Killdozer! Read Online Free Page B

yourself.”
    We started on West Fifty-second Street and did it up pretty well. The evening netted us four dinner invitations, three pairs of tickets to shows on the stem, and a total of ninety-two telegrams on that night’s program. Maria did me proud. There wasn’t a lovelier or more charming woman under lights that night, and after the first half hour or so she seemed to be enjoying it. When I tossed her into a cab in front of the studio at one-thirty, she grinned and squeezed my hand. “Maybe I was wrong, Eddie. I hope so anyway. But it was swell.”
    I went on up to the studio, feeling all warm inside, and it wasn’t the highballs either. Jakie Feltner was winding up the “Hits at Home” stretch, two hours of records of bands playing currently in New York spots, with a background of transcribed night-club chatter to make the unwary listener think he was listening to the real thing. He gave me a peculiar look through the plate-glass as I went in, waved his hand toward my table. I threaded my way through the record-stacksand picked up the sheaf of early wires that fed out of the teletype by my microphone. As a favor to me, Jakie used to read off the one-thirty to two wires and stack up the first few releases for me while his own were being played. I gathered that he had come across a wire of particular moment. He had. Among the run-of-the-mill requests was this little gem, marked “Personal”:
    HEY EDDIE BETTER KEEP THAT SHEMALE SHERLOCK YOU MARRIED OUT OF POWDER ROOMS OR SHE’LL WIND UP MINUS AN EYE. SHE WENT OVER FIVE WOMEN IN THERE ONE AFTER ANOTHER, TOLD EACH ONE EXACTLY WHAT SHE WANTED TO KNOW. TOLD MY WIFE ABOUT THE RAISE I GOT TWO MONTHS AGO. I GOT TROUBLE SON. YOU LEAVE HER HOME NEXT TIME.
    DUKE FROM DUBUQUE.
    I read it over three times. The Duke was one of my steadies, who apparently went on a telegram binge every payday. I’ve seen him send twenty-eight in two hours. I never did find out who he was, though he apparently saw me very often.
    “Pretty, huh?” said Jakie, closing the soundproof door into the other section and coming over to me.
    “Yeah,” I said. “The guy’s nuts.” He looked over my shoulder at the Duke’s wire. “Oh—that one. Could be. Maybe all these are nuts too.” He riffled through the pile, tossed out three more wires.
    DEAR EDDIE THERE CAME THE BRIDE AND THERE WENT THE DETAILS OF MY MONKEY-BUSINESS TO THE WAITING EARS OF THE WORLD. IF YOU CAN’T AFFORD A MUZZLE I’LL SEND YOU ONE. PLEASE PLAY “I’LL BE GLAD WHEN YOU’RE DEAD” AND DEDICATE IT TO YOUR WIFE.
    A FRIEND.
    HI EDDIE SAW THE NEW MATA HARI ON FIFTY-SECOND STREET AND WAS TOLD SHE BELONGS TO YOU. WHO’D OF THOUGHT YOU’D WED A PUBLICITY ENEMY? PLEASE PLAY “WHISPERING GRASS.”
    ANN ONYMUS.
    EDDIE: DIDN’T HAVE A CHANCE TO TELL YOU AT THE TIME BUT I WISH YOU’D KEEP WHAT I TELL YOU UNDER YOUR HAT. YOUR WIFE TOLD BERGEN ABOUT MY MERGER WITH WILLIAMSON WHICH WAS DUE TOMORROW. THAT WILL COST ME ABOUT EIGHT THOUSAND. GUESS IT WASN’T MARIA’S FAULT BUT YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD HER TO KEEP QUIET ABOUT IT. HARRY ELLIOTT.
    They were all lousy but the last one hurt the most. Harry had been a friend of mine for years. Maria and I had joined his crowd a couple of hours ago at Dave’s place. Bergen and his wife were there. Bergen was Harry’s A-number-one rival and competitor in the printing business. I’d known for quite some time that Harry had a deal coming up with the Williamson concern that would give him weight enough to drive Bergen underground. I gathered that now that the info had leaked out through Maria, Bergen had managed to bear down on Williamson and kill the merger. That was bad enough in itself; but imagine how I felt when I remembered that
I had positively not told Maria one word about Harry Elliot’s affairs!
    Jakie said quietly, “Sorry, Eddie.”
    I looked at him. I felt my jaw flapping foolishly and waved him away. “Go back to your turntables, Jakie. You’re on the