Donald Westlake: Somebody Owes Me Money

“No,” I’d say, and go on with the story. I finished by saying, “And the upshot of it is, I didn’t collect my nine hundred thirty dollars.”

“That’s a lot of money,” he said.

“It sure is,” I said. “I wonder who I collect from, now that Tommy’s dead.”

“I wonder where you go to get the money now,” he said.

“That’s what I said,” I said.

He raised his head and sniffed. “Aren’t those dinners ready yet?”

I looked at the clock. “Five more minutes. Anyway, I’ll call Tommy’s wife tomorrow and ask her. She should know.”

“Ask her what?”

“Where I go to collect my money,” I said.

He nodded. “Ah,” he said.

We went on in and had dinner.

I got up late the next morning, and decided not to go to work till the afternoon. I called Tommy’s wife around noon and she answered the phone on the second ring and I said, “Hello, Mrs. McKay? This is Chet.”

“Who?”

“Chet,” I said. “You know, Chet Conway.”

“Oh,” she said. At least she didn’t call me Chester. She said, “What do you want?”

I said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. McKay, I know I shouldn’t disturb you at a time like this, and I wouldn’t under normal circumstances, but the fact of the matter is I’m sort of strapped for cash right now.”

“What is this?” she said. She sounded irritable.

I said, “Well, the fact is, Mrs. McKay, I went over to your place yesterday to pick up the money from a bet I made that came in, and naturally I didn’t get to collect. So I was wondering if you could put me in touch with whoever I should see now to get my money.”

“What? What do you want?” Now she sounded as though I’d just woken her up or something and she couldn’t comprehend what I was talking about.

I said, “I want to know where to go to collect my money, Mrs. McKay.”

“How should I know?”

“Well—” I was at a loss. I floundered for a second or two and then I said, “Don’t you know who Tommy’s boss was?”

“His what?”

“Mrs. McKay, Tommy worked for somebody. He worked for a syndicate or somebody, he didn’t run that book of his all by himself.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

I said, “Is it because I’m asking you on the phone? Listen, could I come by later on? Are you going to be home?”

“You’d better forget it,” she said. “Just forget it.”

“What do you mean, forget it? It’s almost a thousand dollars!”

Suddenly a different voice was on the line, a male voice, saying, “Who’s calling?”

A cop. It had to be a cop. I said, “I’ll talk to Mrs. McKay later,” and hung up. So that was why she hadn’t wanted to tell me anything.

I wondered how long it was going to be before I could find out. I needed that money in the next couple of days.

I hung around the house till about two in the afternoon, then finally got up the energy to go to work. I read about myself in the News on the subway, under the headline BOOKIE FOUND SLAIN IN APARTMENT. It said Tommy was a known bookmaker with a long history of arrests; it said he’d been shot three times in the back with dum-dum bullets, the kind of bullet that has been creased on the nose so it’ll expand when it hits something, which was why his chest had been so smashed up from where the bullets had come out the other side; and it said the body had been found by “Chester Conway of 8344 169th Place, Jamaica, Queens. Mr. Conway stated he was a friend of the dead man.”

That made me feel a little odd. It’s one thing to gamble a bit, put down a bet with a bookmaker from time to time, but it’s another thing to read about yourself in the Daily News, listed as the friend of a murdered bookie. All of a sudden I felt like a Mafia hoodlum or something, and I imagined friends of mine reading that in the paper, and I was both embarrassed and — I hate to admit this — secretly pleased. We all of us would like a dramatic secret life that nobody knows about, that’s the whole idea behind Superman and Batman and the Lone Ranger, and here the Daily News was giving me one for free, by implication. All of a sudden I was the kind of guy who knew secret entrances to apparently abandoned warehouses, unknown passageways in the very walls of the apartment itself, meetings at midnight, people who wore masks and never gave their right names. It made me feel very special, sitting there on the train, surrounded by people reading the News and little knowing that in their midst was the very man they were reading about, the ubiquitous Chester Conway, 8344 169th Place, Jamaica, Queens.

Nobody at the garage had read the paper, apparently, or they hadn’t made the connection, or maybe they were just being very cool. Anyway, nobody said anything. I went in, signed out my car, and took off.

The first place I went was Tommy’s place. I threw on the Off Duty sign as soon as I was out of sight of the garage and went straight down to 46th Street. There weren’t any police cars stopped out front, so I parked by a hydrant — there are no parking places in New York, the last one was taken in 1948, but a cab stopped for a short time by a hydrant is usually left alone — and I went over and rang the bell, but there wasn’t anybody home, so I went back to the cab and at last to work.

I tried a couple of the midtown hotels and jackpotted right away with a fare to Kennedy. Unfortunately, the only thing to do after that is take another fare back to Manhattan, which I did, and then hacked around the city the rest of the afternoon and evening.

I tried Tommy’s place again around seven and there still wasn’t anybody home, and there kept on being nobody at home when I tried for the third time around eleven.

I turned the cab in a little after midnight and took the subway home. I got to the house shortly before one, seeing the light in the kitchen that my father leaves for me when I’m out late, and I went up on the front porch, stopped in front of the door, put my hand in my pocket for my keys, and somebody stuck something hard against my back. Then somebody said, in a very soft insinuating voice, “Be nice.”

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.