Somebody Owes Me Money

15

By the time the doorbell sounded nearly an hour later I was about ready to come apart like a broken kaleidoscope. Abbie was sitting beside me on the bed, and I reached out and grabbed her hand, and we gave each other nervous smiles that were supposed to be encouraging, and I began to blink a lot.

There were voices in the hall, and then Ralph came in, and behind him three other guys.

Solomon Napoli?

Even in my astonishment there was no question which of the three was Napoli. The two on either side were just hoods, Benny and Ralph all over again, just better-dressed. It was the one in the middle who was Solomon Napoli.

I couldn’t help staring at him. He was barely five feet tall, for one thing, the top of his head just about reaching the shoulders of the two guys flanking him. He was dressed very formally, as though on his way to an opera first night. But the most amazing thing was his head, which was too big for his body. Not enough to look deformed, just enough to make him look imposing, commanding, impressive. Leonine, a leonine head, and with the thick mane of hair that goes with it. A square jaw, magnificent white capped teeth, strong level eyes, a healthy hint of tan. He was about forty, with the smooth weathered look of a man who keeps himself in shape with handball and self-esteem.

And he was smiling! He came in smiling like a politician opening a campaign headquarters, his teeth sparkling, his eyes showing bright interest in everything they saw, his stride youthful and determined-without-crabbiness. He came in, and his flankers stopped just inside the door, and he came over to the bed, hand held out, saying to Abbie in a resonant voice, “Miss McKay! How do you do? I thought very highly of your brother. A shame, a shame.”

Through my own paralysis I could see that Abbie, too, was mesmerized. Her hand left mine, she rose uncertainly to her feet, she took his outstretched hand, in a vague and uncertain voice she said, “Uh, thank you. Thank you.”

He turned her off, turned me on. You could see him do it. He kept her hand, but he looked past her at me, his eyes and smile full of candle power, saying, “And how’s our patient?”

“Okay, I guess,” I mumbled.

“Good. Good.” He turned me off, turned Abbie on. “My dear, if you’ll go into the living room for just a few minutes, Chester and I have one or two things we want to discuss. We won’t be long. Ralph.”

“Here, boss,” said Ralph, and in his saying that the spell was broken. I had been totally hypnotized by Napoli up till now, his magnetism, his aura, the massive presence with which he filled the room. It wasn’t until Ralph said, “Here, boss,” that I remembered who this man really was. Solomon Napoli. Gangster.

I had to remember that. For my own good I had to remember it.

Suddenly I was twice as frightened as before. A cigar-chewing tough-talking obvious hood would have terrified me, but I would have understood him, I would at least have felt I knew what I was dealing with. But this man? I remembered how Sid Falco’s very ordinariness had been the most frightening thing about him, and this was Sid’s boss. A super-Sid.

I pulled the covers up around my chin and waited to see what would happen next.

Ralph led Abbie out of the room, she glancing back at me with a worried look just before going out of sight, and then I was alone with the crocodiles. One of the new hoods brought a chair up beside the bed, Solomon Napoli sat down in it, and we were off.

He had turned me on again. “I guess you had a close call, Chester,” he said. His smile showed sympathy, but I didn’t count on it.

“I guess I did,” I said warily.

“Who would take a shot at you, Chester?” he asked, and now his smile implied an urge to be helpful, but I wasn’t about to count on that one either.

“I guess the people Tommy worked for,” I said.

“Why would they do that?” His smile was as delicate an instrument as a theremin, and now it projected polite curiosity.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I suppose they think I had something to do with killing Tommy.”

Can a smile be threatening? Can it glint as though it would bite? Napoli sat back in the chair and his smile changed again and he said, “Chester, I’m a very busy man. I’m due at the Modern Museum in” — he looked at his watch — “forty minutes for a meeting of the board of trustees. Please just take it for granted we already know your involvement, we already know Frank’s involvement, a lot of wide-eyed innocent lying isn’t going to get you anywhere. There are a few things I want you to tell me, after which I promise you you will not find me an unreasonable man. You know Droble’s people are after you now, it shouldn’t take too much intelligence to realize that under my wing is the safest place for you right now.”

I closed my eyes. “Oh, go ahead and shoot,” I said. “I really can’t take any more.” And at that moment I think I really meant it.

Nothing at all happened. I lay on my back, head against the pillow, eyes closed, hands folded over my breast, already laid out you might say, and absolutely nothing happened.

Well, it wasn’t up to me to make the next move. I was done. I went on lying there.

Napoli said, “Chester, you don’t impress me.”

I continued to lie there. My eyes continued to be closed. But my despair, if that’s what it was, had already been diluted by my unsinkable liking for life, and I could feel myself beginning to tense up again. I had shut down like this out of conviction, but I was staying shut down as a kind of technique, mostly because I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

Napoli, with irritation finally creeping into his voice, said, “This is ridiculous. I have thirty-five minutes to get— Chester, I don’t have to give you a break.”

“A break?” I said. I didn’t open my eyes, because I knew if I was looking at him I wouldn’t be able to talk. Keeping my eyes shut and my body still, it was almost like talking on the phone, and I can talk to anybody on the phone. So my eyes were shut as I said, “You call that giving me a break? Getting a lot of wrong ideas into your head about who I am and what I’ve done, calling me a liar when I just so much as hint at the truth, sending people around to threaten me with guns, you threaten me with your teeth for God’s sake, you think—”

“Now just a—”

“No!” I was thrashing around in the bed by now, waving my arms to make my points, but my eyes stayed squeezed shut. “Ever since Tommy was killed,” I yelled, “one God damn fool after another comes after me with guns. Nobody asks me what I’m doing, oh, no, everybody knows too God damn much to ask me anything, everybody’s so God damn smart. Those clowns in the garage, and then Abbie, and then whoever shot at me, and now you. You people don’t know what you’re doing! You’re so God damn smug, you know—”

“Keep your voice down!”

“The hell I will! I’ve been pushed around long enough! I’ve got a—”

I stopped because a hand was clamped over my mouth and I could no longer talk. The hand was also over my nose and I could no longer breathe. My eyes opened.

One of the new hoods was standing over me, his arm a straight line from his shoulder to my face. He was leaning a little, pushing my head deeper into the pillow. I blinked, and looked past his knuckles at Napoli.

Napoli at last had stopped smiling. He was looking thoughtful now, studying me with his arms folded and the side of one finger idly stroking the line of his jaw. He seemed to be thinking things over.

I needed to breathe. I said, “Mmmm, mmm.”

“Shut up,” he said carelessly, and went back to thinking.

“Mm mmm mmmm,” I said.

“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe there is a different explanation.”

Things were turning a darkish red. There was a roaring deep inside my skull. I began to thrash around like a fish in the bottom of a boat.

Napoli pointed at me the finger with which he’d been stroking himself. “That won’t do you any good,” he said. “You just be quiet and let me think.”

“Mm mmm mmmmmmm!” I said.

“We saw you with Frank Tarbok,” he said. “We followed you and the other two from your place. Now you talk about the clowns in the garage as though you don’t know Frank, as though you don’t work for him, don’t know anything about him. Is that possible?”

I scratched feebly at the hand between me and air. Far away, up through the red haze, the hood looked uncaring down the length of his arm at me. I tugged at his pinkie, to no avail.

Napoli was still talking, slowly, thoughtfully, considering all sides of the matter. I could no longer make out the words, the roaring in my head was too loud, it blotted out all other sounds. But through the darkening haze I could still see him, see his mouth moving, his brow furrowed in thought, his eyes gazing into the middle distance. How civilized he looked, but the red haze was closing in and I could no longer make him out clearly.

My head was a balloon, a red balloon, being filled up and up, filled up and up, the pressure increasing on the inside, the pressure increasing too much, the pressure increasing.

The last thing I heard was the balloon exploding.