“Morry,” I said, “I’ll take a cup of your coffee.”
He folded his arms, leaned back against the cooler, and said:
“No.”
“No? Now what?’”
“I don’t want another jukebox in here.”
“Morry, all I was about…”
“I know what was coming. No.”
Walter Lippit would now have been proud of me. Because I smiled and laughed a little bit and made out as if I didn’t mind Morry at all.
“Look,” I said, “what’s it cost you? Nothing. We put in the machine; we service the gadget, and you keep thirty-three and one third of the take. Which isn’t counting…”
“The bond I pay, the service charge when the buttons don’t button, the aggravation when your monkeys don’t show up to fix what needs fixing.”
“Morry,” I said. “Any complaints you got, tell me about them. Though I notice,” and I looked at the machine next to the counter, “that the music comes sweet and perfect.”
“Sure. I had it fixed. I wait two days for your monkeys to show and to fix the buttons, and nothing. So I had it fixed.”
Walter Lippit writes a contract with the places that use his machines, which says nobody fixes the gadgets except us; nobody monkeys with the wires, or else. The “or else” wasn’t any too clear in the contract, or clear in my mind, because we had no competition and there had never been any call for “or elses.” I stayed friendly.
“If you knew what this gadget costs,” I told Morry, “and what a specialty job it is to figure those wires…”
“It works, don’t it?”
“Who fixed it?”
“Electrician. A good man who shows when he’s called and don’t hang around using my alley afterwards, all for nothing, and bouncing balls down the parquette because he thinks he’s a wheel working for that Lippit’s racket.”
Morry, I thought, had rarely been this mean. Perhaps he had in mind what was in the contract. I let that hang for a while.
“What electrician?” And then I said, for a guess, “Somebody called Benotti?”
“Yeah,” said Morry, “Benotti.”
I sat down on a different stool and asked for a cup of coffee again, and this time he gave it to me and I drank it. I had not meant to stay all this time, Morry being a routine problem only, but perhaps it was different now Benotti?
I didn’t know this Benotti. He was new in town, or maybe only his business was new, because he had rented space for an electrical repair shop and he had two or three men and a truck, I think, to go around and fix TV’s and short circuits. None of which was enough reason for me to know this Benotti, except for two things. It was the third time that Benotti had been around fixing one of our machines. A real hustler. All right, let him be. Though it was not good for morale and precedent, seeing how Morry acted.
The other reason I knew of Benotti was that one of his men had done work for me. Electrical work, something special, though none of this had to do with the Lippit business.
I said, “Morry. But we have a contract.”
He looked at my stud button in front and then he looked away to make it clear he had no time for stud buttons and foolishness.
“Where it says,” he told me, “that you got to repair and service within a reasonable time. Not two days of nothing.”
He had even taken the trouble to read up on the contract. He was so edgy and clever about all this, Morry was annoying me. And his coffee had been lousy. I got up, smiled the warmth-and-tolerance smile, and sighed.
“I’ll fix it so it doesn’t happen again,” I said. “No more repair men bouncing balls down your alley, no more two-day delays. All right?”
He shrugged and watched the jukebox stack the ballad disc into the rack.
“And you, Morry, you fix it at your end, like no more outside electricians.”
“You threatening me?”
“You ever meet anybody nicer than me, Morry?” And I put a dime on the counter for the cup of near- coffee.
Morry’s face stayed sour, like the coffee he made, and his hand picked up the dime as if he himself knew nothing about it. I left, feeling none too badly about any of this, because the customer’s feelings were mostly what counted. And Morry, without question, felt good all over. He had made money on the dime I had dropped into the machine (one-third dime was his), and money on the dime I had spent on his coffee (four-fifth dime, my estimate), and on the jukebox repair by that fly-by-night outfit. Not that it would pay Morry in the long run. We were set up to make sure of that. It was strange, though, for Morry to ignore this, what with the feeling he had for all problems of loss and profit.
I drove off fast, being late for the last stop that day, and mostly concerned about red lights all the way crosstown. The last stop that day was really Lippit’s job, with me around just for trappings. Lippit always broke a new man in himself.
The place turned out to be a bar in a shopping center, with a big New Management sign in the window and the blue tile facade not all finished. This being supper time there was all kinds of parking space by the curb, and the bar inside looked big with no customers. Of course Lippit was there. He was leaning on the bar.
I don’t think he had been there very long because the barkeep didn’t know Lippit’s brand. Lippit pointed up at the shelves with the bottles, and then the barkeep took down the bottle Lippit wanted. The barkeep poured out a double, a Chivas Regal double, which went in one toss. Lippit held the glass out and watched as it was refilled. The barkeep smiled, half like a strong man and half like a very weak one, because he was also the owner. Chivas Regal, it said on the little list on the wall, came at one buck a shot.
Lippit paid attention to none of that, nipped down half his double, and watched me come the length of the bar.
“Jack,” he said, “you don’t have to put on the dog for Mister Stonewall here,” and looked at my tux. Then he said to the barkeep, “Mister Stonewall, meet our man Jack St. Louis.”
Stonewall and I mumbled and smiled and had a firm handshake.
“You want a drink, Jack?” said Lippit. Stonewall’s hand became weak and fluttery.
I said, no, I didn’t want a drink, and that I was sorry to be late, and what a nice, new place Mister Stonewall had here. Stonewall smiled, but said nothing, because he was watching Lippit finish the rest of the drink. He held that smile when Lippit set the glass down on the bar and still didn’t relax when he saw clearly what Lippit did next. Lippit pulled a handful of bills out of his pocket, pulled four ones off, and fanned them out on the bar. “I never tip the owner,” he said, pushing the price of the scotch at Mister Stonewall.
Now Lippit was ready for business, and so was Stonewall. He was ready, it looked like, to allow Lippit free reign on installing a jukebox at every barstool in the place.
“With the decor like it is,” said Lippit, “elegant like it is, what we should put in here is the new one hundred we just got.”
Stonewall nodded and said, “Oh? Ah, yes-” and kept nodding his large head with no hair on it.
Stonewall, I thought, was about the same age as Lippit, just a little past fifty, but Stonewall had hardly any hair and Lippit had all of his. Stonewall was short and had a small chest and Lippit was tall and had a large chest. And his shoulders were large, and his hands and his belly.
I have found that a big man like that is either especially shy or especially confident. Lippit was neither. He was just sure. Like when he paid for his liquor, and when he told Stonewall about the most expensive model we carried.
“It plays one hundred discs, makes no mechanical sounds, and it’s got a soft light inside, like a fancy cocktail lounge.”
“Like Mister Stonewall’s,” I said, because Lippit paid me.
