Donald Westlake: Somebody Owes Me Money

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.