Somebody Owes Me Money Read Online Free PDF Page B

emotionless, not really threatening.
    I sat down. I put my hands in my lap, not knowing what to do with them. I met his eye—his eye’s eye—and wished I could control my blinking.
    He glanced at one of the papers littering the desk, saying, “How long you been working for Napoli?”
    I said, “Who?”
    He looked at me again and his face finally took on an expression: saddened humorous wisdom. “Don’t waste my time, fella,” he said. “We know who you are.”
    “I’m Chester Conway,” I said, struck by the sudden hope that this whole thing could be a case of mistaken identity.
    It wasn’t. “I know,” he said. “And you work for Solomon Napoli.”
    I shook my head. “Maybe there’s another Chester Conway,” I said. “Did you look in the phone books for all the boroughs? A few years ago I used to get calls—”
    He slapped his palm on the desk. It wasn’t very loud, but it shut me up. “You pal around with Irving Falco,” he said.
    “Irving Falco,” I repeated, trying to think where I knew the name from. Then I said, “Sure! Sid Falco! I’m in a poker game with him.”
    “Irving Falco,” he insisted.
    I nodded. I was suddenly and irrationally happy, having something I knew about to deal with at last. It didn’t change things, it didn’t explain things, but at least I could join the conversation. “That’s the one,” I said. “But we call him Sid on account of a movie with—”
    “But his name’s Irving,” he said. He looked as though he was starting to lose his patience.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “All right,” he said. “And Irving Falco works for Solomon Napoli.”
    “If you say so. I don’t know him well, just at the poker game, we don’t talk about—”
    He pointed at me. “And you work for Solomon Napoli,” he said.
    “No,” I said. “Honest. I’m a cabdriver, I work for the V. S. Goth Service Corporation, Eleventh Avenue and—”
    “We know about that,” he said. “We know all about you. We know you got a straight job, and you lose twice that much at the cards every week. Plus you play the ponies, plus—”
    “Oh, now,” I said. “I don’t lose all the time. I’ve been having a run of bad cards, that could happen to any—”
    “Shut up,” he said.
    I shut up.
    “The only question,” he said, “is what you do for Napoli.” He made a show of looking at his watch, a big shiny thing with a heavy gold band. “You got ten seconds,” he said.
    “I don’t work for him,” I said. The young blond SS man came into my line of vision on the right.
    Nobody said anything. We all looked at the heavyset man looking at his watch, till he shook his head, lowered his arm, looked over at the SS man, and said, “Bump him.”
    “I don’t work for anybody named Napoli,” I said. I was getting frantic. The SS man came over and took my right arm, and the other guy came from behind me and took my left arm, and they lifted me out of the chair. “I don’t even know anybody named Napoli!” I shouted. “Honest to God! ”
    They lifted me high enough so only my toes were touching the floor, and then they walked me quickly toward the door, me yelling all the time, not believing any of this could possibly be happening.
    We got through the doorway and then the man at the desk cut through all my hollering with one soft-voiced word: “Okay.”
    Immediately the other two turned me around and brought me back to the chair and sat me down again. My upper arms hurt and I was hoarse and my nerves were shot and I figured my hair was probably white, but I was alive. I swallowed, and blinked a lot, and looked at the man behind the desk.
    He nodded heavily. “I believe you,” he said. “We checked you out, and we saw where you buddied up with Falco, and we figured maybe we ought to find out. So you don’t work for Napoli.”
    “No, sir,” I said.
    “That’s good,” he said. “How’s Louise taking it, do you know?”
    I experienced a definite sinking feeling. Here we go again, I