morning.”
“It isn’t feeding time yet,” would have made much more sense. The three who had come over the tail gate went straight for the door where the girl was standing, but the bald ape who had come out of the cab yelled at them that they had the wrong door. “This way, idiots,” he yelled. “This way.”
They all ran to the Benotti door and found that it was closed.
“Nuts,” said one of them. “They been and gone.”
“Idiot,” said the bald ape, “would they lock the door after theirselves?”
This had all taken a minute or two and I kept looking out to the street where my own natives were supposed to show up. They were supposed to show up there and wait for my signal.
Right then they might have showed up and I would never have known it. All the five apes, confused and left high and dry by the puzzle of that locked door, turned my way and brightened. This would be much simpler. This is one and we are five; something like that showed on their faces.
I had an impulse to jump past the girl and slam the door shut behind me, but then they might bust down the door, and then I would have to explain to the girl and how would it look to her-any number of giddy reasons came to me and while none of them were any good I did the right thing, or the thing I had come for. I walked up to the mixer, leaned my hand on the top, and I even drummed up and down with one finger. That was as brave as I could get for the moment, that thing with the finger.
“Get your hands offn that!” said the bald ape.
“Yeah!” said one of the others.
“Watch it,” I told them. “This thing stays intact.”
“What he say?”
“Idiot. He means it don’t get destructed.” They all stopped except for the bald ape. He came up to me, looked at the mixer, at my hand, at my face. “We got instructions,” he said. “Get your hands offn that because nothing around here gets destructed. We’re here to see to that.”
I took my hand off and held it out to him. “Man,” I told him. “Am I glad you came.”
He said, “Huh?” and didn’t take my hand, which was just as well, and then he didn’t know what else to say.
It must have been about five after eight. I was now worried my army would show.
“They’ve come and gone,” I said, “and am I glad you showed.”
“Come and gone?”
“Those goons. You know. They wanted to destructed everything here.”
“Destroyed, you mean.” Then he folded his arms and looked me up and down. “Who are you?”
“Benotti sent me. It almost didn’t work, because here they were and you weren’t here, and the reason he sent me was to let you know that this thing here, this mixer, this thing in particular should come to no harm.”
“Oh yeah?” said one of them.
The bald ape turned a little and said, “Quiet, idiot.” Then he turned back to me. “How come they come and went and nothing’s busted?”
That’s when I saw one of my own stick his head around the brick wall and look into the loading space, at the ramp, and at me. Then he ducked away.
He was waiting behind the wall, on the street, for the signal I was supposed to whistle; he was waiting for the rest of them to come up close and then they would rush us; he was talking it over with them, how best to save me. I myself was going out of my mind.
“Nothing’s busted,” I started without knowing how to finish the sentence, “because I’m a Lippit man. What I mean…”
“Huh?”
“It’s like this,” I said slowly, as much to make him understand as to understand it myself. “Before you came, the Lippit goons came. And I saw this. I was here. So I fooled them into beating it out of here, the new word from Lippit, I told them, was to save their strength. I said this to them, and they thought I’d come straight from Lippit.”
“I don’t get it. I don’t get it why Lippit should switch that way.”
“Because the place was deserted when they came and that wasn’t part of the plan. The Lippit plan, you know, was blood, broken bones, fisticuffs.”
“Fisticuffs?”
“Quiet, idiot.” Then he looked at me again. “Why should I believe you?”
“What, you need proof?”
“Yeah. That. Because I don’t see nothing touched here or anything like that. Like nobody been here.”
“ That’s the proof, friend,” and to flatten his reasoning completely, I called the girl over and said, “Tell him. There hasn’t been any trouble here, has there?”
“Trouble?” she said.
“There you are!” and I smiled at the bald one.
I took a deep breath, finally, because progress had not been bad. The bald one thought I was a messenger from Benotti, the girl thought I was somebody with Blue Beat, and I thought that if my own animals would stay out of the way another few minutes, I could swing the rest. Namely, first get the mixer out, and the Benotti men, and then let my apes do the job they had come for.
“Now the thing about this mixer,” I started, when the girl said, “This is the strangest thing,” and she looked past all of us.
We all reacted to the unknown in different ways. I giggled, the bald ape did nothing, and the girl kept looking out to the street.
“Somebody keeps looking around the corner,” she said. We all looked out to the street Nobody showed there for the moment but I was going further out of my mind.
“Beany,” said the bald one. “Go out there and see who it is.”
Beany went out there and we did not see him any more.
But the bald one had meanwhile had time to think.
“So you ain’t a Lippit man,” he said, “and you ain’t no Benotti man, either. Because there’s that few of us, and I should know you.”
“Of course not,” said the girl. “He’s from Blue Beat.”
“Blue which?” he said, as if three factors in all this were too much for his comprehension.
They were just about that for me, more so every minute, and I talked fast.
“This machine goes to Blue Beat. It’s got repairs done to it in Benotti’s shop and now it’s been pushed out here so it won’t come to any harm should the Lippit goons come. Because the first order on Benotti’s list is always, let the customer come to no harm. Right? And that is why…”
“Where’s Beany?” somebody asked.
“Never mind that idiot,” said the bald one.
“Yes,” said the girl. “Here’s the tag,” and she looked at the tag which hung on the mixer. “Blue Beat is written on it.”
The bald one unfolded his arms, linked his fingers, and cracked them. The sound was terrible. He looked at me all the time.
“What we better do,” he said, “I think I know what we better do.”
Meanwhile one of my crew was also looking around the corner.
“What we better do is take this machine straight down to that whats-thename.”
“Blue Beat Recording thirty-four ten Duncan Avenue and you take the freight elevator in back gently all the way and don’t bump it!”
I got that out very fast and afterwards I didn’t dare say another word for fear I might wake up and find it was yesterday, for example, and I would have to go through all this again.
When my army showed there were only three. The other two, and the enemy who was called Beany, were at that point tactically useless. But the three who were left did a nice and strategic job on the Benotti supply dump. There was hardly any noise and there was minimal interference. The girl from next door came around once, wondering if Franky had showed with the coffee, but I intercepted her at the door and walked her back to her own end of the line. I did this by promising her a fine cup of coffee. In that way she took her coffee break pretty early but
