“I had to open the door for Jack. He was early.”
“Yeah. He keeps doing that today.”
“We were talking,” she said.
“And laughing. Go to bed, huh, Patty?”
“Jack was telling me something about little Red Riding Hood. And the wolf. Remember that story, Walter?”
“Yeah, sort of.”
“The wolf got clobbered,” she said and went off to bed.
Lippit made two drinks and I sat on the couch now, relaxing a little. He came over and sat down too and when he gave me my drink he said, “Let’s talk business,” and I said, “Christ, yes.”
He sipped on his drink and I took one gulp of mine and let the rest of it warm while I told him how all of it looked to me. That Benotti was no smalltime repair man, and also not somebody crazy who thought he could buck Lippit’s set-up. But that he was somebody smart, with backing, who thought he could buck Lippit’s set-up. I told him that the tie-in might be Chicago, and that Lippit, with his background, should be able to check it from there. He said yes, he would, though for the moment it made little difference to the way he would handle this thing.
“We’re going to do this up brown,” he said. “We’ll clobber him.”
It wasn’t Lippit’s kind of word, but like a lot of things, Pat had just put it into his head. I myself wished he hadn’t used it.
I said, “You know how big Benotti is?”
“He lives in a frame house with used furniture.”
“So is your furniture.”
“But I don’t live on the East Side.”
“He’s been living on the East Side I don’t know how long and has been running a repair shop all that time, and we haven’t paid any attention to him for just that reason. That’s why he’s been running it that way.”
“Likely,” said Lippit, and looked at the ceiling. “And I just told you, Jack, that his size makes no difference right now, the way we’re going to clobber.”
“His size would make a difference in how hard we have to-er, clobber.”
“Not for long,” he said and took a nip from his glass. “What we’ll do is this.”
Lippit often said “we” when he didn’t mean it. I put my drink down, put my cigarette out, and sat back. What came next would be mostly instructions.
“He’s big enough,” said Lippit, “or thinks that he’s big enough, to buck our servicing. With Stonewall he’s also tried putting a machine in the place, which may be a sign of what he plans for the future. But right now what he’s setting up for is to buck our servicing. Then he’ll take over.”
“Hm.”
“Just listen. Therefore, first off we fix it so he doesn’t have anything to service with.”
“Tit for tat?”
“Right, but don’t talk like a baby. Here’s how, Jack. We hit the workers; we hit his goons, and we hit the supplies. One, two, three, get it? One, two, three days, and no more Benotti.”
I just nodded, because I didn’t like it.
“Here’s one at a time,” he kept on. “I was late because I arranged about the workers already. I called Folsom. He’s getting a team set up to sit at the phones. They’re gonna call up Benotti’s service men-we know some of them-and give them a hard time with those telephone calls.”
“At three in the morning.”
“Sure at three in the morning. Don’t you know it’s much scarier at three in the morning? Imagine you’re asleep in bed and the phone rings. There’s this voice, like from a beast, and it says…”
“I know. I know.”
“And Benotti’s got all non-union labor. I checked this out through Folsom between the time at the club and now. He’s got six men, it looks like, and they all do moonlighting on the side. So we tighten up on the closed shop arrangements. They either get fired right off, or Folsom pulls a strike or a slowdown on the shop and they get fired then. Unless, we explain to them, they quit Benotti’s shop. And that takes care of the servicing he’s planning to do on our busted machines.”
I lit a cigarette and waited for the other two arrangements he had in mind. Because one of them worried me.
“Second, the goons. We got our machines all over, but Benotti’s been concentrating on the West Side. The operators are closer together, they’re little guys, maybe scare easier. What we do, Jack, we get a gang in that bar at Liberty and Alder Road, another bunch in Morry’s bowling alley, and a third in that place with the malteds and ice cream concoctions, Third and Liberty, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And we got the area triangled off. An operator has troubles with Benotti’s bums anywhere, he calls one of the three places, and a flying squad of our very own bums comes barreling down for a free-for-all. Nice?”
“Ak-”
“Whadda ya mean, ak? ”
But he was in no mood to listen, because he had one point to go.
“Third, we maul their supply.”
“Their what?”
He was starting to sound like a general and I was getting more nervous.
“Hough and Daly,” he said. “Suppliers of electric and electronic equipment.”
I knew damn well who Hough and Daly were.
“Didn’t you know Benotti’s got space rented there? His five trucks use the same ramp; his equipment shop is right next to Hough’s storage rooms, not to speak of the fact that he buys his supplies from them.”
“So do we, Walter. In case you’re thinking of messing up Hough and Daly.”
Lippit folded his hands in his lap, which looks weird and dainty because of his size, and then he cocked his head at me and talked very patiently.
“Jacky,” he said, “sometimes you talk like an idiot, you know that, Jacky?” and then just with a little bit of a change in his voice, “Or like a stockholder in Hough and Daly, perhaps, do you know that?”
I wasn’t a stockholder in Hough and Daly, and it was nothing that simple.
“No workers,” said Lippit, “no equipment, no more operators all scared by his goons. Good?”
“I thought for a minute you were going to say, no more operators.”
He slapped his thighs, got up, and let out a big sigh.
“St. Louis,” he said, “something is bugging you, St. Louis.” He went to the liquor cabinet and brought back the bottle. He sat down with it and kept it in his hands. “What, Jack? What is it?”
For a fact, Walter Lippit wasn’t running a democracy or anything like that, but he and I, some of the time, split the jobs, talked this and that over, gave each other a hand. I liked Walter Lippit Rolling his girl on the couch had nothing to do with that. I liked Pat, too.
“Something’s no good, Jack?”
“Yes,” I said. “All of it.”
He looked at me and then down at the bottle. “Just a minute,” he said, and poured himself some. I held out my glass and he gave me some too.
Then I said, “Your beating up Benotti isn’t…”
“I didn’t beat up Benotti, Jack.”
“All right, all right.” I took a swallow and started over. “Your pushing his men around and he pushing ours around sounds too much like a brawl to me.”
“You don’t like brawls?”
“Lay off for a minute, will you please, Walter? I’m talking about business and you’re talking like a delinquent. Which is no good, just as a matter of principle.”
“What kind of business, just as a matter of principle, do you think I’m running? What they do polite-like in the cosmetics business, let’s say, we do the same, except not so polite. Now, you got more sudden principles?”
“And in this brawling around,” I said, trying to ignore the rest he had been saying, “there’s one guy gets caught in the middle, which is the operator, the guy who’s using our machine.”
