“Yes, a terrible accident.”
“Are they dead?”
“It would appear so.”
“I know who killed them,” Mullaney said.
“Ahhh.”
“A man named Kruger.”
“Ahhh.”
“And two people who work for him. Henry and George.”
“Ahhh.”
“Do you know them?” Mullaney asked.
“Have a little more schnapps,” McReady said, and poured the plastic water tumbler to the brim again. The men lifted their glasses. “L’chaim,” McReady said. They drank. The whiskey was good, and it was very cozy inside the cottage. Outside, the wind howled and the cemetery demons tossed restlessly. But within the cottage, there was the smell of cheese and good whiskey, the aroma of McReady’s tobacco as he lighted his pipe and exhaled a cloud of smoke. Mullaney felt himself relaxing. It had been a long day, and the possibility existed that it might be an even longer night, but for now there was whiskey and cheese and—
“Is there more cheese?” he asked.
“Why certainly,” McReady said, “are you hungry, you poor man?”
“I’m famished,” Mullaney said.
McReady rose and went to a small refrigerator, set under what appeared to be a door serving as a desk, one end of which was supported by the refrigerator, the other end by a green filing cabinet. He stooped, took from the refrigerator a wedge of cheese and a long salami, opened the filing cabinet to remove a knife, and came back to the table. Mullaney fell upon the feast without ceremony.
“I like to see a man eat,” McReady said.
“Yes,” Mullaney agreed, eating.
“Would you perhaps know what happened to the jacket?” McReady asked.
“Yes.”
“What happened to it?”
Mullaney swallowed more of the whiskey, washing down his food. “There was only The New York Times in it,” he said.
“Ahhh,” McReady said.
“Which I’m sure you knew, anyway,” Mullaney said.
“Ahhh?”
“Yes.”
“Paper scraps, do you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Cut into the size of bills?”
“Yes.”
“Sewn into the jacket?”
“Yes.”
“I knew nothing about it,” McReady said.
“You were the one who gave the jacket to me.”
“That’s true.”
“There was supposed to be half a million dollars in it,” Mullaney said.
“You’ve learned a lot since the accident,” McReady said, and his eyes narrowed. He had, until that moment, seemed like only a pleasant-looking old pipe smoker, his head partially bald, a fringe of white hair curling about each ear, his nose exhibiting the rosy tint of the habitual drinker, leisurely puffing on his pipe, puff, puff, and gulping his whiskey, a nice pleasant stonecutter of a man feeding a starving horseplayer and making pleasant chitchat in the night while the wind howled outside and the cemetery horrors moaned. Until he narrowed his eyes. When he narrowed his eyes, Mullaney suddenly wondered what a nice guy like McReady was doing in a place like this, cutting stones for corpses and substituting paper scraps for money. I’ll bet this whiskey has been poisoned, he thought, or drugged, but he took another swallow of it nonetheless.
“Half a million dollars,” he repeated.
“Give or take a few thousand,” McReady said, and puffed on his pipe with his eyes still narrowed. “Who told you all this?”
“Kruger.”
“Ahhh,” McReady said.
“You still haven’t said whether or not you know him,” Mullaney said.
“I know him.”
“He wants that money,” Mullaney said. “So do I.”
“What gives you any claim to it?” McReady asked reasonably.
“I almost became a corpse for it.”
“You may still become one,” McReady said, again reasonably. He seemed like a very reasonable fellow, except for the way he kept his eyes squinched up so narrow, never taking his gaze from Mullaney’s face. The cottage was still. Outside, the cemetery ghouls groaned into the wind. Mullaney took another swallow of whiskey.
“Would you like to hear my theory?” he asked.
“Yes, certainly,” McReady said.
“It’s my theory that you substituted the paper scraps for the money.”
“Me?”
“You.”
“No,” McReady said.
“It’s my theory that you have that five hundred thousand dollars.”
“No,” McReady said, and shook his head for emphasis, and puffed on his pipe again, and again said, “No.”
“I went to a lot of trouble finding you,” Mullaney said, and swallowed more whiskey, emptying the glass. McReady poured it full to the brim again. Mullaney lifted it, and said, “By the way, that was a nice job of chiseling on Martin Callahan’s stone.”
“Thank you,” McReady said.
Mullaney drank. “So?” he said.
“So what?”
“If you didn’t put those paper scraps in the jacket, who did?”
“Let us say that where there is cheese, there is also sometimes a rat,” McReady said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s supposed to mean that half a million dollars can be a very tempting sum.”
“Very tempting indeed,” Mullaney said. “If I had it, I would take it to Monte Carlo and play seventeen red.”
“Black,” McReady said.
“What?”
“Seventeen is black.”
“Then that’s what I would play,” Mullaney said. “If I had the money.”
“Unfortunately, you don’t have it.”
“Do you?”
“Not yet,” McReady said.
“What does that mean?”
“Ahhh,” McReady said, and puffed on his pipe.
“Why were you sending it to Rome?” Mullaney asked.
“Ahhh,” McReady said.
“This is a big international gang, isn’t it?” Mullaney said shrewdly. “This is an enormous criminal cartel, isn’t it? This is a big heroin operation, right? Or white slavery, right, am I right, McReady?”
“You are wrong,” McReady said.
“Then what is it?” he asked, and suddenly realized he was drunk.
“It is none of your business,” McReady said, “that is what it is.”
“It’s my business because you made it my business.”
McReady put down his pipe. Mullaney saw that his hand was very close to the knife on the table, which was a very large and sharp-looking kitchen knife, something he had not noticed while he was slicing the salami. McReady’s eyes were still narrowed. Mullaney was beginning to think he was simply nearsighted.
“I would like to ask you some questions,” McReady said.
“Oh, would you now?” Mullaney said, feeling suddenly very exuberant, feeling again the way he had felt when he’d stood up to Kruger back on Sixty-first Street, somewhat like a hero, albeit a drunken one.
“Yes, and I would like you to answer them.”
“Well now, maybe I’ll answer them, and maybe I won’t,” Mullaney said.
“We shall see,” McReady said, and Mullaney was positive now that he was a member of an international crime cartel because all the members thus far had the same corny way of sounding terribly menacing when they talked to you, as if they had all learned to threaten in the same exclusive school run by Fagin or somebody, Three six nine a bottle of wine, Mullaney thought, I can lick you any old time. But McReady’s hand was on the knife.
“Did you open the jacket?” McReady asked.
“I did.”
“And found the paper scraps?”
“I did.”
“Where?”
“Inside the jacket. Sewn into the jacket.”
“I meant... where did you make this discovery?”
“Oh, I get it,” Mullaney said. “I get it now, pal. Go ahead, torture me, I’ll never tell you where I left those heroin-impregnated scraps of paper. Or is it LSD? Huh? Is that what The New York Times was soaked in? LSD? I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”