Murder Me for Nickels by Peter Rabe Page B

and….”
    “This hour?”
    “He wasn’t asleep either. Nor a, 1, o, n, e.”
    “Gee,” said Conrad, “I didn’t know he was married.”
    “You listening?”
    “Yes.”
    “He said he didn’t pick up the mixer yesterday.”
    “I know. It cuts our schedule to pieces but it wasn’t really promised for yesterday. More like today. Noon, maybe.”
    “That’s too late, Conrad. You got to get it out of there before then.”
    Conrad mumbled something and then he said, “You sound very anxious. Something wrong?”
    “Yes.”
    “I warned you,” he said. “Don’t tell me the details, but I warned you.”
    Conrad, who ran Blue Beat for me, was the only one who knew that I owned the recording studio and the pressing plant on the first floor. I was in and out of the studio, but the rest of the crew, like Herbie the driver, only knew that I sometimes brought talent over. It explained why I showed up in the place, why I was interested in getting the mixer back, because without that machine there could be no sessions.
    Conrad, of course, knew much more. I said, “I want you to call that guy for me, Conrad. The one who’s working on the mixer. And tell him to get it in shape extra early. If he can’t finish it, he should at least tie up the guts, get the thing out of that shop before regular starting time in the morning.”
    “Morning? You mean this morning?”
    “They open at eight,” I said. “This morning.”
    “Jack. Think of the time we lose if he does that. He won’t be finished.”
    “Don’t ask why, Conrad, just get it out.”
    He didn’t ask why and just said, “Oh.” Conrad, who knew of my double life, did not approve of me with Lippit But he would get the machine out, he said.
    The mixer was in the Hough and Daly building. In Benotti’s shop.
    Not everybody can repair something complex like a mixer. The man whom we had to pick for the job was very good but he was also working on repairs for Benotti. It had not been important at the time, but it was now.
    The sure thing was, I didn’t want the machine wrecked in the morning. The long shot was, that it might somehow leak out how a Benotti man worked on a thing which belonged to St. Louis who worked for Walter Lippit.
    “I’ll call him,” said Conrad, “and tell him he might as well stay up and get dressed.”
    “And have the thing out of there before eight. Stress that, Conrad.”
    “Maybe I should tell him he’d better stay away from the place himself, come that hour?”
    “Please, Conrad, I don’t want to mix jobs,” I complained. “Okay?”
    “Okay.” He coughed and said, “Maybe it’s time you got out of one business and go full time into the other?”
    “All you know, Conrad,” I told him, “is that your machine’s got to be out of there, come eight in the morning. Just arrange that, nothing else.”
    “You going to be there yourself?”
    “Why?”
    “Might be awkward if I send down anyone working for the studio and there you are, dressed up like a hood.”
    He was much older than I and so took liberties now and then. All I said was, “I’m going to be there at eight in the morning. Come eight in the morning, I don’t want to see that thing sitting there. Aside from that, just leave me a, l, o, n, e.”
    By seven I had lined up five bozos for a quick job on Benotti’s depot One was a Lippit trucker, large of muscle and small of head, two were from the local gym, long in training and short of cash, one was just somebody I knew, and the fifth was the same. And also large of muscle and small of head.
    At seven thirty I walked down Marsh Avenue, and a quarter to eight I got to the Hough and Daly building. It was very large and used up half a block.
    The first thing I came to was the loading ramp, set back from the street for about the depth of a truck. It put the ramp inside the building.
    On the ramp was my mixer.
    This wasn’t just twenty-five grand sitting there. This was a high-priced complication looking at me.
    The