Somebody Owes Me Money

6

I was nice. I stayed where I was, facing the door a foot from my nose, not moving any parts of my body, and the hard thing stopped pressing against my back, and then hands patted me all over. When they were done, the voice said, “That’s a good boy. Now turn around and go down to the sidewalk.”

I turned around, seeing two bulky guys in bulky winter clothing and dark hats on the porch with me, and I went between them and down the stoop and down to the sidewalk. I felt them behind me, coming in my wake.

At the sidewalk they told me to turn right and walk toward the corner, which I did. Almost to the corner there was a dark Chevrolet parked by the curb, and they told me to get into the back seat, which I did. I was terrified, and I didn’t know who they were or what they wanted, and all I could think of to do was obey their orders.

One of them got into the back seat with me and shut the door. He took out a gun, which glinted dark and wicked in his lap in the little light that came in from the corner streetlamp, and I sat as close to the other door as I could, staring at the gun in disbelief. A gun? For me? Who did they think I was?

I wanted to say something, tell them some sort of mistake was being made, but I was afraid to. I had this conviction that all I had to do was make a sound, any sound at all, and it would break the spell, it would be the signal for carnage and destruction.

If you spend much time driving a cab around New York City, especially at night, sooner or later you’ll find yourself thinking about anti-cabby violence, and what you would do if anybody ever pulled a gun or a knife on you to rob you in the cab. A long time ago I decided I was no hero, I wouldn’t argue. Anybody with a knife or a gun in his hand is boss as far as I’m concerned. It’s like the old saying: The hand that cradles the rock rules the world.

One time a guy who works out of the same garage as me had a knife pulled on him by a rider, and he turned around and disarmed the guy and handed him over to the nearest cop. The police department thanked him, and on his identification displayed on the dashboard they rubber-stamped a notification about how he’d been given this special police citation, but all I could do was look at him and wonder what he’d been thinking of. The guy with the knife had been a junkie wanting money, and this cabby had eighteen dollars in the cab at the time. Eighteen dollars. Frankly, I think my life is worth more than eighteen dollars and a rubber stamp.

Life. I suddenly wondered if these were the guys who killed Tommy. Were they going to kill me?

Maybe nobody was supposed to bet on Purple Pecunia. Maybe they’re killing all outsiders that bet on that rotten horse. But that couldn’t be, it didn’t make any sense at all. Think of all the hunch betters, all the people that bet horses by their names. “Oh, look at this one, Harry, Purple Pecunia! Ain’t that cute, Harry? Let’s put two bucks on this one, Harry! Aw, come on, Harry!”

But these two still could be the guys that killed Tommy, maybe for some other reason entirely. I might not know why they did it, or why I was involved in whatever they were up to, but I wouldn’t have to know why. Maybe Tommy hadn’t known why either.

When the second one opened the door to get in behind the wheel, the interior light went on and I got my first look at the one with me in the back seat. He looked like the sadistic young SS man in the movies, the blond one that smiles and is polite to ladies but his face is slightly pockmarked. He was looking at me like a butterfly collector looking at a butterfly, and I looked away quickly without memorizing his features, not having any need or desire to memorize his features. I faced front, and the driver had black hair between hat and collar. That was all I wanted to know about him, too.

We drove away from my neighborhood, and quickly into neighborhoods I didn’t know, and through them, and beyond. They never took the car on any of the parkways, they stayed on the local streets, and for a while we were under an El. Now and again something would look vaguely familiar, but not enough for me to be sure. An occasional car passed us, minding its own business, or sometimes an empty bus went blooping along all lit up inside like a diner, but mostly the streets were dark and empty all around us.

Snowflakes began to drift down, one at a time, fat and lacy, in no hurry to land anywhere. So maybe we were going to get that big snow after all, the one that was four days overdue already. Here it was the middle of January and so far this winter we hadn’t had even one monstrous horrible snowstorm to tie up traffic and give people heart attacks.

I found myself wondering whether I’d be able to work tomorrow or not, there being no point hacking around New York in the middle of a snowstorm, and then I realized that was a ridiculous thing to be wondering about. I might not work tomorrow, but it wouldn’t be the weather’s fault.

Should I try to make a run for it? Should I leap from the car one time when it was stopped at a red light? Should I go running zigzag under the streetlights, looking for alleys, maybe an open tavern, some place to hide and wait for these guys to give up and go away?

No. It seemed to me if I were to reach out and put my hand on the door handle beside me, it would more than likely be the last thing I ever did on this earth. And although it was possible these two were taking me for a one-way ride, there wasn’t any point rushing the finish.

Besides, how could I be sure they wanted to kill me? Grasping at any consolation at all, I told myself if all they wanted was to kill me they could have done it back at the house and gone on about their business in perfect safety. If they were bringing me with them, it must mean they had something else in mind.

Maybe they wanted to torture me to death.

Now why did I have to think a thought like that?

Trying to think of other thoughts to think, I sat there while the car continued down one dark anonymous street after another until it suddenly made a right turn in the middle of a block. An open garage doorway in a gray concrete block wall loomed before us, blackness inside it, and we drove through and stopped. Behind us I could hear the garage door rattling down, and when that noise stopped, the lights abruptly went on.

We were in a parking garage. Rows of black low-nosed four-eyed automobiles gave me the fish-eye. Iron posts painted olive-green held up the low ceiling, in which half a dozen fluorescent lights were spaced at distances a little too far apart to give full lighting. Shadows and dim areas seemed to spread here and there, like fog.

There was nobody in sight. The driver got out of the car and opened the door beside me. The other one said, “Climb out slow.”

I climbed out slow, and he followed me. The driver pointed straight ahead and I walked straight ahead. It was a wide clear lane with a rank of cars on each side, the cars facing one another with all those blank headlights, me walking between them down the gauntlet. I kept feeling eyes on me, as though I were being stared at, but I knew it was only the cars. I couldn’t help it, I had to terrify myself even more with an image of one of those cars suddenly leaping into life, all four headlights blaring on, the engine roaring, the car slashing out of its slot to run me down like an ant on a racetrack. I walked hunched, facing only front, blinking frequently, and the cars remained quiet.

At the end there was a wall, and a flight of olive-green metal steps against the wall going upward to the right. As I neared it, I was told, “Go up the stairs.”

I went up the stairs. Our six feet made complicated echoing dull rhythms on the rungs, and I thought of Robert Mitchum. What would Robert Mitchum do now, what would he do in a situation like this?

No question of it. Robert Mitchum, with the suddenness of a snake, would abruptly whirl, kick the nearest hood in the jaw, and vault over the railing and down to the garage floor. Meantime, the kicked hood would have fallen backward into the other one, and the two of them would go tumbling down the steps, out of the play long enough for Mitchum either to (a) make it to the door and out of the building and thus successfully make his escape, or (b) get into the hood’s car, in which the keys would have been left, back it at top speed through the closed garage door, and take off with a grand grinding of gears, thus successfully making his escape and getting their car in the bargain.

But what if I spun around like that, and the guy with the gun was Robert Mitchum? What would he do then? Easy. He’d duck the kick and shoot me in the head.

I plodded up the stairs.

At the top was a long hall lined with windows on both sides. The windows on the left looked out on a blacktop loading area floodlit from somewhere ahead of me. The windows on the right, interspaced with windowed doors, looked in on offices and storage rooms, all in darkness except for one room far down at the end of the hall. Yellow light spilled out there, angled across the floor. There was no sound.

I stopped at the head of the stairs, but a hand against the middle of my back pushed me forward, not gently, not harshly. I walked down the hall toward the yellow light.

It was an office, the door open. Inside, a heavyset man in an overcoat with a velvet collar sat at a scruffy wooden desk and smoked a cigarette in an ivory holder. His head seemed too large for his body, a big squared-off block matted with black fur everywhere but in front. His face shone a little, as though he’d been touched up with white enamel, and his heavy jaw was blue with a thick mass of beard pressing outward against the skin. He sat half-turned away from the desk, a black velvet hat pushed back from his forehead, his one forearm resting negligently on the papers on the desk top, as though to imply this wasn’t his office really, he was above scraggly offices like this, he’d just borrowed this one from some poor relation for the occasion.

He looked over at me when I stopped in the doorway, his eye a pale blue, blank and unblinking. It was as though that wasn’t really his eye, his actual eye was hidden behind that one, was looking through that one at me without giving me a chance to look back.

The hand in my back again sent me into the room. I stopped in front of the desk, looking at the man sitting there. The other two stayed behind me, out of my sight. I heard the door close with a little tick of finality, like the last shovel-pat over a filled-in grave.

The man at the desk took the cigarette and holder from his mouth and pointed with them at a wooden chair beside the desk. “Sit down.” His voice was husky, but emotionless, not really threatening.

I sat down. I put my hands in my lap, not knowing what to do with them. I met his eye — his eye’s eye — and wished I could control my blinking.

He glanced at one of the papers littering the desk, saying, “How long you been working for Napoli?”

I said, “Who?”

He looked at me again and his face finally took on an expression: saddened humorous wisdom. “Don’t waste my time, fella,” he said. “We know who you are.”

“I’m Chester Conway,” I said, struck by the sudden hope that this whole thing could be a case of mistaken identity.

It wasn’t. “I know,” he said. “And you work for Solomon Napoli.”

I shook my head. “Maybe there’s another Chester Conway,” I said. “Did you look in the phone books for all the boroughs? A few years ago I used to get calls—”

He slapped his palm on the desk. It wasn’t very loud, but it shut me up. “You pal around with Irving Falco,” he said.

“Irving Falco,” I repeated, trying to think where I knew the name from. Then I said, “Sure! Sid Falco! I’m in a poker game with him.”

“Irving Falco,” he insisted.

I nodded. I was suddenly and irrationally happy, having something I knew about to deal with at last. It didn’t change things, it didn’t explain things, but at least I could join the conversation. “That’s the one,” I said. “But we call him Sid on account of a movie with—”

“But his name’s Irving,” he said. He looked as though he was starting to lose his patience.

“Yes,” I said.

“All right,” he said. “And Irving Falco works for Solomon Napoli.”

“If you say so. I don’t know him well, just at the poker game, we don’t talk about—”

He pointed at me. “And you work for Solomon Napoli,” he said.

“No,” I said. “Honest. I’m a cabdriver, I work for the V. S. Goth Service Corporation, Eleventh Avenue and—”

“We know about that,” he said. “We know all about you. We know you got a straight job, and you lose twice that much at the cards every week. Plus you play the ponies, plus—”

“Oh, now,” I said. “I don’t lose all the time. I’ve been having a run of bad cards, that could happen to any—”

“Shut up,” he said.

I shut up.

“The only question,” he said, “is what you do for Napoli.” He made a show of looking at his watch, a big shiny thing with a heavy gold band. “You got ten seconds,” he said.

“I don’t work for him,” I said. The young blond SS man came into my line of vision on the right.

Nobody said anything. We all looked at the heavyset man looking at his watch, till he shook his head, lowered his arm, looked over at the SS man, and said, “Bump him.”

“I don’t work for anybody named Napoli,” I said. I was getting frantic. The SS man came over and took my right arm, and the other guy came from behind me and took my left arm, and they lifted me out of the chair. “I don’t even know anybody named Napoli!” I shouted. “Honest to God!”

They lifted me high enough so only my toes were touching the floor, and then they walked me quickly toward the door, me yelling all the time, not believing any of this could possibly be happening.

We got through the doorway and then the man at the desk cut through all my hollering with one soft-voiced word: “Okay.”

Immediately the other two turned me around and brought me back to the chair and sat me down again. My upper arms hurt and I was hoarse and my nerves were shot and I figured my hair was probably white, but I was alive. I swallowed, and blinked a lot, and looked at the man behind the desk.

He nodded heavily. “I believe you,” he said. “We checked you out, and we saw where you buddied up with Falco, and we figured maybe we ought to find out. So you don’t work for Napoli.”

“No, sir,” I said.

“That’s good,” he said. “How’s Louise taking it, do you know?”

I experienced a definite sinking feeling. Here we go again, I thought, and very reluctantly I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know who you mean.”

He looked sharply at me, frowning as though this time I was telling a lie for no sensible reason at all. “Come on,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I really meant it. “I don’t want to get in trouble with you or anything, but I don’t know anybody named Louise.”

He sat back and smirked at me, as though I’d just made a lewd admission. “So you were having a thing with her, huh? That’s what it is, huh?”

I said, “Excuse me, but no. I don’t have a girlfriend right now, and I can’t remember ever going out with a girl named Louise. Maybe in high school one time, I don’t know.”

The smirk gradually shifted back to the frown. He studied me for a long minute, and then he said, “That don’t make any sense.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again. My shoulders were hunching more and more. By the time I got out of here, they’d probably be covering my ears and I’d never hear again.

He said, “You knew McKay well enough to go around to his place, but you don’t know his wife’s first name. That don’t make any sense at all.”

“Tommy McKay? Is that his wife?” I suddenly felt twice as nervous as before, because obviously I should know Tommy’s wife’s name, and anything at all I could think of to say right now would have to sound phony.

The man at the desk nodded heavily. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s his wife. You never met her, huh?”

“Oh, I met her,” I said. “Sometimes she’d come to the door when I went over there, or she’d answer the phone when I called. But we never talked or anything, we never had any conversation.”

“McKay never said, ‘Here’s my wife, Louise’?”

I shook my head. “Usually,” I said, “I wouldn’t even go into the apartment. I’d hand him some money, or he’d hand me some, and that’d be it. The couple of times I was in there, his wife wasn’t home. And he never introduced us. I was a customer, that’s all. We never saw each other socially or anything.”

He seemed dubious, but no longer one hundred percent disbelieving.

Another part of what he’d been saying abruptly caught up with me, and I said, “Hey!”

Everybody jumped and looked startled and wary and dangerous.

I hunched some more. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just thinking about what you said, that’s all.”

They all relaxed.

I said, “About me having a thing with Tommy’s wife. I mean, that’s just impossible. She’s not — I mean, she and me — it just wouldn’t—”

“Okay,” he said. He looked tired and disgusted all of a sudden. “You’re clean,” he said.

“Well, sure,” I said. I looked around at them all. “Is that what you wanted to know? Did you think I killed Tommy?”

They didn’t bother to answer me. The man at the desk said, “Take him home.” What beautiful words!

The SS man said to me, “Up.”

“All right,” I said. I got quickly to my feet, wanting to be out of there before anybody changed anybody’s mind. Up till a few seconds ago I hadn’t counted on getting out of here at all.

This time they didn’t grab my arms. I walked of my own accord to the door, and as I was stepping through, the man at the desk said, “Wait.”

Run for it? Ho ho. I turned around and looked at the three of them.

The man at the desk said, “You don’t talk to the cops. About this.”

“Oh,” I said. “Of course not. I mean, nothing happened, right? What should I talk to the cops for?”

I was babbling. I made myself stop, I made myself turn around, I made myself walk down the hall and down the stairs and down the gauntlet of cars and over to the Chevrolet. I got into the back seat without anybody telling me. Looking at the dashboard, I saw the keys had been left there after all, so maybe Robert Mitchum does know best.

The other two got into the car, same seating as before, and behind us the door rattled upward. We backed out, and they drove me home. The trip seemed shorter, through streets that were now even emptier.

The snow was increasing. It was still slow and lazy, but there were more flakes, and they were starting to stick. A thin white coating of confectioners’ sugar covered the black streets. They let me off in front of the house. “Thank you,” I said as I got out, as though they’d just given me a lift home, and then felt foolish, and then was afraid I’d slammed the door too hard, and then walked quickly into the house while they drove leisurely away.

Usually I’m a beer man, but my father is a Jack Daniel’s man, and this was a Jack Daniel’s moment. Two ice cubes and some Tennessee mash in a jelly glass, a few minutes of sitting quietly, sipping quietly, at the kitchen table, and slowly my overwound mainspring began to relax its tension a little.

Now that I could think it over, in safety and solitude, I saw what had happened. Those three guys had to be from the gambling syndicate Tommy worked for. The syndicate, not itself having had Tommy killed, had wanted to know who had done for one of its employees. Apparently they suspected a man named Solomon Napoli, God alone knew why, and they must have read in the News about me finding the body, and they decided to check me out, and they saw the poker game connection with Sid Falco — I hadn’t known he was involved in anything shady — and the rest followed.

But then to think I was having an affair with Tommy’s wife. Louise? Louise. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with the woman, she’s not bad-looking or anything, but she’s skinny as a telephone pole and about ten years older than me and every time I’ve seen her she’s worn bargain-basement dresses and heavy shoes, and her hair is usually wrapped up in so many huge pink plastic rollers she looks like a refugee from a science-fiction movie.

Well. The man at the desk, the important one, had seemed convinced at the end there that I was innocent, so that should finish it. I downed the last of the Jack Daniel’s, put the glass in the sink, switched off the light, and went upstairs in the dark to my bedroom, where it occurred to me I could have asked those people tonight who I should see now about collecting my money. Damn. Well, tomorrow I’d go see Tommy’s wife. Louise.