Donald Westlake: Somebody Owes Me Money

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.