Donald Westlake: Somebody Owes Me Money

Sid smiled thinly, and everybody else objected at once. Leo succeeded in getting the floor at last, and said, “Why eliminate Sid? From the way you two have been talking, you and Sid, he knows as much about this as you do. And he’s apparently connected with some underworld figures some way, I get that much from the conversation. Why wouldn’t that make him your prime suspect, ahead of the rest of us?”

“He didn’t have to shoot at me,” I said. “No matter what he says now, he knew his boss was sending people to kill me. Professionals. So why should he bother to shoot me? Also, it made his boss very unhappy when Tommy was killed, and Sid wouldn’t have dared do anything to make his boss unhappy. Right, Sid?”

“Close enough,” Sid said.

Leo shook his head. “None of us knows anything about this, Chet. How can we talk sensibly about it? If one of us makes a suggestion, you tell us five more facts you already knew and we didn’t which shows the suggestion is wrong. That’s futile. What you ought to do is take your suspicions to the police.”

“Of course,” Jerry said. “Instead of coming here disrupting things, why not go to the police? Tell them what you think, what you know. Let them work it out.”

It was Abbie who answered this time. “We can’t go to the police,” she said.

Doug said, “Why not?”

“Because,” she said, “there are two gangs of crooks after us. Not one gang, two gangs. If one of them doesn’t get us, the other one will. Neither Chet nor I can live a normal life while they’re still after us. And part of the reason they’re all excited and upset is because of Tommy McKay’s murder. If we could solve that for them, and also this business about the lawyer Chet mentioned” — I was glad she’d picked up on that, since I’d just made it up and we hadn’t discussed it in the cab — “they’d leave us alone.”

Fred, leaning forward with a worried expression on his face, said, “You mean your lives are in danger?”

“That’s putting it mildly,” I said. “We’ve been shot at, strangled, threatened, chased, I don’t know what all. There are people out in the world with guns right now, and they’re looking for Abbie and me, and they want to kill us. And Sid there wants to go make a phone call and tell one bunch of them where they can find us.”

Fred shook his head. “I can’t understand that,” he said. “How did you get so involved?”

“I was trying to get that nine hundred thirty dollars I was owed,” I said, “and Abbie wanted to do something to avenge her brother, since he was her last living relative.”

Doug said, “Did you get the money?” He held one of my markers.

“No,” I said. “They refused to pay off, in fact.”

“That’s too bad,” Doug said.

Fred said, “How can you think about money at a time like this, Doug? Chet, do they really want to kill you?” He couldn’t seem to get it into his head.

“Yes,” I said. “They really want to kill me. Abbie, too. Ask Sid.”

Fred turned his head and looked at Sid, who said, “Chet’s right.”

Fred said to him, “And it would help him if he found out who killed Tommy McKay?”

Sid shrugged. “It’s possible. I wouldn’t know about that.”

I said, “The funny thing is, I think I know who it is. And yet I don’t believe it.”

Everybody looked at me. Abbie said, “Who?” Leo said, “Why don’t you believe it?”

I answered Leo. I said, “One of the things I wanted to do here was throw this mess on the table and just watch reactions, see how different people acted. I figured maybe the killer would act different from everybody else, and I’d be able to spot him.”

Leo said, “And did he? Have you spotted somebody?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But I don’t believe it. There’s something wrong somewhere.”

Abbie said, “For Pete’s sake, Chet, who is it?”

“It’s Fred,” I said.

Nobody said anything. Fred frowned, looking troubled and worried and sad but somehow not like a murderer, and everybody else looked alternately at him and at me.

Leo broke the silence at last. He said, “Why do you think it’s Fred?”

I said, “Because he jumped a mile when we came in here, and then covered it up by saying he thought Abbie was Cora. But Abbie doesn’t look at all like Cora, and Fred just saw Abbie four days ago and knew she might be coming back tonight. And because Cora didn’t call last Wednesday and I bet she doesn’t call tonight, and that’s because she knows what happened and she’s agreed to let Fred go on with his normal life as though nothing had happened, to cover up.”

Leo said, “That isn’t very much, Chet.”

“I don’t have very much,” I said, “I admit that. But I have a little more. When I started talking, everybody got excited. Everybody but Fred. Jerry accused Doug, Leo accused Jerry, Doug got mad, Leo accused Sid, everybody was full of questions and excitement and disbelief. Everybody but Fred. He just sat there and didn’t say anything for a long while. Until I made it clear that Abbie and I were now murder targets ourselves and the one who’d killed Tommy was indirectly responsible. Then he asked questions, hoping to get answers that would make it less tough. All he is is worried and troubled and sad, and everybody else is excited and irritated and surprised.”

Abbie said, “But why do you say it doesn’t seem right?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “There’s something that just doesn’t jibe. Fred’s reactions are wrong for him to be innocent, but somehow they’re wrong for him to be guilty, too. He should be tougher if he’s guilty. I don’t understand.”

Fred gave me a wan smile and said, “You’re pretty good, Chet. I don’t know how you did that, but you’re pretty doggone good.”

Jerry gaped at him. “You mean you did do it?”

“No,” Fred said. “I didn’t shoot Tommy. But I did shoot you, Chet, and God, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hit anybody, I aimed between you and Abbie. When I saw I’d hit you I almost died myself. Christ, I’ve always been a pretty good shot, I don’t know what went wrong.”

“That gun shoots off to the left,” I said. “You should have taken it out on a practice range for a while.”

“It must shoot way the hell to the left,” he said.

“It does,” Abbie said.

Sid said to him, “You took the gun out of my pocket?”

Fred nodded. “I was going through Chet’s and Abbie’s pockets,” he said. “I wanted to see if they had any clues or evidence or anything about the murder they weren’t telling us about. I felt the heavy thing in your pocket, and took a look, and there was the gun. I knew you had something to do with the underworld, so I figured it was your gun, and I swiped it. I didn’t know it belonged to you, Chet.”

“To me,” Abbie said. “Where is it?”

“In the Harlem River,” Fred said. “I thought I’d killed Chet for sure, so I got rid of that gun right away.”

I said, “But you didn’t kill Tommy.”

He shook his head. “No, I didn’t.”

“Then why do all this other stuff? To cover up for the real killer? But who?”

Fred just smiled sadly at me.

We all stared at him, and it hit all of us simultaneously, and six voices raised as one to cry, “CORA!”

Fred nodded. “Cora,” he said. “Chet, you saw her right after she did it.”

I said, “I did not.”

“Sure you did. She was coming out of the building when you were going in.”

I frowned, drawing a blank, and suddenly remembered. “The woman with the baby carriage!”

“Sure,” he said. “Cora’s a smart woman, Chet. She saw you through the glass, and she didn’t want to be recognized, and there was a baby carriage in the hallway, so she figured that would make a good disguise, and with the two of you meeting in the doorway, you holding the door and the baby carriage in the way and all, her keeping her head down, she got away with it. She went right through and you never even noticed.”