Somebody Owes Me Money (2 page)

I guess I looked blank. I didn’t say anything.

“Don’t thank me,” he said modestly, smiled and nodded, and turned away. The doorman picked up the luggage.

“I wasn’t going to,” I said, but I don’t think he heard me.

It happens every once in a while you get beaten out of a tip for one reason or another, and my philosophy is, you have to be philosophical about it. It also happens every once in a while you get a really big tipper, so it all evens out. So I just shrugged and got back into the cab in the warm and went looking for a really big tipper.

This was at about nine in the morning. Around eleven-thirty I went over to my usual diner on Eleventh Avenue and had coffee and a Danish even though I’m supposed to be on a diet.
Sitting in a cab all the time there’s a tendency to spread a little, so every once in a while I try to take off a few pounds. But after a while you begin to get hungry, you don’t want to take the time for a whole meal, so you stop for a quick coffee and Danish. It’s only natural.

Anyway, I brought the paper in with me and looked it over and my eye got caught by this horse Purple Pecunia, the one I got stiff-tipped on. I’d thought he’d said Petunia, like the flower, but it was Pecunia, which was peculiar. He was running down in Florida, and judging from past performance he’d be lucky to finish the race the same day he started. Some hot tip.

But then I got to thinking about it, and I remembered how the guy had been friendly all the way into town, how he obviously had money, and how fast he’d been at figuring my fifty-one percent of the meter, and I wondered if maybe I should listen to him after all.

I remembered the numbers. Three fifty-four was my percent, and eighty-one forty-two was what he’d said I would make if I bet that amount. At
least
eighty-one forty-two.

I did some long division on the margin of the
Telegraph
and it came out at exactly twenty-two to one. To the penny.

A man who can do numbers that fast in his head, I told myself, has got to know what he’s talking about. Besides, he was obviously not hurting for money. And further besides, what was the point in giving me a bum steer?

If there’s one thing a horseplayer or any other kind of player learns early in his career it is this: Play your hunches. Get a hunch, bet a bunch, that’s what the poker players say. And all of a sudden, I had a hunch. I had a hunch that fare of mine—who had just come up on a plane from some place warm, let’s not forget that—knew what he was talking about, and Purple Pecunia was going to romp home a winner, and some few
people on the inside were going to walk away twenty-two times richer than they started. A
minimum
of twenty-two times.

And I could use the money. There’s a couple of regular poker games I’m in, and for about five weeks I’d been running a string of bad cards to make you sit down and cry. The only thing to do with a run like that is wait it out, and I know it, but in the meantime I was spreading a lot of paper around, there were half a dozen guys with my marker in their pockets now, one of them for seventy-five dollars, and frankly I was beginning to get worried. If the cards didn’t turn soon, I didn’t know what I was going to do.

So if I was to put some money on this Purple Pecunia, and the tip should turn out to be good, it would be a real lifesaver and no fooling. The only question was—how much did I want to risk? Just in case, just in case.

It seemed to me I should leave that up to Tommy. Tommy McKay, my book. I was going to have to do it on credit anyway, so I might just as well go as steep as he’d let me.

I finished the coffee and Danish, paid my check, and went to one of the phone booths in the back. Tommy works out of his apartment, so I called there and got his wife. “Hi, Mrs. McKay,” I said. “Is Tommy there? This is Chet.”

“Who?”

“Chet. Chet Conway.”

“Oh, Chester. Just a minute.”

“Chet,” I said. I hate to be called Chester.

She’d already put the phone down. I waited, thinking things over, having second thoughts, and so on, and then Tommy came on. His voice is almost as high-pitched as his wife’s, but more nasal. I said, “Tommy, how much can I put on the cuff?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “What are you in to me for now?”

“Fifteen.”

He hesitated, and then he said, “I’ll go to fifty with you. I know you’re okay.”

Second thoughts came crowding in again. Another thirty-five bucks in the hole? What if Purple Pecunia didn’t come in?

The hell with it. Get a hunch, bet a bunch. “The whole thirty-five,” I said, “on Purple Pecunia. To win.”

“Purple Petunia?”

“No, Pecunia. With a
c.
” I read him the dope from the paper.

There was a little silence, and then he said, “You sure you want to do that?”

“I got a hunch,” I said.

“It’s your dough,” he said. Which was almost true.

After that I was very nervous. I went back to work, and I even began to let the midtown traffic get to me. I never do that, I’m always insulated inside my cab. The way I figure, I’m in no hurry, I’m
at
work. I’ll go with the flow of the traffic, I’ll take it easy, I’ll live longer. But I was very nervous about that thirty-five bucks on Purple Pecunia, and the nervousness made me edgy with other drivers. I kept hoping for a fare out to one of the airports, but it never happened. Nothing but short hops through the middle of the mess. Eighth Avenue and 53rd Street. Then Park and 30th. Then Madison and 51st. Then Penn Station. On and on like that.

I keep a transistor radio on the dashboard, so in the afternoon I turned it on for the race results, and at ten minutes to four in came the word on Purple Pecunia. She won the race. I had an old lady in the cab at the time. She had a hundred packages from Bonwit Teller’s and she kept looking out the window and saying, “Look at that, just look at that. Look at that black face. It’s a disgrace, right on Fifth Avenue. Look at that one, walking along as nice as you please. They ought to stay down South where they belong. Look at that one, with a
tie
on if you
please!” She was a ten-cent tip if there ever lived one, but I no longer cared.

She got out at a townhouse in the East Sixties. I switched on the Off Duty light and headed for a phone booth. Using her dime I called Tommy, and he said, “I thought I’d hear from you. That was some hunch.”

It sure was. At twenty-two to one, that hunch was going to bring back eight hundred and five dollars.

I said, “What does it pay?”

“Twenty-seven to one,” he said.

“Twenty-
seven?
”

“That’s right.”

“How much is that?”

“Nine eighty,” he said. “Less the half yard you owe me, that’s nine thirty.”

Nine hundred and thirty dollars. Almost a thousand dollars! I was rich!

I said, “I’ll be over around six, is that okay?”

“Sure,” he said.

I couldn’t turn the cab in before five, so I headed uptown to try to stay out of the midtown crush, so naturally I got flagged down right away by somebody wanting to go to the PanAm Building. What with one thing and another, it was twenty after five before I clocked out at the garage over on Eleventh Avenue. I immediately became a fare myself, hailing a cab for one of the first times in my life, and headed down to Tommy’s apartment on West 46th Street between Ninth and Tenth. I rang the bell, but there was a woman coming out with a baby carriage, so I didn’t have to wait for the buzz. I held the door for the woman and went on in. There still hadn’t been any buzz when I got into the elevator.

He must have heard the bell, though, because the door was
partly open when I got to the fourth floor. I pushed it open the rest of the way and stepped into the hall and said, “Tommy? It’s me, Chet.”

Nothing.

The hall light was on. I left the front door partly open like before and walked down the hall looking into the rooms as I went by. Kitchen, then bathroom, then bedroom, all lit up and all empty. The living room was down at the end of the hall.

I went into the living room and Tommy was lying on his back on the rug, arms spread out. There was blood all over the place. He looked like he’d been shot in the chest with antiaircraft guns.

“Holy Christ,” I said.

I was on the phone in the kitchen, trying to call the cops, when Tommy’s wife came in with a grocery bag in her arms. She’s a short and skinny woman with a sharp nose and a general look of disapproval.

She came to the kitchen doorway, saw me, and said, “What’s up?”

“There’s been an accident,” I said. I knew it wasn’t an accident, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say. And at just that minute the police answered, so I said into the phone, “I want to report a—Wait a second, will you?”

The cop said, “You want to report what?”

I put my hand over the mouthpiece and said to Tommy’s wife, “Don’t go into the living room.”

She looked toward the living room, frowning, then came in and put the bag down on the counter. “Why not?”

The cop was saying, “Hello? Hello?”

“Just a
second,
” I told him, and said to Tommy’s wife, “Because Tommy’s in there, and he doesn’t look good.”

She took a quick step back toward the hall. “What’s the matter with him?”

“Don’t go there,” I said. “Please.”

“What’s the matter, Chester?” she said. “For God’s sake, will you
tell
me?”

The cop was still yammering in my ear. I said to Tommy’s wife, “He’s dead,” and then to the cop I said, “I want to report a murder.”

She was gone, running for the living room. The cop was
asking me my name and the address. I said, “Listen, I don’t have much time. The address is 417 West 46th Street, apartment 4-C.”

“And your name?”

Tommy’s wife began to scream.

“I’ve got a hysterical lady here,” I said.

“Sir,” said the cop, as though it was a word in a foreign language, “I need your name.”

Tommy’s wife screamed again.

“Do you hear that?” I said. I held the phone toward the kitchen doorway, then pulled it back and said, “Did you hear it?”

“I hear it, sir,” he said. “Just give me your name, please. I will have officers dispatched to the scene.”

“That’s good,” I said, and Tommy’s wife came running into the kitchen, wild-eyed. Her hands were red. She screamed at the top of her lungs,
“What happened?”

“My name is Chester Conway,” I said.

The cop said, “What was that?”

Tommy’s wife grabbed me by the front of my jacket. It’s a zip-up jacket, dark blue, two pockets, it’s comfortable for driving the cab all day in the winter.
“What did you do?”
she screamed.

I said to the cop, “Wait a second,” and put the phone down. Tommy’s wife was leaning forward to glare in my face, her hands on my chest, pushing me backward. I gave a step, saying, “Get hold of yourself. Please. I got to report this.”

All at once she let go of me, picked up the phone, and shouted into it, “Get off the line! I want to call the police!”

“That is the police,” I said.

She started clicking the phone at him. “Hang up!” she shouted. “Hang up, this is an emergency!”

“I’m supposed to slap you now,” I said. I tugged at her arm, trying to get her attention. “Hello? Listen, I’m supposed to slap you across the face now, because you’re hysterical. But I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to have to do that.”

She began violently to shake the phone, holding it out at arm’s length as though strangling it.
“Will—you—get—off—the—line?”

I kept tugging her other arm. “That’s the police,” I said. “
That’s
the police.”

She flung the phone away all at once, so that it bounced off the wall. She yanked her arm away from me and went running out of the kitchen and out of the apartment. “Help!” I heard her in the hall. “Help! Police!”

I picked up the phone. “That was his wife,” I said. “She’s hysterical. I wish you’d hurry up and dispatch some officers.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “You were giving your name.”

“I guess I was,” I said. “It’s Chester Conway.” I spelled it.

He said, “Thank you, sir.” He read back my name and the address and I said he had them right and he said the officers would be dispatched to the scene at once. I hung up and noticed the phone was smeared with red from where Tommy’s wife had held it, so now my hand was smeared, too. Red and sticky. I went automatically to wipe my hand on my jacket, and discovered the front of my jacket was also red and sticky.

A heavyset man in an undershirt, with hair on his shoulders and a hammer in his hand, came into the kitchen, looking furious and determined and terrified, and said, “What’s going on here?”

“Somebody was killed,” I said. I felt he was blaming me, and I was afraid of his hammer. I gestured at the phone and said, “I just called the police. They’re on their way.”

He looked around on the floor. “Who was killed?”

“The man who lives here,” I said. “Tommy McKay. He’s in the living room.”

He took a step backward, as though to go to the living room and see, then suddenly got a crafty expression on his face and said, “You ain’t going anywhere.”

“That’s right,” I said. “I’m going to wait here for the police.”

“You’re damn right,” he said. He glanced at the kitchen clock, then back at me. “We’ll give them five minutes,” he said.

“I really did call,” I said.

A very fat woman in a flowered dress appeared behind him, putting her hands on his hairy shoulders, peeking past him at me. “What is it, Harry?” she said. “Who is he?”

“It’s okay,” Harry said. “Everything’s under control.”

“What’s that stuff on his jacket, Harry?” she asked.

“It’s blood,” I said.

The silence was suddenly full of echoes, like after hitting a gong. In it, I could plainly hear Harry swallow.
Gulp.
His eyes got brighter, and he took a tighter grip on the hammer.

We all stood there.

When the cops came in, everybody talked at once. They listened to Harry first, maybe because he was closest, maybe because he had the hammer, maybe because he had his wife talking with him, and then they told him to take his wife and his hammer and go back across the hall to his apartment and take care of the bereaved lady over there and they, the cops, would stop in a little later. Harry and his wife went away, looking puffed with pride and full of good citizenship, and the cops turned to me.