Somebody Owes Me Money

“I hear it, sir,” he said. “Just give me your name, please. I will have officers dispatched to the scene.”

“That’s good,” I said, and Tommy’s wife came running into the kitchen, wild-eyed. Her hands were red. She screamed at the top of her lungs, “What happened?”

“My name is Chester Conway,” I said.

The cop said, “What was that?”

Tommy’s wife grabbed me by the front of my jacket. It’s a zip-up jacket, dark blue, two pockets, it’s comfortable for driving the cab all day in the winter. “What did you do?” she screamed.

I said to the cop, “Wait a second,” and put the phone down. Tommy’s wife was leaning forward to glare in my face, her hands on my chest, pushing me backward. I gave a step, saying, “Get hold of yourself. Please. I got to report this.”

All at once she let go of me, picked up the phone, and shouted into it, “Get off the line! I want to call the police!”

“That is the police,” I said.

She started clicking the phone at him. “Hang up!” she shouted. “Hang up, this is an emergency!”

“I’m supposed to slap you now,” I said. I tugged at her arm, trying to get her attention. “Hello? Listen, I’m supposed to slap you across the face now, because you’re hysterical. But I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to have to do that.”

She began violently to shake the phone, holding it out at arm’s length as though strangling it. “Will — you — get — off — the — line?”

I kept tugging her other arm. “That’s the police,” I said. “That’s the police.”

She flung the phone away all at once, so that it bounced off the wall. She yanked her arm away from me and went running out of the kitchen and out of the apartment. “Help!” I heard her in the hall. “Help! Police!”

I picked up the phone. “That was his wife,” I said. “She’s hysterical. I wish you’d hurry up and dispatch some officers.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “You were giving your name.”

“I guess I was,” I said. “It’s Chester Conway.” I spelled it.

He said, “Thank you, sir.” He read back my name and the address and I said he had them right and he said the officers would be dispatched to the scene at once. I hung up and noticed the phone was smeared with red from where Tommy’s wife had held it, so now my hand was smeared, too. Red and sticky. I went automatically to wipe my hand on my jacket, and discovered the front of my jacket was also red and sticky.

A heavyset man in an undershirt, with hair on his shoulders and a hammer in his hand, came into the kitchen, looking furious and determined and terrified, and said, “What’s going on here?”

“Somebody was killed,” I said. I felt he was blaming me, and I was afraid of his hammer. I gestured at the phone and said, “I just called the police. They’re on their way.”

He looked around on the floor. “Who was killed?”

“The man who lives here,” I said. “Tommy McKay. He’s in the living room.”

He took a step backward, as though to go to the living room and see, then suddenly got a crafty expression on his face and said, “You ain’t going anywhere.”

“That’s right,” I said. “I’m going to wait here for the police.”

“You’re damn right,” he said. He glanced at the kitchen clock, then back at me. “We’ll give them five minutes,” he said.

“I really did call,” I said.

A very fat woman in a flowered dress appeared behind him, putting her hands on his hairy shoulders, peeking past him at me. “What is it, Harry?” she said. “Who is he?”

“It’s okay,” Harry said. “Everything’s under control.”

“What’s that stuff on his jacket, Harry?” she asked.

“It’s blood,” I said.

The silence was suddenly full of echoes, like after hitting a gong. In it, I could plainly hear Harry swallow. Gulp. His eyes got brighter, and he took a tighter grip on the hammer.

We all stood there.

3

When the cops came in, everybody talked at once. They listened to Harry first, maybe because he was closest, maybe because he had the hammer, maybe because he had his wife talking with him, and then they told him to take his wife and his hammer and go back across the hall to his apartment and take care of the bereaved lady over there and they, the cops, would stop in a little later. Harry and his wife went away, looking puffed with pride and full of good citizenship, and the cops turned to me.

“I didn’t do it,” I said.

They looked surprised, and then suspicious. “Nobody said you did,” one of them pointed out.

“That guy was holding a hammer on me,” I said. “He thought I did it.”

“Why did he think so?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Tommy’s wife told him I did.”

“Why would she say a thing like that?”

“Because she was hysterical,” I said. “Besides, I don’t even know if she said it. Maybe it was because of the blood on my jacket.” I looked at my hand. “And on my hand.”

They looked at my jacket and my hand, and they stiffened up a little. But the one who did the talking was still soft-voiced when he said, “How did that happen?”