Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 7, No. 9, September 1962

Trick of the Trade by Leo R. Ellis

It is a source of amazement to sociologists and other observers of the human scene... how hard people will work in order to avoid having to work. If this seems contradictory, read this little story for clarification.

No matter how far back I pressed against the locked door of Benny’s Bar and Grill, the rain still got to me. It was a cold, early morning drizzle that went through my flesh and turned my bones into icicles. A dismal day on which to get murdered, I thought, and the rain wasn’t the only thing that made me shiver. My nerves were jumpin’.

I weigh around a hundred and thirty pounds wringing wet — which I was now — and my cheap suit was trying to squeeze me up smaller. It had shrunk so I was numb. It was trying to choke me to death, which in a way would have been a blessing; Big Lou Costello would be cheated out of the chance to make an example out of me.

At eight Benny arrived wrapped to the ears in a slicker. “Della kicked you out earlier than usual this morning,” he said as he unlocked the door.

“Della didn’t kick me out,” I said through chattering teeth. “I left before she got home.” I bolted through the door and headed for my favorite stool at the end of the bar.

“She still after you to get a job?” Benny asked.

“That and other things,” I admitted. My wife, Della, works all night. When she gets in at seven, she usually stops by the couch in the living room and wakes me up. But this morning, with all my other troubles, I didn’t think I could take the lecture. Still shivering, I watched Benny wrap yesterday’s apron around his fat paunch, then fill the coffee maker. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to cuff my java this morning, Benny,” I said.

Benny wiggled a finger down the neck of the coffee maker while he waited. “For a guy who has to cover a fifty dollar bet by noon or get clobbered, you ain’t in very good financial shape, Milo.”

“That I am not,” I admitted. “I am stony flat broke.”

Benny shook his head. “Lou is going to save money on this deal,” he said cheerfully. “He won’t have to use his goons on a shrimp like you, he can easily pulverize you personally.” The water was too hot for his finger, so he withdrew it and wiped it down his apron. “How come you was so stupid as to call in a fifty dollar bet yesterday with no cash to cover?” he said. “And especially to Big Lou, who you know loves to make an example of horse players who practice that dodge on him?”

“Big Lou is the only bookie who will take my bets anymore,” I said sadly. “If I lose him, I got nothing.”

“After noon today you ain’t liable to need nothing but a shroud,” Benny said as he watched the water go up into the top of the coffee maker. When it came down again, he brought a steaming mug of coffee over and set it in front of me. “You was a dope to let that drifter tout you on that horse. You know that, don’t you, Milo?”

I hugged the mug in my hands to warm them. “He claimed he was the jockey’s brother,” I said. “He said the race was in the bag.”

“That guy weighed over two hundred and eighty pounds,” Benny said. “He was bigger than I am.”

“Was he?” I said, “I didn’t notice. I must have been stoned.”

“You should also have figured out that if the guy was such pals with the Whitneys and Vanderbilts, he would have been out in the clubhouse caging champagne, not down here putting the bite on you for beers.”

“I guess so,” I said miserably, “maybe that tout put a hex on me. Anyhow, I call in the bet and I lose.”

With my hands warm, I started to sip the coffee to thaw out my insides as I desperately try to figure how I am to raise fifty clams by noon. I can’t run, because here I can eat and sleep on a couch in the living room. If I hide, Big Lou will get me sooner or later and be all the madder because he had to look for me.

Della is the only moneyed person I am personally acquainted with, and she is of no practical value to me now. Della has a good job as combination cashier and bouncer in an all-night dairy lunch, but Della is a miser. I don’t think she would put out any money to keep me from getting killed, and when I think of the insurance policy she took out, I’m convinced. Della buys things for herself, like that little doodlebug car she drives. I am also sure that she has a cash hoard in the cupboard under the sink, but I have been afraid to look; it would be characteristic of Della to have it boobytrapped to blow my arm off. Also, if any of that money was ever missing, I would fare better facing Big Lou and all his goons at once.

Only a few regulars drifted in and out of Benny’s that morning and I only give them a nod. I am so sunk in gloom I haven’t even looked at a racing form.

“It’s ten thirty,” Benny said, then came over and stood in front of me. “Now there’s nothing personal in this, Milo,” he said, “but I’m going to have to ask you to leave here before noon. I mopped this floor yesterday and—”

“Sure, Benny,” I said dully, “I’ll take my lumps out in the alley.”

“Thanks,” Benny said and poured me another cup of coffee.

I was about to drink it when the front door opened and a skinny stranger came in lugging something under his coat. At first I thought it was a bagpipe and groaned. When he got to the bar, the guy dumped it on the floor and I saw that it was a vacuum cleaner. He piled the hose, pipe and attachments on the tank, slapped his hat against his leg and said, “Give me a beer, Mac.”

“Vacuum cleaner business not so hot this morning, eh?” Benny said.

“Who’s going to let a guy with wet feet into her house?” the guy said. “I sold one yesterday, but I had to take this as a trade-in.” He kicked the cleaner on the floor.

Benny shoved the beer across the bar. “You mean you salesmen get stuck with the trade-ins?” he asked.

The skinny guy nodded. “I unload mine on a secondhand dealer across town. I’ll only get about ten bucks for this dog.” He kicked the cleaner again.

“I guess there’s tricks to all trades,” Benny said, wiggling his finger down the sink drain.

I have listened to the conversation with only one ear, but it has caused me to grab on to the glimmer of an idea. Della has been bellyaching because she doesn’t have a vacuum cleaner — that means she is thinking of buying, one. If I steer this guy onto a sale, I could cut in on the commission — then I reject the idea as fast as it came. If he wakes Della up, she will kill the guy and I can’t see where that will benefit me. As I stare at the cleaner on the floor, I get another idea and sidle down the bar. “Look, mister,” I said, “maybe I could get you ten bucks for that dog.”

The guy turned and gave me the kind of a stare I get from a floorwalker when I ask for the gent’s room. “My good man,” he said down his nose at me, “any quotation of price you might have overheard was strictly hypothetical. The actual, rock-bottom, wholesale price on this unparalleled marvel of the appliance field is twenty dollars.”

“Come off it, mister,” I snapped. “I ain’t got time to kid. I’m trying to save you a trip across town.”

The guy looked out of the window at the rain, then back again. “It’s yours, Mac,” he said, then when I reached down to take the cleaner, he clamped a big foot on my hand. “We do not permit merchandise to leave the premises without proper defrayment,” he said.

I sucked on my knuckles. “You mean the ten?” I said.

“Precisely.”

“Don’t look at me, Milo,” Benny said quickly. “I know you for an honest citizen, but I wouldn’t invest two-bits in any merchandise a horseplayer could hock.”

“So you ain’t got the ten,” the guy said sadly. “Have you anything of value you could leave as security — a wristwatch, perhaps?”

“Not on me,” I said, then I snapped my fingers. “Don’t go away.” I dashed back to the rest room, took out my dentures and rinsed them off. I folded them in a paper towel and ran back. “There,” I said, slapping them down in front of the guy, “two hundred bucks worth of grade A crockery.”

The guy frowned. “What am I supposed to do with those? I can’t even keep the set I own busy.”

While he was staring at the teeth, I grabbed the cleaner and ran out of the front door. It was only a block and a half to my place and as I hurried through the drizzle, I worked up my sales pitch. When I laid it out in the living room I saw I didn’t have much, but I put it together, plugged it in and pulled down the shades. I hoped that Della would be so bleary-eyed from sleep, she wouldn’t notice how beat up it was.

I tip-toed to the bedroom door, knocked and jumped back. There was a rumbling noise inside, then the door flew open and Della stood there in her flannel nightgown. It was like in an African picture — where a female rhino comes out of the brush and swings her head, looking for something to charge.

“Look, sweets,” I said, pointing at the cleaner, “just look at that.”

Della looked down, but she must have been still half asleep. “For me?” she said.

“No-no!” I said before she could get the wrong idea. “A fellow I met is forced to sell it. It is such a priceless bargain, I thought—” I was having trouble without my teeth “—I thought you would want to snap it up.”

Della advanced on the cleaner as if she expected it to blow up. “How much?” she growled.

“Six — sixty dollars, and it’s a real bargain.” At my words, Della raised her foot as though she was going to stomp the thing through the floor. I dropped to my knees in front of her. “Don’t, sweets,” I begged, “let me show you how it works first.”

I flipped the switch. I grabbed the tube with the attachment on the end and pushed it across the carpet. Nothing happened — then I remembered how the salesman had demonstrated a vacuum cleaner in the department store. There was an ash tray full of butts from my sleepless night and I dumped these on the floor. Still nothing happened. The more I scrubbed the attachment, the more it broke up the butts and strung them around.

“You idiot!” Della yelled.

I grabbed up the tank to keep it from being smashed and backed away. Della stopped when she got to the butts and with her hands on her hips, she leaned over to glare at the mess.

My last hope was gone. I had lucked out completely. The whole world had turned against me. Hate and resentment welled up inside of me — hate against the fat tout who had tricked me into betting on a goat — against Benny, who wouldn’t help me — against Big Lou, who would half-kill me for a few lousy bucks — against the skinny guy for giving me a bum cleaner, and against Della.

I realized that I was holding the tank high over me. It wasn’t just Della’s head I brought the tank down on, it was the whole stinking world’s. She went down slow, with a whoosh, her nightgown ballooning out like a falling circus tent.

I stared stupidly at the dent in the tank, then shut the thing off and carefully put it down on the floor. I hadn’t hit Della to get her money, but now that she was helpless, it was the first thing I thought of.

The money was there, a hundred and twenty bucks worth, and the feel of it in my hand made a new man of me. I was going to keep that money — and I wasn’t going to take a beating. I looked down at Della and had an inspiration — I’d be able to use that vacuum cleaner after all.

They say that at a time like that a man has superhuman strength — I believe that, for I dragged Della out the back way and propped her up behind the wheel of her dinky little car. After starting the motor, I jammed the vacuum cleaner hose over the tail pipe and pushed the other end through the window; then I rolled the window up. I stuffed rags in the crack and checked the gas gauge. The car was so tiny it wouldn’t take long. Della hadn’t moved, so I closed the garage door and legged it back to Benny’s.

Big Lou was waiting, tough and ready, but when he saw the pile of bills I shoved into his hand his mouth dropped open. “There’s a hundred bucks here, Milo,” he said after he had counted it. “You only owe me fifty.”

I waved my hand carelessly. “The rest is a backlog,” I said, “I wish to establish good credit with you, Lou.” I also had other reasons; if the cops should pick me up and find that kind of dough on me, they’d know something was screwy. I looked up at the clock. “If you’ll hold it a few minutes, Lou, I’ll have my picks for the day.”

I knew I had to work fast. Besides selecting my horses, I would have to rush home and type out a suicide note before somebody found Della. I started around the bar to get Benny’s scratch sheet.

“Hey, fellow,” the skinny guy said, “I’ve still got your teeth. Where’s my ten?”

In my affluence I had forgotten him. “You crook!” I yelled, charging him, “you gyp artist, you handed me a ringer. That cleaner wouldn’t pick up nothing.”

“I know,” the guy said blandly. He pulled out a short string with a felt plug on the end. “When I get into a house,” he said, dangling the plug in front of me, “I ask the woman for her old vacuum cleaner so we can compare the two. To make sure my new cleaner looks good, I shove one of these in the hose of the old cleaner when she ain’t looking.”

“A trick of the trade,” Benny said admiringly, “pretty neat.”

I stared at the guy. “You mean that hose had a plug in it?”

The guy nodded. “You grabbed it and ran before I could explain. No harm done,” the guy said, “all you have to do is to grab the end of this string and—”

Big Lou heard the siren first and bolted out the back door. I stood rooted at the bar as it screamed closer, then moaned to a stop at the curb. A couple of bright, young cops bounced out of the front of the police car, then Della lumbered out of the back. She had a kimona over her nightgown — and with her head wrapped in a turkish towel, she looked like a fortune teller. Her splayed bedroom slippers splashed water out of the puddles as she crossed to the front door.

I dropped my head into my arms on the bar. “She ain’t dead,” I sobbed, “thank God — thank God, I got police protection.”