Somebody Owes Me Money

Conclusion of a New Novel

Synopsis: When this fare gets out of my cab on lower Fifth, he gives me a big tip. Some tip--he tells me to bet on a nag named Purple Pecunia. But the funny thing about this is that I have a hunch the guy is right, so I call Tommy McKay, my bookie, and lay $35 on the nose.

So what happens? I hear on the radio that Purple Pecunia made it home first at 27 to 1. So what happens next? When I go to Tommy's to collect, I find the door open and him dead on the floor, looking like he'd been hit with antiaircraft guns. And just then Tommy's wife comes in and immediately proceeds to get hysterical when she finds out.

At this point, things are not looking too good for me; but when the police come and Detective Golderman takes charge, he lets me go--after a few questions. Easy.

Too easy, as I find out the next night when I get home late. Two very large gentlemen come out of nowhere and invite me to take a ride in their car. We drive into a big garage, and I get taken up to an office where a heavy-set individual wearing a velvet-collared coat and a five-o'clock shadow is sitting at a desk. He wants to know how long I have been working for somebody named Solomon Napoli. And for a minute there, I get a very rough time when I say I never even heard of Mr. Napoli. So he tries "Louise" on me. Who? Louise McKay, Tommy's wife, is who. And this time he seems to believe me when I tell him I met her but that we never had any conversation except when I found Tommy.

By this time, nothing's quite what it seems to be. For instance, my first fare the next day is a real nice-looking blonde, headed for the far reaches of Brooklyn. But does she really want to go to the far reaches of Brooklyn? No, she slicks a gun in the back of my neck at the first opportunity and insists we pull over to the side for a little talk.

She wants to know where Louise is. Furthermore, it develops that she thinks that Louise was the one who hit Tommy and that I am covering up for her. Then finally it comes out that she is Tommy's sister and she has flown in from Vegas with the crazy idea of trying to find his murderer. With a little luck, I'm able to get the gun away, and from then on, things begin to get explained. I find out that her name is Abbie and she finds out that I know as little as she does about what's happened.

So we arrange to meet--after she goes to Tommy's wake that evening--at a certain twice-a-week poker game I always sit in on. When Abbie shows up at the game, she is something of a sensation in her baby-blue minidress, but she is even more of a sensation when she begins to riffle the cards like a pro blackjack dealer, which, as it turns out, she really is.

When we split up, Abbie drives me home. Just as I get out of the car, there is a big bang on my head and all the lights go out. I wake up in Tommy McKay's apartment with a very heavy type pointing a gun at me and Abbie yelling and throwing things around in the next room. For a while, she is ahead on points in an over-the-weight match with another heavy type in there.

But it's not long before these rough people get control of the situation. After they find out that whenever they stand me up I fall down, they put in a telephone call. Solomon Napoli himself arrives. He is a much more soothing type than the others, but he keeps saying strange things like, "You know Walter Droble's people are after you now." And, "Why do you talk about Frank Tarbok as though you don't work for him?" Meanwhile, because a hand is over my mouth and nose, my head is turning into a red balloon, being filled up and up, with more and more pressure. The last thing I heard was the balloon exploding.

How had I gotten so tiny? Swimming upside down in a cup of tea, warm orange-red tea, rolling around, needing air, wanting to get to the surface but sinking instead to the bottom of the cup. White china cup. Looking up through all the tea at the light in the world up there, knowing I had to get out of this cup before I drowned. Before somebody drank me. Holding my breath, orange-red in the face, the weight of the tea too much for me, pressing me down. Straining upward, pushing against the bottom of the cup, and then everything confused. Had the cup broken? I was falling out the side, tea splashing all around me, white cup fragments, falling out, falling down, landing hard on elbow and shoulder and cheek.

I was on the floor surrounded by legs, feet, and even though I was awake now, I cowered as though I was still tiny and the feet would crush me. My left arm was pinned under me, but I managed to get the right arm up over my head.

Then hands were holding me, lifting me, voices were jabbering, and the confusions of the dream faded away, leaving the confusions of reality in their wake. When last I'd heard from the real world, somebody was strangling me.

I was placed on the bed and the covers drawn up over me. People were speaking, but I kept my arm up over my head and didn't look at anything or listen to anything until Abbie touched my shoulder and spoke my name and asked me how I was. Then I came out slowly, warily, like a turtle in a French kitchen, to see Abbie sitting on the bed and leaning over (continued on page 130) Somebody Owes Me Money (continued from page 117) me, with a lot of people I didn't like in the background.

Abbie asked me again how I was, and I muttered something, and the leader of the pack came forward to say, "I want you to know that wasn't intentional, Chester. I don't do business that way."

I looked at him.

"I hope there's no hard feelings," he said, and the expression his face wore now was one of concern.

"I'm all right," I said.

"Good. Then we can get back to what we were talking about. Miss McKay?"

So Abbie squeezed my hand and went away, leaving me once again with Napoli and his two elves. Napoli seated himself in his bedside chair once again and said, "I've been thinking over what you said, and it's entirely possible you're telling the truth. It could be you're just an innocent bystander in all this, you don't work for Droble at all. But if that's true, if you are an innocent bystander, how is it you're underfoot all the time? You found the body, you had a meeting with Frank Tarbok, you kept hanging around this apartment, you're traveling with McKay's sister, you got yourself shot at. An awful lot of activity for an innocent bystander."

"I've been trying to collect my money," I said.

He raised an eyebrow. "Money?"

"I had a bet on a horse and he came in. That's why I came here the time I found Tommy dead, I was coming to get my money."

Napoli frowned. "And all of your activity since then has been concerned with collecting it?"

"Right. With Tommy dead, I didn't know who should pay me. I wanted to ask Tommy's wife, but she's disappeared someplace."

"And the meeting with Tarbok? Didn't you collect your money then?"

"I didn't ask," I said. "I didn't think to ask till it was all over."

The frown deepened, grew frankly skeptical. "Then what did you talk about, you and Frank?"

"He wanted to see me because he wanted to know if I worked for you."

That surprised him, and he actually showed it. "For me?"

"He thought maybe I killed Tommy for you," I said. "So he had those other two guys grab me and take me to him, and he asked me questions. The same as you."

Napoli grew thoughtful again. "So he thought I might have had Tommy taken care of, eh? Mmmm. I wonder why."

"He didn't say," I said.

"But you convinced him," he said. "Convinced him you didn't work for me."

"Sure."

"Then why did he try to kill you last night?"

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe he changed his mind. I don't know."

He sat back, smiling reminiscently. "It's a good thing for you he did," he said.

I wasn't sure I understood. I said, "A good thing he tried to kill me?"

He nodded, still with the reminiscent smile. "If he hadn't," he said, "you'd be dead now."

That didn't make any sense at all. I said, "Why?"

"Because," he said, "I'd ordered you shot. What do you think my people were doing outside your house? They were there to kill you."

I stared at him. A man had just calmly told me to my face that he'd ordered me murdered. What was the correct social response to a thing like that? I just lay there and stared at him.

He was unconcerned. The whole thing struck him as no more than amusing. Mildly amusing. "And the funny part of it is," he said, incredibly enough, "I was going to have you killed for the same reason as Walt Droble. I figured you'd killed McKay, you were working under Frank Tarbok."

"I wasn't. But even if I was, why should you care?"

"Frank Tarbok," he said, "works for Walter Droble. Walt is what you might call a competitor of mine. There are territories he has, there are territories I have. For some time, there've been a few territories in dispute between us."

"And Tommy was in the middle?"

"Not exactly. McKay worked for Droble but was also in my employ. I am nearly ready to make a move I've been planning for some time, and McKay was a part of that move. You'll forgive me if I don't get more specific."

"That's all right," I said quickly. "I don't want to know too much."

"That's wise," he agreed, smiling at me, pleased with me. He looked at his watch and said, "I must be off. You take it easy now."

"I will," I said.

He got to his feet. "Get well soon," he said, and smiled, and left.

• • •

After three days of uninterrupted recuperation, I awoke one afternoon to hear voices from the living room. I was much healthier by now. I got out of bed, dressed hurriedly and walked down the hall to the living room, where Frank Tarbok was standing and talking, Louise McKay was standing and talking, and Abbie was standing and talking.

Maybe I was still asleep. I said, "Hey," and several other things, trying to attract everybody's attention, and then I realized I was standing and talking like everybody else, so I said, "Oh, the hell with it," and went away again. If the world wanted to be crazy, I could he crazy, too. With Frank Tarbok and Louise McKay actually standing and talking in the living room, I went out to the kitchen and made myself a liverwurst sandwich. I also heated the coffee, a pot of which we kept permanently on the stove, since both Abbie and I were endless coffee drinkers.

I was sitting at the kitchen table, eating liverwurst, drinking coffee and reading the News, when they came looking for me. Abbie came in first, the other two behind her. She said, "Chet? Arc you out of your mind?"

"Murmf," I said, with a mouthful of liverwurst. I also shook my head, meaning no.

"Don't you see who's here?" she de manded, and actually pointed at Frank Tarbok as though she thought I couldn't see him for myself, standing there as big and ugly as life.

I nodded, pointed at my mouth and held my hand up to ask for a minute's grace. Then I chewed rapidly, swallowed, helped the food along with a swig of coffee, swallowed again, burped slightly and said, "Yes. I see him. I see the two of them."

"I don't understand you," she said. "You're just sitting there."

"When I woke up," I told her, "and I saw Frank Tarbok there in the living room, I did some of the most beautiful terror reactions you ever saw. I carried on like the heroine of a silent movie, and nobody paid any attention. So I decided the hell with everybody, and I came in here and made myself a sandwich. If you're all willing to pay attention now, I am prepared to fall on the floor, or scream, or beg for mercy, or try babbling explanations, or whatever you think the circumstances call for. But I'll be damned if I'll perform without an audience." And I took another bite of liverwurst sandwich.

Abbie just stared at me, openmouthed. It was Tarbok who spoke next, saying in that heavy voice of his, "Conway, for somebody who don't know nothing about nothing, you do keep turning up."

I pushed the liverwurst into one cheek. I said, "Up until now, I thought it was you. Or somebody working for you. But here you are, and you aren't doing anything, so now I don't know. Unless maybe you've changed your mind since Wednesday."

"Wednesday?" His face was too square and blocky and white and blue-jawed and heavy to manage very much expressiveness, but he did use it now to convey a sort of exasperated bewilderment. "What do you mean, Wednesday?"

I pointed the sandwich at him. "Did you," I asked him, "or any other employee of Walter Droble's, or any friend (continued on page 205) Somebody Owes Me Money (continued from page 130) of yours or Walter Droble's, or Walter Droble himself, or any ally of the same, take a shot at me Wednesday night?"

He squinted, as though there were suddenly a lot of cigarette smoke between us. "Take a what?"

"A shot," I said. I used the sandwich for a gun. "Bang, bang." I said, and pointed with my other hand at the healing scar on the side of my head.

The heavy face made a heavy smile. "Conway," he said, "if I'd took a shot at you, it would have got you a little bit to the right of that."

"All right," I said. "It wasn't Napoli or any of his people and it wasn't----"

"Who says it wasn't Napoli?"

"Napoli says it wasn't Napoli."

His head leaned forward, as though to hear me better. In a soft voice he said, "Solomon Napoli?"

"Of course."

"He told you it wasn't him? Personally he said so?"

"It's a long story," I said. "I don't want to go into it now."

"I'll tell you the reason I'm asking," he said. "When we had our talk last week, you said you didn't know Sol Napoli. And I believed you. And now you say he told you personally he didn't order you rubbed out."

"Oh, really, Frank!" Louise McKay suddenly said, her voice dripping with scorn. "Who are you trying to kid? Why go on with it? Leave these people alone."

Immediately he turned on her. "I'm done telling you, Louise," he said. "You got one hundred percent the wrong idea. Now lay off."

"You killed my husband," she said, very bitterly, and Abbie and I exchanged quick glances.

"I didn't," he said, his heavy voice almost a physical weight in the room. "Any more than I shot at this schlimazel here."

"You did."

Abbie said to him, "Did you?"

He looked at her with a kind of sullen surprise, like a lion who's just been poked with a stick through the bars of the cage. Don't people realize he's the king of beasts and has big teeth? He said, "You, too?"

"I'm Tommy's sister," she said. "I want to know who killed him."

Louise McKay said, "Well, there he is, honey, take a look at him," and pointed at Tarbok.

Tarbok rose up on his toes, as though to recapture his temper, which he was about to lose out through the top of his head. I said, as calmly and nonchalantly as I could, "Women are like that, Tarbok. Abbie thought I did it, for a while."

He settled down again, coming off his toes, his fist slightly uncurling. Turning as slowly as Burt Lancaster about to make a plot point, he said, "She did? How come?"

"Everybody did, at one time or another," I said. "You thought I maybe had something to do with it, Napoli thought so, Abbie thought so. For all I know, the cops thought so."

Tarbok leaned forward, the hand that had been a fist now supporting his weight on the tabletop. "Why is that, Conway?" he said. "How come everybody thinks you did for McKay?"

"Everybody had different reasons." I said. "You remember yours. Abbie thought I was having an affair with Mrs. McKay and killed Tommy so we could be together."

"How come Sol Napoli thought it was you?"

"He thought you people found out Tommy had secretly gone over to his side, and you hired me to kill him."

Tarbok stared at me. The silence suddenly bulged. Tarbok said, "Who did what?"

"Tommy was secretly on Napoli's side. Napoli told me so him----"

"That's a lie!"

I looked at Louise McKay. "I'm sorry, Mrs. McKay," I said. "All I know is what I was told." I looked back at Tarbok. "And why would Napoli be involved if it wasn't true?"

Tarbok said, "Don't nobody go nowhere."

• • •

Waller Droble.

Now, Walter Droble was more like it. A stocky 50ish man of medium height with a heavy jowly face, graying hair brushed straight back, wearing a slightly rumpled brown suit, he looked like the owner of a chain of dry cleaners. No, he looked like what he was, the kind of mobster executive who shows up on televised Congressional hearings into organized crime.

He smoked a cigar, of course, and he viewed me with unconcealed suspicion and distaste. His attitude made it plain he was used to dealing at a higher level.

He said, "What's this about McKay?"

The three of us were sitting at the kitchen table. Droble's bodyguards having joined the ladies in the living room. I'd cleared away the coffee cup and the remains of the liverwurst sandwich--except for a few crumbs--and, except for the refrigerator turning itself on and off every few minutes, you could sort of squint and make believe you were in an actual conference room somewhere in Rockefeller Center.

So I told Walter Droble about Tommy McKay.

When I was done, he looked away from me at last and frowned down, instead, at his cigar. He stayed that way for a hundred years or so, and then looked back at me again and said, "You know why I believe you?"

"No." I said.

"Because I don't see your percentage," he said. "I don't see where it makes you a nickel to convince me McKay had sold me out. That's why I believe you."

"That's good," I said.

"The only question is, how come you been in the middle of it all along?"

I said, "I've been meaning to talk to you about that," and I then proceeded to tell him about my $930, finishing, "So you're the one I should talk to about it, I guess."

Droble frowned. "What about it?"

"I want to collect it. You still owe it to me."

He shook his head. "Not on your life," he said. "That money was turned over to McKay. As far as the organization is concerned, you've been paid."

I said, "Wait a second, this might be important. Are you sure he got it? Are you sure the money was actually paid to him?"

"Our courier got here at five thirty-five," Droble told me. "We already checked that out."

I said, "Are you sure? What about this courier?"

"He's my son-in-law," Droble said dryly.

"What happened to the money afterward?"

"Gone," Droble said. "Our cop on the scene told us the bundle wasn't here."

"How much can you trust him?" I asked.

"He picks up no percentage in lying on that one," Droble said. "If the money was here, the cops would have picked it up and divvied it, and our cop would of told us so. There wouldn't be any question about us getting it back or anything."

"So the murderer took it with him."

"Right," Droble said. "So there's your answer. Go find the killer and collect your nine hundred from him."

"I don't think that's fair," I said. "I made my bet in good faith, and just because you have an administrative problem inside your organization is no reason I should----"

"Administrative problem!"

"What else do you call it? I didn't get my money because somebody in your organization lost it in transit. It should be up to you to make it good."

"You want to lake us to court?" he asked me.

"Oh, come on," I said. "That money's important to me."

"It isn't the money," he said, "it's the precedent. We don't pay off twice, and that's all there is to it. Look, the other big winner that day didn't come squawking, he understood the situation. Why don't you?"

"Another big winner?" I said.

"Yeah. Another guy had the same horse as you, only he had a hundred on it. That's almost three grand."

"Who was he?"

"What difference does it make?" Droble said.

"I don't know, I'm just asking. Who was he?"

Droble shrugged in irritation. "I wouldn't know. McKay would have the name, it might be in his records around here some----"

He stopped. He looked wide-eyed. He glanced at Tarbok, who looked back in bewilderment and said, "Walt?"

"I'll be a son of a bitch," Droble said. "That's what the bastard was doing for Napoli! He was robbing me blind!"

I was happy to see Tarbok didn't get it any more than I did. He said, "How do you figure that, Walt?"

"I remember," Droble said, "Higgins in accounting said it to me a couple months ago, how McKay had a couple of consistent winners, guys who'd pick two, three horses a week, long shots. Cleaning up. McKay was actually running at a loss because of those guys, but it disappeared in the over-all accounting picture. Don't you see it, Frank? The bastard was past-posting us!"

I grinned. How lovely. Napoli, in other words, had been feeding Tommy the names of one or two good money winners a day, getting the information to Tommy right alter the race, before the news would be on the wires. Then Tommy would make those bets for nonexistent players, and probably he and Napoli split the proceeds. A nice way for Napoli to hit his competition in the cash register and build up his own funds for when the open warfare started. Particularly if Napoli had more than one of Droble's bookies doing the same thing.

I said. "Mr. Droble, if it wasn't for me, you would never have found out about this. Napoli was suborning your organization from the bottom and financing it with your own money. Now you know about it and you can do something about it, and if it wasn't for me, you'd have gone under. Now, if that isn't worth nine hundred thirty dollars, I don't know what----"

"Will you shut up about that lousy nine hundred?" Droble was angry and worried and in no mood to be fair about things.

The doorbell rang.

I said. "I'll get it," and got to my feet. As I left the room, Droble started to say something to Tarbok about having the accounting department check all the other retail bookies.

I was really angry, and there wasn't a thing I could do about it. To be too cheap to pay me my money, when in reality he owed me a heck of a lot more than that. Boy, some people are really pigs.

I looked through the peephole in the front door, and there was Solomon Napoli himself, with several tough-looking types behind him.

What did I owe any of these clowns? The debts were all the other way, it seemed to me. I opened the door and bowed them in with a flourish. "Come on in, fellas," I said. "You're just in time for the punch."

• • •

Did you ever see two cats meet unexpectedly coming around a corner or through a doorway? Then I don't have to describe the meeting between Walter Droble and Solomon Napoli. Or how full the hall became of assorted henchmen, with Napoli's commandos crowding in from outside and Droble's irregulars hurrying down from the living room.

I slithered back into the kitchen and over to the far side of the refrigerator--wanting to be out of the line of fire in case there was a line of fire--from where I watched the opening stages of the drama.

Droble had leaped to his feet, of course, the minute Napoli had appeared in the kitchen doorway, and for what seemed several years they just stood glaring at each other, both in a hall crouch, hackles rising everywhere, like the opening of the gun-duel scene in a Western movie. There was noise and commotion out in the hall from the rival gangs of extras, but that all seemed to be happening in a different world, as though a thick pane of glass separated this room from the planet Earth as we know it. Frank Tarbok had stayed exactly where he was, seated at the table, hands in plain view on the tabletop.

Droble spoke first: "You've been past-posting me, you son of a bitch."

Napoli, small and dapper and vicious, said, "But you were a real boy scout in that East New York business, weren't you"

"If you hadn't pulled that stunt with Griffin, nothing would have happened in East New York."

Napoli was about to reply, but Tarbok said, "Walt. Remember the civilian."

I said, "Well." and put a horrible smile on my face. "Here's a chance for all you people to settle your differences. All you do is make trouble for each other when you argue like this, and New York ought to be big enough for everybody. And here's a perfect opportunity to sit down and discuss things and work everything out so everybody's satisfied. Mr. Napoli, why don't you take my chair, that one there, and I'll just go wait in the living room. I know you won't want any outsider listening in. So I'll just, uh, go on into, uh, the living room now, and if you want to talk to me later on," as I started moving, slowly but with a great show of the confidence I didn't feel, toward the doorway. "I'll be right in there, on tap, ready to help out any way I can," as I edged around Napoli, talking all the time through the ghastly smile painted on my face, "and looking forward to hearing that you two have ironed out your differences, buried the, uh, settled everything to your mutual ..." and through the doorway, and out of sight.

I got past the last of the heavies and continued on to the living room, where Abbie and Mrs. McKay were sitting now alone at opposite ends of the room, and fell in nervous paralysis into the nearest empty chair. " Uhhhhhh," I said, and let my arms hang over the side.

Abbie hurried to my side and whispered, "What's going on?"

"Summit meeting." I said. I look a deep breath and sat up and wiped my brow. "Napoli and Droble are talking things over in the kitchen."

We looked at one another. We looked at the hallway.

"Maybe we ought to get out of here," she whispered.

"Have you seen lately what's between us and the door?"

She leaned closer to me. "Fire escape."

"Where does it go?" I whispered.

"Away from the apartment," she whispered.

"That's a good place," I whispered. "Come on."

• • •

Detective Golderman's house was a nice white clapboard Cape Cod on a quiet side street in Westbury. In the city there was practically no snow at all, but out here in the suburbs there was plenty of it, on lawns and vacant lots and piled up flanking driveways.

It was fully night by now, of course, but a light was shining beside the front door. We got out of the warm cab and hurried, shivering, through the needle-cold air up the walk to the door. I rang the bell and we stood there flapping our arms until at last it opened.

Detective Golderman was in tan slacks and green polo shirt and white sneakers, and he looked very summery and relaxed, "Well, well," he said.

"I came to tell you a long story," I said.

"Then you'll want a drink," he said. "Come along." And he turned away.

Abbie and I looked at each other, shrugged and followed him. We went through a living room and dining room that looked like department-store displays, and entered a hallway with duck-shooting prints on the walls, where he opened a door and gestured for us to precede him down the stairs.

"This is my pride and joy," he said, coming alter us and shutting the door. "Just got it finished last fall."

A basement game room. Would you believe it? Knotty-pine walls, acousticaltile ceiling, green indoor-outdoor rug on the floor. A dartboard. A ping-pong table. A television-radio-record-player console next to a recessed shelf containing about 100 records. And, of course, a bar.

You know the kind of bar I mean, I hope. The kind of bar I mean is the kind of bar that has all those things all over it. A little lamppost with a drunk leaning against it. Electrified beer signs bouncing and bubbling and generally carrying on. Napkins with cartoons on them. Funny stirrers in a container shaped like a keg. Mugs shaped like dwarfs.

"Sit down," Detective Golderman said, going around behind the bar. "What's your pleasure?"

He made our drinks, poured himself a short brandy, took a sip, made a face, leaned his elbows on the bar and said to me. "Well. now. I believe you're here to tell me something, Chester."

"I'm here to tell you everything," I said, and I did.

He listened quietly, interrupting only once, when I suggested that I'd been shot by the same person who shot Tommy, and added, "Using the same gun."

Then he said, "No, not the same gun. We found that one the same day McKay was killed."

"You did?"

"Yes, in a litter basket just down on the corner. No fingerprints, naturally."

"Naturally."

"And it's a lucky thing for you it wasn't the same gun." he said. He gestured at my wound and said. "It would have made a lot more of a mess than that. It was a 45 automatic. All it would have had to do was brush your head like that and you'd still be looking for the lop of your skull."

"Don't talk like that." I said, and put my hand on the top of my skull, glad I knew where it was.

"Anyway." he said. "Go on with it."

So I went on with it, and when I was done he said. "Chester, why didn't you simply come to me in the first place and tell me the truth? You could have saved yourself an awful lot of trouble."

"I suppose so," I said.

"Now you've not only got two complete gangs of racketeers after you." he said, "you've got a pretty violent amateur killer after you as well."

I said. "Amateur?"

"Definitely." he said. "Bears all the earmarks. Undoubtedly fired in anger when he killed McKay. And he used dumdum bullets. Professionals don't have to do that, their aim is too good. And they prefer to avoid excess mess. Anger again. Some sorehead sitting at his kitchen table, muttering to himself while scoring those bullets, not really sure whether he'd ever use them on anybody or not."

"But how would he know about doing it?"

"How do you know about it?" he asked me.

I shrugged. "I don't know. Movies or television, I suppose."

"Exactly," he said.

"The question is," Abbie said, "can you help us at all?"

"You want the murderer found." he said. "And you want both gangs off your necks."

"Please," I said.

"Let me make a phone call or two. I'll be right back."

Abbie said, "You aren't going to tell your superiors where we are, are you? We don't want police protection, not regular police protection."

He smiled at her. "Worried that somebody could be bought off? You might be right. Don't worry, I'll take care of you myself."

"Thank you." she said.

"Not at all." Coming out from behind the bar he said. "If you want refills, help yourself. I'll try not to be long."

He left, and Abbie swung around on her stool to look at the length of the basement. "Can you believe this room?" she said.

"I bet you." I said, "if you were to burrow through that wall over there and keep going in a straight line across Long Island, you'd go through a good three hundred basement rooms just exactly like this one before you reached the ocean."

"No bet." she said. "But where do they get the money? Golderman must have put his salary for the next twenty years into this place."

"Fourth mortgage," I said. Then I said, "Good Lord!"

She looked at me. "What's the matter?"

"It seems to me I remember Walter Droble saying something about one of the cops on the case being his man on the scene."

"You mean--Golderman?"

"Maybe he didn't have to take out a fourth mortgage after all." I said.

"Oh." she said.

"Who do you suppose he's calling right now?" I asked.

"Oh. my Lord!" she said, and spun around on the stool. "There's always a beige wall phone in places like this," she said.

"I already looked." I told her. "This is the exception to the rule."

"Unless----" She hopped down off the stool and walked around behind the bar, saving, "Sometimes they put it under----Here it is." She lifted a beige phone and put it on the bar.

"Gently." I said.

"Naturally."

Slowly, inchingly, she lifted the receiver. I could suddenly hear tinny voices. Abbie lifted the phone to her ear, put her hand over the mouthpiece and listened. Gradually her eyes widened, staring at me.

I made urgent hand and head motions at her. demanding to know who it was, what was going on. She made urgent shakes of the head, letting me know I'd have to wait. But I kept it up, and finally, she mouthed, with exaggerated lip movements, Frank Tar-bok.

"Oh," I said, aloud, and she frantically shook her head at me. I clapped my hand over my mouth.

Abbie carefully and wincingly hung up the telephone, put it quickly away under the counter and hurried around to sit down beside me at the bar again, saying under her breath, "He doesn't want any trouble here, his wife doesn't know anything about anything. He's supposed to get us out of the house and take us to a rendezvous. A house in Babylon."

"Then what?" I asked, though I didn't really have to.

"Tarbok started to say something about the waterfront being a handy place." Abbie said, "and Golderman broke in and said he didn't want to know anything about anything like that."

We heard the door open at the head of the stairs. Gelling off the stool. I said. "When he's sitting down, you distract him."

"What are you going to do?"

There was no time to answer. Golderman was coming down the stairs. I shook my head and ran around behind I he bar. Scotch. Scotch. Here it is. Black & White, a nice brand. A full quart.

Golderman was at the foot of the stairs. I gulped what was left of the Scotch and soda in my glass, and was leisurely pouring myself a fresh drink when Golderman came over to the bar. "Well, well." he said. '"You the new barman, Chester?"

"That's me," I said. "What's yours?"

He sat down on a stool. "I'll just take my brandy, if I may."

"Sure thing." I slid his brandy glass over to him. "What's the situation?"

"Well, it's been taken out of my hands," he said. "The captain's going to want to talk to you two. In the morning. In the meantime, he refuses to let me keep you here."

"Oh. boy." I said.

"What does he expect us to do tonight?" Abbie asked him.

"It just so happens," he said, "that my wife's brother isn't home right now. He works for Grumman; they have him and his whole family in Washington for three months. I have the keys to his house, there's no reason you can't stay there tonight."

"Where's the house?"

"In Babylon," he said. "Not very far from here."

"Can you give me directions?"

"Oh, I'll drive you over." he said.

"I have my own car out front." I said.

"You'd better leave that here for tonight. The captain was explicit that I shouldn't give you two the opportunity to change your minds and take off again. I'll run you over there, it won't be any trouble at all."

"I hope there's no hurry," I said, lifting the bottle of Black & White. "I was just about to make myself a second drink."

"Go right ahead." he said.

Abbie got down off the stool and started walking away toward the other end of the room, saying, "Is that a color-television set?"

Golderman swung around on his stool to watch her. "Yes, it is," he said, and I bonked him with the Black & White.

•••

We were out of the house and halfway to the cab when two cars squealed to a stop in the middle of the street and burly guys came piling out all the doors. I grabbed Abbie's hand and we took off around the side of the house, heading for the back, snow at once filling my shoes.

There was no shooting, and not even very much shouting. I suppose in a quiet neighborhood like this, they would have preferred to take us without calling a lot of attention to themselves.

It was a cloudy moonless night, but there was enough spill from the back windows of the house to show me a snowy expanse of back yard leading to a bare-branched hedge that looked like a lot of scratched pencil marks dividing this yard from the one on the other side.

There was no choice, and when you have no choice it greatly simplifies things. You don't slow down to think it over at all, you just run through the hedge. It rips your trousers, it gashes your shin, it removes the pocket of your jacket, but you run through it.

I looked back across the hedge, and they were right there, on the other side of it. In fact, one of them made a flying leap over the hedge, arms outstretched, and I just barely leaped clear of his grasping fingers. Fortunately, his toes didn't quite clear the hedge, so the beauty of his leap was marred by a nose-dive finish as he zoomed, forehead first, into the snow. The last I saw of him he was hanging there, feet jammed into the lop of the hedge and face jammed into the ground, while his pals, ignoring him, pushed and shoved through the hedge on both sides of him, trying to catch up with their quarry, which was us.

And which was gone. Hand in hand again, we pelted across the snowy back yard, around the corner of the house and out to a street exactly like the one Detective Golderman's house fated on, except that it didn't have my cab parked on it.

Abbie gasped, "Which way?"

"How do I know?"

"Well, we better decide fast," she said. "Here they come."

Here they came. There we went. I took oil to the right for no reason other than that the street light was closer in that direction.

We ran three blocks, and we were beginning to gasp, we were beginning to falter. Fortunately, the mob behind us was in no better shape than we were, and when Abbie finally pulled to a stop and gasped, "I can't run anymore," I looked back and saw them straggled out over the block behind us, and none of them could run anymore, either. The one in front was doing something between a fast walk and a slow trot, but the rest of them were all walking, and the one at the end was absolutely dragging his feet.

So we walked. I had a stitch in my side myself, and I was just as glad to stop running for a while. We walked, and whenever one of them got closer than half a block away, we trotted for a while. But what a way to escape.

Finally I said. "Doesn't Westbury have a downtown?" We'd traveled six or seven blocks now, three running and the rest walking, and we were still in the same kind of genteel residential area.

"There must be something somewhere." Abbie answered. "Don't talk, just keep walking."

"Right."

So we kept walking, and lo and behold, when we got to the next corner. I looked down 10 the left and way down there I saw the red of a traffic light and the blue of a neon sign. "Civilization!" I said. "A traffic light and a bar."

"Let's go."

We went. We walked faster than ever, and we'd gone a full block before any of our pursuers limped around the corner. I looked back and saw there were only four of them now, and seven had started alter us, so it looked as though we were wearing them away by attrition. I'd seen two quit earlier, falling by the wayside, sitting down on the curb and letting their hands dangle between their knees. Now a third must have done the same thing.

No. All five had been fine before we'd turned the corner, they'd been striding along like a V.F.W. contingent in the Armed Forces Day parade. So where had the fifth one gone?

Could he be circling the block in some other direction, hoping to head us off?

"Oh," I said, and stopped in my tracks.

Abbie stared at me. "Come on, Chet," she said, and tugged.

I came on. I said, "One of them went back for a car."

She glanced over her shoulder at them, and said. "Are you sure?"

"I'm positive. The momentum of the chase kept them going this long, but sooner or later one of them had to remember they had wheels back there in front of Golderman's house. So one of them just went back for a car."

She looked ahead at that distant red light and distant blue light. "How much time do we have?"

"I don't know. He's tired, he'll be walking, it's about seven blocks. But we don't have forever."

"We should have gone Zigzag," she said. "Turned a lot of corners. That way maybe they'd be lost by now, and they wouldn't be able to find their way back to the cars."

"Sorry I didn't think of it sooner," I said.

"I'm sorry we don't have my gun," she said bitterly. "We could use it right now."

"Maybe one of them back there has it." I said.

"Where would one of them get it?" she asked. She was being exasperating.

"Out of my pocket." I said.

"None of those people took it," she said. "It was gone before you got to the apartment."

I actually slopped and stared. "Before?"

She yanked my arm to get me moving again. "Of course," she said. "I searched you in the car, right after you were shot."

"I had it when I got to the game, I remember feeling the weight of it in my pocket when I was going up all those stairs."

"Then it had to be somebody at the game who look it," she said.

"And I'll tell you something else," I said. "It was your gun that shot me in the head."

"What makes you say that?"

"Golderman told us they found the gun that killed Tommy. He also said it was an amateur. So where's an amateur gonna get another gun in a hurry when he decides he'll have lo kill again? From the victim!"

"But why do you think it was the same gun?"

"First." I said, "because our gun was stolen the same night. Second, because the job was done by an amateur who wasn't going to have ready access to a whole arsenal of guns. And third, because Golderman told us I was shot by a smaller, lighter gun than the one used on Tommy, which is an accurate description of that gun of yours."

"But my gun always misses to the left, and he just nicked you on what was his right."

"Of course," I said. "It should have been obvious all along."

"What should have been obvious all along?"

"He was shooting at you."

"Now wait a minute!"

"Abbie, think about it. What did we tell the guys at that game? That you were Tommy's sister, and you came to New York because he was dead, and because you didn't have any faith in the police to find your brother's murderer, you were going to look for him yourself. You. not me. All I ever said I was alter was my nine hundred dollars."

She was shaking her head. "I wasn't the one who was shot, chet, you were."

"Because your goddamn gun shoots crooked."

"We aren't even sure it was my gun."

"I am," I said. "I'll tell you what I'm sine of. I'm sine I was shot with your gun. I'm sine the bullet was meant for you instead of me. And I'm one hundred percent positive that Tommy's murderer is one of the guys at that poker game. You don't know what a relief it is to know it isn't me that guy is after."

"That's nice." she said. "It's a relief to know he's after me instead, is that it?"

"I know how that sounded----"

"Well, what I've got after me." she said, "is one poorly armed amateur, but what you've got after you, buddy, is an army."

"Oh, for Pete's sake," I said. "We've been forgetting." I looked over my shoulder and said, "Time for us to run."

"Are they close?"

"One is," I said, and it was true, one of them was less than half a block back. About three houses away, in fact, so close that when we began to stagger into a sort of falling weaving hall trot, we could clearly make out the words he spoke, even though he was gasping while saying them.

We ran to the next intersection, and across, and I looked back, and he was walking again, holding his side. He shook his fist at me.

Abbie said. "Did you hear what he said he was going to do to us?"

"He didn't mean it." I said, "just a quick bullet in the head, that's all we'll get."

"Well, that's sure a relief." she said, and when I looked at her to see if she was being sarcastic, I saw that she was.

How far were those blasted lights? Maybe four blocks away. Thank God it was all level flat ground. I don't know about the mob behind me. but a hill would have finished me for good and all.

We went a block more and came suddenly to railroad tracks. Automatic gates stood open on either side. I said, "Hey! Railroad tracks!" I stopped.

Abbie pulled on me. "So what? come on, Chet."

"Where there's railroad tracks," I said, "there's a railroad station. And trains. And people."

"There's a bar right down there, Chet," she said.

"And there's five guys behind us. They might just decide to take us out of a bar. But a railroad station should be too much for them." I looked both ways, and the track simply extended away into darkness to left and right, with no station showing at all.

"Which way?" Abbie said. "I suppose we have to do this, even though I think it's wrong."

"This way," I said, and turned left.

There was an eruption of hollering behind us when we made our move. We hurried, spurred on by all that noise, but it was tricky going on railroad ties and we just couldn't make as good time as before. We tired walking on the gravel beside the tracks, but it had too much of a slant to it and we kept tending to slide down into the knee-deep snow in the ditch. so it was the ties for us.

Abbie, looking over her shoulder, gasped, "Here they come."

"I never doubted it for a minute."

It was getting darker, away from the street. There should be another cross street up ahead, but so far, I didn't see it. And in the darkness, it was increasingly difficult to walk on the ties.

Abbie fell, almost dragging me down with her.

I bent over her, heavily aware of the hoods inching along in our wake. "What happened?"

"Damn," she said.

"Yeah, but what happened?"

"I turned my ankle."

"Oh, boy," I said. "Can you walk?"

"I don't know."

Light far away made me look in the direction we'd come from. "You better try," I said. "Here comes a train."

I saw the engineer of the train looking at us in open-mouthed bewilderment. His big diesel engine trundled by, and he looked down at the top of our heads, and I'm sure he kept looking back at us after he'd gone on by. I'm sure of it, but I didn't look to check. I saw a chrome railing coming toward us, and farther on I saw the first of the hoods, hitching a ride, just the way I wanted us to.

I had one arm around Abbie's waist, holding tight. She had both arms around my neck. I was about as nimble as a man in ankle chains wearing a strait jacket, but if I didn't connect right with that chrome railing, it was all over.

Here it came. Here it was.

I stuck my free hand out, grabbed that bar and held on.

The train took us away.

Funny how fast it was going all of a sudden. And my feet were dragging in the gravel, while simultaneously my arm was being pulled out of its socket. I pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and Abbie babbled a million things in my ear, and I finally got my right foot up onto that narrow ledge of platform, and then it was possible to get the rest of me up onto the train, and there I stood, with Abbie hanging onto me as I held onto the train by one hand and one foot.

Something went zzzt.

That louse hanging onto the next car was shooting at us!

"Abbie!" I shouted. "They're shooting at us! Get in between the cars!"

"How?"

"I don't know! Just do it!"

So she did it, I don't know how. It involved putting her elbows in my nose, one at a time, and spending several hours standing on my foot--the one foot I had attached to the train--but eventually she was standing on something or other between the cars, gasping and panting but alive.

So was I, for the moment. There'd been several more zzzts and a ping or two, but the train was rocking back and forth so much it would have been a miracle if he'd hit me. I was a moving target and he was a moving shooter, and since we were on different cars, our movements were not exactly synchronized.

Still, I wasn't all that happy to be out there in the open with somebody shooting bullets at me, no matter how much the odds were in my favor. Some gambles I'd rather not take. So I swung around the edge of the car and joined Abbie amidships.

It was very strange in there. We had three walls and no floor. A sort of accordion-pleated thing connected the end doorways of the two cars, so we couldn't get inside, but, fortunately, the ends of the cars were full of handles and wheels and ladder rungs to hold onto, and there was a narrow lip along the bottom edge of each car to stand on, so it was possible to survive, but very scary to look down between your legs and see railroad ties going by at 20 or 30 miles an hour under your heels. I spent little time looking down.

In fact, I spent more time looking up. A metal ladder ran up the back of the car, and I wondered if we'd be safer on top than here. I called to Abbie, "Wait here! I'm going up!"

She nodded. She looked bushed, and no wonder.

I clambered up the ladder, my arms and legs feeling very heavy, and at the top, I discovered that the top of a railroad car sways a lot more than the bottom does. It was impossible for me to stand, impossible to walk. To I inched along on my belly, and no matter how cold and windy it was, no matter how icy and wet my feet were, no matter how I ached all over, no matter how many people were after me with guns, I must say it did feel good to lie down.

Still, I was there for more than that. I crawled along the top of the car for a little way, and it did seem safe up there, so I edged back and called down to Abbie to come on up. She did, slowly, with me helping her at the top, and when she was sprawled out on the roof, I yelled in her ear. "I'm going exploring! Don't move!"

"Don't worry." She shut her eyes and let her head rest on her folded arms.

I put my mouth close to her ear. "Don't fall asleep and roll off!"

She nodded, but I wasn't entirely convinced. I patted her shoulder doubtfully and then took off.

It didn't take long to get to the other end of the car, and when I did, there was the potshooter, resting now between the cars. Waiting for the train to pull in at a station, no doubt. Then he and the others could just run along the platform to where we were, shoot us and disappear.

Well, maybe and, on the other hand, maybe not. I pushed back from the edge and slowly sat up. I didn't want to take my shoe off, wet and cold though it was, but I didn't have much choice. So I took it off, and my foot promptly went numb. I wasn't sure that was a good sign, but it was better than the stinging ache I'd been feeling up till now.

I lay on my belly again and inched back to the end of the car. He was still there, feet straddling the open space as he faced outward. At the moment, his head was bent a bit because he was trying to light a cigarette.

Perfect. I put one hand on the top rung of the ladder to support me, took careful aim and swung the heel of my shoe around in a great big arc that started in outer space and ended on the back of his head.

Lovely. He popped out like a grape seed out of a grape and landed in a snowbank. The last I saw of him was his feet kicking in the air, black against the gray of the snow.

One down. Three to go.

Sure.

I put my shoe back on and looked across at the next car, trying to figure out how to get over there, and a head popped into view two cars away. And after the head, an arm. And on the end of the arm, a gun. It flashed, the gun did, and I faintly heard the sound of the shot. It missed me, but I wasn't encouraged. I quickly hunched around and started crawling back the other way.

Something went p-tiying beside my right elbow. I looked, and saw a new scratch in the roof there.

He was getting too close. I hurriedly crawled back to the pile of laundry I knew was Abbie and shook her shoulder.

"We've got to go down again!"

"Wha? Wha?" She lifted a shaky head and showed me bleary eyes.

"One of them came up! Back there! He's shooting!"

"Oh, Chet, I'm so tired."

"Come on, honey. Come on."

I herded her onto the ladder, with her about to fall twice, but the more she moved, the more she woke up; and when she finally put her weight on the bad ankle, she woke up completely. She also let out a healthy yowl.

"That's right," I said. "Now get down and let me down."

"Oh, wow, that hurt."

"I'm sure it did. Go down, go down."

She went down and I followed her. As my head was going down past the level of the roof, I saw that guy back there on his feet. I stayed where I was, just high enough to see him. Now what?

He braced himself. He thought it over. He shook his head and got down on his knees. He shook his fist at himself and got up again. He braced himself. He ran forward. He leaped from the front of his car to the back of the next car. He made it, and the car he'd landed on jounced. He teetered way to the left, his arms pinwheeling. The car jounced again, and he teetered way to the right, his arms pinwheeling. The car wiggled, and he teetered every which way, arms and one leg pinwheeling. He got down on one knee, down on hands and knees. He'd made it. And the car waggled, and he rolled over onto his side and fell oil the train.

"Well, I'll be darned," I said.

We were on an overpass now, a deserted street below us. Beyond, the land fell away in a steep slope down from the tracks, with the rears of supermarkets and gas stations at the bottom.

"Up ahead," I said. "It's a snow-covered slope, it should be good for us. If there isn't a lot of old tin cans under the snow. When I give the word, you jump. And remember to jump at an angle, jump as much as possible in the same direction the train is going. And stay loose when you hit. And roll. You got that?"

She nodded. She was sound asleep.

Here came the slope. "Jump!" I shouted, and pushed her off the train. Then I leaped after her.

I must admit it was exhilarating out there for a second or two. In mid-air, sailing along high above the world, the cold wind whistling around my head, a very Jules Verne feeling to it. And then the feeling became more physical as my feet touched the snowy slope and I discovered I was running at 30 miles an hour.

I can't run at 30 miles an hour, nobody can. I did the only thing I could do instead, I fell over on my face, did several loop-the-loops, and rolled madly down the hill, bringing up against somebody's trash barrel at the bottom. Brrooommm, it went, and I raised myself up a little, and Abbie crashed into me. And I crashed into the barrel again.

"Oh, come on, honey," I said. "Watch where you're careening."

"Growf," he said, and wrapped his hand around my neck.

It wasn't Abbie.

His hand was on my throat. My hand was on what I took to be his throat. My other hand was on what I took to be the wrist of his other hand, the hand in which he would be holding his gun if he was holding a gun. My head was buried under his chest somewhere, being ground into the snow. My feet thrashed around. We rolled and rolled, this way and that, gasping and panting, trying with only partial success to cut off each other's breathing, and from time to time, we would bong one or another part of our bodies into that stinking rotten trash barrel. It got so I hated the trash barrel more than the guy trying to kill me. It got so what I really wanted to throttle was that trash barrel.

In the meantime, who was really getting throttled was me. We seemed to have stabilized at last, no more rolling, and unfortunately we'd stabilized with him on top. With his hand squeezing my jugular and my face mashed into his armpit, it looked as though I wasn't going to be getting much air from now on. About all I could do was kick my heels into the snow, which I did a lot of. I also tried squirming, but with very little success.

My strength was failing. I was passing out, and I knew it. I kicked my heels into the snow as hard as I could, but he just wouldn't let go. My head was filling with a rushing sound, like a waterfall. A black waterfall, roaring down over me, carrying me away, washing me away into oblivion and forgetfulness, dragging me down into the whirlpool, the black whirlpool.

He sagged.

His grip eased on my throat.

His weight doubled on my head.

Now what? I squirmed experimentally and he rolled off me, and suddenly I could breathe again. I could move again. I could see again, and what I saw was Abbie standing there with a shovel in her hands.

"Don't bury me," I said. "I'm still alive."

"I hit him with it." she said.

"That's a good girl." I said.

• • •

I won't say climbing the stairs at Jerry Allen's place was the worst thing I went through that weekend, but it comes close. We'd spent a good 45 minutes sitting in the back of a cab, relaxing on our way to the city, and we got out of it in front of Jerry's place feeling pretty good. Then we climbed all those stairs up to the fifth floor and we were dead again.

Abbie more than me, of course, because of her ankle. I'd has the cab stop in front of an all-night drugstore and I'd gone in and bought an Ace bandage, and I'd wrapped it around her ankle so that now she could walk on it at least, but it still slowed her down and drained her energy.

In the cab, I'd offered to drop her off somewhere safe and go on to the game alone, but she'd said, "Not on your life. Charley. I want to be in at the finish." So here she was, hobbling up the stairs with me.

I wondered if they'd all be there. We'd discussed them on the way in, of course, the four of them, the four regulars, trying to figure out which one it could be, and we'd decided if one of them was missing tonight, that was tantamount to a confession of guilt. But we'd thought it more likely the killer would try to act as normal as possible now, and so would more than likely show up.

So which one would it be? Jerry Allen. Sid Falco. Fred Stehl. Doug Hallman. There was also Leo Morgentauser, of course, the irregular who'd been at the game last Wednesday and who surely wouldn't be here tonight. He'd known Tommy, in a business way, but very slightly. Maybe because he wasn't a regular in the game I just didn't think he was our man. But if everybody else proved out clean tonight, I'd certainly make a call on him.

In the meantime, it left four, and the most obvious was Sid Falco. But both Abbie and I had rejected him right away. In the first place, he wasn't an amateur, and Golderman had told us Tommy's killing had been the work of an amateur. In the second place, Sid wouldn't have had to steal Abbie's gun from me in order to have something to shoot me with. And in the third place, we just didn't like him for the job.

Then there was Jerry Allen, our host. Part owner of a florist shop, a possible homosexual, a steady loser at the game, full of sad embarrassed laughter whenever one of his many bad bluffs was called. So far as I knew, he'd never met Tommy, I couldn't think of a motive for him and I couldn't see him shooting anybody anyway. I particularly couldn't see him sitting at his kitchen table and carving dumdum bullets.

Of course, the same was true of Fred Stehl. He was the one with the wife, Cora, who called once or twice every week, sometimes every night there was a game for months, trying to prove Fred was there. What excuses Fred gave her a hundred and four times a year I don't know, but she obviously never believed any of them. Fred was a loser at the game, but not badly, and his laundromat had to be making pretty good money. He made bets with Tommy a lot, but where was his motive?

Of all of them, the only one I could see getting teed oil enough at anybody to sit at a kitchen table and make dumdum bullets was Doug Hallman. our cigar-smoking gas station man. But I couldn't see Doug actually shooting anybody. His hollering and blustering and loudness usually covered a bluff of one kind or another. When he was serious he was a lot quieter. If he ever decided to shoot somebody, it would be a simple, clean, well-planned job, using one perfectly placed bullet that wasn't a dumdum at all. At least that's the way it seemed to me.

So, I'd wound up eliminating them all, if you'll notice. But doggone it, one of those guys had stolen Abbie's gun from me. It couldn't have been anyone else, that was the one fact we had for sure. The idea that I'd been shot by the same gun was an inference, but it was based on a lot of circumstantial evidence. The amateur standing of the killer, for instance, combined with the cops having found the weapon with which Tommy was killed. And the fact that its aim was off, so that the shot that had hit me had probably been intended for Abb'e, was another inference, but it followed logically out of the first one. And finally, that the person who shot at me--Abbie--us--whoever--was the same person who killed Tommy was yet another inference, but one I had no hesitation at all in making. So, with one fact and three inferences, we wound up with the conviction that one of the guys present at last Wednesday's poker game was the murderer. And then we went over them one at a time and eliminated them all.

Hell.

• • •

Jerry himself opened the door. "Well, look at you! We thought you weren't coming. And you brought the pro, too, how lucky. Come on in."

I looked at Jerry and I just couldn't see it. Not Jerry. Jerry wouldn't kill anybody, not in a million years. Scratch one. Again.

We all went into the living room, where Fred Stehl took one look, went, "Yip!" and threw his cards in the air.

"No applause," I said. "No demonstrations."

He put his hand to his heart. "I thought it was Cora," he said.

"After what she did the last time?" Jerry said. "And you thought I'd open the door for her?"

"I know." Fred said. "I know. But boy, just for a second there, wow. And Abbie, you don't look a bit like Cora, honest to God."

"I hope that's a compliment," she said.

"Oh, it is," Jerry told her, and Fred nodded solemnly.

Fred? Fred Stehl the henpecked laundromat man with his glasses and his balding head? No. In his own beer-and-undershirt way. Fred was an even less likely candidate for murderer than Jerry.

I looked around and all the regulars were here tonight, Doug and Sid also sitting there, and besides them there was a fifth man, Leo Morgentauser.

Leo? I frowned at him. What was he doing here, twice in one week? He'd never done that before. That was suspicious, very suspicious. I said, "Leo, what a surprise. I didn't expect you around for a couple of months."

"I called him," Jerry said. "When you didn't show up, I called a couple of guys, and Leo could make it."

"I won last time." Leo said, "and I still have some of it left, so I thought I'd give you guys a chance to get it back."

"'Well, that's good." I said, and it stopped being suspicious that he was here. Naturally, the boys didn't want to play four handed--that's a terrible game--and naturally, Leo was one of the people they'd call, and since he had won last Wednesday, it wasn't unusual for him to say yes tonight. Besides, what was a poor but honest vocational high school teacher going to shoot a smalltime bookie for? Leo had made his rare two-dollar bets with Tommy, but I knew Tommy would never have let him run up a big tab or anything like that: he wouldn't let anyone run up a tab too big to handle; and why would Leo shoot him? Why would Leo shoot anybody? No, not Leo.

There were two spaces next to each other at the table, so Abbie and I sat down there. Abbie on my left, and that put Doug Hallman on my right. He said, "What've you been up to, buddy? You look like you been mugged."

"I slipped on the ice," I said. "How you doing tonight?"

He had his inevitable rotten cigar in his face, and he puffed a lot of foul smoke in answer to my question, then amplified with, "Beautiful cards. Great cards. If we'd been playing low ball, I'd own New York State by now."

I grinned at him, and tried to visualize him shooting Tommy. He knew Tommy the same way the rest of us did, but that was all. Because he played at being mean all the time--the lough grimy garage-man, big and hairy, chewing his cigar--it was possible to imagine him with a gun in his hand, going bang, but it was not at all possible to imagine why he'd do such a thing. Very unlikely. I put a great big check next to his name in my head, with a little teeny question mark next to it.

The other side of Doug was Leo, and the other side of Leo was Sid Falco. Sid hadn't looked at anybody since we'd walked in, but had sat there studying the small slack of chips in front of him. Now, though, when Leo picked up the cards and said, "We ready to play?" Sid suddenly said, "Deal me out," and got to his feet. "I'll be back in a minute," he said, still not looking at anybody.

"Hold it, Sid." I said.

He did look at me, then, and I was surprised to see he was scared. He said. "What's the matter, chet?"

"Sit down. Sid." I said.

He said. "I got to go to the bathroom."

I said. "You mean to go into the kitchen and use Jerry's other phone to call Napoli and tell him Abbie and I are here so he can have some people waiting outside for us when we leave."

Shaking his head from side to side, looking very nervous and embarrassed, blinking a lot, doing all the things he always does when he's trying one of his the-book-says-to-do-it bluffs, he said, "You got me absolutely wrong, Chet. I just got lo go to the bathroom."

"Sit down, Sid." I said. "You can make your phone call in a few minutes, but right now, sit down." I felt everybody else staring at me. Everybody but Abbie, who seemed to have fallen asleep again. "I'll tell you everything, Sid, and then you can go to the bathroom all you want."

Sid sat down.

I said, "The reason I'm here, Sid, is because somebody in this room killed Tommy McKay."

Sid slopped blinking. He looked at me cold-eyed. Everybody else went into shock for a second, and then I got a chorus of wha? and you're putting us on, and things like that. I waited for it to settle down, and then I said. "Sid, when you do go to the bathroom, you're going to have a lot more to tell your boss than just where he can find Abbie and me. You're going to tell him who killed Tommy McKay, and you're going to tell him about the lawyer I went to see on my way to town, and you're going to tell him about the letter I dictated to that lawyer, and you're going to tell him why both his boys and Droble's boys should lay off both Abbie and me permanently and forever. This is all going to be very interesting. Sid."

"Maybe it is," Sid said. He was very businesslike now, not doing a bluff at all.

I said, "All right. We'll start with Tommy's murderer. He's in this room."

Jerry Allen said, "Chet, what nonsense. For heaven's sake, what are you talking about?"

I stopped talking to Sid, and talked to Jerry instead. "When I came here last Wednesday night," I said, "I had a gun in my coat pocket. It was Abbie's, she'd given it to me to hold for her that afternoon."

"You took it." Abbie said sleepily.

"All right." I said. "I took il. The point is, I had it when I came here. When I left here, it was gone. I didn't notice it until later, but the only place it could have been taken from my pocket was in this apartment, while my coat was hanging in the hall closet. Somebody took my gun. Abbie's gun. Somebody in this room took it."

Doug said, "Chet, is this on the level?"

"Absolutely on the level." I told him, and I pointed at the wound on the side of my head. "You see that? I was shot at with that same gun."

Sid said, "You've got something wrong."

I looked at him. "I do? What?"

"I took the gun out of your coat." he said. "I was supposed to turn you over to a couple of guys after the game, and I was supposed to make sure you were clean. They told me they wanted to ask you some questions; they didn't say anything about bumping you off."

"That's what they wanted, though." I said.

"I found that out later." he said. "They told me the other at first because they didn't know how close friends we were."

"Not very close." I said.

He shrugged. "Anyway, you took off with the girl. I followed you, because maybe you were going to her place or something, but you gave me the slip. So I phoned my boss and he said they'd set things up another way and I gave him your home address."

"That was thoughtful," I said.

"He wanted to know. But the point is, I thought you'd got the gun back. I look it out of your coat pocket and put it in my coat pocket, and when I checked after the game, it was gone. So I thought you took it back."

"I didn't," I said. I looked around, and everybody was staring at Sid now. So long as I was the only one who'd been talking crazy, they could all remain astonished spectators, but now that Sid had entered into a dialog with me, the thing was turning real and they were beginning to realize they were in the middle of it. I said, "It looks as though this place was full of pickpockets last Wednesday night. Anybody got any ideas?"

Leo said, "I have the idea I should have stayed home tonight." He still had the cards in his hand, and he looked at them now, smiled grimly and put them down.

Doug said to me, "Let me try and get this straight. You got yourself mixed up in Tommy's murder somehow, and got shot at yourself. And you say it was with a gun that was stolen off you while you were here at the game last Wednesday."

"Right."

"Why wasn't it with the same gun that killed Tommy? Maybe somebody here copped your gun, but didn't have anything to do with shooting at you."

"They found the gun that killed Tommy two days before I was shot at," I said.

"The cops found it?"

"Yes."

"So much for that," Doug said. He shook his head. "I pass. It wasn't me and I don't know who it was."

Jerry said, "It wasn't you, Doug? You have a pretty mean temper sometimes. And you did know tills man Tommy, I believe. You couldn't have gotten angry at him over something----"

"I could get angry at you," Doug told him. "I could get angry, Jerry, and pull your head off, but I couldn't go shoot people." He held up his hands, saying, "If I ever kill anybody, Jerry, this is what I'll use. And you'll be the first to know."

Leo said, "Doug's right, Jerry. You're much more the revolver type than he is. You might get into a pet and blast somebody with a gun."

"Me?" Jerry absolutely squeaked. "I don't even own a gun! I didn't even know the man who was killed! You knew him!"

Doug said. "Hold it. Let's not go pointing the finger at each other. That won't get us anywhere, it'll just get us mad."

"I disagree," I said. "Maybe it will get us somewhere. Why don't we all say what we think and argue it out and see if we can come up with something? Because, I'll tell you the truth, I have absolutely no way to narrow it down. I know it has to be somebody in this room, I know it can't be anybody not in this room, but that's as close as I've been able to get it. Except I've eliminated Sid. But the rest of you----"

Sid smiled thinly and everybody else objected at once. Leo succeeded in getting the floor at last, and said, "Why eliminate Sid? From the way you two have been talking, you and Sid, he knows as much about this as you do. And he's apparently connected with some underworld figures some way; I get that much from the conversation. Why wouldn't that make him your prime suspect, ahead of the rest of us?"

"He didn't have to shoot at me," I said. "No matter what he says now, he knew his boss was sending people to kill me. Professionals. So why should he bother to shoot me? Also, it made his boss very unhappy when Tommy was killed, and Sid wouldn't have dared do anything to make his boss unhappy. Right, Sid?"

"Close enough," Sid said.

Jerry said, "Instead of coming here disrupting things, why not go to the police? Tell them what you think, what you know. Let them work it out."

It was Abbie who answered this time. "We can't go to the police," she said.

Doug said, "Why not?"

"Because," she said, "there are two gangs of crooks after us. Not one gang, two gangs. If one of them doesn't get us, the other one will. Neither Chet nor I can live a normal life while they're still after us. And part of the reason they're all excited and upset is because of Tommy McKay's murder. If we could solve that for them, and also this business about the lawyer Chet mentioned,"--I was glad she'd picked up on that, since I'd just made it up and we hadn't discussed it in the cab--"they'd leave us alone."

Fred, leaning forward with a worried expression on his face, said, "You mean your lives are in danger?"

"That's putting it mildly," I said. "We've been shot at, strangled, threatened, chased, I don't know what all. There are people out in the world with guns right now, and they're looking for Abbie and me, and they want to kill us. And Sid there wants to go make a phone call and tell one bunch of them where they can find us."

Fred shook his head. "I can't understand that," he said. "How did you get so involved?"

"I was trying to get that nine hundred thirty dollars I was owed," I said, "and Abbie wanted to do something to avenge her brother, since he was her last living relative."

Doug said, "Did you get the money?" He held one of my markers.

"No," I said. "They refused to pay off, in fact."

"That's too bad," Doug said.

Fred said, "How can you think about money at a time like this, Doug? Chet, do they really want to kill you?" He couldn't seem to get it into his head.

"Yes," I said. "They really want to kill me. Abbie, too. Ask Sid."

Fred turned his head and looked at Sid, who said, "Chet's right."

Fred said to him. "And it would help him if he found out who killed Tommy McKay?"

Sid shrugged. "It's possible. I wouldn't know about that."

I said, "The funny thing is, I think I know who it is. And yet. I don't believe it."

Everybody looked at me. Abbie said, "Who?"

Leo said, "Why don't you believe it?"

I answered Leo. I said. "One of the things I warned to do here was throw this mess on the table and just watch reactions, see how different people acted. I figured maybe the killer would act different from everybody else, and I'd be able to spot him."

Leo said, "And did he? Have you spotted somebody?"

"Yeah." I said. "But I don't believe it. There's something wrong somewhere."

Abbie said, "For Pete's sake, Chet, who is it?"

"It's Fred." I said.

Nobody said anything. Fred frowned, looking troubled and worried and sad but somehow not like a murderer, and everybody else looked alternately at him and at me.

Leo broke the silence at last. He said, "Why do you think it's Fred?"

I said, "Because he jumped a mile when we came in here, and then covered it up by saying he thought Abbie was Cora, But Abbie doesn't look at all like Cora, and Fred pisl saw Abbie four days ago and knew she might be coming back tonight. And because Cora didn't call last Wednesday and I bet she doesn't call tonight, and that's because she knows what happened and she's agreed to let Fred go on with his normal life as though nothing had happened, to cover up."

Leo said. "That isn't very much, Chet."

"I don't have very much," I said, "I admit that. But I have a little more. When I started talking, everybody got excited. Everybody but Fred. Jerry accused Doug. Leo accused Jerry. Doug got mad, Leo accused Sid, everybody was full of questions and excitement and disbelief. Everybody but Fred. He just sat there and didn't say anything for a long while. Until I made it clear that Abbie and I were now murder targets ourselves and the one who'd killed Tommy was indirectly responsible. Then he asked questions, hoping to get answers that would make it less tough. All he is is worried and troubled and sad, and everybody else is excited and irritated and surprised."

Abbie said, "But why do you say it doesn't seem right?"

"I don't know." I said. "There's something that just doesn't jibe. Fred's reactions are wrong for him to be innocent, but somehow they're wrong for him to be guilty, too. He should be tougher it he's guilty. I don't understand."

Fred gave me a wan smile and said, "You're pretty good, Chet. I don't know how you did that, but you're pretty doggone good."

Jerry gaped at him. "You mean you did do it?"

"No," Fred said. "I didn't shoot Tommy. But I did shoot you. Chet, and God, I'm sorry. I didn't want to hit anybody, I aimed between you and Abbie. When I saw I'd hit you. I almost died myself. Christ, I've always been a pretty good shot, I don't know what went wrong."

"That gun shoots off to the left." I said. "You should have taken it out on a practice range for a while."

"It must shoot way the hell to the left." he said.

"It does." Abbie said.

Sid asked him, "You took the gun out of my pocket?"

Fred nodded. "I was going through Chet's and Abbie's pockets," he said. "I wanted to see if they had any clues or evidence or anything about the murder they weren't telling us about. I felt the heavy thing in your pocket, and took a look, and there was the gun. I knew you had something to do with the underworld, so I figured it was your gun, and I swiped it. I didn't know it belonged to you, Chet."

"To me," Abbie said. "Where is it?"

"In the Harlem River," Fred said. "I thought I'd killed Chet for sure, so I got rid of that gun right away."

I said, "But you didn't kill Tommy."

He shook his head. "No. I didn't."

"Then why do all this other stuff? To cover up for the real killer? But who?"

Fred just smiled sadly at me.

We all stared at him and it hit all of us simultaneously, and six voices raised as one to cry. "CORA!"

Fred nodded. "Cora," he said. "Chet, you saw her right after she did it."

I said, "I did not."

"Sure you did. She was coming out of the building when you were going in."

I frowned, drawing a blank, and suddenly remembered. "The woman with the baby carriage!"

"Sure," he said. "Cora's a smart woman, Chet. She saw you through the glass, and she didn't want to be recognized, and there was a baby carriage in the hallway, so she figured that would make a good disguise, and with the two of you meeting in the doorway, you holding the door and the baby carriage in the way and all, her keeping her head down, she got away with it. She went right through and you never even noticed."

I said, "A day or two later, I saw a sign in the entranceway about a stolen baby carriage, and I never connected it at all."

Abbie, in an outraged tone, said, "Cora? I don't even know who she is!"

"She's Fred's wife." I said.

"But that isn't fair," she said. "How can I solve the murder if I don't even know the murderer, if I never even met her? The woman never even put in an appearance!"

"Sure she did," I said. "She walked right by me with a baby carriage."

"Well, she never walked by me," she insisted. "I say it isn't fair. You wouldn't get away with that in a detective story."

I said, "Why not? Remember the story about the dog who didn't bark in the night? Well, this is the same thing. The wife who didn't phone in the night."

"Oh, foo," Abbie said, and folded her arms. "I say it isn't fair, and I won't have any more to do with it."

Jerry said, "Never mind all that. Fred, why on earth would Cora do a thing like that?"

"You're the one she punched in the nose," Fred reminded him. "She's a very violent woman, Cora. She'd been on Tommy's back not to take any bets from me, and she found out we were still doing business, and she went down there to really let him have it, and she took the gun along to scare him. She wasn't even sure she'd show it to him. But he apparently had something on his mind----"

"That's an understatement," I said. "His wife was running around with another man, and he was running around with another boss."

"Well, anyway," Fred said, "she showed him the gun. Then, instead of getting scared, he made a jump for her, and she started shooting." To me he said, "It's an old gun of mine, I've had it since I was in the Army. I do potshooting with it sometimes. That's why I didn't believe it when I saw I'd hit you the other night, because I knew I was a better shot than that."

"Why did you do it?" I said.

"I wanted to convince you it was a gang thing," he said. "I was afraid you two would find out the truth if you kept poking around. If you kept thinking about the case, you might suddenly remember the woman with the baby carriage. I didn't know. I figured if I took a shot at you and missed, it might scare you into laying off. Or anyway, convince you the mob was behind the killing."

Nobody said anything for a minute or two, and then Leo said, "Where's your wife now, Fred?"

Fred looked embarrassed. "You won't believe this," he said.

Doug said, "Try us."

"She's in a convent," Fred said.

Everybody said, "What?"

"It preyed on her mind," he said. "So Friday night, she packed her things and went to a convent. She says she's going in for good."

Abbie, returning to us after all, said, "Why didn't she go to the police if she felt so bad?"

"I didn't want her to," Fred said. "I feel responsible for the whole thing, goddamn it. I knew Cora hated my gambling, but I went right ahead and did it. So finally, she blew her top and your brother got killed, but I'm just as much to blame as she is, and I just couldn't stand to see her go to jail for it."

Abbie said, "A convent's better?"

"Yes," he said. "And believe me, I hated the idea of coming here the last two times, but I figured I had to, to keep up appearances. I figure this is my last game." He looked at me. "Whatever you want me to do, "Chet he said, "that's what I'll do. You want me to go make a statement to the police? I don't want you and Abbie getting killed over this. Enough has happened already."

"More than enough," I said. I looked at Abbie. "What do you think? Is a convent punishment enough?"

"It would be for me," she said.

I said, "We don't care about the cops anyway. It's the mobs that worry us. Just so they know the story, that should satisfy us. OK, Abbie?"

She hesitated, but I knew she couldn't retain the white-hot desire for vengeance against a woman who'd already turned herself in at a convent. "OK." she said.

"Good." I turned to Sid. "You've got the story straight?"

"I've got it," he said.

"OK. You go make your phone call now. And first you tell them what really happened to Tommy McKay. And then you tell them about the lawyer I stopped off to see on my way in here, and you tell them I dictated a long letter to that lawyer to be opened in the event of either my or Abbie's death, and you tell them that lawyer went to school with John Lindsay, and you tell them we want to be left one hundred percent alone from now on. You tell them we don't intend to make any waves and we don't want any waves making on us, if you get what I mean."

"I've got it," he said.

"And you also tell them," I said, "to be sure things are squared with Golderman."

He frowned. "I don't know Golderman."

"You don't have to. Just tell them. And tell them to pass the word to Droble and his clowns before they screw things up. And tell them I want my doggone nine hundred thirty dollars."

Was he grinning behind that poker face? 1 didn't know. "I'll tell them," he said.

"Let me think," I said. "Oh, yeah. And get word to Golderman to go outside and see if I left the meter running, and if I did to turn it off, and I'll be out tomorrow for the cab."

"You'll be out tomorrow for the cab."

"Can you remember all that?"

"Of course," he said.

"And I'll tell you something I'm going to remember." I told him. "I'm going to remember that you were willing to turn me over to people to murder me."

He shook his head. "What would have happened if I said no, Chet? They would have killed me instead. You're a nice guy and I like you, but I can get along without you. I can't get along without me for a minute." He got to his feet. "I'll make that call now," he said, and he left.

There was a little silence, and then Fred said, "What about me, Chet?"

"You can do what you want, Fred." I said. "I don't hold a grudge against you. I'm glad your aim wasn't any worse than it was, that's all. But I'm not going to turn you over to the police. You can go or stay, it's up to you."

"Then I believe I'll go," he said, and got wearily to his feet. "I don't have many chips here," he said. "Just toss these in the next pot." He walked around the table and stood in front of me. "I'm sorry, Chet," he said. "I honestly am."

"I know you are."

Hesitantly, he stuck out his hand. Hesitantly, I took it. Then he nodded to Abbie, nodded to the table at large and left, very slope-shouldered.

Leo had the cards in his hand again. He said, "I know momentous things are happening all around me, but I don't get to play poker that often. Are we ready?"

"We're ready," I said.

"Good." he said. "Five-card stud, in the lady's honor," he said, and started to deal. When he got to Sid's chair he said, "What about Sid?"

"Deal him out," I said.

This is the conclusion of the new novel by Donald E. Westlake.