Somebody Owes Me Money

Part I of a Novel

I bet none of it would have happened if I wasn't so eloquent. That's always been my problem, eloquence, though some might claim my problem was something else again. But life's a gamble, is what I say, and not all the eloquent people in this world are in Congress.

Where I am is in a cab in New York City. Fares frequently ask me how it is somebody as eloquent as me is driving a cab, and I usually give them a brief friendly answer that doesn't really cover the territory. The truth is, driving a cab gives me a chance to pick my own hours. Day shift when the track is closed, for instance, night shift when it's open.

The trouble of which I wish to speak began with a customer I took from Kennedy Airport to Manhattan. He started the whole mess I got into, and I never saw him again after that one time.

He was a heavy-set, red-faced guy of maybe 50, he smoked a really rotten cigar and had two expensive suitcases, and he went to an address on Fifth Avenue below 14th Street. With a doorman. It was January and a snowstorm had been threatening for three days without yet showing up, and also he'd just come back from somewhere warm, so naturally we got into a discussion of New York City weather and what should be done about it. I cracked a few jokes, made some profound statements, threw in a few subtle asides about politics and scored a few good ones off the automobile industry, made a concise analysis of the air-pollution problem around the city and, all in all, I would say I was at my most eloquent.

When we got to his address, the meter read $6.95. I got out and unloaded the suitcases from the trunk while the building's doorman held the cab door open. The fare got out and handed me a ten, I gave him change from my pocket, and then we just stood there on the sidewalk together, luggage on one side of us and doorman on the other, my customer smiling as though thinking about something else, until finally he said, "Now I give you a tip, right?"

"It's the usual thing," I said. It was cold outside the cab.

He nodded. "That paper I noticed on the seat beside you," he said. "Was that the Telegraph?"

"It was," I said. "It is."

"Would you be a horse player?"

"I've been known to take a chance," I said.

He nodded. "How much of that six ninety-five do you get to keep?"

"Fifty-one percent," I said.

(continued on page 142) Somebody Owes Me Money (continued from page 105)

"That's three fifty-four," he said, faster than I'd have been able to. "All right. I like you, I like the way you talk, you gave me a pleasant ride in, so here's your tip. You put that three fifty-four on Purple Pecunia, it will bring you back a minimum of eighty-one forty-two."

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.

But later, during lunch, I was looking at the Telegraph and my eye got caught by this horse Purple Pecunia, the one I got stiff-tipped on. 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 51 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 $81.42 was what he'd said I would make if I bet that amount. At least $81.42.

I did some long division on the margin of the Telegraph and it came out at exactly 22 to 1. 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 him giving me a bum steer?

If there's one thing a horse player 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 someplace 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 22 times richer than they started. A minimum of 22 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 $75, 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.

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 into me for now?"

"Fifteen."

He hesitated, and then he said, "I'll go to fifty with you. I know you're OK."

Second thoughts came crowding in again. Another 35 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." I read him the dope from the paper.

"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. But I was very nervous about that 35 bucks on Purple Pecunia, and the nervousness made me edgy with other drivers.

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 switched on the off Duty light and headed for a phone booth. I called Tommy and he said, "I thought I'd hear from you. That was some hunch."

I said, "What does it pay?"

"Twenty-seven to one," he said.

"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 OK?"

"Sure," he said.

After work I went straight 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 in 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 (continued on page 166)Somebody Owes Me Money(continued from page 142) 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. "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 heavy-set 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 OK," 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.

"I didn't do it," I said.

They looked surprised, and then suspicious. "Nobody said you did," one of them pointed out.

"That guy was holding a hammer on me," I said. "He thought I did it."

"Why did he think so?"

"I don't know. Maybe Tommy's wife told him I did."

"Why would she say a thing like that?"

"Because she was hysterical," I said. "Besides, I don't even know if she said it. Maybe it was because of the blood on my jacket." I looked at my hand. "And on my hand."

They looked at my jacket and my hand, and they stiffened up a little. But the one who did the talking was still soft-voiced when he said, "How did that happen?"

"Tommy's wife grabbed me," I said. "That's when it got on my jacket. She'd gone in to look at Tommy, and I guess she touched him or something, and then she got it on me."

"And the hand?"

"From the phone." I pointed to it. "She was holding the phone."

"Is she the one who called in the complaint?"

"No. I did."

"You did. Who did Mrs. McKay call?"

"Nobody. She was hysterical, and she wanted to call the co------police, but I was already talking to them. It got kind of confusing."

"I see." They looked at each other, and the talking one said, "Where's the body?"

"In the living room," I said. I made a pointing gesture. "Down the hall to the end."

"Show us."

I didn't want to go down there. "Well, it's just------" I said, and then I saw what they meant. They wanted me with them. "Oh," I said. "All right."

We went down the hall to the living room, me in the lead, and Tommy was still there, spread out on the floor, sunny side up. I stood to one side, and the cops looked. One of them said to me, "Use your phone?"

"Sure," I said. "It's not mine."

The other cop and I went across the hall to Harry's apartment. Harry seemed surprised to see me walking around free, surprised and somewhat indignant, as though he was being insulted in some obscure way. Tommy's wife was lying on her back on a very lumpy sofa in an overcrowded and overheated living room. She had one forearm thrown over her face, and I saw she'd washed the blood off her hands.

The cop sat down on the coffee table and said softly, "Mrs. McKay?"

Without moving her arm so she could see him, she said, "What?"

"Could I ask you a couple questions?" He was even more soft-voiced than before. A very nice corpse-side manner.

I said to Harry, "Can I use your bathroom, please?"

Harry frowned in instant distrust. He said to the cop, "Is it OK?"

The cop looked over his shoulder, nettled at the interruption. "Sure, sure," he said, and went back to Tommy's wife.

Harry's wife, being polite because now I was a guest in her house, showed me to the bathroom. I shut the door with my clean hand, turned on the water in the sink and washed my hands. Then I used a washcloth to try to wash off the front of my jacket. I got it pretty well, rinsed the washcloth, dried my hands and went back out to the living room.

The cop wasn't alone anymore. There were three plainclothesmen there, all with hats on their heads and their hands in their overcoat pockets. They looked at me and the uniformed cop said, "He's the one made the discovery."

One of the plainclothesmen said, "I'll take it." He took his hands out of his pockets and came over to me, saying, "You Chester Conway?"

"Yes," I said. In a corner I could see both Harry and his wife sitting in the same armchair, blinking at everything in eager curiosity. They'd happily given up the participant roles and drifted into their real thing, being spectators.

"I'm Detective Golderman," the plain-clothesman said. "Come along."

Sensing Harry and his wife being disappointed that I wasn't going to be questioned---grilled---in front of them, I followed Detective Golderman out and across the hall and into Tommy's apartment. We went into the bedroom now, and I could hear a lot of murmuring going on in the living room. It sounded like a lot of men in there, a lot of activity.

Detective Golderman, notebook in hand, said, "McKay was a friend of yours, is that right?"

"That's right," I said. "Sort of a casual friend."

"Why were you coming over today?"

"Just a visit," I said. "Sometimes I come over when I quit work."

"What do you do?"

"I drive a cab."

"Could I see your license?"

"Sure."

I handed it to him and he compared my face with the picture and then handed it back, thanking me. Then he said, "Would you know any reason anybody would do a thing like that to your friend?"

"No," I said, "Nobody. He didn't sound frightened or different in any way when I talked to him on the phone this afternoon."

"Whose idea was it you should come over at six?"

I had a problem there, since I didn't feel I should tell a cop that my relationship with Tommy was customer to bookie, but on the other hand I felt very nervous making up lies. I shrugged and said, "I don't know. Mine, I guess. We both decided, that's all."

"Was anybody else supposed to be here?"

"Not that I know of."

"Hmm." He seemed to think for a minute, and then said, "How did Tommy get along with his wife, do you know?"

"Fine, "I said. "As far as I know, fine."

"You never knew them to argue."

"Not around me."

He nodded, then said, "What's your home address, Chester?"

"It's 8344 169th Place, Jamaica, Queens."

He wrote it down in his notebook.

"We'll probably be getting in touch with you," he said.

"You mean I can go now?"

"Why not?"

• • •

The next day, I started working in the afternoon and through the evening rush. I called Tommy's wife a few times, and stopped off at the apartment whenever I happened to be passing through the neighborhood, but she was never at home.

I turned the cab in a little after midnight and took the subway home, getting to the house shortly before one. I stopped in front of my 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 at 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 street lamp, 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?

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.

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 fisheye. 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 walked around to open 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 as though down a gauntlet.

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.

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, inter-spaced 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, with the door open. Inside, a heavy-set 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 desktop, 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.

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.

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, 11th 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 heavy-set 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: "OK."

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 there, 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."

"OK," 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."

• • •

The next afternoon, I went to work, just as though life was normal. I got my first fare half a block from the garage, a good-looking girl in an orange fur coat and black boots and pale blonde hair. "2715 Pennsylvania Avenue," she said.

I said, "Brooklyn or Washington?" I kid with good-looking female passengers whether I'm worried about money or not.

"Brooklyn," she said. "Take the Belt."

"Fine," I said, and dropped the flag, and headed south. My luck was finally in. Not only a good-looking blonde in the rearview mirror but a long haul at that, and it would end not too far from Kennedy.

The first half mile of Pennsylvania Avenue is through filled-in swampland. There's no solid ground at the bottom, just dirt piled into a swamp, so the road is very jouncy and bouncy, full of heaves and holes; and even though there's little traffic at any time there and no housing or pedestrians around, you can't make very good time. Which meant I was doing about 20 when the girl stuck the gun into the back of my neck and said, "Pull over to the side and park."

When I had stopped the car, the girl said, "Turn off the engine."

"Right," I said, and turned off the engine.

She said, "Leave both hands on the wheel."

"Right," I said, and put both hands on the wheel.

The girl said, "I want to ask you a few questions, and you better tell me the truth."

"I'll tell you the truth," I said. "You can count on that." I didn't know what she could possibly want to know, but whatever it was, I was primed to tell her.

"First," she said, "where's Louise?"

"Oh, goddamn it," I said, because all of a sudden there I was back in that office with the hoods again, being asked questions I couldn't answer because the assumptions were all wrong, and by God enough was enough. Forgetting all about how a sudden movement might make today's nut get excited and shoot me in the head, I turned around in the seat and said, "Lady, I don't know who you are, but at least I know it. You don't know who I am either, but you think you know who I am and that screws things up entirely, because I'm not him. Whoever he is. I'm me."

She was sitting there in the back seat with her knees and ankles together, shoulders hunched a little, gun hand held in close to her breasts, the little pearl-handled automatic pointing approximately at my nose. She continued to look at me for a few more seconds, and then a frown began on her face, first with a vertical line in the middle of her forehead, then spreading out to curve down her eyebrows, and finally covering her entire face. She said, "What?"

"I don't know where Louise is," I said. "If by Louise you mean Tommy McKay's wife, I don't know where she is. If you mean any other Louise, I don't know any other Louise."

"Then what were you doing at the apartment?"

"Looking for Louise."

"Why?"

"None of your business."

"She killed him, you know."

"Mrs. McKay? She killed her husband?"

"You mean you don't know it?" Said sneeringly, as though I was being a really obvious liar now.

"She didn't act it," I said. "I found the body, you know."

"I know." Full of menacing overtones.

I rushed on. "And Mrs. McKay didn't act like any murderess, "I said. "It would have been tough for her to put on an act like that."

"So you say."

"Well," I said, "I was there."

"That was very convenient, wasn't it?" she said. "You being there."

"Not very," I said. "I didn't think it was convenient at all."

"You and Louise could cover for each other, lie for each other."

"Oh, come on," I said. "Me and Louise? Me? Louise? Look at me, will you? Have you ever seen Louise?"

"Of course, I have," she said. "She's my sister-in-law."

"You're Tommy's sister?"

"I'm the only one he has," she said. Her face began to work, as though she was fighting back tears. "There's nobody else anymore," she said. Biting her lower lip, blinking rapidly, she looked away out the side window. She'd obviously forgotten all about the gun.

I don't know why I did it. Because she'd forgotten about the gun, I suppose. Anyway, I made a grab for it.

"Oh!" she said, and jumped a foot, and for a few seconds there were four hands on the gun and we were both squirming around, trying to get it, and then it went off.

You talk about loud. Inside that cab, with all the windows shut except the vent on my side, that noise had nothing to do but ricochet, which it did, forever. It immobilized the two of us for maybe half a minute, both of us staring, both of us openmouthed, neither of us moving a muscle.

Happily, I recovered first. I grabbed the gun away from her, pointed it at myself, pointed it at her, instead, and said, "All right, now. All right."

She blinked, very slowly, like a mechanical doll coming to life, and said, in a tiny voice, "Are you hurt?"

That hadn't occurred to me. Only the noise had occurred to me, not the fact that in conjunction with the noise a bullet had left this stupid gun and gone very rapidly through the air of the automobile to somewhere. To lodge in me? I looked down at myself, saw nothing any redder than usual, looked at her to see if she was dead and we hadn't noticed, looked up, and saw a smudge in the top of the cab. The cloth up there had a dirty smudge on it, an inch or two across with a tiny hole in the middle of the smudge.

"You put a hole in the cab," I said. "How am I going to explain that?"

"You've got the gun!" she screamed, staring at it as though it had just popped into existence this second. Then she threw her arms around her head, stuck her pressed-together knees way up in the air, and cowered back on the seat, rolling herself into as much of a ball as possible in the space available.

I stared at her. She was crunched up against the back of the seat, nothing but black-booted knees and orange-furred elbows, with here and there a glint of blonde hair peeking through. I said, "What are you doing?"

She said something, so muffled it took me a few seconds to make it out: "You're going to kill me."

"I am not," I said. I was insulted. I said, "What would I do a thing like that for?"

Arms and legs shifted a little, enough for a blue eye to be seen way down in there. With a sort of brave but hopeless defiance, she said, "Because I know too much."

"Oh, come on," I said.

Legs lowered, arms shifted some more, and her head emerged like a beautiful turtle. "You can't fool me," she said, still with that scared defiance. "You're an accomplice and I know it. I'd give twelve to one on it."

"Done," I said, and without thinking, I reached my hand over for a shake, forgetting the gun was in it. Immediately, the turtle popped back into her orange shell. I said, "Hey! I'm not going to shoot you. I was just taking the bet."

She inched out again, mistrustful. "You were?"

I switched the gun to my left hand and held the right out for her to shake. "See? You give me twelve-to-one odds on a lock, you've got yourself a bet. How much? Ten bucks? Make it easy on yourself."

The legs this time slowly lowered all the way to the floor. She kept looking at me, studying me, very doubtful and mistrustful, as though wondering if somebody had stuck in a ringer. She looked at my hand, but she didn't touch it. Instead she said, "You are Chester Conway, aren't you? The one who found Tommy dead?"

"Sure," I said. I pointed the gun at my identification on the right side of the dashboard. "There's my name and picture," I said. "You'll have to take my word that's my picture."

"And you're the one who's been having an affair with Louise."

"Whoa, now," I said. "Not me, honey. Now you're thinking about somebody else. I didn't even know that woman's first name until yesterday."

"Do you expect me to believe that?" she said, but the scorn was mixed with doubt.

"To tell you the truth," I said, "I don't much care. And what I think I ought to do now is turn you over to the cops."

"You wouldn't dare, "she said, still with that touch of doubt showing through.

"Why not?" I said. "You're the one pulled the gun on me."

"What if I tell them what I know?"

"Go ahead," I said. "They're liable to find out if it's true before they go running up six-dollar meters and sticking guns in my neck." I waggled the gun at her. "You get in the middle of the seat," I said, "where I can see you in the rearview mirror."

She moved, being somewhat sulky about it, and when she got to the middle of the seat she sat up, folded her arms, gave me a defiant glare and said, "All right. We'll see who's bluffing."

"Nobody's bluffing," I told her. "You just misread your hole card, that's all." I turned around, shut off the meter, flicked on the off Duty sign, made sure the gun was safe on the seat beside me against my hip, made sure I could see her plainly in the mirror, and we took off.

• • •

"Maybe I was wrong," she said, in a very small voice.

I was just making my left at Flat-lands Avenue, the nearest police station I knew of being on Glenwood Road the other side of Rockaway Parkway. I finished making the turn before looking into the rearview mirror, where I saw my passenger looking very contrite. She met my eye in the mirror and said, "I'm sorry."

"You're sorry," I said, "You threatened me with a gun, you shot a hole in the roof, you accused me of all sorts of things, and now you're sorry. Sit back!" I shouted, because she'd started to lean forward, her hand reaching for my shoulder, and I didn't trust her an inch. That contrite look and little-girl voice could be all a gag.

She sat back. "It made sense," she said, "before I saw you. Before we had our talk. But now I believe you."

"Sure," I said.

"Because," she said, "if you were having an affair with Louise, and if you did help her kill Tommy, you wouldn't dare leave me alive now. You couldn't take a chance on having me running around loose."

"I can't take a chance on having you running around loose," I said. "That's why we're on our way to the cops."

She acted like she wanted to lean forward again, but controlled herself. "Please don't," she said. "I was desperate, and I did foolish things, but please don't turn me up."

This part of Flatlands Avenue is lined with junkyards with wobbly wooden fences. I pulled to the side of the road, next to one of these fences, and stopped the car. Then I turned around and said to her, "I tell you what. I'll make you a deal."

She got the instant wary look of the gambler in her eye. "What kind of a deal?"

"There's something I want to know," I told her. "You tell me and I'll forget the whole thing. I'll let you out of the cab and that'll be the end of it."

"What do you want to know?" She was still wary.

"I'll give you the background first," I said, and quickly sketched in the incident of Purple Pecunia. I left out the business about the hoods last night, seeing no purpose in opening that can of worms right now, and finished by saying, "So what I want to know is, who do I collect from now that I can't collect from your brother?"

"Oh," she said. "Is that why you've been hanging around the apartment?"

"I haven't exactly been hanging around," I said. "I've been over there a couple times is all."

"Three times yesterday and once today," she said. "I've been waiting in the apartment for Louise to show up so I could confront her---"

"With the gun?"

"With the fact that I know she's guilty," she said fiercely.

"Well, you're wrong," I told her. "Nobody on earth could do an acting job like that. When Tommy's wife saw him dead there, she had hysterics, and I mean hysterics."

"It could have been guilt," she said. "And nervousness."

"Sure," I said. "Only it wasn't."

"Then why did she disappear?"

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe she's staying with some relative, maybe she doesn't want to be around the apartment now."

She shook her head. "No. I called both her brothers and they don't know where she is, either. And I had to make all the arrangements for the funeral and the wake myself."

"Wake? When?"

"It starts this evening," she said. "At six." She looked at her watch.

"Never mind," I said. "Just tell me who Tommy's boss was and where I find him."

"I can't," she said.

"OK, sister," I said, turning around to the wheel again. "It's the hoosegow for you."

"I don't know," she said. "I'd tell you if I knew, honest I would."

"Tommy's sister would know," I said. "Especially if she was as close to him as you claim."

"I didn't claim to be close," she said. "I just came here from Vegas because he was killed."

I turned around again. "You live in Las Vegas?"

"For a couple of years now," she said. "Can I show you something out of my purse?"

"If you move very slow," I said.

She moved very slow, and produced an airline ticket from her purse, which she handed over to me. It was TWA, it was the return half of a round-trip ticket between Las Vegas and New York, it showed she'd come in yesterday morning, and it gave her name as Abigail McKay.

I said, "Abigail?"

"Abbie," she said, "What do people call you?"

"They call me Chester," I said. "I want them to call me Chet, but nobody does."

"I will," she said. "If you don't call me Abigail, I won't call you Chester."

I looked at her in the mirror and I saw she was really trying to be friends.

"It's a deal," I said.

She said, "Would you please don't take me to the police, Chet? If you do, there won't be anybody to look for Tommy's murderer, not anybody at all."

Watching her in the mirror, seeing that her chin was trembling and she was on the verge of tears, I said, "What about the cops? Let them find the murderer."

"Somebody who killed a bookie? Are you kidding? How hard do you think they're going to work?"

"All right, maybe. The police aren't going to work as hard as if it was the governor, I'll grant you that. But what do you know about any of it? You're running around with a lot of dumb ideas in your head, leaping to conclusions, waving a gun around, acting like a nut. You aren't going to solve any murders; all you'll do is get yourself in trouble."

I had my forearm up resting on the top of the seat, and now she leaned forward and rested her hand on my arm, saying, "Will you help me? I'm all alone in the world now, I don't have anybody now that Tommy's dead."

"Frankly," I said, "I don't want to get mixed up in any murder situation, and I don't think you should, either."

"I'm doing it for Tommy," she said, looking at me again. "Because somebody has to and because he was the only brother I had. And because I'm the only one he has."

"OK," I said. "I see your point. But you've got to handle things differently from now on."

"I will," she said. "Believe me, I will."

"I tell you what," I said. "I want to know where to collect my money, you want to know who killed your brother. We'll probably overlap a little, anyway, so I'll help you for a little while. Until either you find out what you want to know or I find out what I want to know. Is it a deal?"

"Definitely," she said, and smiled a glowing smile and stuck her hand out. I took it, and it was cool and smooth and very delicate. "Thank you," she said.

"I haven't done anything yet," I said. "Can I make a suggestion?"

"I wish you would."

"You go to this wake," I said. "Stay there from beginning to end. Check out everybody who comes in, find out who they are. If Tommy's wife shows up, ask her some questions about where she's been. If anybody that Tommy worked for shows up, ask them about where I can get my money. What time is the wake over?"

"Nine o'clock."

"OK. There's a poker game I'm in on Wednesdays, I'll be there by then, I'll give you the number. You can---"

"Do they let girls sit in?"

Surprised, I said, "Well, we've had girls sit in a couple of times."

"I'm not like them," she said. "I promise I'm a good player."

"Not too good," I said, and grinned.

"We'll see," she said. "Do you think they'd mind if I sat in?"

"They won't mind," I said. "You come right along. It's in Manhattan, 38 East 81st Street. Between Park and Madison. The guy's name is Jerry Allen."

"All right. I'll be there around nine-thirty."

"Good. Where do you want to go now?"

"Back to Tommy's place," she said. "That's where I've been staying."

"OK. I'm going to have to run the meter, or a cop is liable to stop us."

"That's all right," she said. "I have money."

"Fine. You already owe me six fortyfive for the trip down." I started the car and the meter and headed up to Rockaway Parkway and made my left to go back to the Belt.

"Oh," she said, as though it had just occurred to her, "and could I have my gun back, please?"

"Ha-ha," I said.

"You mean I can't have the gun back? That's mean, Chet. I need that gun, for my own safety."

"You'll be a lot safer without it," I said. "And so will everybody else." And that was the end of that conversation.

• • •

That evening, I took the 79th Street cross-town bus and walked up to Jerry Allen's apartment. And I do mean up. Jerry lives on the top floor of a five-story building with no elevator. People tend to arrive at his door out of breath.

As I did now. I rang the bell, and it was opened by Jerry himself. He's part owner of a florist shop over on Lexington Avenue, and it's possible he isn't entirely heterosexual, but he isn't obnoxious about it and none of us cares what he does away from the card table, and besides that he's a fish. I think in losing to us and hosting the game, he's sort of paying for the privilege of being accepted by a bunch of real guys, whether he realizes it or not. Anyway, he tends to laugh in an embarrassed way when he loses, and he loses a lot.

Jerry said, "Hi, you're late," and I breathed hard and nodded. He went back to the game and I shut the door behind myself, took off my coat and hung it in the hall closet. Then I went into the living room, where Jerry has a nice round oak table over near the front windows, at which five guys were currently sitting. There were two empty chairs, and they were both between Jerry and Sid Falco, Sid being the guy those hoods had mentioned last night. Feeling suddenly very nervous about being in the same room with Sid Falco, a guy I had known without nervousness for about five years, I sat in the chair closer to Jerry and forced my attention on what was happening at the table.

There was a hand in progress, seven-card stud, which on the fifth card was down to a two-man race, Fred Stehl and Leo Morgentauser. Leo looked like a possible flush, Fred a possible straight. Doug Hallman was dealing. I looked at the hands and the faces and knew that Leo either had it in five or was on his way to buying, and that Fred was hanging in with a four straight that wouldn't ever fill, and even with Sid Falco over there to my right I began to calm down and get into the swing of things.

This twice-weekly poker game had been a Wednesday-and-Sunday institution with us for five or six years now, with only minor changes in personnel all that time. There were five regulars including me in the game these days, plus half a dozen other guys who'd drop in from time to time. Leo Morgentauser, the made flush currently betting up Fred Stehl's unmade straight, was one of the irregulars, a teacher at a vocational high school in Queens, teaching automobiles or sewing machines or something. A tall, skinny, bushy-haired guy with a huge Adam's apple, Leo was married and probably didn't make a very good living, so he seldom came to the game, but when he did, he was usually a winner.

Everybody else at the table tonight was a regular. Fred Stehl, the guy currently head to head with Leo, was a gambling fool; and next to Jerry Allen was the closest thing to a fish among the regulars. He was a fairly consistent loser, maybe four times out of five; but as he would begin to lose, he would also begin to get more cautious, so he rarely lost heavily. The big joke with Fred was his wife, Cora, who was death on gambling and was always trying to track Fred down. Almost every time, she'd call during the game, wanting to know if Fred was there, and Jerry always covered for him. A couple of times, she'd actually showed up at the apartment, but Jerry hadn't let her in, and the last time, over a year ago, she punched him in the nose. It was really very funny, though Jerry, with a nosebleed, hadn't seen the humor in it very much. Fred ran a laundromat on Flatbush Avenue over in Brooklyn, and I guess he had to make a pretty good living at it, because on the average, he had to drop ten or twenty bucks a week at our two games. Also he plays the horses a lot. In fact, it was through him I started placing my own bets with Tommy McKay.

Doug Hallman, currently dealing, was a huge hairy fat man who ran a gas station on Second Avenue, not far from the Midtown Tunnel. He was a blustery sort of player, the kind who tries to look mean and menacing when he bluffs. Otherwise, he was a pretty good poker player and won more often than he lost, and my only objection to him was the 12-for-a-quarter cigars he smoked all the time.

And, finally, there was Sid Falco---thin, serious, narrow-headed, probably the youngest guy at the table. A deadly serious poker player, he was full of the math of the game, the only one at the table who could reel off the odds for making any hand, given any situation and lie of the cards. He played strictly by the book, which meant very conservative, no imagination, and he was a small but consistent winner. Two or three times a night, he'd try a bluff, because the book says you should bluff every once in a while to keep the other players guessing; but his bluffs were always as transparent as wax paper.

The current hand finally finished itself out, Leo's flush winning. Fred didn't even bother to show the straight. He just folded his up cards and pushed them away.

Leo dealt next, seven-card stud again, the game he'd won at. I got a four and nine down and a jack up, three different suits, and folded. I spent the rest of the hand watching Sid Falco, who was nursing a pair of showing queens through a careful methodical hand in which his only competition was Jerry Allen, who looked to have kings up with no pair showing.

So Sid Falco was a mobster. Or worked for a mobster. Or worked for somebody connected with mobsters. Or something. The point was, did he look any different, now that I knew whatever it was I knew about him?

No. He looked like the exact same guy who'd always said he was a salesman for a wholesale-liquor company.

But why didn't he look different to me? Tougher, maybe, or more dangerous, or dirtier, or more mysterious. Something. But he didn't.

In the meantime, Sid and his pair of queens had pushed steadily but moderately through the hand, and at the finish there was no one left but Jerry with his probable kings up. Sid made a limit bet, and Jerry had to stay in and make Sid show the trips, and Sid did. Jerry made that embarrassed unhappy laugh of his, and looked around the table to see if anybody had noticed his failure. We all know that move of his by now, so we were all looking someplace else.

Fred dealt next. Seven-card stud again. Fred was the true gambling fool; he'd go back to the game that bit him time after time till he finally bit it back. This time, I got a three and a jack down and a seven up, three suits again. I folded, naturally, and began to wonder if my luck with Purple Pecunia had been strictly a one-shot. These cards were costing me a quarter a hand.

Jerry took this one, with an eight-high straight that had obviously come in on the seventh card, against Doug Hallman's unimproved aces up. Doug puffed a lot of cigar smoke over that hand but didn't say anything.

Sid was the next dealer. He switched to five-card stud and gave me a jack in the hole, nine on top. I stayed, paired the jack on the fourth card and had only Fred to contend with at the end. Two other jacks had been folded in other hands, which Fred had to be aware of. The highest card he had showing was a ten, so I had a lock, so naturally I bet the limit, which is two dollars; and when he bumped two dollars back to prove he had a pair of tens, I considered doing Leo's Actors Studio bit, but then decided the hell with it and just threw in my two-buck raise. Fred called and I showed him my other jack. "I didn't believe it," he said and showed me his other ten. "I believed that," I said, which was maybe cruel.

Then, as I drew in my first pot of the evening, I said, "You guys hear what happened to Tommy McKay, Monday?" Fred and Doug and Leo all knew Tommy, and Sid and Jerry had both heard us mention him at one time or another.

Doug said, "I been trying to call him."

"He's dead," I said.

None of them had heard. So I told them, and of course no more hands were dealt till I finished. When I told them Tommy had a beautiful sister from Las Vegas who was going to sit in a little later, though, all the other elements in the story suddenly grew very pale. At first the questions had been about Tommy, and then about the guy who'd given me the tip on the horse, but by the end there was nothing but questions about Abbie. "You'll see her," I kept saying. "She'll be here around nine-thirty."

Finally, we got back to the game, and in the next two hours I did very well, indeed. Doug Hallman was having a streak of cards almost as rotten as his cigars; Fred Stehl and Jerry were both chasing too much and staying in hands too long, and Sid was just about holding his own, which meant the money was all coming to Leo and me, and most of it was coming to me. By the time the doorbell rang at a quarter to ten, I was almost 40 bucks to the good, which was fantastic for that game, particularly in only two hours.

The ring had come at one of the odd moments when I wasn't in a hand, so I pushed my chair back and said, "That'll be Abbie now." I left the living room, went to the door and threw it open, and there was Abbie, still in her orange fur and black boots. "Hi, there," I said.

She came in and smiled and panted and waved at her mouth to let me know she couldn't talk yet.

"That's OK," I said. "I understand." I helped her out of the coat, and the boots continued on up under the miniskirt of her baby-blue wool dress. She was a very sexy-looking girl.

"Did you find out anything at the wake?"

"Nothing important. I'll tell you later."

"OK," I said, and led her into the living room to introduce her to the boys, all of whom acted very natural and nonchalant, except that Doug began puffing so much cigar smoke he looked like a low-pressure system, Leo knocked over all his little stacks of chips, Fred managed to kick over his chair when he blurted to his feet, Jerry began to giggle with the kind of unhappy laugh he makes when he loses and Sid started to blink very rapidly as though he was trying a bluff.

Finally, though, everybody settled down. Abbie sat between Sid and me and got ten dollars' worth of chips from Jerry, we filled her in on the house rules, Leo dealt a hand of guts draw, and Abbie took a nice pot with queens over treys. Welcome to the club.

Two hands later, it was her deal. "My favorite game is stud," she said.

Doug, who wanted to make time with this beautiful girl but hadn't yet figured out how to go about it in the middle of a poker game, said, "Five-card or seven-?"

"Five," she said. "Naturally." In the silence following that put-down, she shuffled like a pro, slid Sid the deck to be cut, and fired the cards out like John Scarne. My ace up looked good, but it was the ten in the hole that paired with the fourth card that did the trick, and I raked in a small but pleasant pot. It was then my deal, and it just wasn't possible for me to deal anything but five-card stud.

Nor could anybody else switch, not after that announcement of Abbie's; so for the next hour or so, we played nothing but five-card stud. Abbie did well, playing a fairly conservative game and winning small amounts. My streak slowed a bit but didn't entirely turn off. Leo seemed to be holding his own and Jerry just grew wilder and wilder, like a centrifuge going too fast and spinning all its money away. But the big surprises were Fred and Sid. Fred suddenly settled down and became a tight, sharp, wary, brilliant player, reading bluffs incredibly, betting his hands with the cunning of a tax lawyer, and all in all coming on like a graduate of Gardena. Sid, on the other hand, broke down totally. All math seemed to have left his head, and he played so erratically it was as though he was out of phase with the rest of us and was actually playing his hands five deals too late. Abbie was sitting at his left elbow, and the proximity was obviously more than he could handle. It was a great encouragement to know a gangster could also be human.

Anyway, along about 11 o'clock, at a time when Abbie was just about to deal, Doug asked her what she did for a living in Las Vegas, was she a dancer or what, and she said, "I deal blackjack." And began to deal out the cards for stud.

Talk about a bombshell. Nobody looked at their cards at all, everybody just stared at Abbie.

It was Doug who asked the question in all our minds. Taking the cigar out of his face for once, he said, "Are you by any chance a mechanic?"

She looked around at all of us, and reluctantly she nodded. "I know how to do some things," she said. "I wouldn't do them, I promise, but I do know how."

"Show us some stunts," Doug said. He pushed the cards he'd been dealt over toward her. "Show us how it's done."

"But what about the hand?" she asked.

"The hell with the hand," he said, and the rest of us said yes, the hell with the hand. We all pushed our cards toward Abbie, and she shrugged and picked them up and began to show us things.

Fascinating. She spent half an hour going through her bag of tricks, and it was lovely to watch. She palmed cards, she did fake cuts, she did one-handed cuts, she dealt out hands and then stacked the deck while pulling in the discards and then made the stack survive shuffling and cutting and everything else we could think of. She took an old deck Jerry had around and showed us how to mark it with thumbnail indentations on the edges of the cards while the deck was in play. She showed us how to crimp the deck to get it cut where you wanted.

That was the end of poker for that night. Jerry broke out beer and Scotch and we all sat around and talked about gambling and cheating and one thing and another, cutting up old jackpots as they say, and we had a great time. Even Sid relaxed after a while. Fred's wife, Cora, didn't call, amazingly enough, and that simply rounded out the perfection of the night.

We split up about 12:30, everybody agreeing Abbie should come back Sunday if she was still in town, and then we all went our separate ways.

Abbie drove me home, and when she pulled to a stop in front of my house I said, "Thanks for the lift."

"Any time."

I opened the door, the interior light went on, I leaned toward the opening and somewhere there was a backfire. Almost simultaneously, something in the car went koot and something fluffed the hair on the back of my head.

I looked around, bewildered, and saw a starred round hole in the windshield. "Hey," I said.

Abbie yelled, "Shut the door! The light, the light, shut the door!"

I wasn't thinking fast enough. I looked at her, confused, meaning to ask her what was going on, and then something very hard hit me all around the head and all the lights everywhere clicked out.

• • •

What woke me was Abbie screaming.

I sat up, and I was in a room full of a man with a gun. He was wearing a hat and an overcoat and a gun, and the gun was pointed at me, and his eyes were looking at me, and his eyes appeared to be made of slate.

Abbie screamed again, and something crashed. She was in some other room in what I now recognized was Tommy McKay's apartment, and she was in trouble, but I was convinced I was dead, so I didn't move.

In that other room, something else crashed, and a male voice roared in what sounded like a triplicate combination of anger and surprise and pain. The man with the gun glanced back at the doorway in irritation, then glared at me again and waggled the gun. "Don't move," he said, in a voice that was 40 percent gravel and 60 percent inert materials. "You don't go nowhere, see? Not if you don't want nothing to happen to you."

"I don't want nothing to happen to me," I said, but I don't think he heard me. He had already backed up through the doorway and was standing in the hall. With one last glare and gun waggle at me, he took off toward the living room.

Nothing changed for a minute, the ruckus continued unabated, and then all of a sudden, it went absolutely insane. The crashing around doubled, it tripled, it sounded like Saint Patrick's Day on Third Avenue.

And then, abruptly, silence.

I squinted, as though to hear better. Silence? Silence.

What had happened? What was happening now? Was Abbie all right?

Abbie came hurtling into the room, brought up against the dresser, spun around, and shouted at the guy who'd shoved her, "You stink, you bastard!" She was dressed but disheveled, hair awry, make-up smeared, clothing wrinkled and all twisted around. She was the most insanely beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life.

My old comrade with the gun came through the doorway, pointed the gun at Abbie as though he was pointing a finger at her, and said, "You ain't no lady."

"And you're a gentleman," she snapped. She turned away from him and came over to me. "How are you, Chet?" she said. "Did they do anything to you?"

I was lying flat on my back, sheet and blanket tucked up around my neck. I blinked up at her, and I felt like an absolute lummox. "How are you?" I said. "Did they do anything------"

"Them," she said, with total disdain.

The man with the gun said, "Lady, you're outa your mind. My partner would of been dead within his rights to let you have it. You know that? You know what you done to him, if I'd been in his place I'd of shot you down like some kind of wild beast. I think you're nuts or something."

"You force your way in here------" she shouted, blazing at him, all set to start brawling again, and I could see by his face that what she was going to get this time was at the very least a hit on the head from the gun butt, and I reached out and grabbed her hand and said, "Abbie, cool it."

She tugged, trying to get her hand free. "These people think they can------"

"They can, Abbie," I said. "They've got guns. Don't try their patience."

"That's right," the man with the gun said. "You just listen to him, lady, he's got sense. You been trying our patience, and you shouldn't ought to do that. You should ought to soak your head in some brains for a while and think about things. Like we don't want to give you two any more trouble than we have to, so why make us make things tough on you?"

Movement attracted my attention to the doorway. I blinked.

There was a guy standing there. He was wearing a white shirt, the left sleeve of which was torn off and absolutely gone. Also, several buttons were missing and the pocket was ripped half off and was dangling there. He was wearing black trousers, and the right leg was ripped from knee down to cuff. He had an angry-looking bruise just above his left eye, and he was holding a wet washcloth to his right cheek. He had long black hair in wild disorder on top of his head, like Stan Laurel, and he overall had the stunned look of somebody who's just been in a train wreck.

"Good God," I said.

In a weak and disbelieving voice this apparition said to Abbie, "You chipped my cap."

"Serves you right," Abbie said.

"I don't believe it," he said. He turned to his partner, the man with the gun, and said, "Ralph, she chipped my cap. Right in the front of my mouth." He opened his mouth and pointed at one of his teeth with the hand that wasn't holding the washcloth to his cheek. Trying to talk with his mouth open, he said, "Do you know how nuch that cat cost ne? Do you hathe any idea at aw?"

"You forced your way in here," Abbie told him, "and you deserve whatever you get."

"Ralth," the walking wounded said, still holding his mouth open and pointing to the crippled tooth, "I'n gonna kill her. I'n gonna nurder her. I'n gonna dlast!"

"Get hold of yourself, Benny," Ralph said. "You know what Sol said. He wants to talk to these two."

I said, "Sol? Solomon Napoli?"

Ralph turned and looked at me. "That's the one, pal," he said. He crooked a finger at me. "Time for you to get up outa there," he said. "Sol's waiting."

I let go of Abbie's hand, preparatory to rising, but she grabbed it again, sat on the bed beside me, put her other arm on the pillow around my head, leaned protectively over me so that I was peeking at everybody over her right breast, and turned to Ralph to say, "He's not supposed to move. The doctor said he isn't supposed to move for a week. He was shot last night."

I said, "I was shot?"

"We know," Ralph said. "We saw it happen. That's one of the things Sol wants to talk to him about."

I said, "You saw it happen?"

But I was drowned out by Abbie, saying, "I don't care who wants to see Chet, he can't be moved."

"Shut up, lady," Ralph said. "I've had all of you I'm going to take."

"It's OK, Abbie," I said, struggling to get out from her protective circle. "I feel pretty good now, I could get up. Just so I don't have to move fast or anything, I'll be fine, I know I will." And I sat up.

Abbie touched my bare shoulder. She looked worried. She said, "Are you sure, Chet? The doctor said------"

I said, "What about my clothes?"

"They were all bloody," she said. "I was going to get you some more, but I didn't have time yet."

Ralph went over to the closet, opened it and pulled out some clothing. "How about this stuff?" he said, and tossed it beside me on the bed.

"That's not mine," I said. "That was Tommy's."

"You can wear it," he said. "Be my guest."

Did I want to wear a murdered man's clothing? I didn't think so. I looked at Ralph, feeling very helpless, and didn't say anything. In the meantime, he was going to the dresser and opening drawers. He tossed me underwear and socks and said, "There. Now get dressed."

I said, "Tommy was shorter than me."

"So don't button all the buttons," he said.

I looked at the clothing, at Ralph, at the clothing, at Abbie, at the clothing. There didn't seem to be any choice.

Abbie said, "Chet, are you sure you're up to this?"

I wasn't, but I said, "Sure, I'm sure. I feel fine."

"Get up from there, lady," Ralph said. "Let him up."

Abbie reluctantly got to her feet. She looked at me worriedly and said, "I'll turn my back." She did so, and folded her arms, and said coldly to Ralph, "If anything happens to him because of this, I'll hold you responsible."

"Sure, lady," said Ralph.

I pushed the covers back, surprised at how much they weighed. I put my legs over the side of the bed, stood up and fell down. I had no balance at all, no equilibrium, no control. I just went on over, like a duck in a shooting gallery.

Abbie, of course, heard me hit the floor. She spun around and yelled my name, but what I heard more than that was Benny's exasperated, "He's faking, Ralph. Let's just bump him now."

"I'm all right," I said. "I can do it." I pushed with my hands, my head and torso came up, and then my arms failed and I flopped onto my nose like a fish.

"Goddamn it," said Ralph.

"He can't help it!" Abbie cried. "He's wounded, can't you see that? Do you like seeing him fall on the floor?"

"I do," Benny said. "I'd like to see him fall out a window."

Ralph said, "Shut up, Benny. OK, lady, we'll leave him here. He can talk, can't he?"

"I can talk," I told the floor.

Hands gripped me. I was lifted, the floor receding, and dumped onto the bed like a bag of laundry. I bounced, and just lay there. It must have been Abbie who covered me up.

Ralph said, "Watch them, Benny, but don't do nothing."

Benny growled.

I was rolling over, a slow and painful process. I got over in time to see Ralph leaving and Benny glowering at me.

Abbie said, "Are you hungry?"

"Yes," I said. "I am very hungry."

"I'll get you something," she said, and got up from the bed and started for the door.

Benny blocked the way, saying, "Where do you think you're goin'?"

"To the kitchen," she said coldly.

I said, "Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere."

He glared at me. "You better not," he said. Then, to Abbie he said, "And I got my eye on you."

She disdained to answer. She left the room, and Benny went after her.

Nothing happened for about five minutes, and then Abbie came, carrying a tray and followed by Benny. Benny took the chair in the far corner and Abbie put the tray down on the foot of the bed. She helped me sit up, adjusted the pillows behind me and put the tray on my lap, its little feet straddling my legs.

Clear chicken broth. Buttered toast, two slices. Tea with lemon. A dish of vanilla ice cream.

I ate everything in sight, while Abbie sat on the edge of the bed and watched me in approval.

At one point, taking a break from eating, I said, "How long was I out? This is Thursday, isn't it?"

"Yes. Four o'clock in the afternoon. You slept over thirteen hours. I was afraid you were dying there for a while, you just lay in one place and didn't move at all."

Ralph came in. Abbie turned to him. "What now?"

"We wait," he said.

"For what?"

"For Sol," he said.

I said, "He's coming here? Solomon Napoli?"

"Yeah," said Ralph. "He wants to talk to you."

• • •

By the time the doorbell sounded nearly an hour later, I was about ready to come apart like a broken kaleidoscope. Abbie was sitting beside me on the bed, and I reached out and grabbed her hand, and we gave each other nervous smiles that were supposed to be encouraging, and I began to blink a lot.

There were voices in the hall, and then Ralph came in, and behind him three other guys.

Even in my astonishment, there was no question which of the three was Napoli. The two on either side were just hoods, Benny and Ralph all over again, just better dressed. It was the one in the middle who was Solomon Napoli.

I couldn't help staring at him. He was barely five feet tall, for one thing, the top of his head just about reaching the shoulders of the two guys flanking him. He was dressed very formally, as though on his way to an opera first night. But the most amazing thing was his head, which was too big for his body. Not enough to look deformed, just enough to make him look imposing, commanding, impressive. Leonine, a leonine head, and with the thick mane of hair that goes with it. A square jaw, magnificent white capped teeth, strong level eyes, a healthy hint of tan. He was about 40, with the smooth weathered look of a man who keeps himself in shape with handball and self-esteem.

And he was smiling! He came in smiling like a politician opening a campaign headquarters, his teeth sparkling, his eyes showing bright interest in everything they saw, his stride youthful and determined-without-crabbiness. He came in, and his flankers stopped just inside the door, and he came over to the bed, hand held out, saying to Abbie in a resonant voice, "Miss McKay! How do you do? I thought very highly of your brother. A shame, a shame."

Through my own paralysis, I could see that Abbie, too, was mesmerized. Her hand left mine, she rose uncertainly to her feet, she took his outstretched hand, in a vague and uncertain voice she said, "Uh, thank you. Thank you."

He turned her off, turned me on. You could see him do it. He kept her hand, but he looked past her at me, his eyes and smile full of candlepower, saying, "And how's our patient?"

"OK, I guess," I mumbled.

"Good. Good." He turned me off, turned Abbie on. "My dear, if you'll go into the living room for just a few minutes, Chester and I have one or two things we want to discuss. We won't be long. Ralph."

"Here, boss," said Ralph, and in his saying that, the spell was broken. I had been totally hypnotized by Napoli up till now, his magnetism, his aura, the massive presence with which he filled the room. It wasn't until Ralph said, "Here, boss," that I remembered who this man really was. Solomon Napoli. Gangster.

Ralph led Abbie out of the room, she glancing back at me with a worried look just before going out of sight, and then I was alone with the crocodiles. One of the new hoods brought a chair up beside the bed, Solomon Napoli sat down on it and we were off.

He had turned me on again. "I guess you had a close call, Chester," he said. His smile showed sympathy, but I didn't count on it.

"I guess I did," I said warily.

"Who would take a shot at you, Chester?" he asked, and now his smile implied an urge to be helpful, but I wasn't about to count on that one, either.

"I guess the people Tommy worked for," I said.

"Why would they do that?" His smile was as delicate an instrument as a theramin, and now it projected polite curiosity.

I shook my head. "I don't know. I suppose they think I had something to do with killing Tommy."

Can a smile be threatening? Can it glint as though it would bite? Napoli sat back in the chair and his smile changed again and he said, "Chester, I'm a very busy man. I'm due at the Modern Museum in"---he looked at his watch---"forty minutes for a meeting of the board of trustees. Please just take it for granted we already know your involvement, we already know Frank's involvement, a lot of wide-eyed innocent lying isn't going to get you anywhere. There are a few things I want you to tell me, after which I promise you you will not find me an unreasonable man. You know Walter Droble's people are after you now, it shouldn't take too much intelligence to realize that under my wing is the safest place for you right now."

I closed my eyes. "Oh, go ahead and shoot," I said. "I really can't take any more." And at that moment I think I really meant it.

Napoli said, "Chester, you don't impress me."

I continued to lie there. My eyes continued to be closed.

Napoli, with irritation finally creeping into his voice, said, "This is ridiculous. I have thirty-five minutes to get------Chester, I don't have to give you a break."

"A break?" I said. I didn't open my eyes, because I knew if I was looking at him I wouldn't be able to talk. Keeping my eyes shut and my body still, it was almost like talking on the phone, and I can talk to anybody on the phone. So my eyes were shut as I said, "You call that giving me a break? Getting a lot of wrong ideas into your head about who I am and what I've done, calling me a liar when I just so much as hint at the truth, sending people around to threaten me with guns, you threaten me with your teeth for God's sake, you think------"

"Now just a------"

"No!" I was thrashing around in the bed by now, waving my arms to make my points, but my eyes stayed squeezed shut. "Ever since Tommy was killed," I yelled, "one goddamn fool after another comes after me with guns. Nobody asks me what I'm doing, oh, no, everybody knows too goddamn much to ask me anything, everbody's so goddamn smart. Those clowns in the garage, and then Abbie, and then whoever shot me, and now you. You people don't know what you're doing! You're so goddamn smug, you know------"

"Keep your voice down!"

"The hell I will! I've been pushed around long enough! I've got a------"

I stopped because a hand was clamped over my mouth and I could no longer talk. The hand was also over my nose and I could no longer breathe. My eyes opened.

One of the new hoods was standing over me, his arm a straight line from his shoulder to my face. He was leaning a little, pushing my head deeper into the pillow. I blinked, and looked past his knuckles at Napoli.

Napoli at last had stopped smiling. He was looking thoughtful now, studying me with his arms folded and the side of one finger idly stroking the line of his jaw. He seemed to be thinking things over.

I needed to breathe. I said, "Mmmm, mmm."

"Shut up," he said, carelessly, and went back to thinking.

"Mm, mmm, mmmm," I said.

"Maybe," he said. "Maybe there is a different explanation."

Things were turning a darkish red. There was a roaring deep inside my skull. I began to thrash around like a fish in the bottom of a boat.

Napoli pointed at me the finger with which he'd been stroking himself. "That won't do you any good," he said. "You just be quiet and let me think."

"Mm, mmm, mmmmmmm!" I said.

"We saw you with Frank Tarbok at the garage," he said. "We followed you and the other two from your place. Now you talk about the clowns in the garage as though you don't know Frank, as though you don't work for him, don't know anything about him. Is that possible?"

My head was a balloon, a red balloon, being filled up and up, filled up and up, the pressure increasing on the inside, the pressure increasing too much, the pressure increasing.

The last thing I heard was the balloon exploding.

This is the first of a two-part serial. The conclusion will appear next month.