“All right Wait!”
“What?”
“I never seen that Benotti. How will I know…”
“The one you can’t recognize,” I said, and let him work out the rest for himself. After all, do-it-yourself…
Then I called Lippit. He was at the union hall, talking rates and kickbacks most likely, and when the girl at the telephone said she’d send somebody up and get Lippit I told her never mind, she should have him come over and join me at this and that address. I didn’t feel like standing around in the telephone booth.
I called Spire after that, Doctor Spire, who was a legitimate doctor but with a practice so small, it assured a patient of immediate service. He was in, reading something on sleeping sickness, but if I came right over, he said, he would see me forthwith.
“And why the hurry,” he wanted to know. “Are you bleeding to death?”
That profession makes a man callous. I said no, but wanted to be damn sure he was still awake when I got there.
“You bringing a girl,” he said, “or what?”
Callous profession. I hung up.
Last call was to Hough and Daly, and I would like to speak to the girl in shipping-receiving.
“Shipping-receiving,” she said.
“Doris?”
“That depends on who you are.”
“Your friend, Jack.”
“Ah! The Ripper.”
“The Ripped. Which is why I’m calling, little sweets, to beg off this evening.”
“You’re sick.”
“Jeez, you sound matter-of-fact.”
“Why, Baaibee,” she said, “you thickumth? That better?”
“Now I am sick.”
She didn’t want to let go our evening appointment and more talk like that, but I didn’t feel in any shape for the next twenty-four hours. Her boss walked in and she had to hang up. Then I drove down to Doctor Spire’s place.
He had a two-room place over a grocery store. His office was there and his living quarters. There would not have been enough space if he had put the one in the first room and the other into the second, so instead his rooms overlapped in function. The waiting room was also the living room or the library, there being chairs, bookshelves, medical journals all over a table. This was, I think, the only waiting room where the patient could read up on the competence of his physician. The other room was more versatile even, or more cluttered. Examination table, fish tank, instrument closet, pots and pans, autoclave, hot plate, bed, with more journals on it.
When I rang, he opened the door and said, “Yes?”
“St Louis,” I said. “You don’t remember?”
“Jack?” and then, “God!”
“Just Jack is fine. Let me in.”
He let me in and told me to sit on the table in the second room. I sat carefully, not being alone on this table. The fish tank was there, murky and mysterious, and instruments under glass, some kelp under glass, and something else under glass which I was afraid to ask about.
Spire was short and bald, a tired egg. Before he came over for a close look he put his white coat on.
“Don’t want to get all spotted up,” he said, and then stood close up to my face.
“What do you see?”
“Tissue. Red and blue.”
Callous as hell. He put a thermometer in my mouth, wet cotton on various parts of my face.
“Soak things down to bedrock,” he said. “So I know what’s what.”
“Bedrock? You drilling for oil?”
“All right. Bone then. Down to the bone.”
Then the bell rang and he let me sit there like that.
It was Lippit. He came in and up to the table and stopped there, by the sound of it.
“What is this?” he said to Spire. “You preparing a mummy?”
Spire laughed. It sounded like Dracula.
“Did you, ah, achieve something?” Lippit asked.
Spire took off the cotton and dabbed here and there.
“No,” I said. “But Benotti did. He owns Bascot’s.”
Lippit swore. He kept this up for a while and the doctor daubed here and there. Each little dab with a tuft of cotton felt very much worse than Benotti slamming me.
“Does Bascot look the same as you?” Lippit asked me.
“No. But Benotti does.”
“Hold still,” said Spire. “I’m anointing.”
He did that and something else with a piece of tape, so that a cut on the cheekbone would heal shut straight.
“I think I’ll go over there,” said Lippit, “and have a talk with that man. Can’t have him jumping all over my help.”
I answered something which caused the doctor to tell me to shut up or I’d end up with my tongue sewed to my nose, and Lippit should also stop talking for a moment. “It’s not good for the patient,” said Spire. We had silence for a while.
“What’s in here?” Lippit asked.
“Don’t you put your finger in it,” said Spire.
Lippit took his finger out of the tank.
“I can’t see anything in there,” he said. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been meaning to change the water.”
Then he packed gauze to one side of my face and explained about cleanliness; to keep my hands off that thing and to come back two days later for another grease job and a check.
“You can get off the table. And take your pants down.”
He was a doctor so I didn’t question it. He prepared a shot-the ampule was next to the mayonnaise in the refrigerator, the syringe was where the dishes were, and the needle-he couldn’t find the needle for a while.
“Explain to me about Benotti,” said Lippit.
I explained about Benotti and about how all the stock got broken.
“Maybe we can sway Bascot back our way,” Lippit said.
“Bascot is nothing. The way I see it, he sold out.”
“There’s a few stop-gap things we can do,” Lippit said. “I’ll try having records shipped from Chicago.”
“That’s all Benotti needs for a helping hand. He’ll deliver faster and cheaper.”
Lippit knew that. He said nothing and thought.
“I got to think of something,” he said. “Skip the jobber, maybe.”
“I don’t think the manufacturers will sell to you. Bascot’s got the franchise.”
“Skip the manufacturer maybe. Make my own.”
It was harebrained and he didn’t expect me to answer. I was just as glad.
“You got the needle yet?” I asked the doctor.
“No.”
“Keep your pants on,” said Lippit.
“Maybe in the fish tank,” I said. “You thought of that yet, Doctor?”
“Yes,” said Spire.
While Spire kept looking, Lippit kept thinking.
“We can buy through stores for a short while,” he said. “I’ll make up a data sheet with volume that’ll rock their inventory.”
“And your till.”
