Evan Hunter - A Horse’s Head

Mullaney’s poverty of invention was beginning to depress him. It seemed to him that someone in possession of half a million cool American dollars to warm the cockles of his heart, not to mention a rather beautiful young lady on his arm—

“How old are you?” he asked suddenly.

“Twenty-two,” she said. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-one,” he lied.

“That’s a lie,” she said.

“Right, I’m really thirty-three.”

“Oh boy, what a liar,” the girl said.

“I’ll be forty years old in August,” Mullaney said.

“You look older,” the girl said.

“That’s because I have half a million dollars. That kind of money can give a person worry lines.”

“Oh yes indeed I’m sure,” the girl said.

— someone in possession of such wealth and beauty and, yes, youth (she was only twenty-two, what a marvelous age to climb onto and into, all springtime taut and fresh), someone who owned all these things after a year of steady downhill plodding, well hell it just seemed impossible that someone so richly endowed could not think of a single solitary brilliant trick to shake those twins behind him.

“Listen,” he said, “are you game?”

“I am game for anything, baby.”

“No matter what?”

“Anything.”

“Would you, for example, do it on a Ferris wheel?”

“I would, for example, do it on a roller coaster,” she said.

“Then, sweetheart, let’s go!” he said, and he grabbed her hand and began running down Fifth Avenue. He glanced quickly over his shoulder and saw that he had taken the twins by surprise. The trick now was to maintain that element of surprise, lead them a merry chase around this fair Friday-night city, and then unleash all those crisp little mothers from where they were nestling so snug and warm, lay his shy blond beauty down upon the bills, hump her royally against a backdrop of cash, hang singles from her nipples, fivers on her navel, deck her halls with sawbucks and centuries, set her aglow with green like an April evening Christmas tree, humping her all the while, money and sex, winner take all, but maintain the element of surprise.

The first surprise was the Mercedes-Benz that stopped for a light on the corner of Fifty-fifth and Fifth. Mullaney pulled open the back door and shoved the girl onto the leather seat. To the driver, he shouted, “Get moving.”

“Crazy,” the driver said cheerfully, and stepped on the gas. “Did you just rob a bank?”

“Don’t tell him,” the girl said, and giggled.

“Lady, you arc gorgeous,” the driver said. “Where to?”

“Anywhere away from here,” Mullaney said.

“Crazy,” the driver said. “Let’s go to Philadelphia.”

“Except Philadelphia,” the girl said.

“You know the Philadelphia jokes, huh?”

“Every one of them.”

“None of them are jokes.”

“I know.”

“Lady, you are gorgeous,” the driver said.

“I do it on roller coasters,” the girl said, and giggled again.

“Front or back scat? There’s a big difference.”

“They’re behind us,” Mullaney said suddenly.

“Who?”

“Henry and George.”

“Don’t believe I know them,” the driver said thoughtfully.

“They’re killers,” the girl said.

“Yeah?”

“Oh yes indeed.”

“Lady, you are gorgeous.”

“Let us out on the next comer,” Mullaney said.

“Let you out? You just got in!”

“Surprises,” Mullaney said, “that’s the secret.”

“Of what?” the driver asked, but they were already out of the car. Behind them, Mullaney could see the twins’ cab pulling to the curb.

“Run!” he shouted to Merilee, and they began running again, laughing hysterically. He was suddenly afraid that the jacket would split up the middle. He tried to keep his shoulders back, to avoid putting a strain on the seam, but all the while he was certain the jacket would split.

“They’re still with us,” Merilee shouted. “Oh my this is fun!”

“We’ll have to think of something clever,” he said.

“Good,” she said, “think of something clever.”

“And unexpected.”

“Oh yes unexpected, I love the unexpected!”

“Let’s head for your apartment!” he said.

“Clever, clever,” she said, “they’d never expect us to go there.”

“Right!”

“Because I live with Kruger, you see.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

They had reached Sixth Avenue now and he paused for just a moment on the corner, holding her hand, wondering whether to proceed directly west toward the honkytonk movie theaters or to turn uptown toward the camera stores and hardware stores and Howard Johnson’s beckoning in the distance and beyond that Central Park and beyond that—

“Hurry!” she said.

“Yes, yes.”

“They’re coming!”

“Yes!”

“Can’t we go to your place?”

“No,” he said.

“Why not?”

“My landlady locked me out of it yesterday.”

“For God’s sake, hurry!” she shouted.

“The unexpected!” he said, and he tugged her hand and reversed direction and ran back toward Henry and George who were racing up toward the comer. There were a lot of people on the comer of Sixth Avenue and Forty-second Street, but not many of them paid too much attention to Mullaney and the girl, or even to Henry and George, who stopped dead in their tracks and then whirled about when they realized their quarry was heading in the opposite direction. Neither of the twins was exactly slim or svelte, and they were puffing hard and desperately out of breath as they once more took up the chase. Mullaney had another brilliant idea, which he planned to spring if things got too tight, and that was to run up Fifth Avenue again to the Doubleday’s on Fifty-seventh Street, where he would lock the twins into one of the listening booths with a Barbra Streisand LP in stereo. But that was his ace in the hole, and he planned to play it only if the Public Library had already closed, which he hoped against hope it hadn’t. He reasoned (correctly, he hoped) that the twins would never expect them to run into the Public Library, because who in his right mind would go into the Public Library on a Friday night?

“You’re crazy,” the girl said. “I love you you’re so crazy.”

He took a last look over his shoulder before running across the street, dodging traffic and coming once again onto Fifth Avenue. Pulling the girl along with him, he raced up the wide marble front steps of the library, past the MGM lions, and then ducked onto the footpath leading to the side entrance, and through the revolving doors and into the high hallowed marbled corridors, wishing he had a nickel for every encyclopedia he had sold to libraries all over the country (in fact he had once had even more than a nickel for every encyclopedia he’d sold). He caught from the corner of his eye a sign telling him the library closed at ten, and then saw the huge wall clock telling him it was now nine thirty-seven, which meant he had exactly twenty-three minutes to put his hands on the money, perhaps less if George and Henry found them first. He was fairly familiar with libraries, though not this one, and he knew that all libraries had what they called stacks, which was where they piled up all the books. This being one of the largest libraries in the world, he assumed it would have stacks all over the place, so he kept opening oak-paneled doors all along the corridor, looking into rooms containing learned old men reading books about birds, and finally coming upon a door that was marked STAFF ONLY, figuring this door would surely open upon the privacy of dusty stacks, convinced that it would, and surprised when instead it opened on a cluttered office with a pince-nezed old lady sitting behind a desk, “Excuse us,” he said, “were looking for the stacks.”