Somebody Owes Me Money

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who?”

“Chet. Chet Conway.”

“Oh, Chester. Just a minute.”

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

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

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

“Fifteen.”

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

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

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

“Purple Petunia?”

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

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

“I got a hunch,” I said.

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