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.
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!”