Somebody Owes Me Money

“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 rear-view mirror.”

“I don’t—”

“Move,” I said. I’d just heard a click, reminding me that the meter was still running. Another six bucks down the drain.

She licked her lips and began to look worried. “Maybe—” she said.

“Move now,” I said. “I don’t want to listen to any more. I’m supposed to be working now. Go on, move!”

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.

10

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

I was just making my left at Flatlands Avenue, the nearest police station I knew of being on Glenwood Road the other side of Rockaway Parkway. Since even after a snowstorm Brooklyn is full of elderly black Buicks being driven slowly but stupidly by short skinny women with their hair in rollers, I finished making the turn before looking in the rear-view 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 all be 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.”

Up? Most people would say “turn me in,” given the situation; “turn me up” was a very insidey gangland way of saying the same thing. And come to think of it, that wasn’t the first odd thing she’d said. Like quoting me twelve to one on my having helped kill her brother. Like talking about seeing who was bluffing when I said I’d take her to the cops.

It looked like she was really Tommy’s sister.

And that might mean, it suddenly occurred to me, that she might know who Tommy’s boss was. Maybe I wouldn’t have to look for Tommy’s wife at all anymore.

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?”