A Horse’s Head

by Ed McBain

  “It’s near,” Mullaney said.

  “Take George with you,” Kruger suggested.

  “Out of the question.”

  “Henry then?”

  “Neither of them. I go alone.”

  “Why?”

  “Put yourself in my position,” Mullaney said, not knowing what the hell he was talking about, “I need protection. I wouldn’t mind giving up five hundred thousand dollars,”—like fun I wouldn’t, he thought—“after all, that’s only money. But you can’t ask me to risk my life getting it because what’s the difference between that and getting killed right here in this room?” still not knowing what he was talking about, but realizing he was making sense because the men were studying him soberly and weighing his words, and the girl was glancing at him in approval and smiling encouragingly from where she stood in black against the red drapes. “If either George or Henry are recognized, I don’t think I have to tell you what could happen to me,” Mullaney said, not having the faintest idea what could happen to him especially since K and Gouda and the others were now dead, but figuring it never hurt to throw in dire predictions when you were dealing with people who had the power to make those predictions come true. “Think of my position,” he said.

  “He has a point,” Kruger said. He kept studying Mullaney. “But think of my position,” he said reasonably. “What guarantee do I have that you’ll come back?”

  “No guarantee at all. Except my word,” Mullaney said.

  Kruger coughed politely. “I’m afraid that’s not enough for me,” he said.

  “Well, what can I tell you?” Mullaney said, and shrugged. Come on, Kruger, he thought, you are walking right into the sucker bet, it’s sitting right here waiting for you, all you’ve got to do is come a wee bit closer, I’m going to let you pick up the bet all by yourself, come on, baby, come on.

  “No,” Kruger said. “I don’t like the odds.”

  “They’re the only odds in this game.”

  “You’re forgetting that I can end this game whenever I choose.”

  “In which case you lose all the marbles.”

  “I’d be an idiot to let you out of here alone.”

  “You’d be a bigger idiot to throw away half a million dollars.”

  “If I let you go, I may be doing both.”

  “Not if I gave you my word.”

  “Please,” Kruger said politely, and then began pacing before the fireplace, his huge hands clasped behind his back. Mullaney kept waiting for him to have the sudden inspiration he hoped he would have had long before now, but Kruger only kept pacing back and forth, thinking. “Suppose I go with you?” he suggested at last.

  “No.”

  “Not too many people know me,” Kruger said.

  “No, I couldn’t take that chance,” Mullaney said, waiting for lightning to strike, wondering how many permutations and combinations Kruger had to examine before he fell over the sucker bet that was right there at his very feet.

  “I know!” Kruger said, and turned from the fireplace. Mullaney held his breath. “The girl,” Kruger said. “You’ll take the girl with you.”

  It’s about time, Mullaney thought. “Absolutely not,” he said.

  “Why not?” Kruger asked, frowning.

  “That’s the same thing as taking you or any of the others.”

  “No,” Kruger said. “No, it isn’t. I beg your pardon, but it isn’t. The girl is not known.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mullaney said. “I hate to be difficult, but either I go alone, or I don’t go at all.”

  “Either you take the girl with you,” Kruger said, looming large and hairy and black and menacing and shooting up cinders and sparks from the evil smokestack that he was, “or you leave here in a coffin.”

  “I arrived in a coffin,” Mullaney answered, “so I might just as well leave in one.”

  “All right, George,” Kruger said, “kill him.”

  “All right,” Mullaney said, “I’ll take the girl with me.”

  “Good. George, get her a gun.”

  George went to a cabinet against the wall, opened the top drawer, and removed from it a small pearl-handled .22. He showed the gun to the girl and said, “Do you know how to use this?”

  The girl nodded, then took the gun and put it into her purse.

  “If he does not go directly for the money,” Kruger said, “shoot him.”

  The girl nodded.

  “If he tries to contact either the others or the police,” Kruger said, “shoot him.”

  The girl nodded.

  “If he gets the money, and then refuses to come back here,” Kruger said, “shoot him.”

  The girl nodded.

  “Very well, go.” They started for the door, and Kruger said, “No, wait.” He walked very close to where Mullaney was standing, and said, “I hope you’re not lying to me, sir. I hope you really know where that money is.”

  “I really know where that money is,” Mullaney said, because he really did know.

  “Very well. See that you bring it back. We’ll get you if you don’t, you know.”

  “I know,” Mullaney said.

  Kruger opened the door. Mullaney and the girl stepped into the hallway and the door closed behind them.

  “Hello, honey,” the girl whispered, and grinned.

  3. MERILEE

  It was nine o’clok on a Friday night, and all the gamblers were out.

  Mullaney and the girl came down into the overspill uptown throng. He felt very much like a college freshman pledging for a fraternity, his trousers perhaps six inches too short, the cuffs riding high on his shins, his jacket sleeves reaching midway up his forearm, the jacket itself stretching tight to bursting across his shoulders, the big black buttons barely holding, the jasmine shirt ludicrously incongruous with the solemn burial garments. The fraternity brothers had given him the most beautiful girl in the world to carry on his arm and then had sent him into the clamor of Friday-night New York to get half a million dollars. There was no question that he already possessed both the money and the girl, so the secret now was to prolong this delicious suspense, to put off the moment of releasing—yes, that was the proper word—first the money, then the girl and himself. In the meantime, they walked idly down the street, he in his Ichabod Crane clothes, and she in her demure black velvet, laced at the throat, holding his arm with an intimate delicate-fingered knowledge—she too seemed willing to wait.

  The gamblers, or more accurately the losers, were everywhere around them. They had saved their nickels and dimes to build their Friday-night stake, and now they were betting it on a single roll of the dice, the sucker bet supreme, a bigger sucker bet than even Kruger had laid. They hoped to win (he supposed) all the things he had hoped to win when he stepped out a year ago, but quicker and with a more dizzying sense of triumph, all of it on a single roll. Laughter awaited on the opposite side of that roll, dazzling good looks and keen intelligence, wealth unimaginable, luxury undreamt. So they all marched in their Robert Hall suits, and their heads swam with visions of cashmere lined with silk, expensive motor cars purring gently, Playmates of the Month spreading eager legs, the soft interiors of women they thought they had never known the likes of, all waiting, all beckoning, all belonging to the conqueror. Just a single winning roll and power would be theirs, lightning bolts to hurl, orgasms to waste, laughter to recklessly spend.

  Mullaney had already won, had won in that apartment when he’d bluffed Kruger’s hand. The cash was his, as was the girl, whenever he wanted them. Everybody else was a loser.

  “Do you have any money?” he asked the girl.

  “No,” she said, and they both laughed.

  “I have half a million dollars,” he said.

  “Oh I know you do, baby.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “No, where is it?” she said, and laughed.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “First tell me where the money is.”

  “No. First
tell me your name.”

  “Merilee,” she said.

  “That’s very close to my name,” he said, “which is Mullaney.”

  “That’s very close indeed,” the girl said.

  “We are going to be very close indeed, Merilee.”

  “Oh yes indeed,” she said, “we are going to be very close indeed.”

  “We’re going to make love on a bed of five hundred thousand dollars. Have you ever made love on such a bed?”

  “No, but it sounds like enormous fun,” she said. “Where is it?”

  “Your ass will turn green,” Mullaney said, and laughed.

  “Oh yes indeed it will. All that money will rub off on it, and I will absolutely adore the color of it. Where is it?”

  “I wonder if it’s in tens, or hundreds, or thousands,” Mullaney said.

  “Don’t you know?”

  “I won’t know until I see it. I have a feeling, however, that it’s in largish bills.”

  “A feeling?”

  “Yes,” he said, “a warm, enveloping feeling,” and grinned at his inside joke.

  “Do you know something?” she said.

  “What?”

  “We’re being followed. No, don’t look.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know. George and Henry are following us.”

  The girl was right; the twins were behind them. Mullaney caught a quick glimpse of them as he took her arm and led her onto Madison Avenue, and then spotted them again crossing the street near the IBM showroom on Fifty-seventh. He toyed with the idea of pulling something unexpected on the twins, playing some sort of fantastic trick that would leave them bewildered and lost, but he couldn’t think of anything clever enough or devastating enough. So he simply continued walking up Fifty-seventh Street, toward Fifth Avenue, and then turned left on Fifth, all the while trying to think of a really clever gimmick he could pull on Henry and George, who were right there behind him, ambling along the avenue like a double vision of Friday-night delight, dirty rats.

  Mullaney’s poverty of invention was beginning to depress him. It seemed to him that someone in possession of half a million cool American dollars to warm the cockles of his heart, not to mention a rather beautiful young lady on his arm—

  “How old are you?” he asked suddenly.

  “Twenty-two,” she said. “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-one,” he lied.

  “That’s a lie,” she said.

  “Right, I’m really thirty-three.”

  “Oh boy, what a liar,” the girl said.

  “I’ll be forty years old in August,” Mullaney said.

  “You look older,” the girl said.

  “That’s because I have half a million dollars. That kind of money can give a person worry lines.”

  “Oh yes indeed I’m sure,” the girl said.

  —someone in possession of such wealth and beauty and, yes, youth (she was only twenty-two, what a marvelous age to climb onto and into, all springtime taut and fresh), someone who owned all these things after a year of steady downhill plodding, well hell it just seemed impossible that someone so richly endowed could not think of a single solitary brilliant trick to shake those twins behind him.

  “Listen,” he said, “are you game?”

  “I am game for anything, baby.”

  “No matter what?”

  “Anything.”

  “Would you, for example, do it on a Ferris wheel?”

  “I would, for example, do it on a roller coaster,” she said.

  “Then, sweetheart, let’s go!” he said, and he grabbed her hand and began running down Fifth Avenue. He glanced quickly over his shoulder and saw that he had taken the twins by surprise. The trick now was to maintain that element of surprise, lead them a merry chase around this fair Friday-night city, and then unleash all those crisp little mothers from where they were nestling so snug and warm, lay his shy blond beauty down upon the bills, hump her royally against a backdrop of cash, hang singles from her nipples, fivers on her navel, deck her halls with sawbucks and centuries, set her aglow with green like an April evening Christmas tree, humping her all the while, money and sex, winner take all, but maintain the element of surprise.

  The first surprise was the Mercedes-Benz that stopped for a light on the corner of Fifty-fifth and Fifth. Mullaney pulled open the back door and shoved the girl onto the leather seat. To the driver, he shouted, “Get moving.”

  “Crazy,” the driver said cheerfully, and stepped on the gas. “Did you just rob a bank?”

  “Don’t tell him,” the girl said, and giggled.

  “Lady, you are gorgeous,” the driver said. “Where to?”

  “Anywhere away from here,” Mullaney said.

  “Crazy,” the driver said. “Let’s go to Philadelphia.”

  “Except Philadelphia,” the girl said.

  “You know the Philadelphia jokes, huh?”

  “Every one of them.”

  “None of them are jokes.”

  “I know.”

  “Lady, you are gorgeous,” the driver said.

  “I do it on roller coasters,” the girl said, and giggled again.

  “Front or back seat? There’s a big difference.”

  “They’re behind us,” Mullaney said suddenly.

  “Who?”

  “Henry and George.”

  “Don’t believe I know them,” the driver said thoughtfully.

  “They’re killers,” the girl said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh yes indeed.”

  “Lady, you are gorgeous.”

  “Let us out on the next corner,” Mullaney said.

  “Let you out? You just got in!”

  “Surprises,” Mullaney said, “that’s the secret.”

  “Of what?” the driver asked, but they were already out of the car. Behind them, Mullaney could see the twins’ cab pulling to the curb.

  “Run!” he shouted to Merilee, and they began running again, laughing hysterically. He was suddenly afraid that the jacket would split up the middle. He tried to keep his shoulders back, to avoid putting a strain on the seam, but all the while he was certain the jacket would split.

  “They’re still with us,” Merilee shouted. “Oh my this is fun!”

  “We’ll have to think of something clever,” he said.

  “Good,” she said, “think of something clever.”

  “And unexpected.”

  “Oh yes unexpected, I love the unexpected!”

  “Let’s head for your apartment!” he said.

  “Clever, clever,” she said, “they’d never expect us to go there.”

  “Right!”

  “Because I live with Kruger, you see.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes.”

  They had reached Sixth Avenue now and he paused for just a moment on the corner, holding her hand, wondering whether to proceed directly west toward the honkytonk movie theaters or to turn uptown toward the camera stores and hardware stores and Howard Johnson’s beckoning in the distance and beyond that Central Park and beyond that—

  “Hurry!” she said.

  “Yes, yes.”

  “They’re coming!”

  “Yes!”

  “Can’t we go to your place?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “My landlady locked me out of it yesterday.”

  “For God’s sake, hurry!” she shouted.

  “The unexpected!” he said, and he tugged her hand and reversed direction and ran back toward Henry and George who were racing up toward the corner. There were a lot of people on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Forty-second Street, but not many of them paid too much attention to Mullaney and the girl, or even to Henry and George, who stopped dead in their tracks and then whirled about when they realized their quarry was heading in the opposite direction. Neither of the twins was exactly slim or svelte, and they were puffing hard and desperately out of breath as they once more t
ook up the chase. Mullaney had another brilliant idea, which he planned to spring if things got too tight, and that was to run up Fifth Avenue again to the Doubleday’s on Fifty-seventh Street, where he would lock the twins into one of the listening booths with a Barbra Streisand LP in stereo. But that was his ace in the hole, and he planned to play it only if the Public Library had already closed, which he hoped against hope it hadn’t. He reasoned (correctly, he hoped) that the twins would never expect them to run into the Public Library, because who in his right mind would go into the Public Library on a Friday night?

  “You’re crazy,” the girl said. “I love you you’re so crazy.”

  He took a last look over his shoulder before running across the street, dodging traffic and coming once again onto Fifth Avenue. Pulling the girl along with him, he raced up the wide marble front steps of the library, past the MGM lions, and then ducked onto the footpath leading to the side entrance, and through the revolving doors and into the high hallowed marbled corridors, wishing he had a nickel for every encyclopedia he had sold to libraries all over the country (in fact he had once had even more than a nickel for every encyclopedia he’d sold). He caught from the corner of his eye a sign telling him the library closed at ten, and then saw the huge wall clock telling him it was now nine thirty-seven, which meant he had exactly twenty-three minutes to put his hands on the money, perhaps less if George and Henry found them first. He was fairly familiar with libraries, though not this one, and he knew that all libraries had what they called stacks, which was where they piled up all the books. This being one of the largest libraries in the world, he assumed it would have stacks all over the place, so he kept opening oak-paneled doors all along the corridor, looking into rooms containing learned old men reading books about birds, and finally coming upon a door that was marked STAFF ONLY, figuring this door would surely open upon the privacy of dusty stacks, convinced that it would, and surprised when instead it opened on a cluttered office with a pince-nezed old lady sitting behind a desk, “Excuse us,” he said, “we’re looking for the stacks.”

  The stacks, he thought, would be symbolically correct for unleashing those stacks of bills, which he had been very close to all along, but which he was now very much closer to, actually within touching distance of, actually within finger-tingling stroking distance of, five hundred thousand dollars’ worth of unmitigated loot. The girl’s hand was sweating in his own as they went rapidly down the marble corridor, as if she too sensed that he was about to unlock that avalanche of cash, turn her backside green with it as he had promised, allow her to wallow in all that filthy lucre. He spotted another door marked PERSONNEL and tried it, but it was locked, so he kept running down the corridor with the girl’s sweaty hand in his own, the smell of money enveloping both of them, trying doors, waiting for the door that would open to their touch, open upon rows and rows of dusty books in soaring stacks behind which they would allow the bills to trickle through their fingers, floating noiselessly on the silent air, if only Henry and George did not get to them first.