“I don’t want to talk to you, Patty, honest,” and I tried to get back to the lost subject.
She didn’t say “no” this time. She didn’t say anything for a while, and I didn’t, and it felt as if we were done talking. My collar felt tight and out of place and she must have felt the same way when it came to that dress with the busted zipper because she stretched and twisted up closer and to hell with the front of that dress.
Then it struck me what a mercenary minx she was.
“Patty.”
“Huh?”
“I got nothing to do with the record business.”
“Uh.”
“I said, I got no ins with the record business.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I mean it.”
“Your stud button is digging into me.”
“I, uh, I’m sorry.”
“Take it off.”
It was hard to take it off and it was harder to talk any more and I hardly cared any more what kind of a minx she was. I heard her kick off first one shoe, then the other.
“Listen, Patty.”
“Yes, Jack.”
“I meant that, what I said.”
“Yes, Jack.”
“So let me up.”
“I’m half naked.”
“What I mean is…”
“Yes, Jack. Yes, Jack.”
“About records…”
“I don’t give one damn, Jack!”
Chapter 5
Before driving all the way down to the club I felt I should have a little bit more to show than the fine feeling I had about the brief bout with Benotti and the longer one with Pat. I stopped at the next open drugstore and went to the phone booth in back. I had part of a cigarette there and thought once more about the men who had shambled up Louie’s place.
One of them had smelled like a horse.
In this town there was only one tie-in with the rackets, and that was at the tracks. I’m not counting Lippit’s organization. I’m a member of that. I’m a businessman-a flexible businessman-but no racketeer. I am, granted, very flexible sometimes, which is the kick I am after and the reason Lippit pleases me, but I wouldn’t push someone like Louie. I’ll push a Benotti, be it business or no, but I’m no racketeer.
So one of them had smelled like a horse. I picked up the phone and dialed a man I knew, a good craftsman with a quarter-mile horse, with whom I had beer sometimes while we worked over a scratch sheet He was a trainer, local, and spent most of his working time out at the track.
I don’t know why they start exercising horses at four in the morning and the first explanation I would discount is what a trainer would say about that. It meant, in any case, that my man was already in bed. He groaned into the phone, that I should call back at four-thirty in the morning when he would be more himself, but I wasn’t a horse, I told him, and this would just take a minute.
“There is nothing good in any of the starts tomorrow,” he said.
“I’m not calling for that, Dinkham. I’m calling about the outfit that’s stringing the bets and the races.”
“That’s run from Chicago,” he said. “I got nothing to do with them.”
“But they got men out at the track, don’t they?”
“Nothing big,” said Dinkham. “Just handlers who bring in the ponies sometimes. The ponies that surprise everybody by winning. And bums.”
“What?”
“Bums. They give stable jobs to their bums what’s on the lam from someplace or what’s too wore out for the jobs they used to do.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m talking about them. I’m calling to ask if any new ones have come in, bums like that.”
“No. Listen, Jack, I got to get up at…”
“Wait, Dinkham. One more thing.”
I didn’t know of one more thing to ask him, being much disappointed with what he had said. It was a sad longshot to think that I could tie Benotti in with the syndicate, which worked out of Chicago, because one of his hoods had smelled like a horse. But Benotti, even with electrical shop, frame house, wife and kids, did not strike me like a lone electrician gone hog wild. The electrical shop showed that he was starting out with a long plan, and the rest showed that he was aiming to stay. And his bums showed-must show-that he might be well-connected.
“I’ll let you know if some new ones come in,” said Dinkham. “Okay, Jack? Some should, any day now.”
“What did you say?”
“We lost a bunch of them. We’re short of help, because a bunch of them been taking off and we’re short handed. Not that they knew anything about horses.”
“How many left, Dinkham? And why?”
“I don’t know Four, five, maybe. And they left because they got pulled out.”
“And you don’t know where they went?”
“I think they’re still in town. At least one of them is still in town because I seen him, drinking beer.”
“And smelling like a horse.”
“What was that, Jack?”
There was a note of injury in Dinkham’s tone and I did not want to insult him. I also did not think there was any more he could tell me so I said, “Nothing, Dinkham, nothing. Please go back to sleep so that you can get up with the chickens.” He was saying, “Not chickens. Horses!” when I hung up the phone. Then I drove to the club.
Actually, the place wasn’t a club, except that Pat liked the word better and so Lippit had started calling it that. This club was a cross between YMCA and community center where a member could dance, sit, swim, box, get instructions in drama, or get a good massage. Lippit, who could not do without sweaty exercise, played handball there, went to the steambath, and got himself rubbed. In addition, he paid rent on a room with chairs and a long table. He had meetings there because he did not like an office address.
And I didn’t like going there. First of all, I didn’t like Lippit’s meetings. He wasn’t running a democracy, so why have meetings? He listened to what there was and then said what he wanted done. He could have done the same thing by phone. To keep you guys on your toes, he’d say. But it just bored me.
Second of all, I didn’t like the place because it reminded me of all the right-minded foolishness which used to bother me a number of years ago. I didn’t have a very rich upbringing, just a varied one, and this cold shower health kick of fun without girls used to be a sad bother to me. It ruined sports for me and it never made me want a woman any less.
So there were the thin-legged kids wearing gym shoes as if they had Frankenstein feet, then the real addicts, all balled up with muscle, and the ones who must have started too late because the sweatshirt just brought out their stomachs. I had to walk past all that wearing this crazy tuxedo, and I went to the top floor as fast as I could.
That was another thing I didn’t like. That room. It was space left over because the architect had made a mistake in arithmetic. There were windows to the street way up in the wall, but they only made sense from the outside where they had something to do with the Greek facade. The opposite wall, where there was no street, had a row of windows too. They were long and very low to the floor and if you lay down on your stomach you could look
