Somebody Owes Me Money

“Yes. Abbie called one. He came and he put this bandage on. He said I shouldn’t move for a while, that’s why I’m still here.”

“It didn’t happen today?”

“No. Wednesday night.”

“Must have been a bad fall.”

Why did I always feel as though Detective Golderman was disbelieving me? Maybe because I was always telling him lies. “It was,” I said. “I got like a cut on the side of my head.” I made vague motions with the hand holding the cards.

“You’re lucky you didn’t have to go to the hospital,” he said.

“Yeah, I guess I was.”

“Lucky you weren’t killed,” he said. “You an old friend of Abbie McKay’s?”

“No, uh. I just met her a little while ago.”

“When was that?”

“Uh, Wednesday.”

He smiled faintly. “You might say you fell for her on first sight, eh?”

“Heh heh,” I said.

“Nice of her to go out of her way to take care of you,” he said. “After just meeting and all.”

“Yeah, well...Yeah, it was.”

He looked around the room again. “I take it Mrs. McKay isn’t staying here these days. Tommy McKay’s wife.”

“No. No, she isn’t.”

He glanced at me, with that casualness I distrusted. “Where is she staying, do you know?”

“No, I don’t,” I said. “I haven’t seen her since Monday. Since Tommy was killed.”

“That isn’t her in the closet, in other words,” he said.

I said, “Uh. In the closet?”

“In the closet,” he agreed. “If Tommy’s sister is at the funeral and you haven’t seen his wife since Monday, that can’t be either one of them in the closet, can it?”

“Uh...Well...”

“So it has to be somebody else,” he said. “Doesn’t it, Chester?”

“I...” I made a helpless gesture with the deck of cards, and Ralph came out of the closet. He looked morose again.

Detective Golderman casually turned his head and looked at Ralph. “Do I know you?”

“No,” Ralph told him.

“You waiting for a bus in there?”

“Developing pictures,” Ralph said.

“Ah,” said Detective Golderman. “Would you have some sort of identification on you?”

“Yeah,” said Ralph. He dragged his wallet out and extracted a driver’s license from it, which he handed over to Detective Golderman.

Detective Golderman reached into an inner pocket for notebook and pencil and copied some information into it from Ralph’s license, then handed the license back and put the notebook away. Finally he got to his feet and said, “Ralph, you wouldn’t mind if I frisked you, would you?”

Ralph’s face showed that the thought didn’t make him happy, but all he said was, “If you got to.” And lifted his arms up at his sides.

“Thank you, Ralph,” Detective Golderman said, and patted him thoroughly all over without finding the gun I knew Ralph possessed. When he was done, he glanced at the closet and said, “I wonder if I should go over the closet, too.”

Ralph made an after-you-Alphonse gesture and said, “Be my guest.” But his tone was still morose and not at all sarcastic.

“Not worth the aggravation,” Detective Golderman decided, and looked back at me again. I’d known he would get back to me again sooner or later, and I hadn’t been looking forward to it. “Chester,” he said, “you haven’t told me the entire truth, have you?”

“Uh,” I said. That seemed to be my favorite word with him. “About what?” I said.

“Well, Ralph, for instance,” he said. “You hadn’t planned on introducing me at all, had you?”

“Well,” I said. “I felt it was up to him. Whether he wanted to come out or not.”

“Still and all, Chester,” he said, “you did hold out on me.”

“Yes, sir,” I admitted. “I guess I did.”

“It would have been a very simple thing, Chester,” he said. “When I came in, all you had to do was say, ‘I’d like you to meet my friend Ralph Corvaccio in the closet.’ Then I would have gone on believing you were somebody I could trust. Somebody whose word I could take on various things.” There was nothing for me to say. That’s what I said. Detective Golderman stood there looking at me. He seemed to be thinking about things, considering various ways of dealing with me, none pleasant. At last he said, “Do you remember when I came to see you at your house Wednesday?”

“Yes. Sure.”

“Do you remember I mentioned some names to you, and asked you if you knew any of those men, or had ever heard of any of them?”

I nodded.

“Do you remember those names?”

“I think so,” I said.

“Let’s try your memory,” he said.

“Frank Tarbok,” I said. “Walter Droble. Bugs Bender. Uh, and Solomon Napoli.”

“Very good,” he said. “And do you remember what you told me?”

“That I didn’t know them.”

“Didn’t know a thing about them.” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at Ralph. “Is Ralph an old friend of yours, Chester? Or do you just know him since Wednesday, too?”

“Thursday,” I said. “Yesterday.”

“Yesterday. In that brief time, Chester, has Ralph mentioned to you who he works for?”

“Well—”

“Do you know who Ralph works for, Chester?”

I looked at Ralph, but he was moodily studying the back of Detective Golderman’s head and was of no help to me. In a low voice, not looking at anybody at all, I said, “I think he works for Solomon Napoli.”

“Solomon Napoli. That’s one of the four men I asked you about, isn’t it?”