A Horse’s Head

by Ed McBain

  “That’s almost half your ride,” the driver said.

  “I know.”

  The streets, as the driver had observed, were thronged with people, but Mullaney could not see anyone carrying a Judy Bond shopping bag. He was desperately hoping that the shopping bag was still on the train, and that he could catch up with the train before his meter money ran out. (The meter now read fifty-five cents, he noticed with rising despair.) He would then board the train (What would he use for fare? he suddenly wondered), retrieve the bag and figure out a way of tricking K into revealing the jacket’s secret. That was his biggest hope, and he was gambling that his money would not run out before he could realize it. (The meter now read sixty cents.) But the possibility also existed that someone had picked up the shopping bag, disembarked from the train, and was at this very moment hurrying homeward with a supposed treasure trove, little suspecting that all the bag contained was a jacket with a torn lining. So he kept his eyes on the pedestrians scurrying past, shifting his attention from them to the meter and then back again, and suddenly hearing a siren somewhere up ahead.

  He leaned forward tensely and peered through the windshield, noticing from the corner of his eye that the meter now read seventy cents and thinking I’ll never make it, all is lost. There was a crowd of people milling about the steps of the elevated station stop ahead. An ambulance was parked at the curb, and the police car he had heard was just pulling up beside it.

  “Slow down,” he told the driver.

  The driver obediently slowed the taxi as they came abreast of the ambulance. Two attendants were coming down the steps of the platform, carrying someone on a stretcher. Mullaney could not see the person on the stretcher, but he recognized George walking beside it, a grave, pale look on his face. That will be poor Henry on the stretcher, Mullaney thought, and grinned ghoulishly, figuring he would not have to worry too much about either of the twins for the rest of the day, what with hospital emergency rooms and all that. Even Kruger seemed only a remote menace now that his musclemen were out of the action. Still grinning, he said to the driver, “Scratch two.”

  “I beg your pardon?” the driver said.

  “Drive on,” Mullaney said, grinning. “And remember that a horse race isn’t over until all the photos are in.”

  “Your particular horse race is gonna be over in exactly twenty cents,” the driver said.

  “Be that as it may,” Mullaney said.

  “Are you a cop?” the driver asked instantly.

  “Oh no indeed,” Mullaney said.

  “Mister, there is now eighty cents on the meter.”

  “Yes, yes,” Mullaney said, “well, that’s the way it goes, you cannot win them all.”

  “Did you say a Judy Bond shopping bag?” the driver said.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Because I just saw a girl carrying one.”

  “What! Where?”

  “Up ahead there. You want me to pull over?”

  “Yes, where is she? Where’d you see her?”

  “Right over there, oops,” the driver said, “she’s gone.”

  “Let me out,” Mullaney said.

  “One moment please, sir,” the driver said, and put his hand on Mullaney’s arm.

  “Look, I can’t afford to lose that …”

  “The fare is only eighty cents whereas you gave me ninety-five cents plus a twenty-cent tip,” the driver said. “Now twenty cents is a more than sufficient tip on an eighty-cent ride, so if it’s all the same to you, I would like to give you fifteen cents change.”

  “Fine, fine,” Mullaney said. “Only please …”

  “One moment please, sir,” the driver said, and reached over for his change dispenser, pushing a lever in the dime section, and another lever in the nickel section, and then presenting both coins to Mullaney.

  “Thank you,” Mullaney said. “A girl, did you say?”

  “Yes. Carrying that shopping bag you were talking about.”

  “Thank you,” Mullaney said, and jumped out of the cab. He began running in the direction the driver had indicated, but he saw no one, male or female, carrying a Judy Bond shopping bag. He saw a lot of old women carrying plain old brown shopping bags or A&P shopping bags, and one carrying an Abraham & Straus shopping bag, but he did not see anyone carrying his shopping bag, the bag containing the goddamn jacket.

  The trouble with New York City, he thought, is that there are too many people living here, and they all look exactly alike. Also, he thought, if you want to get right down to it, all the various boroughs of the city look exactly alike, too, with the possible exception of Manhattan and Staten Island. Take this sidewalk along which I am now running, pushing my way through the baby buggies and the kids roller skating and the old ladies gossiping and the teenagers giggling, take this street in the shadow of the elevated structure (whatever street it may happen to be, I haven’t the faintest idea), but take it and add up all the butcher shops on it, the delicatessens and grocery stores, add up the shoemakers and dry-goods stores and luncheonettes, the record shops and jewelers and vegetable stands, the photography joints, and furniture stores and bakeries, add them all up and you no longer have a street in Brooklyn in the shadow of the elevated structure, you also have a street in Queens in the shadow of the el, and a street in the Bronx in the shadow of the el—they are all different and yet they are all the same. I could be searching for that girl with the Judy Bond bag on any one of those other streets as well (I never dated a girl from Brooklyn, what a pity, the Bronx is so very far away, my dears, the opposite end of the earth).

  But identical.

  Goddamn bloody well identical, he thought, and suddenly was stricken by a revelation so clear and so sharp that he almost forgot all about the shopping bag, stopped dead in the center of the sidewalk and allowed himself to be jostled by the crowds passing by, stood glassy-eyed and amazed and thought I’ll bet by Christ there are streets in the shadow of the el in Rome, or London, or Paris, not literally in the shadow of the el because they probably haven’t got elevated structures such as these beauties that support our transit-system tracks, but I’ll bet it’s the same there, I’ll bet the people look exactly the same there. I’ll bet even in Yokohama—which has got an elevated structure because I once saw a movie—I’ll bet even there everybody looks exactly the same, oh my God I feel like a carbon copy.

  Is it this way in Jakarta? he suddenly wondered.

  He saw his shopping bag going around the corner in a flurry of Saturday-afternoon humanity, a boy on a skateboard rushing past, two old ladies carrying groceries, a man wearing a straw hat and drinking beer from a bottle, he saw only the disappearing end of the bag as it rounded the corner and did not see who was carrying it, saw only a portion of a word, IKE!, and hurried to reach the corner, almost knocking over a man carrying a Christmas tree, a what?, turning to look back at the man—sure enough, he was carrying a goddamn Christmas tree in the middle of April—ran past the gardening shop on the corner, saw pines and spruces potted in tubs (is there Christmas in Jakarta? he wondered), said, “Excuse me,” to a lady in slacks and high-heeled pumps, suddenly transported to Brentwood in Los Angeles 49, California, where Irene’s aunt lived and where they had spent the entire summer of 1962 watching middle-aged ladies in gold lamé pants and sequined slippers shopping in supermarkets, all the same, all the same, reached the corner, turned the corner, saw a row of empty lots, a single huge apartment house—but not his shopping bag.

  His shopping bag, carried by a girl he had not yet laid eyes on, had disappeared.

  12. LADRO

  He stood on the sidewalk and counted thirteen stories in the apartment building, and then started counting windows in an attempt to learn how many apartments there were, counting ten windows on each floor across the front face, and figuring another ten windows for each floor at the rear of the building, two windows to each room most likely. That would make it at least ten apartments on each floor, multiplied by thirteen (unlucky number) for a total of one hu
ndred and thirty apartments. It suddenly occurred to him that the Judy Bond shopping bag he had seen might not be his shopping bag. Suppose he knocked on a hundred and thirty doors only to discover that the bag contained, for example, a pair of men’s pajamas or a lady’s bathrobe? Besides, even if it was his shopping bag, he still didn’t know exactly why the jacket was worth retrieving. K and his fellows knew that, but the last time he’d seen them they were struggling with problems of their own. Except McReady. Mmmm, Mullaney thought, and immediately hailed another taxi, coldly calculating the petit larceny he was about to commit against the driver, but figuring C’est la guerre, and giving him the address of McReady’s Monument Works in Queens.

  This has got to be the end of it, he thought.

  If that really is my shopping bag, then I know where the jacket is, or at least approximately where it is—there’s only one apartment building on that block and the girl certainly didn’t vanish into thin air. On the other hand, K and McReady and Purcell all know the secret of the jacket. So the ideal thing is to form a partnership, fifty-fifty, I tell you how to get the jacket, you tell me how to get the money, okay? Is it a deal?

  No, they will say, and shoot me through the head.

  But then they don’t get the jacket.

  I certainly hope they want that jacket.

  “Have you been bereaved?” the cab driver asked.

  “No, not recently,” Mullaney said.

  “I thought perhaps you had been bereaved, since you are heading for a gravestone place.”

  “No, I’m heading there to consummate a rather large business deal.”

  “Oh, are you in the gravestone business?”

  “No, I’m …”

  He hesitated.

  He had almost said, “I’m an encyclopedia salesman,” which he had not been for more than a year now.

  “I’m a gambler,” he said quickly.

  “I take a gamble everytime I pick up a passenger,” the cab driver said, which made Mullaney feel a bit uneasy. He had only fifteen cents in his pocket, and the meter already read forty cents.

  “Really?” he said.

  “Certainly. You’d be surprised how many times a year I get stiffed,” the driver said. “You wouldn’t believe how mean and rotten the people in this rotten city are.”

  “Really?” Mullaney said.

  “I get guys in this cab,” the driver said, “they look like respectable businessmen, nice, you know what I mean? Dressed neat, just like you. We reach where we’re going, they get out and tell me they’ll be right back, I should wait for them, psssssst, the great disappearing act.”

  “Really?” Mullaney said, and cleared his throat; he had planned a similar disappearance, but now he wondered whether he dared attempt it. “What … uh … do you usually do when something like that happens?” he asked.

  “I wait.”

  “How long do you wait?”

  “Five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes, sometimes a half-hour. By that time, I realize I’ve been stiffed.” The driver shrugged. “So I drive away. What else can I do? It’s a gamble, this whole rotten business. I wish I was in gravestones, like you.”

  “No, I’m not in gravestones,” Mullaney said.

  “That’s right, you ain’t,” the driver said. “And you think hizzoner the mayor gives a damn about us? You got to fight tooth and nail for everything you get in this rotten city, we’re like the coolies of the western world, they should give us them rickshas and them little straw hats and let us pull people around that way, it’s the same rotten thing. What business did you say you were in?”

  “I’m a gambler,” Mullaney said.

  “Horses, you mean?”

  “Horses and other things, too.”

  “What other things?”

  “Dice, cards …” Mullaney shrugged. “You know.”

  “Do you ever win?” the driver asked.

  “Oh, sure,” Mullaney said.

  “What’s the most you ever won?” the driver asked.

  “Well …” He hesitated again. The most he’d ever won was a hundred and sixty-five dollars on the Daily Double at Yonkers Raceway. “I won … uh … almost three thousand dollars at Hialeah once. I was down there for the winter.” He paused. “I go down there every winter,” he said.

  “That must be the life,” the driver said.

  “Oh, sure, it’s a nice life,” Mullaney said.

  “You married?”

  “No. No,” Mullaney said.

  “I got a battle-axe I’ll let you have for a subway token,” the driver said, and laughed. “I also got three miserable little bastards, one of them is playing around with boys, the other is playing around with pot, and the third is playing around with himself,” the driver said, and laughed again. “I’ll throw them in for the same subway token.”

  “Well, thanks,” Mullaney said, and laughed, “but I like this free and easy life I have.”

  “Must be a free and easy life, huh?” the driver said.

  “Oh sure, it’s a very free and easy life.”

  “Three thousand dollars, huh?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Down at Hialeah.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Mullaney said. “I also won a lot of money at Churchill Downs once.”

  “That’s in England,” the driver said.

  “No, Churchill Downs,” Mullaney said. “That’s in Kentucky. I go down there for the Derby each year.”

  “Oh sure, that’s in Kentucky,” the driver said. “You really get around, don’t you?”

  “Oh sure, I get around,” Mullaney said.

  “I envy you, mister,” the driver said, “I really envy you. I get home the other night, my faggot son is sitting on some guy’s lap, right in my own living room, I nearly killed him. I said you goddamn pansy get out of my house with your queer friends, you know what he told me? He told me What do you know about love, Pop? What do I know about love, who only created him, the little fruit.”

  “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth,” Mullaney said.

  “You said it,” the driver said.

  They were coming around the perimeter of the cemetery now, fast approaching McReady’s place. Mullaney did not want to add to the cab driver’s woes, but he could see no way of leaving the taxi without stiffing him. He suddenly had a brilliant idea, or at least told himself it was a brilliant idea, completely ignoring the fact that he was about to compound his contemplated larceny.

  “Listen,” he said, “I’m going right back to where you picked me up, would you like to wait for me?”

  “And get stiffed, huh?” the driver said, and laughed.

  “Well, no,” Mullaney said uneasily. “I really am going back. In fact, if you’d like me to pay you before I get out of the cab …”

  “I think I can tell a gent when I see one,” the driver said. “That’s it up ahead there, ain’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You won’t be long, will you?”

  “Just a few minutes.”

  “I’ll wait,” the driver said. “I got to go back that way, anyway, because my garage is over on Sutter, you familiar with Brooklyn?”

  “Not very.”

  “Well, that ain’t too far from where I picked you up. But don’t take all day, huh? It’s already …” He looked at his watch. “… twenty to five, I should have been in ten minutes ago. Okay?”

  “Fine,” Mullaney said. He opened the cab door. “Thank you for what you said.”

  “What did I say?”

  “About … my being a gent. Thank you.”

  “Come on, come on,” the driver said, embarrassed, but he smiled nonetheless.

  Mullaney went up the gravel walk, debating whether he should chance popping in on McReady without at least a preliminary phone call to announce the purpose of his visit. Suppose K or Purcell were in the cottage, suppose they all began shooting the moment he opened the door? He noticed that the window he had dived through the night before was still open,
and whereas he didn’t want to waste time trying to locate a phone booth, he saw nothing wrong with stealing over to the window and doing a little precautionary eavesdropping. He tiptoed across the gravel, ducked below the window, and then slowly and carefully raised his head so that his eyes were just level with the sill.

  McReady was alone in the room.

  He was standing near the Tutankhamen calendar, alongside which was a wall telephone. He had the phone receiver to his ear, and was listening attentively. He kept listening, nodding every now and then, listening some more, and finally shouting, “Yes, Signor Ladro, I understand! But …” He listened again. “Yes,” he said, “losing the body was inexcusable, I agree with you. But, Signor Ladro, I must say that I find this call equally inexcusable. I thought we had agreed … yes … yes, but … yes … what? Of course, the body was properly clothed. Yes, that does mean the burial garments were lost as well. Including the jacket, yes. But I told you we’re making every effort to relocate the corpse. Yes, of course, the jacket as well.”

  Mullaney’s eyes narrowed. Go on, he thought. Talk, McReady. Tell the nice gentleman—who is undoubtedly a member of your international ring, I can tell by the way you’re using your finishing-school voice and manners—tell the nice gentleman all about the jacket.

  “Eight,” McReady said.

  Eight, Mullaney thought.

  “No, at five to six.”

  At five to six, Mullaney thought.

  “Three, that’s correct,” McReady said.

  Oh, it’s three, Mullaney thought.

  “No, ten, eleven, and nine, in that order.”

  Oh my, Mullaney thought.

  “Signor Ladro, I really find discussing … yes, I can understand your concern over the delay, but we thought it best not to contact … yes, I understand. But the matter is still a very delicate one, here in New York at least. The … accident occurred only two nights ago, you know. One might say the body is still very very warm. Good, I’m glad you do.”

  What is he talking about? Mullaney wondered. What the hell are you talking about, McReady?

  “Well, all I can do is assure you once again that we’re doing everything in our power to recover it. Yes, quite securely fastened, there’s no need to worry on that score. Besides, we had arranged for a decoy, Signor Ladro, as you know. So we feel confident that everything is still intact. Well no, we can’t be certain, Signor Ladro, but … what? We had them drilled. Yes, each one.”