somehow leak out how a Benotti man worked on a thing which belonged to St. Louis who worked for Walter Lippit.
“I’ll call him,” said Conrad, “and tell him he might as well stay up and get dressed.”
“And have the thing out of there before eight. Stress that, Conrad.”
“Maybe I should tell him he’d better stay away from the place himself, come that hour?”
“Please, Conrad, I don’t want to mix jobs,” I complained. “Okay?”
“Okay.” He coughed and said, “Maybe it’s time you got out of one business and go full time into the other?”
“All you know, Conrad,” I told him, “is that your machine’s got to be out of there, come eight in the morning. Just arrange that, nothing else.”
“You going to be there yourself?”
“Why?”
“Might be awkward if I send down anyone working for the studio and there you are, dressed up like a hood.”
He was much older than I and so took liberties now and then. All I said was, “I’m going to be there at eight in the morning. Come eight in the morning, I don’t want to see that thing sitting there. Aside from that, just leave me a, l, o, n, e.”
By seven I had lined up five bozos for a quick job on Benotti’s depot One was a Lippit trucker, large of muscle and small of head, two were from the local gym, long in training and short of cash, one was just somebody I knew, and the fifth was the same. And also large of muscle and small of head.
At seven thirty I walked down Marsh Avenue, and a quarter to eight I got to the Hough and Daly building. It was very large and used up half a block.
The first thing I came to was the loading ramp, set back from the street for about the depth of a truck. It put the ramp inside the building.
On the ramp was my mixer.
This wasn’t just twenty-five grand sitting there. This was a high-priced complication looking at me.
The big gadget, because of its weight, was built on rollers, and Benotti’s man, because of the phone call, had pushed the thing out on the ramp and had left it there. As a matter of fact, he had pushed it a little over to one side, where the Hough and Daly door was. Nice of him. Twenty-five grand of high-priced complication pushed over to one side a little.
Three of Benotti’s delivery trucks were parked side by side. I walked past them and up the steps to the ramp. At one end was a double door with glass panels halfway up where it said Benotti’s Service. I looked through the glass and saw nobody. The shop was empty.
It was ten to eight and they opened on the hour. Or they did all the other days. I had ten minutes to get the machine out of the way because at eight sharp my army of five was due.
There was a little more life on the Hough and Daly side of the building. The big double door to the ramp was still closed but the square window next to the door showed the inside of an office and a girl taking the cover off an adding machine. The girl was a little one, all made-up and pretty, as if she might enjoy working back here near the loading ramp. I myself thought I might enjoy working back near the loading ramp. I knocked at her window.
She nodded, barely looking up, and called, “Just a minute.” I could hear that through the window. Then she walked out of the office and came around to the double door. She clanked it and rattled it from the other side and then had it open.
“I was wondering when you’d… Oh,” she said.
“Good morning. I’m a little bit in a hurry, but if…”
“I thought you were one of the fellows next door. From next door, I mean. With the coffee.”
“No. As a matter of fact, there’s nobody next door, which is the…”
“They always make the coffee over there,” she said again. She looked very disappointed.
“There’s a little mix-up this morning. Nobody showed up yet and I need a little favor.”
She tilted her head and looked suspicious. “Like what?”
“This thing here,” I said, and nodded at the mixer on the platform. “I’d like it moved.”
“You want me for that? ”
It was five to eight.
“It looks bigger than both of us,” she said.
“What I mean is, you just open this door some more and I move it myself. In there, where you are.”
“Why?”
She didn’t open the door any further. I wasn’t the man with the coffee; I wasn’t anyone she knew. I heard a car at the end of the block, motor whining fast. I now talked at the same rate.
“Look, the thing, the machine, it actually…”
“It’s a mixer,” she said.
“Yes, and it actually belongs next door, the Benotti place, but nobody is there and by some mistake or other the thing-mixer, got left …”
“Mix-up.”
“Yes. Please, don’t interrupt What I’m trying to mix you-eh, tell you…”
“Who are you?”
“I’m the man who’s supposed to, who’s trying to just try and get that machine over there to over here, there, where you stand, and if you’ll just…”
“You sound like that car out there.”
The car was still whining in low and now that it was very much closer it slowed. I looked out to the street and wiped my hand across my face, but I wasn’t sweating. I never sweat. I just start shaking.
There was a woman behind the wheel and when she had passed the loading entrance I could hear her turn the corner. It was about three minutes to eight.
“Women drivers,” I said.
“Makes you nervous?”
“No.”
“I could have sworn you were nervous,” she said.
“Look, honey,” I said.
“Do we know each other?”
“No, but I feel that…”
“Then don’t call me honey.”
I took a deep breath, coughed slowly, and then smiled at her again. This was a simple smile, just harmless warmth.
“That mixer belongs to Blue Beat Studios. I…”
“I know.”
“I’m connected with Blue Beat because I hustle talent for them.”
“Aha,” she said, and nodded her head.
“And I’ve got a session arranged, you know what a session is-?”
“You’re a talent scout and I’m just the thing you’ve been looking for, and if I’d let you handle me…”
“I don’t want to handle you!”
“You don’t?”
“Sweetsufferingsuffering, all I want is just for you to open up there, open up that gate wide so I can move, push I mean, that mixer…”
“Well,” she said. “What now?”
There was this panel truck. It went by the entrance, it stopped with the tailgate still showing, it went in reverse and backed around into the loading space and up to the ramp.
“Eight o’clock,” she said. “We’ve got nothing to go out at eight this morning.”
The canvas flaps opened in back and one, two, three, lump-muscled apes jumped out. Then two more from the cab, all lump-muscled and goonish.
My own army counted five, but this wasn’t it. This was the enemy.
“Good morning,” said the girl from Hough and Daly. “I was just saying, we have nothing for you this
