by Ed McBain
Very good, Mullaney, he thought, you’re getting very close. To what, he didn’t know.
Kruger knew the money was in the coffin, but did not know it was in the jacket.
Excellent.
On the other hand, K and O’Brien and all the others knew the money was in the jacket, but apparently did not know the money in the jacket was only The New York Times. They had concocted an elaborate scheme whereby they were prepared to ship a coffin and a corpse (was it to be a real corpse, and was that why the original victim had jumped out of the limousine on Fourteenth Street?) to Rome, where an informed party no doubt was to have opened the coffin, removed the body, slit the jacket’s lining, and become richer by half a million dollars. But somewhere along the line, someone had decided it would be a good joke to substitute newspaper strips for cash and, all unbeknownst to K and his fellows, had tiptoed away with the loot and stitched the morning paper into the garment.
Very good.
Now, Mullaney thought, we come to the difficult part, difficult because Kruger and his fellows didn’t tell me anything much about it except that there had been a terrible highway accident. Was it reasonable to assume that the hearse and the coffin had been hijacked on the way to Kennedy and then shuttled out to Secaucus or environs awaiting the resurrection of the corpse? But how had Kruger and his fellows learned about the money in the first place? And who had substituted the newspaper strips for the cash?
Mullaney suddenly remembered something that caused the sweet aroma of money to flood once more into his nostrils. He suddenly remembered that O’Brien had sent someone else to get the suit of clothes from the other room, and he suddenly remembered who that someone had been. The man who kept offering the schnapps. The stonecutter or whatever the hell he was. He had very definitely gone into the other room to get the jacket and pants, leaving the shirt behind because he was certain it would not fit Mullaney. Was it not possible, then, that the stonecutter was the man with the shifty fingers, the man adept at cutting up The New York Times? The only trouble was that Mullaney didn’t know where he had been this morning, other than that it was on the edge of a cemetery. Wait a minute, he thought, wasn’t there a sign, didn’t I notice a sign, something that caused me to think of Feinstein’s funeral (it was so funny the way he died) no, the hearse in the backyard made me think of his funeral, an excellent hearse, that and the marble stones, IN MEMORY OF, wait a minute, one of them had a name on it, now hold it what was the name on that stone, just a minute, the large black marble stone, and across the face of it, IN LOVING MEMORY OF …
Who?
In loving memory of all the pleasures I will no longer enjoy on this sweet green earth.
In …
loving …
memory …
Got it! he thought as it came to him in a terrifying rush, IN LOVING MEMORY OF MARTIN CALLAHAN, LOVING HUSBAND, FATHER, GRANDFATHER, 1896–1967, crazy! and hoped it wasn’t just a dummy stone left around the yard for prospective customers to examine for chiseling styles.
He found an open drugstore on Thirty-eighth Street and looked up the name Martin Callahan in the Manhattan telephone book, discovering that there were two such Callahans listed and thinking So far, so good, I’ve got twenty cents, and a phone call costs a dime, and there are only two Martin Callahans, so I can’t lose. He went into the phone booth and dialed the first Martin Callahan and waited while the phone rang on the other end. There was no answer. This was Friday night. If this was the quick Callahan, he might very well be out stepping. Mullaney hung up, retrieved his dime (which was one-half of his fortune) and dialed the second Martin Callahan.
“Hello?” a woman said.
“Hello,” he said, “my name is Andrew Mullaney. I was out at a cemetery this morning …”
“What?” the woman said.
“Yes, and happened to see your husband’s beautiful stone …” He paused.
“Yes?” the woman said.
“Your husband was Martin Callahan, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, he died last month, poor soul,” she said.
“Well, I’d like to get a stone just like his,” Mullaney said, “but I can’t remember where I saw it. Would you remember the name of the stonecutter?”
“Is this Phil?” the woman said.
“No, this is Andrew Mullaney.”
“Because I don’t think it’s a very funny joke, if this is you, Phil.”
“No, this isn’t Phil.”
“I thought you were coming here at ten o’clock,” the widow Callahan said.
“Well, you see, this isn’t Phil.”
“I got all ready for you,” she said, petulantly he thought.
“Would you remember the name of the stonecutter, ma’am?” he asked. “It’s really very important.”
“Are you sure this isn’t Phil?”
“Oh, I’m positive. Positive, ma’am. Andrew Mullaney, M-U-L-L …”
“Oh,” the woman said. She paused. “The stonecutter’s name is Roger McReady, and he’s of McReady’s Monument Works in Queens,” she said, and hung up.
“Thank you,” Mullaney said in retrospect, and hung up. Since he was very hungry, he spent his last dime on a Hershey bar, which he consumed in three bites. Then he went out into the street and began walking crosstown toward the Queensboro Bridge. He had no plan in mind. Vaguely, he assumed it would be best to keep on the move, but he figured he had at least a little time before Merilee found her way back to Kruger’s apartment on East Sixty-first. So he walked at a normal pace, ambling along and looking at the Lexington Avenue chippies and the Third Avenue fags and the Second Avenue winos, then cutting uptown and thinking all the while what a nice city New York was if only a person had some money to spend in it. Irene had never been a one to worry about money, couldn’t matter less to her whether he’d earned ten thousand a year (which he hadn’t) or twenty thousand (which he most certainly hadn’t). “The best things in life are free,” she was fond of chirping around the house while he wrote out checks for the mountain of bills that seemed to accumulate each month, “all the world loves a lover, and boy do I love you!” or words to that effect, all of it sounding to him like the jabberwocky of a happy schizophrenic. He would gnaw his pencils down to a nub and mutter to himself about freedom and realization, thinking of the several times he had been out to the racetrack and won, or thinking of the few five-and-ten-cent poker games he had busted, or thinking of the impromptu crap game in which he had won thirty-two dollars from his startled friends—break out, he had muttered to himself, break out, cut loose, be a gambler!
So here he was, big gambler, just having lost half a million dollars, but hot on the trail of it again. Or at least hot on the trail of the stonecutter who might or might not have a clue as to how all that newspaper had happened to get inside the jacket. The problem now was one of transportation. He paused at the approach to the bridge, saw a sign reading FOOTWALK TO WELFARE ISLAND, and remembered that it was possible to walk to the island, and then across it, and then onto another bridge that led to Queens. The idea of such a long walk did not appeal to him, but the only other choice he could think of was walking all the way up to 125th Street and then across the Triboro Bridge, which seemed even longer to him. So he went down the cobbled path below the arching roadway overhead, and paused at the steps leading to the walkway. There were several signs affixed to the stone wall there. One of them, in white letters on a red enameled field, read:
NO STANDING
ANY
TIME
A sign alongside it, in black letters on a white field, read:
NO BABY CARRIAGES
BICYCLES DOGS OR SKATERS
PERMITTED ON FOOTWALK
He was standing there reading the second sign when a police car pulled up behind him. There were two patrolmen in the car. The one sitting alongside the driver rolled down his window and said, “Can’t you read that sign?”
“What sign, officer?” Mullaney said.
“That sign right behind yo
u there,” the patrolman behind the wheel said, pointing. “I guess he can’t read the sign, Freddie.”
Mullaney turned and read the sign again. He was neither a baby carriage, a bicycle, a dog, or a skater, so he couldn’t understand why the policemen had stopped, or why they were now questioning him.
“Well, I can read the sign,” he said, “but I don’t see …”
“The other sign,” Freddie said.
“Oh, I see,” Mullaney said, and turned to look at it again. “It says No Standing Any Time.”
“Oh, he sees,” the patrolman behind the wheel said, “it says No Standing Any Time.”
“Yeah, Lou, he sees,” Freddie said, both of them beginning to sound very much the way Henry and George had sounded, though these two didn’t look at all alike. “What are you doing here?”
“I was just …”
“Are you standing here?”
“Yes, but …”
“Does the sign say No Standing Any Time?”
“Yes, but that applies to auto—”
“Then what are you doing standing here?” Lou asked.
“I have to get to the cemetery,” Mullaney said, which was the truth so far. He decided to embroider upon the truth a little because both Freddie and Lou looked as if they just might pull him in for standing or loitering or hitchhiking or skating across the bridge without skates or raping somebody, it being Friday night, and there not being enough trouble to occupy them anywhere else in the city. “A very good friend of mine passed away just last month,” Mullaney said, “name of Martin Callahan. I was just talking to his widow a few minutes ago, and she seemed all broken up because the stone is ready, but she can’t bear to go out and look at it, being grief-stricken. So she asked me if I’d go out to take a look at it, see that they spelled his name right and all that, and I promised I would and then like a fool left my wallet in my jacket. At the gym. In my gym locker.”
“At the gym?” Lou asked.
“Yes, I go there to work out with the medicine ball. I’ve got a desk job, you see, keep the old bod in shape with a medicine ball.”
“What gym?”
“You know. Over on Fifty-third,” he said, wondering if there was a gym someplace on Fifty-third.
“Oh yeah, that one,” Freddie said. “What kind of work do you do?”
“I sell encyclopedias,” Mullaney said.
“Yeah, huh?”
“Yeah. So here I promised her I’d go out tonight and take a look at the stone for her, and I didn’t want to go all the way back to the gym, so I thought I’d walk across the bridge.”
“That’s a very interesting story,” Lou said.
“How did he die?” Freddie asked.
“Who?”
“Hoolihan. Your friend.”
“Callahan, you mean.”
“Yeah, Callahan, him.”
“Well …” Mullaney said, and paused, unable to remember how Callahan had died, but remembering very clearly how Feinstein had died, and figuring he might as well give them that story since they had thought his first story so interesting. “Actually,” he said, “it was very comical the way he …”
“Never mind,” Lou said, “I don’t like to hear about how guys died. Get in the car, and we’ll drop you off at the cemetery.”
“Thank you,” Mullaney said, and got into the squad car. “Where I’m going, actually, is to the stonecutter’s just outside the cemetery. McReady’s Monument Works.”
“I know where that is,” Freddie said.
“He thinks this is a taxi,” Lou said.
“Yeah,” Freddie said, “he thinks this is a taxi.”
But, being New York’s Finest, they nonetheless drove him over the bridge and into Queens, where they dropped him off on the sidewalk just outside McReady’s Monument Works.
5. McREADY
A cold wind blew in off the cemetery, keening relentlessly over gravestone and urn, eddying against the black iron fence, rising to a vivid scream that dropped again in moaning obbligato, a tortured cry of unknown horror and graveside lament.
Mullaney was cold and he was frightened.
A light was burning in the stonecutter’s cottage. He crept around the side of the house, the gravel crunching underfoot, the wind billowing into his jasmine shift. There were ghosts in the adjacent cemetery, he knew, tall apparitions in soiled winding sheets, eyesockets staring, skeletal fingers grasping. Bony women cackled on the wind, withered lips pulled back over toothless gums, their voices echoing on the fitful air. As Mullaney approached the lighted window, a shutter banged, and banged again, and his heart thumped, and he almost ran. A tree in new April leaf suddenly whipped its branches across the sullen night, rattling fresh leaves. Somewhere a cat shrieked in terror and was still again.
Teeth chattering, Mullaney peered into the cottage.
McReady the stonecutter was sitting at a small table. He was eating a sandwich and pouring schnapps from a brown bottle. Mullaney watched as the old man bit into the sandwich. It was a deliciously monstrous concoction, a huge wedge of French bread stuffed with what seemed to be at least fourteen different kinds of meats and cheeses. Mullaney, remembering again how hungry he was, watched enviously as the old man clamped his teeth into, the crisp brown bread. Savagely, McReady tore loose an enormous bite, chewed it with obscene enthusiasm, and then washed it down with a huge swallow of whiskey. Smacking his lips, he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and then brought the sandwich into biting position again.
Mullaney’s eyes narrowed.
He was hungry, and frightened, and cold, and whereas he philosophically reasoned that most cruel acts in this world were perpetrated by people who were either hungry, frightened, or cold, the knowledge did not prevent him from devising a cruel little act of his own.
He had already relegated blame for the switched money to McReady, arguing that he would now be in possession of half a million dollars had McReady not performed his sleight-of-hand. But worse than the money swap was the solitary and selfish indulgence taking place inside this cottage on the edge of the cemetery. McReady’s feast was assuming the dimensions of an onanistic orgy. Relentlessly, he chewed and swallowed, poured and drank, licked his lips and belched in contentment. What I’m going to do to you, Mullaney thought in rising anger and greed, is scare you out of your wits, old man. I am going to rap on the window here and pretend I’m one of the ghosts howling out there in the cemetery, come to get you for your many many sins among which are substituting paper scraps for money and making a pig of yourself swilling good food and liquor before the very eyes of a starving horseplayer.
The anger with which he had conceived his malicious plan gave way to the sheer enjoyment of contemplating its execution. Chuckling, he hunched down below the window, his eyes level with the sill, so that he could watch McReady’s reaction unobserved. Oh boy, he thought, this is going to be good, and he raised his knuckles toward the pane, giggled, and rapped sharply on the glass.
McReady looked up.
The expression on his face was similar to the one that had been on Henry’s when Mullaney yelled “Boo!” from the coffin. He nodded. Then he took another bite of his sandwich. Then he put the sandwich down on its plate. Then he rose. Chewing, he walked leisurely to the door and opened it. Around a mouthful of food, he asked, “Who is it?”
“It’s me!” Mullaney bellowed, and stepped into the light streaming through the open door.
“Oh, hello there,” McReady said, “come in.” He backed away from the door. “It certainly is a brisk night, isn’t it?” he said. Mullaney entered the cottage. McReady closed the door behind him and walked back to the table. “Sit down,” he said. “Sit down. I was just having a little snack, helps the long night to pass.” He picked up the remainder of his sandwich and devoured it in two enormous gulps. Pouring more whiskey into his glass, he asked Mullaney, “A little schnapps?”
“Thank you,” Mullaney said.
The stonecutter rose and walked to a small cabine
t set on the wall. Mullaney noticed that the wall was covered with posters advertising marble and granite. A calendar near the cabinet was printed with the words “Elegant … Exotic … Eternal,” and a photograph of what appeared to be the tomb of Tutankhamen. McReady came back to the table with a plastic water tumbler. He poured it almost full to the brim, raised his own glass, and said, “L’chaim.” The men drank.
McReady smacked his lips and said, “I’m very happy you stopped by to see me. I was wondering what happened to you.”
“I’ll bet you were,” Mullaney said.
“When I heard about the accident on the radio …”
“Was it on the radio?”
“Yes, a terrible accident.”
“Are they dead?”
“It would appear so.”
“I know who killed them,” Mullaney said.
“Ahhh.”
“A man named Kruger.”
“Ahhh.”
“And two people who work for him. Henry and George.”
“Ahhh.”
“Do you know them?” Mullaney asked.
“Have a little more schnapps,” McReady said, and poured the plastic water tumbler to the brim again. The men lifted their glasses. “L’chaim,” McReady said. They drank. The whiskey was good, and it was very cozy inside the cottage. Outside, the wind howled and the cemetery demons tossed restlessly. But within the cottage, there was the smell of cheese and good whiskey, the aroma of McReady’s tobacco as he lighted his pipe and exhaled a cloud of smoke. Mullaney felt himself relaxing. It had been a long day, and the possibility existed that it might be an even longer night, but for now there was whiskey and cheese and—
“Is there more cheese?” he asked.
“Why certainly,” McReady said, “are you hungry, you poor man?”
“I’m famished,” Mullaney said.
McReady rose and went to a small refrigerator, set under what appeared to be a door serving as a desk, one end of which was supported by the refrigerator, the other end by a green filing cabinet. He stooped, took from the refrigerator a wedge of cheese and a long salami, opened the filing cabinet to remove a knife, and came back to the table. Mullaney fell upon the feast without ceremony.