A Horse’s Head

4. Callahan

The packets of bills fell to the floor just like the rain Mullaney had expected, plop, plop, plop, great big drops of bills falling to the stone floor of the library and raising a cloud of dust which at first obscured his vision a bit, and caused him to believe that perhaps he was not quite seeing what he thought he was seeing. Plop, plop, plop, the packets kept falling out of the jacket and pattering all around while he and the girl stared down at their five-hundred-thousand-dollar rain, and the dust settled, and they kept staring down at the packets, and Mullaney wanted to weep.

The packets were worth exactly ten cents because that is how much The New York Times costs on a Friday, and that is exactly what these were made of, The New York Times. Mullaney kept staring down at the packets, which someone had cut very nicely into the shape of dollar bills, and then stacked and bound neatly with rubber bands, each packet slim enough to be sewn into a funeral jacket. He did not raise his eyes from the slowly settling dust because, to tell the truth, he was a little embarrassed about facing the girl.

“It seems to be newspaper,” he said, and cleared his throat.

“Yes indeed,” Merilee said.

They kept staring at the cut stacks of newspaper.

“Boy,” he said.

“Newspaper,” the girl said.

“Boy.”

“The New York Times, no less,” she said. “I don’t even read The New York Times.”

“Boy.”

“You know who must have done this?” she asked.

“Who?”

“Somebody who reads The New York Times.”

“I’ll bet,” Mullaney said.

“Oh my,” the girl said. “Oh my my my my my.”

“Mmm,” Mullaney said.

“Oh my.”

They were silent again.

Into the silence there came the unholy clamor of a ringing bell, startling Mullaney so much that he leaped back against the wall and then was surprised to find himself shaking. He had not realized until just this moment that the worthless collection of clipped newspapers at his feet represented something more than just the end of a gambler’s dream. This pile of garbage containing yesterday’s baseball scores and war casualties, yesterday’s stock prices and theater reviews, this worthless pile of shredded garbage lying in the dust at his feet also contained, if Mullaney was willing to read it correctly, an obituary notice announcing the untimely demise of one Andrew Mullaney himself, to take place in the not unforeseeable future. It was one thing to consider running out on Smokestack Kruger when you were in possession of half a million dollars and a beautiful blonde. It was another to think of running out on him when you had only a mangled copy of this morning’s Times and a blonde who was beginning to get a distinct hangdog expression. He could not understand the hangdog expression, but there it was, spreading across her mouth and drawing down the corners of her eyes, Oh boy, Mullaney thought, I’m going to be in pretty big trouble soon, his innate optimism refusing to allow that he was already in pretty big trouble, in fact in very big trouble.

“That’s why you should always get the money first,” the girl said suddenly, as though she had been mulling it over for quite some time.

“I guess so,” Mullaney said. The jacket was still in his hands. He glanced at it sourly, and then threw it to the floor. It lay inert and worthless at his feet. Angrily, and for good measure, he kicked it. Twice.

“Oh boy Kruger’s going to kill you,” Merilee said.

“Mmm.”

“Kruger’s going to absolutely murder you.”

“Listen, did you hear a bell?” Mullaney said.

“What?”

“Just a few minutes ago? I think it’s closing time. I think we’d better get out of here.”

“I think you’d better get out of New York,” the girl said. “I think you’d better get off the planet earth, if you want my advice, because Kruger is going to kill you.”

“Well...” Mullaney said, and he hesitated because he was about to make a speech, and he rarely made speeches. He was going to make a speech because he incorrectly assumed everything was ending instead of just beginning, and he thought it would be nice to say something to commemorate the event. He started thinking about what he was going to say as he led the girl toward the red light burning over the exit door at the far end of the labyrinth. By the time they reached the door, he knew what he wanted to tell her. He put his hand on her arm. The girl turned and stared up at him, her flaxen hair aglow with spilled red light, her eyes wide and solemn and fitting to the occasion.

“Merilee,” he said, “I really thought the money was inside the jacket, and I can’t tell you how sad it makes me that it was only paper scraps. But in spite of that, I remember what happened before I opened that jacket. I remember you, Merilee. And so whatever happened afterwards doesn’t matter at all, the disappointment doesn’t matter, the possibility that I’m in danger doesn’t matter, none of it matters except what happened with you. That was good, Merilee, that was something I’ll never forget as long as I live because it was real and honest and, Merilee, it was just really really good, wasn’t it?”

“No,” the girl said, “it was lousy.”

The guard at the front door of the library bawled them out for lagging so far behind all the others and causing him to unlock the door after he had already carefully locked it for the night, did they think he had nothing to do but lock and unlock doors all night long? Mullaney supposed the guard did have a great many other things to do, so he didn’t argue with him, he just meekly allowed himself to be let out of the library and then he walked down the steps and stood with the girl near one of the lions and figured they would have to say goodbye. She would go back to Kruger, he supposed, and he would go he didn’t know where.

“Well...” he said.

“I’m supposed to shoot you, you know,” she said.

“You might just as well,” he answered.

“I’m terribly sorry the relationship didn’t work out,” she said.

“So am I.”

“But I don’t think I could shoot you.”

“I’m grateful,” Mullaney said.

“When they get you — they’ll get you, you know...”

“I know.”

“... you just tell them you escaped, okay? That’s what I’ll tell them.”

“Okay, that’s what I’ll tell them, too.”

“Well,” the girl said, and glanced over her shoulder.

“It was very nice knowing you,” Mullaney said.

“Oh yes indeed,” she answered, and walked away.

We’ll meet again, he thought, not really believing that they would. He thrust his hands into the pockets of the too-short trousers, and began walking downtown on Fifth Avenue. A breeze had sprung up and he was a bit chilly now that he no longer had his paper-lined jacket. He began wondering about that jacket. He was very good at making deductions based on the condition of the track and the number of times out and the number of wins and losses and the weight of the jockey, and all that. He was also very good at figuring the true odds on any given roll of the dice as opposed to the house odds, and he could calculate within reason the possibility of, say, drawing a diamond to a flush, very good indeed at doing all of these things — which was why he’d lost his shirt over the past year. Well, hadn’t actually lost his shirt, was actually still in possession of his jasmine shirt, which was a bit too flimsy for a cool April night like this one. Nor was he really convinced that he was not a very good gambler; he was simply a gambler who’d had a run of bad luck. Being equipped, therefore, with a coolly calculating mind that was capable of figuring combinations, permutations and such, he put it to use in speculating about the jacket and the odd fact that The New York Times had been sewn into it, rather than the half-million dollars everyone had been expecting.

The first obvious truth about the jacket was that Kruger had not known the money (or even the facsimile of the money) was sewn into its lining. Henry or George, he forgot which, had mentioned that the money was supposed to be in the coffin, but whereas they had thoroughly searched the coffin, they had not thought to search the person in the coffin. Which meant, following a logical progression of thought, that whoever had told them the money was in the coffin had neglectfully forgotten to mention it was sewn into the corpse’s jacket.

Very good, Mullaney, he thought, you’re getting very close. To what, he didn’t know.

Kruger knew the money was in the coffin, but did not know it was in the jacket.

Excellent.

On the other hand, K and O’Brien and all the others knew the money was in the jacket, but apparently did not know the money in the jacket was only The New York Times. They had concocted an elaborate scheme whereby they were prepared to ship a coffin and a corpse (was it to be a real corpse, and was that why the original victim had jumped out of the limousine on Fourteenth Street?) to Rome, where an informed party no doubt was to have opened the coffin, removed the body, slit the jacket’s lining, and become richer by half a million dollars. But somewhere along the line, someone had decided it would be a good joke to substitute newspaper strips for cash and, all unbeknownst to K and his fellows, had tiptoed away with the loot and stitched the morning paper into the garment.

Very good.

Now, Mullaney thought, we come to the difficult part, difficult because Kruger and his fellows didn’t tell me anything much about it except that there had been a terrible highway accident. Was it reasonable to assume that the hearse and the coffin had been hijacked on the way to Kennedy and then shuttled out to Secaucus or environs awaiting the resurrection of the corpse? But how had Kruger and his fellows learned about the money in the first place? And who had substituted the newspaper strips for the cash?

Mullaney suddenly remembered something that caused the sweet aroma of money to flood once more into his nostrils. He suddenly remembered that O’Brien had sent someone else to get the suit of clothes from the other room, and he suddenly remembered who that someone had been. The man who kept offering the schnapps. The stonecutter or whatever the hell he was. He had very definitely gone into the other room to get the jacket and pants, leaving the shirt behind because he was certain it would not fit Mullaney. Was it not possible, then, that the stonecutter was the man with the shifty fingers, the man adept at cutting up The New York Times? The only trouble was that Mullaney didn’t know where he had been this morning, other than that it was on the edge of a cemetery. Wait a minute, he thought, wasn’t there a sign, didn’t I notice a sign, something that caused me to think of Feinstein’s funeral (it was so funny the way he died) no, the hearse in the backyard made me think of his funeral, an excellent hearse, that and the marble stones, in memory of, wait a minute, one of them had a name on it, now hold it what was the name on that stone, just a minute, the large black marble stone, and across the face of it, IN LOVING MEMORY OF...

Who?

In loving memory of all the pleasures I will no longer enjoy on this sweet green earth.

In...

loving...

memory...

Got it! he thought as it came to him in a terrifying rush, IN LOVING MEMORY OF MARTIN CALLAHAN, LOVING HUSBAND, FATHER, GRANDFATHER, 1896–1967, crazy! and hoped it wasn’t just a dummy stone left around the yard for prospective customers to examine for chiseling styles.

He found an open drugstore on Thirty-eighth Street and looked up the name Martin Callahan in the Manhattan telephone book, discovering that there were two such Callahans listed and thinking So far, so good, I’ve got twenty cents, and a phone call costs a dime, and there are only two Martin Callahans, so I can’t lose. He went into the phone booth and dialed the first Martin Callahan and waited while the phone rang on the other end. There was no answer. This was Friday night. If this was the quick Callahan, he might very well be out stepping. Mullaney hung up, retrieved his dime (which was one-half of his fortune) and dialed the second Martin Callahan.

“Hello?” a woman said.

“Hello,” he said, “my name is Andrew Mullaney. I was out at a cemetery this morning...”

“What?” the woman said.

“Yes, and happened to see your husband’s beautiful stone...” He paused.

“Yes?” the woman said.

“Your husband was Martin Callahan, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, he died last month, poor soul,” she said.

“Well, I’d like to get a stone just like his,” Mullaney said, “but I can’t remember where I saw it. Would you remember the name of the stonecutter?”

“Is this Phil?” the woman said.

“No, this is Andrew Mullaney.”

“Because I don’t think it’s a very funny joke, if this is you, Phil.”

“No, this isn’t Phil.”

“I thought you were coming here at ten o’clock,” the widow Callahan said.

“Well, you see, this isn’t Phil.”

“I got all ready for you,” she said, petulantly he thought.

“Would you remember the name of the stonecutter, ma’am?” he asked. “It’s really very important.”

“Are you sure this isn’t Phil?”

“Oh, I’m positive. Positive, ma’am. Andrew Mullaney, M-U-L–L...”

“Oh,” the woman said. She paused. “The stonecutter’s name is Roger McReady, and he’s of McReady’s Monument Works in Queens,” she said, and hung up.

“Thank you,” Mullaney said in retrospect, and hung up. Since he was very hungry, he spent his last dime on a Hershey bar, which he consumed in three bites. Then he went out into the street and began walking crosstown toward the Queensboro Bridge. He had no plan in mind. Vaguely, he assumed it would be best to keep on the move, but he figured he had at least a little time before Merilee found her way back to Kruger’s apartment on East Sixty-first. So he walked at a normal pace, ambling along and looking at the Lexington Avenue chippies and the Third Avenue fags and the Second Avenue winos, then cutting uptown and thinking all the while what a nice city New York was if only a person had some money to spend in it. Irene had never been a one to worry about money, couldn’t matter less to her whether he’d earned ten thousand a year (which he hadn’t) or twenty thousand (which he most certainly hadn’t). “The best things in life are free,” she was fond of chirping around the house while he wrote out checks for the mountain of bills that seemed to accumulate each month, “all the world loves a lover, and boy do I love you!” or words to that effect, all of it sounding to him like the jabberwocky of a happy schizophrenic. He would gnaw his pencils down to a nub and mutter to himself about freedom and realization, thinking of the several times he had been out to the racetrack and won, or thinking of the few five-and-ten-cent poker games he had busted, or thinking of the impromptu crap game in which he had won thirty-two dollars from his startled friends — break out, he had muttered to himself, break out, cut loose, be a gambler!

So here he was, big gambler, just having lost half a million dollars, but hot on the trail of it again. Or at least hot on the trail of the stonecutter who might or might not have a clue as to how all that newspaper had happened to get inside the jacket. The problem now was one of transportation. He paused at the approach to the bridge, saw a sign reading FOOTWALK TO WELFARE ISLAND, and remembered that it was possible to walk to the island, and then across it, and then onto another bridge that led to Queens. The idea of such a long walk did not appeal to him, but the only other choice he could think of was walking all the way up to 125th Street and then across the Triboro Bridge, which seemed even longer to him. So he went down the cobbled path below the arching roadway overhead, and paused at the steps leading to the walkway. There were several signs affixed to the stone wall there. One of them, in white letters on a red enameled field, read:

A sign alongside it, in black letters on a white field, read:

He was standing there reading the second sign when a police car pulled up behind him. There were two patrolmen in the car. The one sitting alongside the driver rolled down his window and said, “Can’t you read that sign?”

“What sign, officer?” Mullaney said.

“That sign right behind you there,” the patrolman behind the wheel said, pointing. “I guess he can’t read the sign, Freddie.”

Mullaney turned and read the sign again. He was neither a baby carriage, a bicycle, a dog, or a skater, so he couldn’t understand why the policemen had stopped, or why they were now questioning him.

“Well, I can read the sign,” he said, “but I don’t see...”

“The other sign,” Freddie said.

“Oh, I see,” Mullaney said, and turned to look at it again. “It says No Standing Any Time.”

“Oh, he sees,” the patrolman behind the wheel said, “it says No Standing Any Time.”

“Yeah, Lou, he sees,” Freddie said, both of them beginning to sound very much the way Henry and George had sounded, though these two didn’t look at all alike. “What are you doing here?”

“It was just...”

“Are you standing here?”

“Yes, but..”

“Does the sign say No Standing Any Time?”

“Yes, but that applies to auto—”

“Then what arc you doing standing here?” Lou asked.

“I have to get to the cemetery,” Mullaney said, which was the truth so far. He decided to embroider upon the truth a little because both Freddie and Lou looked as if they just might pull him in for standing or loitering or hitchhiking or skating across the bridge without skates or raping somebody, it being Friday night, and there not being enough trouble to occupy them anywhere else in the city. “A very good friend of mine passed away just last month,” Mullaney said, “name of Martin Callahan. I was just talking to his widow a few minutes ago, and she seemed all broken up because the stone is ready, but she can’t bear to go out and look at it, being grief-stricken. So she asked me if I’d go out to take a look at it, see that they spelled his name right and all that, and I promised I would and then like a fool left my wallet in my jacket. At the gym. In my gym locker.”

“At the gym?” Lou asked.

“Yes, I go there to work out with the medicine ball. I’ve got a desk job, you see, keep the old bod in shape with a medicine ball.”

“What gym?”

“You know. Over on Fifty-third,” he said, wondering if there was a gym someplace on Fifty-third.

“Oh yeah, that one,” Freddie said. “What kind of work do you do?”

“I sell encyclopedias,” Mullaney said.

“Yeah, huh?”

“Yeah. So here I promised her I’d go out tonight and take a look at the stone for her, and I didn’t want to go all the way back to the gym, so I thought I’d walk across the bridge.”

“That’s a very interesting story,” Lou said.

“How did he die?” Freddie asked.

“Who?”

“Hoolihan. Your friend.”

“Callahan, you mean.”

“Yeah, Callahan, him.”

“Well...” Mullaney said, and paused, unable to remember how Callahan had died, but remembering very clearly how Feinstein had died, and figuring he might as well give them that story since they had thought his first story so interesting. “Actually,” he said, “it was very comical the way he...”

“Never mind,” Lou said, “I don’t like to hear about how guys died. Get in the car, and we’ll drop you off at the cemetery.”

“Thank you,” Mullaney said, and got into the squad car. “Where I’m going, actually, is to the stonecutters just outside the cemetery. McReady’s Monument Works.”

“I know where that is,” Freddie said.

“He thinks this is a taxi,” Lou said.

“Yeah,” Freddie said, “he thinks this is a taxi.”

But, being New Yorks Finest, they nonetheless drove him over the bridge and into Queens, where they dropped him off on the sidewalk just outside McReady’s Monument Works.