Somebody Owes Me Money

Abbie carefully and wincingly hung up the telephone, put it quickly away under the counter, and hurried around to sit down beside me at the bar again, saying under her breath. “He doesn’t want any trouble here, his wife doesn’t know anything about anything. He’s supposed to get us out of the house and take us to a rendezvous. A house in Babylon.”

“Then what?” I asked, though I didn’t really have to.

“Tarbok started to say something about the waterfront being a handy place,” Abbie said, “and Golderman broke in and said he didn’t want to know anything about anything like that.”

I remembered what a short time ago it had been that Tarbok and I had shaken hands in solemn partnership. Well, that duet had gone off-key in a hurry.

We heard the door open at the head of the stairs. Getting off the stool, I said, “When he’s sitting down, you distract him.”

“What are you going to do?”

There was no time to answer. Golderman was coming down the stairs. I shook my head and ran around behind the bar. Scotch, Scotch. Here it was. Black & White, a nice brand. A full quart.

Golderman was at the foot of the stairs. I gulped what was left of the Scotch and soda in my glass, and was starting to pour myself a fresh drink when Golderman came over to the bar. “Well, well,” he said. “You the new barman, Chester?”

“That’s me,” I said. “What’s yours?”

He sat down on a stool. “I’ll just take my brandy, if I may.”

“Sure thing.” I slid his brandy glass over to him. “What’s the situation?”

“Well, it’s been taken out of my hands,” he said. “The captain’s going to want to talk to you two. In the morning. In the meantime, he refuses to let me keep you here.”

“Oh, boy,” I said.

“What does he expect us to do tonight?” Abbie asked him.

“It just so happens,” he said, “that my wife’s brother isn’t home right now. He works for Grumman, they have him and his whole family in Washington for three months. I have the keys to his house, there’s no reason you can’t stay there tonight.”

“Where’s the house?” I asked. It was easy to resist the impulse to say something smart-alecky, like, “Oh, the house in Babylon?” Like him with Ralph in the closet. But all I had to do was forecast the dialogue from that point on, if I did such a thing, and the impulse got itself resisted.

“In Babylon,” he said. “Not very far from here.”

“Can you give me directions?”

“Oh, I’ll drive you over,” he said.

“I have my own car out front,” I said.

“You’d better leave that here for tonight. The captain was explicit that I shouldn’t give you two the opportunity to change your minds and take off again. I’ll run you over there, it won’t be any trouble at all.”

“I hope there’s no hurry,” I said, lifting the bottle of Black & White. “I was just about to make myself a second drink.”

“Go right ahead,” he said.

Abbie got down off the stool and started walking away toward the other end of the room, saying, “Is that a color television set?”

Golderman swung around on his stool to watch her. “Yes, it is,” he said, and I bonked him with the Black & White.

30

“We can’t stay here all night,” Abbie said.

I shut the last cabinet door. “Not a gun down here,” I said. “And none on him. I thought cops were supposed to wear guns at all times.”

“Not while they’re at home,” she said.

I went around behind the bar again and looked at him. He was tied hand and foot, he was gagged, and he was unconscious, and it all served him right. But if only he’d had a gun on him.

“Doggone it,” I said. “That gun of yours might have been a pea-shooter, but it would have been better than nothing.”

“Stop worrying about guns,” Abbie said. “When we don’t show up at that house in Babylon pretty soon, Tarbok and his men are going to come over to find out what’s the matter.”

“Yeah, and one of them will probably be carrying that gun of yours, and he’ll stand very close and go pit pit and it’s all over because we don’t have anything to defend ourselves with.”

“Where would one of them get it?” she said, frowning at me.

“Out of my pocket,” I said.

“No,” she said.

Why was she bothering me with things like that? I looked at her, exasperated, and said, “What do you mean, no?”

“None of those people took the gun,” she said. “It was gone before you got to the apartment.”

I stared. “Before?”

“Of course,” she said. “When do you think I was looking for it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought one time while I was unconscious in the apartment.”

“In the car,” she said. “When you got yourself shot. I took off away from there, and every time I got stopped by a light I searched you some more. That’s how I got so sticky.”

“Never mind that part.”

“Anyway,” she said, “you didn’t have it with you. I could have killed you myself, if you want to know.”

“Not without the gun. Maybe it’s in the car someplace, maybe it fell out of my pocket.”

“I searched, Chet, I really and truly searched. That gun was gone.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said. I went over and sat down at the bar and pulled on my Scotch and soda. “Then who the heck took it?” I said.