Somebody Owes Me Money

“Be careful,” Abbie said.

“Naturally,” I said. I left the kitchen, went to the front door, and looked through the peephole at Ralph, who was looking both impatient and disgusted.

Oh. I opened the door and he pushed in without a word and thumped on down the hall toward the bedroom. I shut the door again and went back to the kitchen. At Abbie’s raised eyebrow, I said, “It was Ralph. He came back for his gun.” I went around the table and sat down again.

Abbie said, “Come to think of it, what did you do with my gun?”

“It’s in my overcoat pocket,” I said. “You know, I’d forgotten all about that?”

“No, it isn’t,” she said.

“What?”

“It isn’t in your overcoat pocket. I looked.”

“Well, that’s where I put it,” I said, and Ralph appeared in the doorway. I looked at him.

He said, “Okay, where is it?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s on the dresser.”

“On the dresser?”

“Yes,” I said. “On the dresser.”

He went away again, and Abbie said, “Believe me, Chet, I looked through all your clothing for that gun. I thought it might come in handy.”

“Somebody swiped it,” I said.

“That’s fine,” she said. “I give you the thing to hold for me, and you lose it.”

“In the first place,” I said, and Frank Tarbok came back. “Later,” I said to Abbie, and looked at Tarbok.

“Walt Droble is coming over,” he said.

“I am Nero Wolfe,” I said.

He said, “Hah?” and Ralph appeared in the doorway behind him, waving the gun in the air so we could see it, saying, “I got it.”

Tarbok turned, not having known till now that Ralph was in the apartment. He saw the gun, saw Ralph’s face, yelled, and hit the dirt. That is, he hit the linoleum, rolled under the table and into a lot of chair legs, and was pawing around inside his clothing down there when I stooped and said, “It’s okay. He isn’t going to shoot anybody, it’s okay.”

Ralph, meanwhile, suddenly looking wary, was saying, “Was that Frank Tarbok?”

“Just wait there,” I told Tarbok, and got to my feet. To Ralph, I said, “Come on now. Let’s not make things any more confusing than they already are.”

“Is that Frank Tarbok?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s Frank Tarbok.”

Ralph’s gun was suddenly pointing at me. “Against the wall, mother,” he said.

23

Tarbok came out from under the table with his hands up, the way Ralph ordered, and stood next to me at the refrigerator. “I won’t forget this, Conway,” he told me.

“Shut up,” Ralph said. He waggled the gun at Abbie and Mrs. McKay. “You two over there with them.”

“No,” Abbie said.

He looked at her. “What?”

“Go away, Ralph,” she said. “We have trouble enough already, so just go away.”

“Oh, yeah? Maybe you don’t think Napoli’s going to be interested about this? How Chester Conway here, who doesn’t know nothing about nothing, is having a nice private chat with Frank Tarbok.”

“Oh, don’t be stupid,” I said.

“Watch it, you,” he told me.

I said, “Think about it, Ralph. If anything was going on here, would I have let you into the apartment?”

Tarbok said, out of the corner of his mouth, “You and me are gonna talk about that, Conway, believe me.”

“Oh, you shut up, too,” I said. “You people are the shlemozzles, not me. I never in my life saw so many people jump to so many wrong conclusions. You’re all either paranoid or stupid, and I’m beginning to think you’re both.”

Abbie said, dangerously, “I hope you’re not including me in that, Chet.”

“Now don’t you start,” I said. I walked away from the refrigerator toward Ralph, who put a menacing expression on his face. “Ralph,” I said, “Frank Tarbok is not here to make any plans with me to do anything mean to Solomon Napoli. Frank Tarbok is here as a private citizen, escorting the widow of Tommy McKay, who is that tear-stained lady sitting at the kitchen table.”

“So you say,” said Ralph.

“So I say,” I agreed. “And so it is. You came back for your gun, Ralph, and you have your gun, and now it seems to me you’ve got your choice of either using that gun or going away. Which is it?”

Abbie said, “Chet, be careful.”

I turned to her and said, “No. I’ve had it, Abbie. Every time things quiet down a little, some other lamebrain comes running in with a lot of stupid ideas in his head and starts—”

“Hey,” Ralph said.

“Yes,” I said, turning back to him, “I do mean you. If you weren’t a lamebrain I wouldn’t have taken thirteen bucks from you at gin in an hour.”

“You had the cards,” he said. “I can’t do nothing when you keep getting the cards.”

“Sure,” I said. “And if you weren’t a lamebrain you wouldn’t have walked out of here without your gun.”

“That was that cop.” Ralph was becoming very defensive now. “He screwed things up, made me—”

“Sure, the cop,” I said. “And if you weren’t a lamebrain you wouldn’t be carrying on like a nut just because Frank Tarbok is in Tommy McKay’s apartment. Tommy worked for Frank Tarbok, what’s so surprising that Tommy’s widow is with Frank Tarbok?”