Donald Westlake: Somebody Owes Me Money

“I suppose so,” I said.

“You want me to say it first?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“Tommy McKay was a bookie.”

I nodded. “I believe so,” I said.

“Mm. Would you say you knew him best as a friend or as a customer?”

It was me doing the grinning this time, nervous and sheepish and out in plain view. “A little of each, I guess,” I said.

“Don’t worry, Chester,” he said. “I’m not looking for gamblers.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“Our interest is the homicide, that’s all.”

I said that was good, too.

“Have you got any ideas on that, Chester?”

I suppose I looked blank. I know I felt blank. “Ideas?”

“On who might have killed him.”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t. I didn’t really know him that well.”

“Did you see anybody else in the apartment or in the building that day?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Did McKay ever express worry to you, any fear that he thought somebody might be after him?”

“No.”

“Was he ever slow in paying off on winnings?”

“Never. Tommy was always straight about things like that.”

He nodded, thought for a second, then said, “Do you know anybody else in that building?”

“Tommy’s place? No.”

“Does the name Solomon Napoli mean anything to you?”

Until last night I could have given that question a straight no with no qualms. Trying to figure out what such a denial would have sounded like and then imitate it, I furrowed my brow, scratched my head, shook my head, stared out the window, and finally said, “Solomon Napoli. Noooo, I don’t think so.”

“You seem doubtful.”

“Do I? I don’t mean to. I really don’t know the name, I just wanted to be sure before I said anything. Who is he?”

“Somebody we’re interested in,” he said, making it clear it was somebody he didn’t want me being interested in.

I said, “Does he live in the same building as Tommy?”

He frowned, as though confused. “Of course not. Why?”

“Well, you asked if I knew anybody in that building, and then right away you wanted to know if I—”

“Oh,” he said, interrupting me. “I see what you mean. No, it’s two different questions.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Did you ever hear of Frank Tarbok?” he asked. “And he doesn’t live in McKay’s building either.”

“Tarbok? No.”

“You don’t want to think about that one first?”

“Well,” I said. “Uh. It’s just, I just knew right away he—”

“Okay,” he said. “How about Bugs Bender?”

“That’s a name? No, if I’d ever heard that one I’d remember it.”

“What about Walter Droble?”

I was about to say no when the name did ring some sort of distant bell. “Walter Droble,” I repeated. “Did I read about him in the papers or some place?”

“That would be the only way you know him?”

“Yeah, I think so. It’s like I’ve heard the name somewhere, a long time ago.”

“All right.” He seemed to consider things for a minute, and then said, “How well do you know Mrs. McKay?”

Him, too? “Not very well,” I said. “Mostly I just had dealings with Tommy.”

“Ever hear any rumors about her? Running around with another man, anything like that?”

I shook my head. “Not a thing,” I said.

“Did she ever make a play for you, flirt with you?”

“Mrs. McKay? Have you ever seen her? Sure you have, the other day.”

“She wasn’t looking at her best the other day,” he said. “You don’t think she’s good-looking enough to flirt?”

“Well, she’s not bad -looking,” I said. “I don’t know, I never saw her dressed up or anything, I don’t know what she’d look like.”

“All right,” he said, and got to his feet. “That’s about it. Thank you for your cooperation.”

“Not at all,” I said.

“You’re going to be around town?”

“Sure.”

“You’ll be notified about the inquest.”

“I’ll be here,” I said, and led the way to the front door. He buttoned up his coat and put his hat on and then I opened the door and he slogged out into all that swirling snow. There were little puffs of wind, this way, that way, with still places in between, so when you looked out, it was like looking at a photograph full of random scratches.

I watched him go down the stoop, then shut the door and went back to the living room, but this time I left the television off. I sat there thinking, and it seemed to me if there was anybody in this world I didn’t want to be right now it was probably Solomon Napoli. The cops obviously thought he might have had something to do with Tommy’s death, and so did Tommy’s bosses, and that seemed to leave Napoli square in the middle.

Who was Napoli? Maybe the boss of some other gang that was trying to muscle in. Maybe all this was part of some kind of gang war. There still are gang wars, only they don’t get as much publicity as they used to. Mobsters just disappear these days, they don’t get blown up in barbershops or machine-gunned in front of nursery schools anymore. But still every once in a while something will get into the papers, usually when something goes wrong. Like the guy a couple of years ago that was attacked in a bar in Brooklyn and two cops just happened to walk in while he was being strangled with a wire coat hanger. He was known to be a member of one of the mobs down there, and the cops figured the killers had to be with some other mob. They got away, both of them, and the victim naturally insisted he didn’t know who they were or why they were after him.

But if Tommy’s death was a gang killing, how come he didn’t disappear? He was very visible, his murder made the newspapers and everything. (There hadn’t been anything about it in today’s paper, but that’s because nothing new had happened.)

Well, it wasn’t my problem. My problem was collecting my money, and losing a day’s work today was making that collection even more urgent than before.

Of course, if 214 came in today my twenty-five cents would bring me back a hundred fifty dollars, but I wasn’t going to hang by my thumbs till it happened. In all the years I’ve played the numbers I’ve never won spit, and sometimes I wonder why I even bother. I treat it like dues, not like a bet at all. Once or twice a week I hand over a quarter at the stationery store. But what the hell, the return is six hundred to one — the odds are a thousand to one, so nobody’s doing anybody any favors — and I figure at a quarter a throw it can’t hurt me to try.

In the meantime, back in the real world 214 was not going to come in today, so the question was how to get my nine hundred thirty dollars, and for that I was going to have to go see Mrs. Louise McKay.

If she knew.

Did she know? Did Tommy tell his wife his business, enough for her to know who I should see now? Some husbands do, some don’t, and thinking about Tommy now it seemed to me he could best be described as the close-mouthed type.

Listen, I had to have that money. If Mrs. McKay couldn’t tell me how to get it, who could?

I remembered those other names Detective Golderman had mentioned — Frank Tarbok and Bugs Bender and Walter Droble. Maybe one of those guys was in the same syndicate with Tommy, and could tell me who to see now.

But I’d prefer to get it from Tommy’s wife. It struck me as easier, maybe safer, and all around better.

Just to be on the safe side, though, I went to the dining room and borrowed a piece of paper from my father and wrote down the three names, so I wouldn’t forget them. Frank Tarbok. Bugs Bender. Walter Droble.

By three, I couldn’t stand the house anymore. The snow had finally sighed to a stop around one, the plows had continued to rattle their chains down the street for a while after that, and the radio said we’d had eight inches and it was now definitely over. The day was white, tending to gray at the edges, and there was a sort of muffled feeling everywhere, as though I were walking around with cotton in my ears.