That lousy tux again. I had no time and went up the back stairs.
Louie had three rooms on top where he lived alone. At first he wouldn’t open.
“It’s Jack,” I said through the door. “Honest, Louie.”
“How do I know?”
“Come on, Louie. I’m in a hurry.”
“That’s Jack,” and he opened the door.
I didn’t recognize Louie. One ear was big and purple, one cheek was big and purple, and one eye was all gone where the purple cheek had blown up all over it. I said, “Jeesis Christ,” and closed the door.
Louie just nodded and sat down in the plush easy chair he had in the room. There was a lot of furniture that color. Like his cheek.
“Benotti?” I said.
“He was all right the first time,” Louie said.
“When you told him no.”
“And the second time he said he was sorry I don’t understand the polite-type English he talks.”
“And then he talked that kind,” I said, and nodded at Louie’s face.
Louie sighed for an answer. He raised his hand to his face because he had a gesture of stroking his nose, but halfway up he decided against it.
“This can’t go on,” he said. “All this for who’s gonna put a jukebox in my place, I ask you?”
I walked back and forth in the room a few times, around all the furniture, because I certainly didn’t know what to say to Louie.
When it came to a thing like Benotti, the fact was, we were hardly set up for a thing like that any more. The man had blossomed out on us just a little too fast. He’s a backlot electrician; he’s a hustler who wants to put a jukebox into a bar; then suddenly he turns into a hood who strongarms one of my customers. And all this time, neither Lippit nor I knew who Benotti was.
“Jack,” said Louie. “I’m real sorry, but this can’t go on.”
I nodded but his good eye wasn’t turned my way and he just heard the silence and thought I was thinking.
“So you got something figured?” he asked me.
I didn’t have anything figured. I said, “Have you seen a doctor, Louie?” but that wasn’t the right reply for what he wanted to know, namely what would Lippit and I do about this and how would we help Louie.
He asked all that, a small old man with his face beaten up, sitting there in his old furniture and me shiny and bright with a tuxedo and no answers.
“Not to speak of,” he said, “what this kind of thing’s gonna do to your organization.”
I stopped pacing and feeling like hell. “You didn’t have to say that, Louie. A lousy thing like that.”
I felt angry now, which was better than feeling like hell, because mostly it makes me active. There was a phone in the room and I called up a doctor. I gave him Louie’s address and told him to hurry it up. Then I put the phone down and sat down opposite Louie.
“Now from the beginning,” I said. “This Benotti comes in, gets a no answer, then beats you.”
“Not that fast. First he told the others they should mess up my place.”
“Others?”
“Three others. They and Benotti come in at the slack time, which is ten in the morning. They lock the door and pull the blind down that says Closed, and then like I said.”
I thought about the three others and wondered whether that would change the picture again.
“These three,” I said to Louie. “Did you know any of them?”
“I have never, and I hope I will never…”
“All right.” Then I wondered how to put it. “Did they-I mean speaking off-hand-did they look like, let’s say, electricians?”
Louie’s good eye looked at me for a moment and then closed. “I don’t know what electricians look like, Jack, but these didn’t look like no electricians.”
“Like what, then?”
“One stunk from liquor,” said Louie, “one stunk from horses…”
“Horses?”
“Horses. And the other-you should pardon the expression-to me he just stunk.”
They had broken some glass in the counter, twisted legs off the tables, had stolen a salami each. And the one who “just stunk” had mixed all the herring salad together with antipasto and two jars of British preserves.
“How would you know what a horse smells like?” I asked Louie.
“Because I was born in Russia. And at the time I was born in Russia…”
“All right, Louie,” and I kept wondering what there was in all this that could add to the picture. Benotti himself, was all I could think. I’d have to go see him.
“Benotti beat you, Louie?”
“Yes. Slow. He wasn’t mad.”
“And the others, wrecking the place?”
“They weren’t mad either.”
“Maybe I should look at the place downstairs. Maybe they dropped something.”
“No. I looked. Just the newspaper.”
“What?”
“One had the Herald in his pocket. There was something, at first, about the newspaper. Should they use the newspaper, one of them said, and kept rolling it up, if you get the picture…”
“I do.”
“But Benotti said nix, after thinking about it, and he said to let it show because it makes a better example.”
Then the doctor came. He took one look at Louie and told me to boil water. I put the water on, in the nook where Louie did his cooking, and I got the picture much more clearly now, of Benotti and his three men. Not a bum among them, because they were much too well-trained. They wrecked the place with method, and they knew about the trick with the rolled paper, how you can beat up a man with the paper so it hurts like hell but no marks left to show for it. Just the pain. Who they were I did not know, but I knew what they were. They knew their way and they were hoods.
Louie was making small sounds while the doctor fingered him, and I left. It was time for Benotti.
Chapter 3
Benotti’s place of work had a listed number but nothing was listed for his home. I knew where he rented space for his shop-in the building of Hough amp; Daly, Electric Supply. That outfit was big, and we dealt with them, and I even knew the night watchman. I drove down to Hough amp; Daly, all shut down for the day. Benotti’s place, a big room off the loading ramp, was also shut tight. I had a two-minute chat about nothing with the old man who watched the plant and the offices, then I left with Benotti’s address.
I went back to the east side. I had to slow down when I got to the neighborhood because it was a warm night and there were great bundles of children all over the street I gave up and parked halfway down the block and walked the rest of it.
All the frame houses were alike. Two stories, porch in front, lawn in front of that, sprinkler going. Or a man in shirt sleeves doing the watering. The house I wanted had nobody in front but I could see the light on the back porch and went there.
They were all in the kitchen, four kids, a fat wife, and Benotti in his undershirt The shirt looked like a joke. The serious part was all the muscle. He had no neck because of the muscles, and his arms showed no bones on account of the muscles. In a suit he might have looked short and fat, but this way I knew better. Nevertheless, I knocked on the screen door.
Benotti got up from the table and came over to see who it was. He peered through the screen like something
