The Fabulous Clipjoint by Fredric Brown (the reader ebook TXT) đ
- Author: Fredric Brown
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But Mom hadnât done it. Bassett was way off on that.
We rounded the corner to Clark Street. Uncle Am asked, âCup coffee, kid?â
âSure,â I said. âBut are we going to call that number tonight? Itâs getting later.â
âFrom now on it gets earlier,â he said. âA few minutes wonât matter.â
We ordered a bowl of chili and coffee apiece, in the joint just north of Superior. We had our end of the counter to ourselves; two loud-voiced women down near the other end were arguing about somebody named Carey.
The chili was good, but it didnât taste good. I kept thinking about Mom. I thought, anyway they donât use a rubber hose on women.
Uncle Am said, âThink about something else, Ed.â
âSure. What?â
âAnything. What the hell.â He looked around and his eye lit on the handbag one of the women had lying on the counter. âThink about handbags. Ever think about handbags?â
âNo,â I said. âWhy should I?â
âSuppose you were a leather-goods designer. Then youâd be plenty interested. Whatâs a handbag for? Itâs a substitute for pockets, thatâs all. A man has pockets, and a woman hasnât. Why? Because pocketsâloaded onesâwould spoil a womanâs shape. Sheâd bulge in the wrong places, or too much in the right places. Wouldnât she?â
âI guess so,â I said.
âWhy, take handkerchiefs. Women do carry handkerchiefs in pockets sometimes, but little tiny ones, while a man carries big ones. And it isnât because they have any less snot in their noses than men do; itâs because a big handkerchief would make a bulge. If they did carry big handkerchiefs, theyâd carry them in pairs. But letâs get back to handbags.â
âSure,â I said. âLetâs get back to handbags.â
âThe more a handbag holds the better it is, and the smaller it looks, the better it is. Now, how would you design a handbag that would be big and look little? That would make a woman say, âGolly, this bag holds more than youâd thinkâ?â
âI donât know. How?â
âI think the approach would be empirical. Youâd design a lot of âem just for looks and wait till you heard a woman say one of them holds more than youâd think. Then youâd study it to see why, and try to put the same thing in other bags. You might even reduce it to an equation. You know algebra, Ed?â
âNot intimately,â I told him, âand the hell with handbags. They make me think of wallets. Was Bobby Reinhart telling the truth about Gardie giving it to him?â
âSure, kid. If he was lying, he wouldnât tell one that could be checked on that easy. Heâd say he found it, or something. But donât let it worry you.â
âIt does, though.â
âMy God, why? You donât think Gardie killed him, took the wallet and then gave it to Bobby, do you? Or that Madge killed him, left the wallet lying around loose, or gave it to Gardie, do you?â
I said, âI know neither of them did it, but it looks damn bad. How did Gardie get the wallet?â
âHe didnât take it with him, thatâs all. Lots of guys leave their wallets home when they go out on a bender. They stick a few bucks in their pockets and leave their wallets safe at home. Gardie found it and glommed onto the money in it, and didnât say anything. Even then it was dumb for her to give the wallet awayâbut if it was anything worse than that, she wouldnât have taken the chance. Sheâd have put the wallet in the incinerator.â
âShe should have, anyway,â I said. âSheâs pretty damn dumb.â Uncle Am said, âIâm not so sure, kid. Sheâll get what she wants out of life. Most people do. Not all of them, but most people.â
âPop didnât,â I said.
âNo,â Uncle Am said, âWally didnât.â He spoke slowly, as though he were choosing his words one at a time. âBut thereâs a difference. Gardie is selfish; she wonât mess up her life for the same reason Wally messed up his. If she marries the wrong guy, sheâd just walk out on him.
âWally was the kind of guy who was loyal, kid, even to lost causes. He was also the kind of guy who should never have married at all. But your mother was a real woman, Ed, and he was happy with her. And she died before he got too restless, if you know what I mean. And Madge caught him on the rebound.â
I said, âMom isâoh, skip it.â I realized that I was going to stick up for her just out of loyalty. If I thought back about Mom and Pop, I remembered things, and Uncle Am was right. I was being soft, because she was in trouble now, and because sheâd been differentâa lot differentâsince Pop had died. But I shouldnât kid myself that would last.
Mom had been poison to him, and sheâd have been poison to any man as decent as Pop was. Or had been, before she drove him to drink. And even his drinking had been quiet and not ever quarrelsome.
I finished my chili and pushed the bowl aside.
Uncle Am said, âNot yet, kid. Letâs have another cup of coffee.â He ordered them. He said, âIâm trying to think out how to handle talking to that phone number. I think best when Iâm talking about something else. Letâs talk about something else.â
âLadiesâ handbags?â I suggested.
He laughed. âThey bored you, huh? Kid, thatâs because you donât know anything about them. The more you know about something, anything, the more interesting it is. I knew a leather-goods worker once; he could talk about handbags all night. Like a carney could talk about carnivals.â
âGo ahead,â I said. âIâd rather hear about carneys than about handbags. Whatâs a blow?â
âShort for a blow-off. Itâs a show for inside money, usually inside a freak show, I mean, say, you pay two bits to get into the freak show, and the spieler takes you around the platforms and then starts an inside bally for another two bits or more to see a special show on the inside, down at one end of the top. Why?â
I said, âI remember back at the carney you asked Hoagy to take over your ball game. He said he was sloughed and if Jake got a chance to use the blow after Springfield, he could get a cooch. What was he talking about?â
Uncle Am laughed. âYou got a memory, kid.â
âYeah,â I said. âI remember something out of tonightâs talking, too. Wentworth three-eight-four-two. Have you got an angle yet?â
âAny minute now. Back to Hoagy. Hoagyâs a sex spieler. The bally for the inside money at the freak-show top is a sex lecture with living models, for men only. Two bits each and money back if theyâre not satisfied.â
âWhat do you mean, living models?â I asked.
âThatâs what pulls in the mooches. They want to know, too. Oh, heâs got a nice spielâbut you could read it in any book on what a young man should know. And he does use living models, a couple girls in bathing suits. Discusses what types they are, as a reason for having them on the platform.â
âDonât the mooches want their money back?â
âA few, a darned few. They get it, and so what? On a good night, heâll still take in a hundred bucks up and over the nut.â
âWhatâs the nut?â
âThe overhead, kid. Say your expenses on a concession run thirty bucks a day; well, youâre on the nut until youâve taken in that much. The rest of it is profit; youâre off the nut.â
I drank the last of my coffee. I asked, âWhy would a bank-robber have been looking for Pop?â
âI donât know, kid. Weâll have to find out.â He sighed and stood up. âCome on; letâs start.â
We walked down Clark Street to the Wacker and went up to his room.
He moved the chair out from the wall before he sat down. He said, âStand behind me, Ed, and put your ear down to the receiver. Iâll hold it a little out from my ear, and you can hear as well as I can. Use that memory of yours on whatâs said.â
âOkay,â I said. âWhatâs the angle?â
âThe hell with it. Iâll ad lib. What I say depends on what they say.â
âWhat if they say âHelloâ?â I asked him.
He chuckled. âI never thought of that. Iâll wait and see.â
He picked up the receiver and when he gave the number to the operator, his voice was different. It was low-pitched, gruff, with a completely different intonation. But Iâd heard it before somewhere. It puzzled me for a second and then I placed it. He was imitating Hoagyâs voice; weâd been talking about Hoagy and that had been the first voice heâd thought of to imitate. It was perfect.
I heard them ringing the number. I leaned closer, resting my weight on the chair back to put my ear as near the end of the receiver as I could.
It rang about three times and then a womanâs voice said, âHello.â
Itâs funny, sometimes, how much you can tellâor anyway, guessâfrom a voice. Just one word, but you knew she was young, that she was pretty, and that she was smart. In all the senses of the word âsmart.â And just from the way she said that one word, you liked her.
My uncle said, âWho zis?â
âClaire. Wentworth three-eight-four-two.â
âHowya, baby?â my uncle asked. ââMember me? Thisâs Sammy.â He sounded very drunk.
âAfraid I donât,â said the voice. It was considerably cooler now. âSammy who?â
âGâwan, you râmember me,â Uncle Am said. âSammy. In at the bar thâother night. Look, Claire, I know âsawful late to call you, ânail that, but, honey, I jusâ cleaned up a crap game. Took thâ boys for two Gâs, anâ itâs burning a hole. Wanta see thâ town, Chez Paree, the Medoc Club, nâeverywhere. Want thâ prettiest gal in Chi with me. Nothinâ too good. Might even buy âer a fur coat if she likes rabbit fur. Howâs âbout can I come out ânâ getcha in a cab anâ weâll goââ
âNo,â said the voice. The receiver clicked.
âDamn,â said my uncle.
âIt was a good try,â I told him.
He put the receiver back on the phone. He said, âThey donât pay off any more on good tries. Guess Iâm not so hot as a Romeo. I shouldâve let you try.â
âMe? Lord, I donât know anything about women.â
âThatâs what I mean. Hell, kid, you could have any woman you want. Take a look in the mirror.â
I laughed, but I turned around to the mirror over the dresser.
I said, âI am getting a shiner. Damn Bobby Reinhart.â
Uncle Am grinned at me in the mirror. He said, âOn you it looks romantic. Save it; donât put a steak on it. Well, now we try something that wonât work.â
He dialed a number and asked for the Wentworth exchange clerk. He asked her for the listing on three-eight-four-two. He waited a minute and then put the receiver down with an âOkay, thanks,â that sounded discouraged.
âUnlisted number,â he told me. âI thought it would be.â
âSo what do we do now?â
He sighed. âWork from the other end. Find out whatâs known about this Harry Reynolds. Bassettâll know something about him, or be able to dig it out of the morgue. Only thing is, I was hoping that phone number
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