Read Somebody Owes Me Money for Free Online

thought, and very reluctantly I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know who you mean.”
    He looked sharply at me, frowning as though this time I was telling a lie for no sensible reason at all. “Come on,” he said.
    “I’m sorry,” I said, and I really meant it. “I don’t want to get in trouble with you or anything, but I don’t know anybody named Louise.”
    He sat back and smirked at me, as though I’d just made a lewd admission. “So you were having a thing with her, huh? That’s what it is, huh?”
    I said, “Excuse me, but no. I don’t have a girlfriend right now, and I can’t remember ever going out with a girl named Louise. Maybe in high school one time, I don’t know.”
    The smirk gradually shifted back to the frown. He studied me for a long minute, and then he said, “That don’t make any sense.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said again. My shoulders were hunching more and more. By the time I got out of here, they’d probably be covering my ears and I’d never hear again.
    He said, “You knew McKay well enough to go around to his place, but you don’t know his wife’s first name. That don’t make any sense at all.”
    “Tommy McKay? Is that his wife?” I suddenly felt twice as nervous as before, because obviously I should know Tommy’s wife’s name, and anything at all I could think of to say right now would have to sound phony.
    The man at the desk nodded heavily. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s his wife. You never met her, huh?”
    “Oh, I met her,” I said. “Sometimes she’d come to the door when I went over there, or she’d answer the phone when I called. But we never talked or anything, we never had any conversation.”
    “McKay never said, ‘Here’s my wife, Louise’?”
    I shook my head. “Usually,” I said, “I wouldn’t even go into the apartment. I’d hand him some money, or he’d hand me some, and that’d be it. The couple of times I was in there, his wife wasn’t home. And he never introduced us. I was a customer, that’s all. We never saw each other socially or anything.”
    He seemed dubious, but no longer one hundred percent disbelieving.
    Another part of what he’d been saying abruptly caught up with me, and I said, “Hey!”
    Everybody jumped and looked startled and wary and dangerous.
    I hunched some more. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just thinking about what you said, that’s all.”
    They all relaxed.
    I said, “About me having a thing with Tommy’s wife. I mean, that’s just impossible. She’s not—I mean, she and me—it just wouldn’t—”
    “Okay,” he said. He looked tired and disgusted all of a sudden. “You’re clean,” he said.
    “Well, sure,” I said. I looked around at them all. “Is that what you wanted to know? Did you think I killed Tommy?”
    They didn’t bother to answer me. The man at the desk said, “Take him home.” What beautiful words!
    The SS man said to me, “Up.”
    “All right,” I said. I got quickly to my feet, wanting to be out of there before anybody changed anybody’s mind. Up till a few seconds ago I hadn’t counted on getting out of here at all.
    This time they didn’t grab my arms. I walked of my own accord to the door, and as I was stepping through, the man at the desk said, “Wait.”
    Run for it? Ho ho. I turned around and looked at the three of them.
    The man at the desk said, “You don’t talk to the cops. About this.”
    “Oh,” I said. “Of course not. I mean, nothing happened, right? What should I talk to the cops for?”
    I was babbling. I made myself stop, I made myself turn around, I made myself walk down the hall and down the stairs and down the gauntlet of cars and over to the Chevrolet. I got into the back seat without anybody telling me. Looking at the dashboard, I saw the keys had been left there after all, so maybe Robert Mitchum does know best.
    The other two got into the car, same seating as before, and behind us the door rattled upward. We backed out, and they drove