Evan Hunter - A Horse’s Head

“Terrible,” Henry repeated.

The room was very still. Mullaney cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, “I’m certainly sorry to hear that.”

“Yes,” George agreed. “Where’s the money?”

“I don’t know,” Mullaney said.

“We figured it had to be in the coffin,” Henry said.

“Well then maybe it is.”

“No. We looked.”

“Did you look carefully?”

“Very carefully. We even removed you and put you on the floor,” Henry said. “The money is definitely not in the coffin.”

“So where is it?” George asked.

“I told you. I don’t know.”

“We’d better take him to Kruger,” George said.

“That would be a small man who wears a letter K on his tie, right?” Mullaney said.

“No. He’s dead.”

“He is?”

“They’re all dead,” Henry said.

“The accident,” George said.

“Terrible,” Henry said.

“Take him,” George said, and son of a bitch if Henry didn’t hit him on the head again.

The nice thing about getting hit on the head, Mullaney thought, is that it hardly hurts at all. It’s over so quickly, whap, that you hardly realize its happening. And while its happening there are these really rather extraordinary colors that go shooting and bursting and rocketing all over the place, somewhat like a Greenwich Village event, though done with considerably more style. However, the terrible thing about getting hit on the head, Mullaney realized as he awakened in a moving automobile, was that whereas it didn’t hurt much at the time, it sure as hell hurt a lot afterward.

“Ow,” he said, and rubbed the back of his neck, and then silently added Henry’s name to the list of dirty rats who needed getting. “Why’d you do that?” he said.

“To transport you,” Henry, who was driving, said.

“If you needed to transport me, all you had to do was ask. I’m a reasonable person, all you had to do was ask.”

He didn’t know where in Italy they were. They seemed to be coming through a suburban area that looked very much like New Jersey — the outskirts of Rome, no doubt. His head hurt, and he was angry with Henry and not exactly delighted with George, either, who sat silently on the back seat of the big Italian whatever-kind-of-car-it-was, holding a very un-Italian gun in his hand, a .38 Smith & Wesson Detective’s Special which his cousins in the Bronx branch of the Mafia had undoubtedly heisted from the body of a good dead cop and then mailed in a candy box to Rome.

“What kind of gun is that?” Mullaney asked.

“A very good one,” George said, thereby ending the conversation.

“What kind of car is this?” Mullaney asked Henry.

“Cadillac,” Henry replied.

“Pretty fancy,” Mullaney said.

He was in a very surly mood, and was beginning to feel highly uncooperative. In a few moments he planned to punch George right in the mouth, take the gun out of his hand, and hit Henry on the back of the head with it, see how he liked getting hit on the back of the head. In the meantime, he was resting, gathering his strength. What I’ll do, he thought, is kick George in the leg instead. Then when he bends over to grab his shin, I’ll throw him on the floor and take his gun away and then give Henry the old one-two right at the back of the head, pow, Henry, how do you like that little blow to the medulla oblongata? These Roman guys wanted to fool around with Andrew Mullaney, well, maybe they didn’t know just who they were fooling around with here. Maybe he ought to inform them he was the only guy in his graduating class at C. C. N. Y. who could do seventy-four pushups, at a time when lots of kids were Communists. Or perhaps they would like to be told that he had once busted a very husky advertising man from Madison Avenue square on the jaw because first he had stated unequivocally that all girls with red hair were extremely passionate (which Irene was, but it was none of his damn business) and second that people who sold encyclopedias for a living were a little bit wrong in the head. Mullaney hit him with a devastating uppercut. And whereas the uppercut didn’t exactly knock the advertising man unconscious, it certainly dazed him a little; there were perhaps a dozen witnesses who were willing to corroborate that fact, if Mullaney cared to take the trouble. So perhaps these young Mafiosi here driving him all over the suburbs of Home did not realize they had got hold of a tiger. Well, he would show them soon enough. In the meantime, he kept marveling at the way American culture had engulfed Europe, billboards advertising American gasolines, signs in English catering to American tourists, ah, where were the glories of ancient Rome? The car was obviously closer to Rome itself now since Mullaney could see lights glowing on the distant horizon. He was pretty excited about the idea of being abroad, even if it had to be in the company of these two hoods taking him to see Kruger (there were bosses all over the world, it seemed). He could not wait to get out of the car and pinch his first Italian girl. He had once seen a movie with Jean Paul Belmondo, where Belmondo leaped out of the car and ran across the Champs Elysees and flipped a girl’s dress right up over her head, oh that had been a wild escapade. (Irene hadn’t liked it; suppose the poor thing hadn’t had any panties on? she asked, practically.) This was before they got divorced, when they still used to go to movies and things together. But he had always remembered that crazy nut Belmondo running across the Champs Elysees, whoops, up go your skirts, dearie! As the lights of Rome came closer and closer, he felt some of the same wild exuberance Belmondo must have known. What he would do was smash old George here right in the la panza , and then grab the gun and give Henry such a clunk, oh boy, he could hardly wait. Then he would run out of the car and across the equivalent of the Champs Elysees and the first Italian girl he saw, he would throw her skirts up over her head and then run away laughing. Then he would pinch the next Italian girl he saw, live it up a little, because once they found out he didn’t know where the money was, he was a dead duck anyway.

About that money, he thought, and he kept staring at the lights of Rome in the distance and thought how very much alike all big cities looked — but about that money — this city, this Rome, Roma Bella in the distance and fast approaching looked a lot like New York. But about that money, what am I going to tell them when they ask again and start putting bamboo slivers under my fingernails? Man, that Rome there sure looks a lot like New York, Mullaney thought, and then he recognized the toll booths, and realized they were approaching the Lincoln Tunnel.

“What the hell?” he said, startling even George, who he suspected had begun to doze on the back seat.

“Whats the matter?” George shouted. “What is it? What is it?”

“Just where are we?” Mullaney demanded. It was one thing to get pushed around, but it was another to be welshed out of a trip to Rome.

“We’re on our way to see Kruger,” George said. “Stop making noise near the toll booths.”

“Is this New Jersey?” Mullaney asked shrewdly.

“This is New Jersey.”

“You’re not even Italians!” Mullaney shouted.

“We are so!” George said, offended.

“Keep quiet while we go through the booth,” Henry said, “or there’ll be another terrible highway accident.”

He was angry now, oh boy now he was really angry. They had really got his Irish dander up this time, hitting him on the head and giving him such a headache, and then not even shipping him to Rome as they had promised. His anger was unreasoning and uncontrolled. He knew he could not blame either Henry or George for the empty promises the others had made, but neither could he get angry with the others because (as George had pointed out) they were all unfortunately dead. But he was angry nonetheless, an undirected black Irish boiling mad anger that was beginning to give him stomach cramps. In about two minutes flat, as soon as they were past the toll booths (he didn’t want any innocent people to get hurt if there was shooting), he was going to erupt into this automobile, rip George’s gun in half, wrap it around his head, stuff it down his throat, oh boy, you started up with the wrong fellow this time! They were past the toll booths now and approaching the tunnel itself, the blue-and-white tiled walls, the fluorescent lighting, the cops walking on the narrow ramparts, waving the cars on; Mullaney waited, not wanting to cause a traffic jam in the tunnel when he incapacitated these two cheap gangsters.