The Fabulous Clipjoint by Fredric Brown (the reader ebook TXT) đ
- Author: Fredric Brown
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âHe drank only beer?â
âMostly, anyway. One place, the bartender wasnât sure what he drank. And on Chicago Avenue, he had one shot with his last beer, then bought the bottles to go. Kaufmanâs place. Kaufman was behind the bar. Said he seemed a little tight, quiet drunk, but not staggering or anything. In control.â
âWhoâs Kaufman? I mean, outside of being a tavern owner.â
âNobody much. I donât know how straight he is, but we havenât got anything on him if he isnât. I checked with the boys at the Chicago Avenue station on that. As far as they know, his nose is clean.â
âYou talked to him. Is it?â
Bassett said, âHe could do with a handkerchief. But I think heâs clean on this. He came up with identifying your brotherâs picture after Iâd jogged him a little. Used the same line on him as the others; I mean, told âem we knew he was there and was only interested in getting the time he left. First he said he never saw him. I said we had proof heâd been in there, just wanted to know when, and it wouldnât get him in any trouble. So he got some glasses out of a drawer and looked again, and then kicked in.â
âAll the way?â
âI think so,â Bassett said. âYouâll get a look at him and a listen to him tomorrow, at the inquest.â
âSwell,â my uncle told me. âLook, you donât know me at the inquest. Nobody does. I just sit at the back, and nobody knows who I am. They wonât want me to testify anyway.â
Bassettâs eyes unveiled a little, just a little. He asked, âYou think you might want to run one?â
âI think maybe,â my uncle said. They seemed to understand one another. They knew what they were talking about. I didnât.
Like when Hoagy, the big man, had been talking to my uncle about the blow being sloughed. Only that was carney talk; at least I knew why I didnât understand it. This was different; they were talking words I knew, but it still didnât make sense.
I didnât care.
Bassett said, âOne angleâs out. No insurance.â
That did make sense to me. I said, âMom didnât do it.â
Bassett looked at me, and I wondered if I liked him as much as Iâd thought.
Uncle Ambrose said, âThe kidâs right. Madge isââ He stopped himself. âShe wouldnât have killed Wally.â
âYou canât tell with women. My God, Iâve known casesââ
âSure, a million cases. But Madge didnât kill him. Look, she might have waited till he got home and gone for him with a butcher knife or something. But this wasnât like that. She wouldnât have followed him into an alley and blackjâSay, was it a blackjack?â
âNope. Something harder.â
âSuch as?â
âAlmost anything heavy enough to swing and without a point or sharp edge on the side that hit. A club, a piece of pipe, an empty bottle, aâalmost anything.â
A blunt instrument, I thought. Thatâs the way the papers would describe it, if the papers would print it.
I watched a cockroach that was crawling across the floor away from the bar. It was one of the big black kind, and it moved in hitches, scurrying a little and then stopping still. It would run for about ten inches, stop a second, then another ten inches.
One of the men at the bar was watching it. He walked toward it and it scurried out from under his foot just in time.
The second time it wasnât so lucky. There was a crunching sound.
âLook,â Bassett was saying, âI got to get home. I just phoned there and my wife is kind of sick. Nothing serious, but she wanted me to bring some medicine. See you at the inquest tomorrow.â
âOkay,â said my uncle. âWe canât talk there, though, like I said. How about meeting afterwards here?â
âFine. So long. So long, kid.â
He left.
I thought, a hundred bucks is a lot of money. I was glad I hadnât a job where people might offer me a hundred bucks for doing something I shouldnât do.
Not that, come to think of it, he was being paid for doing anything really wrong. Just for being on our side; for levelling with us. For giving us the straight dope on everything. That was all right; it was only the taking money for it that was wrong. But he had a sick wife.
And then I thought, my uncle didnât know he had a sick wife. But my uncle knew heâd take the hundred.
My uncle said, âItâs a good investment.â
âMaybe,â I said. âBut if heâs dishonest, how do you know heâll play straight with you? He can give you nothing for that hundred dollars. And thatâs a lot of money.â
He said, âSometimes a dime is a lot of money. Sometimes a hundred isnât. I think weâll get our moneyâs worth. Look, kid, how about making the rounds? I mean, looking over the places he stopped. One thing I want to know. You feel up to it?â
âSure,â I said. âI canât sleep anyway. And itâs only eleven.â
He looked me over. He said, âYou can pass for twenty-one, I think. If anyone asks, Iâm your father and they ought to take my word for it. We can both show identification with the same name. Only we donât want to.â
âYou mean we donât want them to know who we are?â
âThatâs it. Anyplace we go in, we order a beer apiece. I drink mine fast and you just sip yours. Then we get the glasses mixed, see? That wayââ
âA little beer wonât hurt me,â I said. âIâm eighteen, damn it.â
âA little beer wonât hurt you. Thatâs all youâre going to get. We change glasses. See?â
I nodded. No use arguing, especially when he was right.
We walked over Grand to Clark and started north. We stopped on the corner of Ontario.
âThis is sort of where he started,â I said. âI mean, he would have come over on Ontario from Wells, and started north.â
I stood there, looking down Ontario, feeling almost that I would see him coming.
It was very silly. I thought, heâs lying on a slab at Heidenâs. Theyâve taken out his blood and filled him with embalming fluid. Theyâd have done that quick because the weather is so hot.
He isnât Pop any more. Pop had never minded hot weather. Cold got him down; he hated to go out in cold weather, even for a block or two. But hot weather he didnât mind.
Uncle Ambrose said, âThe Beer Barrel and the Cold Spot, those are the two places, werenât they?â
I said, âI guess Bassett said that when I wasnât listening. I donât know.â
âWasnât listening?â
âI was watching a cockroach,â I said.
He didnât say anything. We started walking, watching the names of the places we went past. The taverns average three or four to a block on North Clark Street from the Loop north to Bughouse Square. The poor manâs Broadway.
We came to the Cold Spot just north of Huron. We went in and stood at the bar. The Greek behind the bar hardly looked at me.
There were only a few men along the bar, and no women. A drunk was asleep at a table near the back. We stayed only for the one beer apiece, Uncle Ambrose drinking most of mine.
We did the same at the Beer Barrel, which turned up on the other side of the street, near Chicago. It was the same kind of place, a little bigger, a few more people, two bartenders instead of one and three drunks asleep at tables instead of one.
There was no one near us at the bar, so we could talk freely.
I said, âArenât you going to try to pump them? To find out what he was doing, or something?â
He shook his head.
I wanted to know, âWhat were we trying to find out?â
âWhat he was doing. What he was looking for.â
I thought it over. It didnât make any sense that we could find that out without asking any questions.
My uncle said, âCome on, Iâll show you.â
We went out and walked back half a block the way we had come and went in another place.
âI get it,â I told him. âI see what you mean.â
Iâd been kind of dumb. This was different. There was music, if you could call it that. And almost as many women as men. Faded women mostly. A few of them were young. Most of them were drunk.
They werenât percentage girls. Maybe a few of them, I decided, were prostitutes, but not many. They were just women.
We had our one beer apiece again.
I thought, Iâm glad Pop didnât come here, places like this, instead of the Beer Barrel and the Cold Spot. Heâd been out drinking. Just drinking.
We went north again and crossed back to the west side of the street and turned the corner at Chicago Avenue.
We passed the police station. We crossed LaSalle and then Wells. He could have turned south here, I thought. It would have been about half-past twelve when he came this way.
Last night, I thought. Only last night, he came this way. Probably walking on the same side of the street we were on. Only last night, and about at this time. It must be almost twelve-thirty right now, I thought.
We walked under the el at Franklin.
A train roared by overhead and it shook the night. Funny that the el trains are so loud at night. In our flat on Wells, a block from the el, I can hear every one at night, if Iâm awake. Or early in the morning when I first get up or am still lying in bed. The rest of the time you canât hear them.
We walked on, as far as the corner of Orleans Street. We stopped there. Across the way was a Topaz Beer sign. It was on the north side of Chicago Avenue, two doors past the corner. It would be Kaufmanâs place. It would have to be, because it was the only tavern in the block.
Popâs last stop.
I asked, âArenât we going over there?â
My uncle shook his head slowly.
We stood there maybe five minutes, doing nothing, not even talking. I didnât ask him why we werenât going over to Kaufmanâs.
Then he said, âWell, kidâ?â
I said, âSure.â
We turned around and started walking south on Orleans.
We were going there now. We were going to the alley.
The alley was just an alley. At the Orleans end there was a parking lot at one side and a candy factory at the other. There was a big loading platform alongside the candy factory.
The alley was paved with rough red brick and there were no curbs.
There was a street light, one of the smaller size they use in the middle of a block, opposite the Orleans end.
Down at the Franklin end, under the elevated, there was another such light, right at the left of the mouth of the alley. It wasnât particularly dark. You could stand at the Orleans end and look through it.
It was dim down in the middle of the alley, but you could see through it, and if anyone was in there you could see him silhouetted against the Franklin end.
There wasnât anyone in there now.
Down in the middle of the alley were the backs of flat buildings, ramshackle old ones, that fronted on Huron and on Erie. The ones on the Erie side had wooden back porches with
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