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 shlemoz-zles, 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?”
“I’m not with that bastard!” Louise McKay suddenly shouted, leaping to her feet in order to throw a monkeywrench into the works just as I was beginning to make Ralph see a glimmer of light. She shouted at Ralph, “Go ahead and shoot him! He’s the one killed my Tommy!”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said. “He did not. Mrs. McKay, you’re carrying on worse than Ralph.”
“Just a second there,” Ralph said. “Let the lady talk.”
“The lady runs off at the mouth,” I told him. “She doesn’t have the brains of a chipmunk.”
“Chet!” Abbie said, shocked. “Louise has been through a lot!”
“Well, it hasn’t smartened her up any,” I said. “She’s had a week to get used to being a widow, and frankly I’m not impressed by how broken up she is, seeing she was running around behind Tommy’s back when he was alive. If you ask me, she’s just making all this fuss because she feels guilty now about what she did to Tommy herself.”
“You’ve got a dirty mind, Chester Conway,” Mrs. McKay told me, “and a dirty mouth to go with it. But it doesn’t change the fact of the matter, and the fact of the matter is, Frank Tarbok killed my Tommy.”
“Why?” I said.
“Because he thought he could get me that way,” she said.
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “He already had you, as often as he wanted.”
She went white. “You’re a filthy little bastard,” she said.
“Yeah, and you’re a nun.” I turned to Ralph, saying, “Ralph, think about it. Is Frank Tarbok the kind of man who would kill somebody for a woman? Particularly for a woman he was already shacked up with.”
Ralph was looking from face to face. The whole thing was miles over his head, but he had just enough brains to know it. “I don’t know nothing about nothing,” he said. “All I know is, Sol is going to be very interested in all this.”
“Then you better hurry and tell him about it,” I said. “Maybe he’ll give you a merit badge.”
“Watch that,” he said.
I opened my mouth to say one or two things, but then I changed my mind and instead I said, “Ralph, you weren’t bad to me while I was your prisoner. You were a pretty nice guy, in fact, and believe me I am doing my best right now to remember that. And please, you try and remember me. I haven’t done anything to Sol Napoli or anybody else, and what’s more I’m not in a position to do anything to Sol Napoli or anybody else. I am not a threat to you, Ralph, honest to God. Think about it.”
He thought about it. I could see him struggling with the problem, and his eyes kept straying to Frank Tarbok, standing in front of the refrigerator with his hands up. I could see what he had to surmount. Frank Tarbok was the enemy, and I was with the enemy, and that had to mean something was going on. On the other hand, what could be going on? It was a problem.
He finally gave up on it. “All right,” he said. “Okay. I’ll just go talk to Sol. Maybe he’ll want to see you again.”
“I will more than likely be right here,” I said. “Drop in any time. Join the crowd.”
“Sol can find you if he wants you,” Ralph said darkly.
“I know,” I said.
Ralph glared around at everybody, wanting to be sure his reputation as a tough guy was still unflawed, and then he hefted his gun one last time, backed out of the kitchen like the evil foreman leaving a western saloon, and disappeared to the right. A second later we heard the door open and shut.
Tarbok lowered his arms. “Conway,” he said, “just why in holy hell did you let that guy in here?”
“He left his gun behind,” I said, “and he came back for it. To be honest, I completely forgot about you being here. About the implications, I mean.”
“He left his gun behind.” Tarbok picked up an overturned chair and heavily sat down on it. Shaking his head he said, “Every time I have a conversation with you, Conway, things go crazy.”
“I thought it was the other way around,” I said, and walked around the table and sat down again in front of my liverwurst sandwich. Picking it up I said, “What time do we expect Walter Droble?”
“Half an hour.”
“Shall we make some onion dip? Does he play bridge?”
Louise McKay suddenly said, “Abbie, it’s perfectly all right for you to stay here while you’re in New York, but I’d rather you didn’t bring other people in with you. Particularly a foul-mouthed individual like that one.”
I said, “Mrs. McKay, I’m sorry if I offended you.”
“Huh!” she said.
“But,” I said, “you’re going around being very shrill and emotional and you’re not thinking sensibly. We could all have gotten killed if Ralph had decided to start shooting. Do you think he’d have shot Tarbok here and left three witnesses alive to tell about it? Just exactly at the moment when I was about to get him quietly out of here you start yelling all this stuff about Tarbok killing your husband, when you know perfectly well he didn’t.”
She stared at me. “I know no such thing.”
“Maybe you didn’t,” I said. “You probably did think he’d done it at first, but now you know he didn’t and you’re just going on momentum. You’re mad at him and maybe you should be, but that’s why you’re going on saying he killed Tommy.”
“He did.”
“No. You know the motive isn’t right, you know he wouldn’t have killed Tommy in order to marry you. And besides that,” I said, pointing at the wound on my head, “somebody shot at me Wednesday night.”
She sat there waiting for me to go on, but I’d said all I wanted to say, so finally she said, “Well? What difference does that make?”
I said, “The Droble gang didn’t do it, and the Napoli gang didn’t do it. So who did it?”
“I don’t know,” she said coldly. “Who else have you insulted recently?”
“Come on,” I said. “Be serious. Nobody’s ever shot at me before, and nobody’s going to be shooting at me now except in connection some way with the murder of Tommy McKay. It would be too much of a coincidence if the shootings weren’t related.”
“I don’t see what point you think you’re making,” she said.
I said, “The point I think I’m making is that the only person who would take a shot at me has to be the same person who killed Tommy. And Frank Tarbok didn’t do it. He didn’t shoot at me Wednesday night.”
Tarbok said, “What time?”
“Around one-thirty,” Abbie told him.
Tarbok looked at Mrs. McKay. “You know where I was at one-thirty Wednesday night.”
“That doesn’t prove anything,” she said. “All we have is your word for it,” she told me, “that you were shot at one-thirty Wednesday night.”
“Well,” I said, “there is also this healing wound on the side of my head, which ought to count for something.”
She glanced at the side of my head, but her expression didn’t change. It remained locked up, cold, unreachable. “It doesn’t say one-thirty Wednesday night on it,” she said.
“I say one-thirty Wednesday night,” Abbie said. “I was with Chet when it happened.”
She faltered for a second at that, but then she said, irritably, “What difference does it make anyway? The shooting doesn’t prove anything, it doesn’t have to be connected to all this at all. If you associate with underworld figures, you shouldn’t be surprised if sooner or later you get yourself shot at.”
“The only underworld figure I ever associated with up till now,” I told her, “was your husband.”
She stiffened even more, and got to her feet. “Nothing you say is going to change the facts,” she said. “And the fact is that Frank Tarbok killed my husband. He’s held me incommunicado for a week to keep me from telling the police what I know, and that’s proof enough for me.”
“What if he hadn’t held you for a week?” I said. “What would have been proof enough then?”
But she was done with listening. No, she’d never listened, she was done now with answering. She turned and walked toward the kitchen door, very haughty.
Tarbok said heavily, “Don’t try making any phone calls.”
She left the room without deigning to answer.
Abbie looked at the doorway, frowning. “Maybe I ought to go talk to her,” she said.
“Forget it,” I said. “She’s got a closed mind.”
“I didn’t mean to convince her of anything. Just to comfort her a little.” She got to her feet. “In fact, I will.” She also left the room.
I said to Frank Tarbok, “Care for some liverwurst?”
“No, thanks,” he said. “My stomach’s been acting up the last few days.”
“I wouldn’t wonder. Can you take coffee?”
“No, nothing for me.” He looked at me. “You got any idea who it is?”
“The killer?”
“Who else?”
“No, I don’t. I wish I did. Abbie thought it was Louise, but I never did think so and I still don’t.”
He shook his head. “Naw, she didn’t do it. She ran around on him, but she liked him okay. Just like I like my wife. Louise and me, we both knew it was just for kicks, neither of us was looking for no permanent change.”
“Right,” I said. “So it wasn’t her, and it wasn’t you—”
“You’re damn right.”
“Right. And it wasn’t Napoli or any of his people, because Tommy was working with them, and it wasn’t Droble or any of his people, because he didn’t know Tommy was double-crossing him. So who’s left? I don’t know.”
“We oughta find out,” Tarbok said. “It’d help us both if whoever he is he got found out.”
“Yes, it would,” I said. “You’d have Mrs. McKay off your back, and I’d have the killer off mine.”
“Maybe we oughta work together,” Tarbok said. “Maybe the two of us could maybe find out something.”
I stared at him. “You mean, play detective? You and me?”
“Why not? The cops ain’t playing detective, and somebody ought to.”
“The cops are still working on the case,” I said. “They were as of Friday, anyway.”
“Well, they’re off now,” Tarbok told me. “I get information, I can guarantee it.”
“Oh,” I said. “That makes for a problem, doesn’t it?”
“We’re both of us in big trouble if the guy ain’t found,” Tarbok said.
“You’re right.”
“So why don’t we join up and take a look for him?”
“Abbie’s looking, too,” I said. “You know, to avenge her brother.”
“She can come aboard,” he said. “Plenty of room. What do you say?”
I grinned at him. “You want to team up with a shlemozzle?”
He grinned back, and it was amazing how the change of expression lifted his face. He almost looked human now. “You’re a kind of a super shlemozzle,” he said. “You do dumb things, but you always got smart reasons.”
“Hmmm,” I said, because it was a description I couldn’t find myself disagreeing with, though I would have liked to. He stuck his hand out. “Is it a deal?”
I shrugged, shook my head, and took his hand. “It’s a deal,” I said. We shook hands, the unlikeliest team since the lion and the mouse, and once again the doorbell rang.