again.
This was a problem because the ape held on.
Hit the ribs? Muscle. Hit the kidneys? Muscle. Hit the head? Break your knuckles.
Lippit solved this by ducking his head. He ducked it right into the big one’s nose. But before the other one thought of letting go, Lippit had to do this thing several times. It went wham, wham, wham, and then squish.
The big one let go just enough for another type grip-maybe he had also been a groaner at some time-but that was enough for Lippit. Lippit liked distance for his style. He got his distance by slamming his hands on the ears of the other one. Open hands. They make a tremendous racket inside the head, and if it does not break the eardrum, it at least feels like it.
To the ape it suddenly felt as if there was a great space inside his head after all, hollow maybe, but a space with room for the racket to roll around.
While this went on inside, Lippit commenced work on the outside.
He kept worrying the other one’s eye. He himself caught a rocker high on the arm-I thought for a while he’d go lame there for the rest of the fight-and he caught a very solid jolt square in the chest. This winded him.
But he didn’t need much wind for the jabs he was placing. I had seen Lippit fight once before, but he didn’t place a thing on that occasion, only plowed each time. That was how he preferred it. This time he didn’t plow, he just jabbed. The ape’s eye closed and his nose bled and the way he didn’t worry about his guard any more, his face must have been getting anesthetized. He still had plenty of wind but he couldn’t see so well. He hit the top of Lippit’s head, the side of his shoulder and his forearm a few times. He threw several roundhouses, but they just whistled.
There were three of those. Each time Lippit let it go by, and answered with one of his jabs. The way he kept worrying the big one, he interfered with his breathing. Each time the ape tried to take a big breath, Lippit jabbed him.
This happened three times. At the end of the third time the big one was rasping for breath, blind with blood and his strangled rage, and careless.
He stumbled back and Lippit finished him. He just plowed into his head, then close under the other’s basket, on the head again, and then on the tip of the chin.
The last made a crash when it connected; it made a crash when the ape fell.
He was a great mess and spread out on the floor.
“All right,” said Lippit He was plenty winded but still plenty loud. “Like I said. You mice, you take this mouse, and you scoot outa here, willynilly.”
They did and Lippit leaned on the bar. He was breathing hard.
“It was that last lap in the pool,” I said to him.
“Shut up, will you?” he spat on the floor. “Gimme a drink,” he said to the bartender.
“Yessir.”
“Don’t you start that now!”
Then he flipped down that drink and right away had another.
“Lousy mess,” he said. “And it wasn’t even Benotti.”
“Yessir,” I said.
Lippit almost choked but then he just spat on the floor again.
“Got to keep order,” he said. “Can’t have some animal taking over.”
Then he had a big glass of water.
“I better find Folsom,” I said.
Lippit slammed down the glass, wiped his mouth, hitched his pants around.
“You take the section north of Liberty, and I’ll look south.”
“What’ll I do with him, if I find him?”
“Tell him I want to see him. Tell him what just happened here to his zoo. And if he’s got any back talk in mind, just use your own judgment.”
“May I use your example?”
“Don’t overreach yourself, Jack.”
“I’ll take it easy. What with the walking I did, back and forth alongside that pool…”
“Don’t drop any third socks,” he said. I left.
While I was looking for Folsom I found something else. Two bars were closed and three ice cream places. The machines make a lot of coin in the ice cream places. They were all closed because of the rumble in the neighborhood. Lippit would be wild about this piece of information. Or maybe he knew about it already. South of Liberty isn’t much different from north of Liberty.
I’m a conservative driver. That is, I like to drive fast but I rarely do where there’s law around. So it was a shock when I got stopped by a cruiser which rolled up next to me after a perfectly legal turn. Pull over, stop, look out of the window, surprised and eager. That’s the formula. Next, weary cop, hitching pants, pulling pencil, face cool and legal.
I did my part but the cop didn’t do his. First of all, he wasn’t a patrolman. He was a captain. Secondly, he didn’t hitch pants, look weary, act legal, or any of that He looked annoyed.
“You’re St. Louis, aren’t you?”
I nodded and got out my driver’s license.
“Never mind that. Mazullo here says you’re St. Louis.”
He nodded at the patrolman who sat in the car.
“I know him from around the neighborhood,” I said.
“He says you should know.”
“Know what, Captain?”
“What goes on! What goes on here, for chrissakes?”
I looked around, as if confused, which was the wrong thing to do. He wanted to know what the rumble was and I wasn’t being intelligent about it.
“What’s this jukebox crap around here, St. Louis? And don’t act more stupid than you are.”
“The reason I’m here,” I said, “is to find out. Really.”
He thought that was reasonable. He pecked away a little while longer with this question and that-he knew Benotti’s name, Lippit’s, a little about the competition-and then he became reasonable, too.
“This is nothing official, just a straight piece of cooperation. Either you or that Lippit,” he said, “come down to the station. Come down today, anytime before five, and we’ll talk like normal people. Main station.”
I said, “Yes, Captain,” and let him drive away first.
Lippit was going to be wild about this one. Now the cops were interested, before anything had even happened. Once the pay-off play came, they would be watching from the grandstand. The Lippit Plan, the One-Two Plan, was going one-two all the time, but with a sound like a limp.
I found Folsom about ten minutes later. At first, making the rounds, I found nothing. Then I found a small crowd in front of a candy store. We had a jukebox in there because in back of the candy store were a few chairs and tables where the kids would sit and have pop or sodas.
I walked into the candy store, which was long and narrow so that I did not get the whole scene all at once. It turned out very ugly. I saw the cop first, with his back turned to me, and angry He was the same captain who had stopped me a short while ago. Then there was Folsom with his scary leather jacket and with a look on his face as if he knew only innocence. His three goons stood behind him. Behind the candy counter was the young man who owned the store, and he was holding a baby on his arm. He had one hand on the baby’s back and gave it a small stroke every so often. He kept his face blank as he looked at the captain.
“And if it weren’t for that baby there,” the captain was shouting, “I’d haul you in right this second and explain later!”
“Yessir,” said the young man.
He stroked the baby’s back and I could see that he wished the captain would go. But the captain was not through being angry. He may well have been angry with himself for shouting like this, angry about cruising the neighborhood and learning nothing, because his loudness now was that much out of proportion.
“When you call us in for help, we expect to come in for help, not a runaround!”
“Yessir,” said the proprietor.
