Somebody Owes Me Money

So instead of volunteering, I switched the subject of conversation altogether, and we discussed the poker game for a while. She had some interesting things to say about the personalities and playing styles of the other players, and also suggested to me one of my own flaws in the game, being a too-great respect for aces. An ace visible in somebody else’s hand would tend to chase me at times that I had a perfectly respectable stay, and an ace in my own hand would keep me in at times when I had nothing but a clear-cut fold. I had to agree with that, and filed everything she said away in the back of my mind, to be used next week.

At the gas station we got two Sunny fives and a Dollars ten. “Anything good?” Abbie asked.

“No. These are the easy halves.”

After the gas station we went back across town and through the Midtown Tunnel and up onto the Expressway, and Abbie said, “We’re being followed, Chet.”

I turned around and looked and there were four pairs of headlights spaced out behind us. I couldn’t see any of the cars behind the lights at all. “Which one?” I said.

“Second car back in the left lane.”

“How do you know he’s following us?”

“He was behind us when we stopped for the light at Fifth Avenue on the way to the gas station. Then I saw him behind us again in the tunnel.”

“You sure it’s the same car?”

“I noticed the hood ornament,” she said. “It’s very sexy.”

I looked at her, abruptly more aware of the man-woman thing than of any car following us around the nighttime city, and she glanced at me, grinned, and said, “I’m putting you on, Chet.” She looked front again. “But it is the same car, I know it.”

I looked back again. The car was maintaining its distance back there. I said, “There’s something I didn’t tell you about. Maybe this would be a good time to.” And I told her about the hoods grabbing me last night.

She was very interested but didn’t interrupt at all, and when I was done, she nodded and said, “I didn’t think the mob had done it. It just didn’t look like their kind of thing. If they’re going around trying to solve it, too, that proves it.”

“They think this guy Solomon Napoli did it,” I said. “The cop that came to see me mentioned the same name, too.”

“We’ll have to find out who he is,” she said. “But in the meantime let’s get away from those people back there.” And she stood on the accelerator.

Dodges have more pep than they used to. We took off like the roadrunner in the movie cartoons, shooting down the Expressway like a bullet down the barrel of a rifle.

“Hey!” I said. “We have cops in New York!”

“Are they staying with us?”

I looked back, and one pair of headlights was rushing along in our wake, farther back now but not losing any more ground. Fortunately, there was very little traffic on the road, and our two cars wriggled through what there was like a snake in a hurry.

I said, “They’re still there.”

“Hold on,” she said. I looked at her, and she was leaning over the wheel in tense concentration. I couldn’t believe she meant to take that exit rushing toward us on the right, but she did, at the last minute swerving the car to the right, slicing down the ramp without slackening speed.

There was a traffic light ahead, and it was red. There was no traffic anywhere in sight. Abbie got off the accelerator at last and stood on the brake instead. Bracing myself with both hands against the dashboard, I stared in helpless astonishment as we slewed into the intersection. I believe to this day that Abbie made a right turn then simply because that was the way the car happened to be pointing when she got it back under control.

Anyway, we leaped another long block down a street absolutely empty of traffic, which was lucky for them and lucky for us, and then we squealed through another right turn. We were on a block of scruffy-looking storefronts now, dark and silent and dismal. About mid-block there was a driveway between two buildings on the right side, and Abbie made an impossible turn, shoved the Dodge in there, screamed to a stop inches from a set of crumbling old garage doors, and cut the engine and the lights.

We both looked out back, and a minute later we saw a flash of light go by, white in front and red in back. “There,” Abbie said in satisfaction, and twisted around to sit normally again.

I sat sideways, facing her, my back against the door. “Abbie,” I said, “you have achieved a rare distinction. You have driven an automobile in such a way as to terrify a New York City cabdriver.”

It was very dark back there, but I could see her grinning at me. “We got away, didn’t we?” she said, and I could hear the smugness in her voice.

“We got away,” I agreed. “I’d almost rather I was caught.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” she said.

Something in her voice gave me pause. I said, “I wouldn’t? What do you mean?”

“Who could that have been,” she said, “but the same people who were after you last night? And if they want you again, it can only mean one thing.”

“What one thing?”

“They’ve decided you are guilty after all,” she said.