Free Murder Me for Nickels by Peter Rabe

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 then, she said, she had never been with a real talent promoter before.
    “Is it difficult work?” she asked.
    “Oh no. Easy.”
    “And you like it.”
    “Oh yes. Very.”
    “I sing, you know.”
    “Oh.”
    “And I look good, don’t you think? I mean, that’s important.”
    “Yes. But I don’t handle that kind of talent What I mean is, a voice on a record….”
    I didn’t get any further because she whammed me across the left cheek; it was, in a manner of speaking, the only stinging defeat of the morning’s action.

Chapter 8
    W hen we were done I retired my army, disbursed mustering-out pay plus bonus of one bottle of beer, and called up Walter Lippit. Pat answered and the first thing she said was, “No.”
    “I haven’t even asked….”
    “You were going to ask if Walter is here and the answer is no.”
    “Maybe I was going to ask….”
    “Anything else, the answer is no, too,” and she hung up.
    I called up the club where he had that room and somebody answered to tell me Mister Lippit was in the steam room. That’s when I felt that the rest of the operations must be going all right.
    It was a nice forenoon with bright sun and a breeze to keep the heat down, at least till noontime. I put the top down on the car and drove to the club.
    There were athletes even at that hour. I could hear them make sports noises in the gym and that health odor of theirs came as far as the lobby.
    “Where is Mister Lippit at the moment?” I asked at the desk.
    “He maintains a room on….”
    I nodded and went up there but Lippit wasn’t in the room. There was a kid at the table, by the name of Davy, and he was supposed to hold down the phone. There hadn’t been any phoning he said, and Lippit was still in the steam room, or at the next stage, he said, which he thought might be the masseur.
    “You mean nobody’s checked in from the West Side or anything?”
    “There haven’t been any calls,” said Davy. “But I’ve called the West Side every hour, the way Mister Lippit said.”
    “And?”
    “Nothing.” The kid smiled politely but he was clearly impatient. He was rolling and unrolling a magazine about how to do it yourself—I couldn’t tell what—and I was interrupting him.
    “Did you reach Folsom?”
    “No. He’s not at the number I got. He’s out running things.”
    Good commander, that Folsom.
    “And he hasn’t called in either?”
    “No, Mister St. Louis.”
    Requiring no supervision, that Commander Folsom.
    I went downstairs and checked around for Lippit, but he was still sweating himself in the steam room. So I left.
    Perhaps it was the clear, pretty morning, but there seemed to be real peace on the West Side. Not that I had expected a war, but some war nerves, maybe. At least that. But Morry, in the bowling alley, was toting up last night’s receipts, and he was happy. Louie, who had a very clean looking patch on one side of his nose, was also happy, because he felt secure and protected. Then I went to a couple of bars, but bars always look peaceful in the forenoon. There were just the few who drink before ten in the morning, but they never talk and are silent types. There was peace. Dead, maybe, but peace.
    I went to the bar on Liberty and Alder where Folsom had one of the goon squads