Evan Hunter - A Horse’s Head

There were a great many cars on the road, this was Friday night, the start of the weekend. He could remember too many Friday nights long ago, when he and Irene had been a part of the fun-seeking throng, but he tried to put Irene out of his mind now because somehow thinking of her always made him a little sad, and he didn’t want to dissipate the fine glittering edge of his anger, he was going to chop through these hoodlums like a cleaver! But the traffic was dense even when they got out of the tunnel, and he didn’t get a chance to make his move until the car stopped outside a brownstone on East Sixty-first, and then he realized they had reached their destination and it was too late to do anything. Besides, by then he wasn’t angry anymore.

He got out of the car and thought They’re going to ask me about the money again, I’d better think up a good one. He wondered how much money was involved here. Probably a couple of grand, maybe even more, otherwise they wouldn’t be making all this fuss. He could feel George’s gun in the small of his back as they climbed the steps in front of the building. Across the street, a girl in a green dress laughed at something her boy friend said. Henry rang the bell. An answering buzz sounded, and they went inside.

“Upstairs,” George said.

The building was silent. Carpeted steps wound endlessly upward, creaking beneath them as they climbed. A Tiffany lamp, all glistening greens and yellows, hung from the ceiling of the second floor. As Henry walked beneath it, it bathed his head in a Heineken glow, giving him a thoughtful beery look. A flaking mirror in an ornate gold-leaf frame hung on the wall of the third floor. George adjusted his tie as he went past the mirror, and then began whistling tunelessly under his breath as they continued to climb. On the fourth floor, a bench richly upholstered in red velour stood against the wall, just outside a door painted in muted grey. Henry knocked on the door, and then patted his hair into place.

The door opened.

Mullaney caught his breath.

Kruger was a woman.

Into that hallway, she insinuated springtime, peering out at them with a delicately bemused expression on her face, cornflower eyes widening, long blond hair whispering onto her cheek. She might have been a fairy maiden surprised in the garden of an ancient castle, banners and pennoncels fluttering on the fragrant breeze above her. She turned to gaze at Mullaney, pierced him with a poignant look. A curious smile played about her mouth, the secret of her delicious joke erupting, Kruger is a woman, Kruger is a beautiful woman. He had once written sonnets about women like this.

He had once, when he was a boy and still believed in magic, written sonnets about delicate maidens who walked through fields of angel’s breath and left behind them dizzying scents that robbed men of their souls. When he’d left Irene a year ago, she had asked (he would never forget the look on her face when she asked, her eyes turned away, the shame of having to ask), “Andy, is there another woman?” And he had replied, “No, Irene, there is no other woman,” and had meant it, and yet was being dishonest. The other woman, the woman for whom he had left Irene a year ago, was this Kruger standing in the doorway with her shy inquiring glance, flaxen hair trapped by a velvet ribbon as black as a medieval arch. The other woman was Kruger; the other woman had always been Kruger. She leaned in the doorway. She was wearing a black velvet dress (he knew she would be wearing black velvet), its lace-edged yoke framing ivory collarbones that gently winged toward the hollow of her throat. Her hips were tilted, her belly gently rounded, her legs racing swift and clean to black high-heeled pumps. She leaned in the doorway and stopped his heart.

She was the gamble.

He had tried to explain to Irene, not fully understanding it himself, that what he was about to do was imperative. He had tried to explain that in these goddamn encyclopedias he sold to schools and libraries, there was more about life and living than he could ever hope to experience in a million years. He had tried to show her, for example, how he could open any one of the books, look, let’s take BA-BL, just open it at random, and look, well here we are, Balts, peoples of the East Coast of the Baltic Sea, have you ever seen the people of the East Coast of the Baltic Sea, Irene? Well, neither have I, that’s what I’m trying to tell you, that’s what I mean about taking the gamble, honey.

I don’t know what you mean, she said.

I mean the gamble, the gamble, he said, beginning to rant a little, he realized, but unable to control himself, I’m talking about taking the gamble, I’ve got to take the gamble, Irene, I’ve got to go out there and see for myself.

You don’t love me, she said.

I love you, Irene, he said, I love you really honey I do love you, but I’ve got to take the gamble. I’ve got to see where it is that everything’s happening out there, I’ve got to find those places I’ve only read about, I’ve got to find them. Honey, I’ve got to live. I m dying. I’ll die. Do you want me to die?

If you leave me, Irene said, yes, I want you to die.

Well, who cares about curses? he had thought. Curses are for old Irish ladies sitting in stone cottages by the sea. He knew for certain that somewhere there were people who consistently won, somewhere there were handsome sun-tanned men who held women like Kruger in their arms and whispered secrets to them and made love to them in the afternoon on foreign beaches, and later played baccarat and yelled Banco! and danced until morning and drank pink champagne from satin slippers. He knew these people existed, he knew there was a world out there waiting to be won, and he had set out to win it.

And had lost.

Had lost because Irene had said Yes, I want you to die, and slowly he had died, as surely as Feinstein had died (though that was really comical). He had taken the gamble, had thrown everything to the winds, everything, had been laying his life on the morning line for the past year now, had been clutching it to his chest across poker tables for the past year now, had been rolling it across green felt cloths for the past year now, and had lost, had surely and most certainly lost. This morning, he was down to his last twenty cents and squarely facing his inability to borrow even another nickel in this fair city of New York, and so they had put him in a coffin. He had very definitely lost.

Until now.

Now, this moment, he looked at Kruger standing in the doorway of the apartment and knew he still had a chance, knew by what he read on her face, knew that she was the lady he had set out to find on that February day a year, more than a year ago. He could not breathe; he had never stood this close to a dream before.

And then, because dreams never last too very long, a voice from behind Kruger said, “Is that you, boys?” and he looked past her into the room to see the ugliest, most evil-looking man he had ever seen in his life, and he realized at once that Kruger was not a pretty blond lady after all. Kruger was instead a two-hundred-and-ten-pound monster who came lumbering toward the doorway in a red silk dressing gown, dirty black fingernails, hair sticking up on his head and on his chest and growing like weeds on his thick arms and on the backs of his hands and over his fingers. This is Kruger, he thought, and if you don’t tell him where the money is, he is going to throw you to his crocodiles. You lose again, Mullaney, he thought, and the girl said, “Do come in.

They all went into the room.

He could not take his eyes off the girl. He followed her every movement in terror because he knew that Kruger could bend steel bars, Kruger could breathe fire, and he did not want Kruger to see him sneaking glances at the girl. But the girl kept sneaking glances back at Mullaney, like luck dancing around the edges of a crap table when the dice are running hot and you can’t roll anything but elevens, dancing and tantalizing, and watching him with that strange sweet wistful smile, walking as delicately as though she were in a meadow of mist.