Evan Hunter - A Horse’s Head

The cash register was on the extreme right-hand end of a long, glass-enclosed cigar display case. The cashier sat behind it on a high stool, turning to his right whenever a patron came to pay a check, adding up the items on it, taking the money and making change, and then turning to his left to skewer the check on the spike of a bill spindle that rested on the counter top to the left of the register. He then invariably went back to reading his magazine, leaning against the wall behind him, and looking up again only when the next patron arrived. Mullaney carried on his imaginary conversation with Irene, biding his time, waiting for the proper moment.

The proper moment arrived when three diners walked up to the cash register simultaneously, ready to pay their checks. Mullaney immediately came out of the phone booth, walked quickly to the register, and stood slightly apart from the people gathered there. The cashier turned to his right, took the check from the first patron, and then bent his head to add the column of figures. Mullaney swiftly and daringly thrust out both hands and stuck his own check onto the bill spindle to the left of the register, piercing the green slip, and then glancing quickly at the cashier to see if he had noticed the sudden move. The cashier pushed some keys on his register, opened the cash drawer, made change for his customer, a fat lady in a flowered bonnet, and then turned to his left and skewered the check on the spindle, covering the check Mullaney had just placed there. The only person who seemed to have followed the action was a hawk-nosed man with a heavy beard shadow, who glanced at Mullaney, shrugged uncomprehendingly, and then turned away. Mullaney waited until everyone, especially the hawk-nosed man, had paid his bill and left the luncheonette. Standing expectantly and patiently by the register, he waited for the cashier to look up at him. The cashier was now leaning against the wall again, reading his Sports Illustrated. Mullaney cleared his throat.

“Yes?” the cashier said.

“May I have my change, please?” Mullaney said.

“What?” the cashier said, and looked up at him for the first time.

“May I please have my change?”

“What do you mean, change?”

“I gave you my check and a five-dollar bill, but you didn’t give me my change.”

“What do you mean, you gave me your check?”

“A few minutes ago. You stuck it on your thing there, but you didn’t give me my change.”

“What do you mean, I stuck it on my thing there?”

“Well, take a look,” Mullaney said. “I had a grilled cheese sandwich and a Coke, it’s right on your thing there.”

“This thing here?”

“Yes.”

The cashier pursed his lips, shook his head, and pulled the bill spindle closer to the register. He studied the top check (which had been given to him by the hawk-nosed man) and he studied the check under that (which had been given to him by a man in a grey sweater) and then he studied the check under that (the one that had been paid by the fat lady in the flowered bonnet) all the while muttering, “No grilled cheese sandwich here, you must be crazy,” and finally came to Mullaney’s check, sure enough, skewered on the long metal spike. He pulled it off the spindle, shoved his glasses up onto his forehead, held the check close to his face, peered myopically at it, and said, “Grilled cheese sandwich and a Coke, is that what you had?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You gave me five dollars?”

“Well, check your drawer there. I’ve been standing here for maybe ten minutes, waiting for my change.”

“Why didn’t you speak up?”

“Well, I saw you were busy.”

“You should speak up,” the cashier said. “You won’t get no place in this world, you don’t speak up.”

“Well,” Mullaney said shyly, and watched while the cashier rang up a No Sale, and then reached into the drawer for four singles and fifty-five cents in change, the grilled cheese sandwich having cost thirty cents, and the Coke fifteen cents, for a grand total of forty-five cents — “Four fifty-five,” the cashier said, “is that correct?”

“That’s correct, thank you,” Mullaney said.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” the cashier said.

“That’s quite all right,” Mullaney said. He walked back to the end of the lunch counter, left a twenty-five-cent tip for the waitress, and then nodded to the cashier as he walked out of the luncheonette, vowing to return with the money as soon as his ship came in.

He could not find the proper labyrinth.

He kept trying doors as he had last night, but somehow the magic was missing, he could not find the one that opened on the jacket’s hiding place, the secret book-bound glade wherein he had claimed his maiden, promising her the world and then some. But then, at last, frantic and exhausted, he found a door that opened on what seemed to be a familiar passageway, and he followed it between rows and rows of books, the dust rising before his anxious feet, saw a red light burning somewhere in the distance, made a sharp turn, found himself in the remembered cul-de-sac, and immediately saw the jacket. Untouched, it lay on the dusty floor where he had dropped it, surrounded by the paper scraps that had been sewn into its lining.

His hands trembling, he picked it up.

There was nothing terribly remarkable about it, it seemed to be an ordinary-looking jacket, made of black wool, he supposed or perhaps worsted, which was probably wool, he was never very good on fabrics, FA-FO with four round black buttons on each sleeve near the cuff, and three large black buttons at the front of the jacket opposite three buttonholes in the overlapping flap, a very ordinary jacket with nothing to recommend it for fashionable wear, unless you were about to be buried. He opened the black silk lining again, and searched the inner seams of the jacket, thinking perhaps a few hundred-thousand-dollar bills were perhaps pinned up there somehow, but all he felt was the silk and the worsted, or whatever it was. He thrust his hand into the breast pocket and the two side pockets, and then he searched the inner pocket on one side of the jacket and then on the other, but all of the pockets were empty. He crumpled the lapels in his hands, thinking perhaps the real money was sewn into the lapels, but there was neither a strange sound nor a strange feel to them. To make certain, he tore a lapel stitch with his teeth, and ripped the entire lapel open, revealing the canvas but nothing else. He was extremely puzzled. He buttoned the jacket and looked at it buttoned, and then he un buttoned the jacket and looked at it that way again, but the jacket stared back at him either way, black and mute and obstinate.

He put the jacket aside for a moment and picked up one of the New York Times scraps, not knowing what he would find, or even what he was looking for, but hoping one of the scraps might give him a clue to what the jacket was supposed to possess. He began methodically studying each scrap, not actually reading all of them, but scrutinizing the newsprint to see if any word or sentence had been circled or marked, but none of them had. As he turned each scrap over in his hands, he remembered what McReady had said last night, “Let us say that where there’s cheese, there is also sometimes a rat.” Now what the hell was that supposed to mean? He sighed heavily; there were far too many bogus bills. He finally spread them out haphazardly on the library floor, using both hands, and then only scanned them, making a spot check now and again, picking up one bill or another to scrutinize, and deciding on the basis of his sampling that none of them had any of their corners clipped or trimmed or scalloped or dog-eared or folded or anything.

Well, he thought, I don’t know.