Evan Hunter - A Horse’s Head

A third shot sounded on the air, and this time the bullet whistled past Mullaney’s left ear in terrifying proximity. He decided he had better knock K down before K did something he would be terribly sorry for later, like maybe killing Mullaney and therefore never finding out where the jacket was. Mullaney stepped to the left in a broken-field tactic he had learned from the encyclopedia, FA-FO, just as K fired again. Then he threw a block he had learned from the same volume, shoulder low, legs piston-bent, shoving up and back, catching K in the ribs and sending him tumbling over, the gun going off wildly in his hand for the fifth time, more than enough for an empty revolver if the gun was any one of a half-dozen or so in the Smith & Wesson line, but leaving yet another shot or more if the gun was one of the other Smith & Wessons, or a Colt, or a Ruger, or — oh boy there were too damn many of them, volume PA-PL, see also Handguns, Revolvers, Weapons and Warfare.

Mullaney ran.

He ran with uncontrollable glee, cavorting between the gravestones, laughing to the night, delighted to have learned that his grandmother was full of shit, delighted to have knocked K on his ass, and delighted to be the only person in the entire world who knew the jacket was important and who also knew where it was — which was to say, delighted to be himself, Andrew Mullaney.

It was funny the way Mullaney got to be a fugitive from the law within the next ten minutes. Oh, not funny the way Feinstein’s death had been, but funny in a fateful sort of way that caused him to reflect later upon the vagaries of chance and the odds against drawing to an inside straight.

He had come perhaps six blocks from the monument works when he realized that an automobile was following him. Glancing rapidly over his shoulder, he saw only the car’s headlights on the dark street, about half a block behind him. He quickened his pace, but the car maintained its distance, rolling along slowly beside the curb. He was in a suburban area of two-family houses that spread out in monotonous sameness from the cemetery’s boundaries, and whereas there were lights on in many of the houses, the thought of knocking on one of those doors and telling someone he was being followed by a car possibly containing people who wanted to know where he had left the jacket he’d been wearing when they placed him in the coffin — the thought was ludicrous. Besides, as the car passed under a street lamp, Mullaney noticed that it had a distinctive green-and-white color combination and that it also sported a dome light, and it occurred to him just as the dome light came on and began revolving in a Martian manner, that the car was a police car.

“Hey you!” a voice behind him shouted, and he recognized the voice as belonging to one of the cops who had picked him up at the approach to the Queensboro Bridge. “You with the funeral story!” the voice continued, as if Mullaney needed further proof that these were his old friends Freddie and Lou, returning to correct their oversight of an hour before. The oversight, as Mullaney saw it, was that they had neglected to arrest him. They had undoubtedly taken a coffee break after dropping him off at McReady’s friendly establishment, and had discussed the fellow in the jasmine shirt over their steaming cups of brew, coming to the conclusion that he had looked highly suspicious and dangerous and was undoubtedly armed and wanted for any number of crimes in California and some of the border states. They had then finished their prune and cheese Danishes and had come back to Queens to track him down, checking McReady’s spooky courtyard first, and then cruising the streets where, worse luck, it had been comparatively simple to spot a man in a jasmine shirt.

So now they were behind him with their dome light revolving and their spotlight suddenly in action, bathing him in its glare as if he were trying to jump the wall at Sing Sing, and shouting, “You! You with the cockamamie story! Stop or we’ll shoot!” which everyone seemed to be yelling at Mullaney lately, and which left him no choice but to cut around the comer toward the cemetery fence again, and leap the fence, and start running once again among the gravestones, though this time neither with fear nor jubilation. This time he ran with all the experience of a graveyard veteran, all the concentration of a steeplechase racer, dodging in and out of the stones, ducking, weaving, bobbing, running for a distant fence beyond which he could see a row of lighted apartment buildings. He had no idea where Freddie and Lou were, whether they had abandoned the squad car and were chasing him on foot, or whether they were simply cruising the cemetery’s boundaries waiting for him to emerge again. That was a chance he would have to take. He felt certain that they were here to arrest him, and felt more than certain they would do exactly that the moment they saw the bullet hole K had put in his nice shirt. So he ran without fear and without joy, simply doing what had to be done, trying not to knock over any of the older, smaller gravestones, but concentrating on getting out of the cemetery and away from Freddie and Lou because tomorrow morning he hoped to get back to the New York Public Library to retrieve the jacket and wring from it its secret. The trick was to stay alive and out of sight until tomorrow morning at nine or ten or whenever the hell it was the library opened (he would get there at eight , to make sure) and that meant staying away from K’s fellows and also Kruger’s fellows, and now the Police Commissioner’s fellows because he did not want to be arrested as a vagrant and have to spend however many days on Riker’s Island. A fellow was a vagrant only if he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life, and Mullaney knew exactly what he wanted to do — or at least thought he did.

So he ran until he was out of breath, and then he rested behind one of the larger tombs (though not as large as Feinstein’s) and then began running again toward that distant fence beyond which the apartment lights beckoned. When he reached the fence, he paused again, crouching behind a large marble slab, listening. He could hear nothing but the sound of a solitary cricket. Across the street, the apartment houses rose in illuminated majesty, and beyond them was the entire borough of Queens, which was certainly a large enough place in which to hide. Cautiously, quietly, he climbed the fence and dropped to his knees. He crouched a moment longer, still listening. Then he rose.

The spotlight came on the moment he stood erect.

“There he is!” Lou shouted.

“Shoot him!” Freddie said.

Mullaney broke into a run as the spotlight picked him up, beginning to feel the same indignation he had felt when Hijo threw him down the poolhall steps, wanting to turn and tell these fellows they were civil-service employees who were supposed to protect citizens like himself, not go turning spotlights on him, and not — for God’s sake, they were shooting! They were both of them shooting at him, one of them standing outside the car and resting his revolver on his bent arm, and the other one manipulating the spotlight and getting off a shot every now and then, though neither of them were as good shots as K had been, neither of them came anywhere near putting a bullet in him or even his shirt. Out of breath, angry, indignant though unafraid, Mullaney ran across the street and into the nearest apartment building, saw the open and waiting elevator and was about to enter it when the doors closed. He looked up at the indicator, saw it marking the elevator’s slow rise, calculated immediately that Freddie and Lou would assume he was in the elevator, and decided to take the steps up instead. He found the service stairway, opened the door (A sign warned #keep this door closed for protection against fire, but it said nothing about protection against police) and ran up the steps to the third floor. On the third floor, he opened another fire door and stepped into the corridor.