Evan Hunter - A Horse’s Head

“No,” Kruger said. “I don’t like the odds.”

“They’re the only odds in this game.”

“You’re forgetting that I can end this game whenever I choose.”

“In which case you lose all the marbles.”

“I’d be an idiot to let you out of here alone.”

“You’d be a bigger idiot to throw away half a million dollars.”

“If I let you go, I may be doing both.”

“Not if I gave you my word.”

“Please,” Kruger said politely, and then began pacing before the fireplace, his huge hands clasped behind his back. Mullaney kept waiting for him to have the sudden inspiration he hoped he would have had long before now, but Kruger only kept pacing back and forth, thinking. “Suppose I go with you?” he suggested at last.

“No.”

“Not too many people know me,” Kruger said.

“No, I couldn’t take that chance,” Mullaney said, waiting for lightning to strike, wondering how many permutations and combinations Kruger had to examine before he fell over the sucker bet that was right there at his very feet.

“ I know!” Kruger said, and turned from the fireplace. Mullaney held his breath. “The girl,” Kruger said. “You’ll take the girl with you.

It’s about time, Mullaney thought. “Absolutely not,” he said.

“Why not?” Kruger asked, frowning.

“That’s the same thing as taking you or any of the others.”

“No,” Kruger said. “No, it isn’t. I beg your pardon, but it isn’t. The girl is not known.”

“I’m sorry,” Mullaney said. “I hate to be difficult, but either I go alone, or I don’t go at all.”

“Either you take the girl with you,” Kruger said, looming large and hairy and black and menacing and shooting up cinders and sparks from the evil smokestack that he was, “or you leave here in a coffin.”

“I arrived in a coffin,” Mullaney answered, “so I might just as well leave in one.”

“All right, George,” Kruger said, “kill him.”

“All right,” Mullaney said, “I’ll take the girl with me.”

“Good. George, get her a gun.”

George went to a cabinet against the wall, opened the top drawer, and removed from it a small pearl-handled .22. He showed the gun to the girl and said, “Do you know how to use this?”

The girl nodded, then took the gun and put it into her purse.

“If he does not go directly for the money,” Kruger said, “shoot him.”

The girl nodded.

“If he tries to contact either the others or the police,” Kruger said, “shoot him.”

The girl nodded.

“If he gets the money, and then refuses to come back here,” Kruger said, “shoot him.”

The girl nodded.

“Very well, go.” They started for the door, and Kruger said, “No, wait.” He walked very close to where Mullaney was standing, and said, “I hope you’re not lying to me, sir. I hope you really know where that money is.”

“I really know where that money is,” Mullaney said, because he really did know.

“Very well. See that you bring it back. We’ll get you if you don’t, you know.”

“I know,” Mullaney said.

Kruger opened the door. Mullaney and the girl stepped into the hallway and the door closed behind them.

“Hello, honey,” the girl whispered, and grinned.

It was nine o’clock on a Friday night, and all the gamblers were out.

Mullaney and the girl came down into the overspill uptown throng. He felt very much like a college freshman pledging for a fraternity, his trousers perhaps six inches too short, the cuffs riding high on his shins, his jacket sleeves reaching midway up his forearm, the jacket itself stretching tight to bursting across his shoulders, the big black buttons barely holding, the jasmine shirt ludicrously incongruous with the solemn burial garments. The fraternity brothers had given him the most beautiful girl in the world to carry on his arm and then had sent him into the clamor of Friday-night New York to get half a million dollars. There was no question that he already possessed both the money and the girl, so the secret now was to prolong this delicious suspense, to put off the moment of releasing — yes, that was the proper word — first the money, then the girl and himself. In the meantime, they walked idly down the street, he in his Ichabod Crane clothes, and she in her demure black velvet, laced at the throat, holding his arm with an intimate delicate-fingered knowledge — she too seemed willing to wait.

The gamblers, or more accurately the losers, were everywhere around them. They had saved their nickels and dimes to build their Friday-night stake, and now they were betting it on a single roll of the dice, the sucker bet supreme, a bigger sucker bet than even Kruger had laid. They hoped to win (he supposed) all the things he had hoped to win when he stepped out a year ago, but quicker and with a more dizzying sense of triumph, all of it on a single roll. Laughter awaited on the opposite side of that roll, dazzling good looks and keen intelligence, wealth unimaginable, luxury undreamt. So they all marched in their Robert Hall suits, and their heads swam with visions of cashmere lined with silk, expensive motor cars purring gently, Playmates of the Month spreading eager legs, the soft interiors of women they thought they had never known the likes of, all waiting, all beckoning, all belonging to the conqueror. Just a single winning roll and power would be theirs, lightning bolts to hurl, orgasms to waste, laughter to recklessly spend.

Mullaney had already won, had won in that apartment when he’d bluffed Kruger’s hand. The cash was his, as was the girl, whenever he wanted them. Everybody else was a loser.

“Do you have any money?” he asked the girl.

“No,” she said, and they both laughed.

“I have half a million dollars,” he said.

“Oh I know you do, baby.”

“Do you know where it is?”

“No, where is it?” she said, and laughed.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“First tell me where the money is.”

“No. First tell me your name.”

“Merilee,” she said.

“That’s very close to my name,” he said, “which is Mullaney.”

“That’s very close indeed,” the girl said.

“We are going to be very close indeed, Merilee.”

“Oh yes indeed,” she said, “we are going to be very close indeed.”

“We’re going to make love on a bed of five hundred thousand dollars. Have you ever made love on such a bed?”

“No, but it sounds like enormous fun,” she said. “Where is it?”

“Your ass will turn green,” Mullaney said, and laughed.

“Oh yes indeed it will. All that money will rub off on it, and I will absolutely adore the color of it. Where is it?”

“I wonder if it’s in tens, or hundreds, or thousands,” Mullaney said.

“Don’t you know?”

“I won’t know until I see it. I have a feeling, however, that it’s in largish bills.”

“A feeling?”

“Yes,” he said, “a warm, enveloping feeling,” and grinned at his inside joke.

“Do you know something?” she said.

“What?”

“We’re being followed. No, don’t look.”

“How do you know?”

“I know. George and Henry are following us.”

The girl was right; the twins were behind them. Mullaney caught a quick glimpse of them as he took her arm and led her onto Madison Avenue, and then spotted them again crossing the street near the IBM showroom on Fifty-seventh. He toyed with the idea of pulling something unexpected on the twins, playing some sort of fantastic trick that would leave them bewildered and lost, but he couldn’t think of anything clever enough or devastating enough. So he simply continued walking up Fifty-seventh Street, toward Fifth Avenue, and then turned left on Fifth, all the while trying to think of a really clever gimmick he could pull on Henry and George, who were right there behind him, ambling along the avenue like a double vision of Friday-night delight, dirty rats.