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

She shrugged, picked up her glass from the mantel and sat down on the sofa, just far enough away to let me know I wasn’t expected to make a pass. I didn’t. I wanted to, but I didn’t.

I waited till the phonograph finished the fourth record and quit.

Then I said, “What if there was money in it for you? For Harry’s address, I mean.”

She said, “I don’t know it, Ed.”

She turned and looked at me. She said, “Listen, this is the truth and I don’t care if you believe it or not. I’m through with Harry and with—with everything he stands for. I’ve lived here two years now, and all I’ve got to show for it is enough money to get back home on. Home is Indianapolis.

“I’m getting out of here and going back there, and I’m going to take a job and live in a hall bedroom, with one pillow on the bed. I can learn all over again how to live on twenty-five bucks a week. Or whatever. Maybe that sounds funny to you.”

“Not particularly,” I said. “But wouldn’t a nest egg in the bank be a good start for turning over a new—”

“No, Ed. For two perfectly good reasons. First, a double-cross would be a hell of a start. Second, I don’t know where Harry is. I haven’t seen him for a week—almost two weeks. I don’t even know if he’s in Chicago. I don’t care.”

I said, “If that’s the way it is—”

I got up and walked over to the shelf of albums. There was a book of old-timers there, featuring Jimmy Noone. Wang-Wang Blues, Wabash Blues—I’d heard a lot about Jimmy Noone, and I’d never heard one of his platters, I took the album over to the phono, figured out how to put it on, and stood watching till the first record got going. It was very, very swell stuff.

I held out my hand to Claire, and she stood up and came to me. We danced. The music was as blue as the creme de menthe had been green. Deep, deep blue. They don’t play it like that any more. It got me.

It wasn’t until the music stopped that I really realized I had Claire in my arms. And that she wasn’t fighting to get out of them and that kissing her was going to be the most natural thing in the world.

It was. And it was there, in the silence between records, in the silence of that kiss, that we heard a key turning in the door.

She was out of my arms almost before I realized what the sound was.

She put a finger to her lips in a quick gesture of silence and then pointed toward a door that was ajar just to the left of the liquor cabinet. Then she whirled and started for the short hallway that led to the outer door of the apartment—the door in which the key had turned, the door that was opening by now.

I wasn’t so slow, either. I got my glass and my cigarette off the mantel and my hat off the end of the sofa, and I was through the door she’d pointed to, all before she’d reached the doorway to the hall.

I was in a dark room. I pushed the door back as it had been, a few inches ajar.

I heard her voice say, “Dutch! What the hell do you mean by walking in here like—”

The phono started in again, on the second of the Jimmy Noone records, and I couldn’t hear the rest. The record was Margie. “Margie, I’m always thinking of you, Margie—”

Through the crack of the door, I could see Claire crossing the room to shut it off. Her face was white with anger and her eyes—well, I’m glad they hadn’t looked at me like that.

She shut it off, sharp. She said, “Goddam you, Dutch, did Harry give you that key or did you—”

“Now, Claire, climb off it. No, Harry didn’t give me a key. You know damn well he wouldn’t. I got this key, toots. I figured this angle a week ago.”

“What angle? Skip it; I don’t even want to know what you’re talking about. Get out of here.”

“Now, toots.” He was farther into the room now. I saw him for the first time. I hadn’t been able to tell anything by his voice except that he wasn’t a soprano. I saw him now. He looked as big as the side of the house.

And if he was either Dutch or Irish, then I was a Hottentot. He looked like a Greek to me. A Greek or a Syrian or an Armenian. Maybe even Turkish or Persian or something. But how he got the last name of Reagan or the nickname Dutch, I wouldn’t try to guess. He had swarthy skin, and if he’d been stripped, there would have been acres of it. He looked like a wrestler and walked as though he were muscle-bound.

“Now, toots,” he said, “don’t get up in the air like that. Take it easy. We got business to talk.”

“Get out of here.”

He stood there, smiling, turning his hat in his hands. His voice got softer.

He said, “You think I don’t know Harry’s crossing me? Me and Benny? Well, I’m not worried about Benny, but me, I don’t like to be crossed. I’m going to explain that to Harry.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you?” He took a fat cigar out of his breast pocket, put it between his puffy lips, and took his time lighting it with a silver lighter. He put his hat back on his head. He said again, “Don’t you?”

Claire said, “I don’t. And if you don’t get out of here, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” He chuckled. “You’ll call copper? With forty G’s, hot from Waupaca, in the joint? Don’t make me laugh. Now listen careful, toots. First, I know the score. Harry pretended to break with you; he was smart, he did it before the Waupaca job. But like schlemiels, we let Harry take the stuff when we break up. Now where’s Harry? I don’t know, but I’ll find out. And I know where the forty G’s are. Here.”

“You’re crazy. You damn dumb—”

I’d been wrong in thinking he was muscle-bound. He jus! walked that way. His hand went out like a snake would strike and grabbed Claire’s wrist. He jerked her to him and her back was against him, his arm holding her there, against his chest, pinning down both her arms.

His other hand clamped over her mouth.

His back was mostly toward me. I didn’t know what I was going to do; I didn’t know what I could do against a mountain of muscle like that, but I opened the door. I looked around for something. The only thing I could see was the lightweight poker by the phony fireplace.

I started for it, walking quietly.

His voice hadn’t changed a semitone in pitch. He kept on as though he was talking about the weather. He said, “Just a second, toots, I’ll relax my hand over your yap enough to let you tell me yeah or no. One way we take the dough, you and me toots, and Harry doesn’t live here any more. Other way, well— you wouldn’t like it.”

I had hold of the poker now. My feet hadn’t made any noise Only, My God, it was a toy poker. It wasn’t made to poke a fire or to hit a giant over the head with. It didn’t have any heft. I would just make him mad.

The andirons were screwed down.

I remembered something I’d read. There’s a jujitsu blow along the side of the neck, parallel to and just under the jaw bone. It’s given with the edge of the flat hand, and it can paralyze or even be fatal.

It was worth a try. I moved to just the right position, held the poker well back for a good swing.

I said, “Hold it, Dutch.”

Plenty happened. He let go Claire with both hands, and turned his head at just the angle I’d figured he’d turn it, and I let go with the poker, a full arm swing. It hit on the dotted line that would have been there if his neck had been on a diagram.

Claire fell, and Dutch fell, and the double thud shook the Milan Towers. It really was a jar. It knocked Claire’s creme de menthe glass off the mantel and it hit the tiles of the fireplace with a bright tinkle and a green splash. There were going to be spots on the maroon carpet after all.

My first thought was his gun. I didn’t know if he was really out or for how long. It wasn’t in a holster. It was a snub-nosed Police Positive revolver, in his side coat pocket.

Once I had it, I felt better. I could even hear what was going on, and what was going on was laughter. Claire was on her hands and knees trying to get up, and she was laughing like the devil. Slightly drunken laughter.

I didn’t get it; she hadn’t been drunk. It didn’t sound like hysteria.

It wasn’t. When she saw me looking at her, she stopped. She said, “Turn on the phonograph again, quick.”

Then she started laughing again. Only it was just her mouth that was laughing. Her face was white; her eyes were scared. She got to her feet and staggered across the room, deliberately.

I didn’t get it, I was dumb. But I can take orders; I got the phonograph going. She collapsed onto the sofa, sobbing, but sobbing quietly, very quietly.

The phonograph played, “Margie, I’m always thinking of you, Margie; you mean the world—”

Over it, she said, “Talk, Ed. Talk loudly. Walk, so they can hear you.” She’d stopped sobbing, and brought her voice up in pitch. “Don’t you see, you dope? a fall like that, a noise like that? It’s either a murder or an accident—or a drunk falling down. If there’s talking and walking and laughing after it, then they say, it was just a drunk. If there’s dead quiet after a thud like that, they call the desk—”

“Sure,” I said. I’d whispered it. I cleared my throat and said, “Sure,” louder. Too loud. I didn’t try it a third time.

I still had the gun in my hand. I shoved it in my pocket to get it out of the way, and went over to where Dutch still lay stretched out. I thought, My God, why is he still as that? He can’t be dead from—

But he was. My hand inside his coat couldn’t find any heartbeat, although I kept hunting. I didn’t believe it. A trick blow like that, you read it in a book, but you don’t really believe it would work. Not for you. For a jujitsu expert, yes, but not for you.

I’d been so scared that it wouldn’t even faze him that I’d put my weight into it. It had worked. He was as dead as a mackerel.

I started laughing, and not to reassure the neighbors.

Claire came over and slapped my face and I stopped.

We went back to the sofa and sat down. I got hold of myself, and got cigarettes out for us. I got hold of myself, and when I struck a match and held it for us, my hand was steady.

She asked, “Want a drink, Ed?”

“No,” I told her.

She said, “Neither do I.”

The phonograph had changed records again. It started the Wang-Wang Blues. I got up and shut it off. If the neighbors under us or on either side were going to call copper or call the desk,