Evan Hunter - A Horse’s Head

“No,” the girl said, “it was lousy.”

The guard at the front door of the library bawled them out for lagging so far behind all the others and causing him to unlock the door after he had already carefully locked it for the night, did they think he had nothing to do but lock and unlock doors all night long? Mullaney supposed the guard did have a great many other things to do, so he didn’t argue with him, he just meekly allowed himself to be let out of the library and then he walked down the steps and stood with the girl near one of the lions and figured they would have to say goodbye. She would go back to Kruger, he supposed, and he would go he didn’t know where.

“Well...” he said.

“I’m supposed to shoot you, you know,” she said.

“You might just as well,” he answered.

“I’m terribly sorry the relationship didn’t work out,” she said.

“So am I.”

“But I don’t think I could shoot you.”

“I’m grateful,” Mullaney said.

“When they get you — they’ll get you, you know...”

“I know.”

“... you just tell them you escaped, okay? That’s what I’ll tell them.”

“Okay, that’s what I’ll tell them, too.”

“Well,” the girl said, and glanced over her shoulder.

“It was very nice knowing you,” Mullaney said.

“Oh yes indeed,” she answered, and walked away.

We’ll meet again, he thought, not really believing that they would. He thrust his hands into the pockets of the too-short trousers, and began walking downtown on Fifth Avenue. A breeze had sprung up and he was a bit chilly now that he no longer had his paper-lined jacket. He began wondering about that jacket. He was very good at making deductions based on the condition of the track and the number of times out and the number of wins and losses and the weight of the jockey, and all that. He was also very good at figuring the true odds on any given roll of the dice as opposed to the house odds, and he could calculate within reason the possibility of, say, drawing a diamond to a flush, very good indeed at doing all of these things — which was why he’d lost his shirt over the past year. Well, hadn’t actually lost his shirt, was actually still in possession of his jasmine shirt, which was a bit too flimsy for a cool April night like this one. Nor was he really convinced that he was not a very good gambler; he was simply a gambler who’d had a run of bad luck. Being equipped, therefore, with a coolly calculating mind that was capable of figuring combinations, permutations and such, he put it to use in speculating about the jacket and the odd fact that The New York Times had been sewn into it, rather than the half-million dollars everyone had been expecting.

The first obvious truth about the jacket was that Kruger had not known the money (or even the facsimile of the money) was sewn into its lining. Henry or George, he forgot which, had mentioned that the money was supposed to be in the coffin, but whereas they had thoroughly searched the coffin, they had not thought to search the person in the coffin. Which meant, following a logical progression of thought, that whoever had told them the money was in the coffin had neglectfully forgotten to mention it was sewn into the corpse’s jacket.

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.”