“If you knew what this gadget costs,” I told Morry, “and what a specialty job it is to figure those wires…”

“It works, don’t it?”

“Who fixed it?”

“Electrician. A good man who shows when he’s called and don’t hang around using my alley afterwards, all for nothing, and bouncing balls down the parquette because he thinks he’s a wheel working for that Lippit’s racket.”

Morry, I thought, had rarely been this mean. Perhaps he had in mind what was in the contract. I let that hang for a while.

“What electrician?” And then I said, for a guess, “Somebody called Benotti?”

“Yeah,” said Morry, “Benotti.”

I sat down on a different stool and asked for a cup of coffee again, and this time he gave it to me and I drank it. I had not meant to stay all this time, Morry being a routine problem only, but perhaps it was different now Benotti?

I didn’t know this Benotti. He was new in town, or maybe only his business was new, because he had rented space for an electrical repair shop and he had two or three men and a truck, I think, to go around and fix TV’s and short circuits. None of which was enough reason for me to know this Benotti, except for two things. It was the third time that Benotti had been around fixing one of our machines. A real hustler. All right, let him be. Though it was not good for morale and precedent, seeing how Morry acted.

The other reason I knew of Benotti was that one of his men had done work for me. Electrical work, something special, though none of this had to do with the Lippit business.

I said, “Morry. But we have a contract.”

He looked at my stud button in front and then he looked away to make it clear he had no time for stud buttons and foolishness.