A Horse’s Head Read online

  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.

  “What’s 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.

  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 di
ed (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.

  Kruger bit off the end of a cigar, spit it into the fireplace where a real wood fire was blazing, and said, “Where’s the money?”

  Always back to that, Mullaney thought. There was a miasma of evil emanating from Kruger, as strong as the stench of garlic, wafted across the room, penetrating the woodsmoke smell, thick and suffocating. Kruger could kill a bug by looking at it, he was evil, and he was strong, and he was mean, and Mullaney was afraid of him, and more afraid of him because he could not take his eyes off the delicate blond girl.

  “I don’t know where the money is,” Mullaney said. “Would you happen to know who won the fourth race at Aqueduct today?”

  “I have no idea who won the fourth race at Aqueduct,” Kruger said.

  “Well, I have no idea where the money is,” Mullaney said.

  “I believe otherwise. I suggest you tell me, sir, or we may be forced to kill you.”

  He spoke very well for a man who looked the way he did, his cultured voice adding somehow to the terrible menace that rose from him like a black cloud from the smokestack of a steel mill, hanging on the air, dropping black particles of soot on Sunday church clothes. He stuck the cigar in his mouth, but did not light it. Mullaney had the feeling he was simply going to swallow it.

  The girl was standing near the window, peering down into the street below, except occasionally when she turned to look at Mullaney with that same sad sweet smile on her face. He knew instinctively that she wanted him to save her from the clutches of such as Kruger. She wanted him to start a fight here, knock these fellows around a little, and then take her down to the casino, where he’d put twenty thousand francs on seventeen red and then maybe they’d go running barefoot along the Grande Corniche, that was what she wanted him to do. She wanted him to become what he thought he would become a year ago when he had flown the coop in search of some dizzy kind of freedom, finding nothing but cold dice and losing horses, dead hands and buried luck, finding none of the things he thought he was taking the gamble for, and managing to lose Irene into the bargain, the only thing that had ever mattered in his life until then. Now, here in this room, everything seemed within grasp once again. All he had to do was become a hero. All he had to ask of himself, all he had to expect of himself, was that he become a hero.

  “If you kill me,” he heard himself say, “you’ll never find out where the money is.”

  “That’s true enough,” Kruger said.

  “I thought you’d be reasonable,” Mullaney said, and smiled like a hero.

  “Oh, yes, I am a very reasonable man,” Kruger said. “I hope you are equally as reasonable, sir, because I think you know how obsessed one can become by the idea of possessing half a million dollars.”

  “Yes,” Mullaney said, and then said, “Half a million dollars?”

  “Or didn’t you realize it was that much money?”

  “No, I didn’t realize that, I certainly never realized that,” he said, and knew at once that this was it, this was sweet luck keening to him from someplace, half a million dollars, if only he could be a hero. He felt himself tensing, knew instinctively that he would have to call upon every reserve of strength and intelligence he possessed if he was to get out of this room with what he wanted. He had come into this room thinking that all he wanted was to stay alive, but now he knew that he wanted the blonde as well, not to mention the money.

  He suddenly knew where it was.

  He knew with an intensity bordering on clairvoyance exactly where the money was. He almost grinned at his own ridiculously marvelous perception, he knew where the goddamn money was, he actually knew where it was.

  “I know where the money is,” he said aloud, surprised when he heard the words.

  “Yes, I realize that, sir,” Kruger said.

  “And I’ll be happy to get it for you.”

  “Good.”

  “But …” He hesitated. Kruger stood facing him across the room, the only other player in the game. Mullaney was holding half a million aces, half a million lovely crisp rustling American dollar bills, warm and safe and snug, the best hand he’d ever held in his life. He almost burst out laughing. The girl, leaning against the window drapes, watched him silently, anticipating his opening bet.

  “I’d have to go for it alone,” Mullaney said.

  “Out of the question,” Kruger answered, calling and raising.

  “Then we’d better forget it.”

  “No, we won’t forget it,” Kruger said. “George,” he said, and George moved a step closer to Mullaney.

  “That won’t help you a bit,” Mullaney said.

  “Perhaps not. I have a feeling, however, that it will help you even less.”

  “Well, if you want to get clever,” Mullaney said, and then could think of nothing further to say. George was very close now. The blued steel of the revolver glinted in the firelight. He flipped the barrel of the gun up so that the butt was in striking position. He smiled pleasantly, lots of people smile pleasantly before they commit mayhem, Mullaney reflected.

  “Sir?” Kruger said.

  “Just touch me with that gun …” Mullaney said.

  “You realize, do you not …”

  “… just touch me with it, and …”

  “… that we can very easily drop you in the Hudson River …”

  “I realize that.”

  “… in little pieces?”

  “Little pieces, big pieces,” Mullaney said, and shrugged.

  “So I suggest you tell me where the money is. Now.”

  “And I suggest you bet your jacks,” Mullaney said. “Now.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Or get out of the game.”

  Kruger stared at him.

  “Well?” Mullaney said.

  Kruger was silent for a long time. Then he sighed and said, “How far is it?”

  “How far is what?”

  “Where
the money is.”