Somebody Owes Me Money

“Oh, it is,” Jerry told her, and Fred nodded solemnly.

Fred? Fred Stehl, the henpecked laundromat man with his glasses and his balding head? No. In his own beer-and-under-shirt way Fred was an even less likely candidate for murderer than Jerry.

I looked around and all the regulars were here tonight, Doug and Sid also sitting there, and besides them there was a fifth man. Leo Morgentauser.

Leo? I frowned at him. What was he doing here, twice in one week? He’d never done that before. That was suspicious, very suspicious. I said, “Leo, what a surprise. I didn’t expect you around for a couple of months.”

“I called him,” Jerry said. “When you didn’t show up I called a couple of guys, and Leo could make it.”

“I won last time,” Leo said, “and I still have some of it left, so I thought I’d give you guys a chance to get it back.”

“Well, that’s good,” I said, and it stopped being suspicious that he was here. Naturally the boys didn’t want to play four-handed, that’s a terrible game, and naturally Leo was one of the people they’d call, and since he had won last Wednesday it wasn’t unusual for him to say yes tonight. Besides, what was a poor but honest vocational high school teacher going to shoot a small-time bookie for? Leo had made his rare two-dollar bet with Tommy, but I knew Tommy would never have let him run up a big tab or anything like that, he wouldn’t let anyone run up a tab too big for them to handle, and why would Leo shoot him? Why would Leo shoot anybody? No, not Leo.

There were two spaces next to each other at the table, so Abbie and I sat down there, Abbie on my left, and that put Doug Hallman on my right. He said, “What’ve you been up to, buddy? You look like you been mugged.”

“I slipped on the ice,” I said. “How you doing tonight?”

He had his inevitable rotten cigar in his face, and he puffed a lot of foul smoke in answer to my question, then amplified with, “Beautiful cards. Great cards. If we’d been playing low ball I’d own New York State by now.”

I grinned at him, and tried to visualize him shooting Tommy. He knew Tommy the same way the rest of us did, but that was all. Because he played at being mean all the time, the tough grimy garage man, big and hairy, chewing his cigar, it was possible to imagine him with a gun in his hand, going bang, but it was not at all possible to imagine why he’d do such a thing. Very unlikely. I put a great big check next to his name in my head, with a little teeny question mark next to it.

The other side of Doug was Leo, and the other side of Leo was Sid Falco. Sid hadn’t looked at anybody since we’d walked in, but had sat there studying the small stack of chips in front of him. Now, though, when Leo picked up the cards and said, “We ready to play?” Sid suddenly said, “Deal me out,” and got to his feet. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said, still not looking at anybody.

“Hold it, Sid,” I said.

He did look at me, then, and I was surprised to see he was scared. He said, “What’s the matter, Chet?”

“Sit down, Sid,” I said.

He said, “I got to go to the bathroom.”

I said, “You mean to go into the kitchen and use Jerry’s other phone to call Napoli and tell him Abbie and I are here so he can have some people waiting outside for us when we leave.”

Shaking his head from side to side, looking very nervous and embarrassed, blinking a lot, doing all the things he always does when he’s trying one of his the-book-says-to-do-it bluffs, he said, “You got me absolutely wrong, Chet. I just got to go to the bathroom.”

“Sit down, Sid,” I said. “You can make your phone call in a few minutes, but right now sit down.” I felt everybody else staring at me. Everybody but Abbie, who seemed to have fallen asleep again. I didn’t blame her. I would have liked to fall asleep myself. I said, “Sit down, Sid, and I’ll tell you and everybody else why I’m here now, and why I look like this, and why Abbie’s sitting there with an Ace bandage wrapped around the outside of her boot. I’ll tell you everything, Sid, and then you can go to the bathroom all you want.”

Sid sat down.

I said, “The reason I’m here, Sid, is because somebody in this room killed Tommy McKay.”

Sid stopped blinking. He looked at me cold-eyed. Everybody else went into shock for a second, and then I got a chorus of wha? and you’re putting us on, and things like that. I waited for it to settle down, and then I said, “Sid, when you go to the bathroom, you’re going to have a lot more to tell your boss than just where he can find Abbie and me. You’re going to tell him who killed Tommy McKay, and you’re going to tell him about the lawyer I went to see on my way to town, and you’re going to tell him about the letter I dictated to that lawyer, and you’re going to tell him why his boys and Droble’s boys both should lay off both Abbie and me permanently and forever. This is all going to be very interesting, Sid.”

“Maybe it is,” Sid said. He was very businesslike now, not doing a bluff at all.

I said, “All right. We’ll start with Tommy’s murderer. He’s in this room.”