny glass.

“All right,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Ed.”

“Is that all of it? What’s the rest?”

“Hunter,” I told her. “That took two syllables. I tried to stick to Ed; it’s all your fault.”

“You really are looking for Harry? That’s why you came here?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want with him?”

“That’ll take three syllables.”

“Go ahead.”

“To kill him.”

“Who are you working for?”

“A man. His name wouldn’t mean anything to you. If I thought it would, I’d tell you.”

She said, “Your tongue isn’t quite loose enough yet. We’ll have to try more liquor.” She refilled our glasses.

“And music,” I told her, “soothes the savage breast. How about those records. If you have any.”

She laughed again, and walked across the room. She pulled aside some cretonne and there was a shelf of albums. “Who do you want, Ed? Most of them are here.”

“Dorsey?”

“Both of them. Which Dorsey?”

“The trombone Dorsey.”

She knew I meant Tommy. She took the records from one of the albums and put them in the phono, setting it for automatic.

She came back and stood in front of me. “Who sent you here?”

I said, “It would be a nice line if I could say ‘Benny sent me.’ But he didn’t. I don’t like Benny or Dutch any more than I like Harry. Nobody sent me, Claire. I just came.”

She leaned over and touched both sides of my coat, where a shoulder holster would be. She straightened up, frowning. She said, “You haven’t even got a—”

“Shut up,” I said, “I want