Murder Me for Nickels Read Online Free PDF

Patty.”
    “Yes, Jack.”
    “I meant that, what I said.”
    “Yes, Jack.”
    “So let me up.”
    “I’m half naked.”
    “What I mean is….”
    “Yes, Jack. Yes, Jack.”
    “About records….”
    “I don’t give one damn , Jack!”

Chapter 5
    B efore driving all the way down to the club I felt I should have a little bit more to show than the fine feeling I had about the brief bout with Benotti and the longer one with Pat. I stopped at the next open drugstore and went to the phone booth in back. I had part of a cigarette there and thought once more about the men who had shambled up Louie’s place.
    One of them had smelled like a horse.
    In this town there was only one tie-in with the rackets, and that was at the tracks. I’m not counting Lippit’s organization. I’m a member of that. I’m a businessman—a flexible businessman—but no racketeer. I am, granted, very flexible sometimes, which is the kick I am after and the reason Lippit pleases me, but I wouldn’t push someone like Louie. I’ll push a Benotti, be it business or no, but I’m no racketeer.
    So one of them had smelled like a horse. I picked up the phone and dialed a man I knew, a good craftsman with a quarter-mile horse, with whom I had beer sometimes while we worked over a scratch sheet He was a trainer, local, and spent most of his working time out at the track.
    I don’t know why they start exercising horses at four in the morning and the first explanation I would discount is what a trainer would say about that. It meant, in any case, that my man was already in bed. He groaned into the phone, that I should call back at four-thirty in the morning when he would be more himself, but I wasn’t a horse, I told him, and this would just take a minute.
    “There is nothing good in any of the starts tomorrow,” he said.
    “I’m not calling for that, Dinkham. I’m calling about the outfit that’s stringing the bets and the races.”
    “That’s run from Chicago,” he said. “I got nothing to do with them.”
    “But they got men out at the track, don’t they?”
    “Nothing big,” said Dinkham. “Just handlers who bring in the ponies sometimes. The ponies that surprise everybody by winning. And bums.”
    “What?”
    “Bums. They give stable jobs to their bums what’s on the lam from someplace or what’s too wore out for the jobs they used to do.”
    “Yes,” I said. “I’m talking about them. I’m calling to ask if any new ones have come in, bums like that.”
    “No. Listen, Jack, I got to get up at….”
    “Wait, Dinkham. One more thing.”
    I didn’t know of one more thing to ask him, being much disappointed with what he had said. It was a sad longshot to think that I could tie Benotti in with the syndicate, which worked out of Chicago, because one of his hoods had smelled like a horse. But Benotti, even with electrical shop, frame house, wife and kids, did not strike me like a lone electrician gone hog wild. The electrical shop showed that he was starting out with a long plan, and the rest showed that he was aiming to stay. And his bums showed—must show—that he might be well-connected.
    “I’ll let you know if some new ones come in,” said Dinkham. “Okay, Jack? Some should, any day now.”
    “What did you say?”
    “We lost a bunch of them. We’re short of help, because a bunch of them been taking off and we’re short handed. Not that they knew anything about horses.”
    “How many left, Dinkham? And why?”
    “I don’t know Four, five, maybe. And they left because they got pulled out.”
    “And you don’t know where they went?”
    “I think they’re still in town. At least one of them is still in town because I seen him, drinking beer.”
    “And smelling like a horse.”
    “What was that, Jack?”
    There was a note of injury in Dinkham’s tone and I did not want to insult him. I also did not think there was any more he could tell me so I said, “Nothing, Dinkham, nothing. Please go back to sleep