Somebody Owes Me Money

“It isn’t mine either,” she said. “But it has to be done. And I know you naturally don’t have as strong feelings about it as I do, so I won’t ask you to do any more than you want.”

“Good,” I said.

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

“Ha ha,” I said.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“You mean I can’t have the gun back?”

“Right.”

“That’s mean, Chet. I need that gun, for my own safety.”

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

11

What with one thing and another I didn’t check the cab in till seven-thirty, and when I did I made no mention of the gunshot wound in the roof. It would have led to a very complicated conversation I didn’t particularly want to get into, and if somebody did notice the hole eventually, who was to say when it happened or that I was the one driving the cab at the time?

The reason I worked till seven-thirty, even though the game starts at seven, was because I was almost out of cash. I didn’t know if my losing streak was over or if Purple Pecunia had been a fluke, and if I lost tonight at least I didn’t want to have to write any markers in front of Abbie McKay. Don’t ask me why I thought that was so important, because I don’t know. But I did.

I’d already phoned my father a little after five that I wouldn’t be home for dinner, so I went to a greasy spoon near the garage and had franks and beans before going across town to Jerry Allen’s place. I kept being conscious of the weight of Abbie’s gun in my coat pocket. I didn’t particularly want to carry it around on me, but I couldn’t think of what else to do with it.

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

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

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

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

This twice-weekly poker game had been a Wednesday-and-Sunday institution with us for five or six years now, with only minor changes in personnel all that time. There were five regulars including me in the game these days, plus half a dozen other guys who’d drop in from time to time. Leo Morgentauser, the made flush currently betting up Fred Stehl’s unmade straight, was one of the irregulars, a teacher at a vocational high school in Queens, teaching automobiles or sewing machines or something. A tall skinny bushy-haired guy with a huge Adam’s apple, Leo was married and probably didn’t make a very good living, so he seldom came to the game, but when he did he was usually a winner. He was a good poker psychologist and could run a very beautiful bluff when he felt like it. His biggest failing was that he wouldn’t push a streak, so sometimes he’d go home with less of our money than he should have had. Not that I’m complaining.