Evan Hunter - A Horse’s Head

He was halfway to the other side when he realized he had left the Judy Bond shopping bag on the train.

He stopped dead in the middle of the street and, as cars rushed past him in both directions, thought that Merilee’s estimation had been correct, If you lose, honey, why then you’re a loser, yes indeed. He had felt like a winner not a moment ago when he’d eluded the twins, but here he was bereft of the bag that still contained the jacket that held the clue to half a million dollars. He thought Well, the hell with it, easy come, easy go, and was almost knocked flat to the pavement by a red convertible that swerved screechingly away from him, the driver turning his head back to shout a few swear words, thereby narrowly missing a milk truck that went thundering past from the opposite direction. He did not think it would be a good idea to get hit by a moving vehicle as that might attract the attention of the police; there was still a Burglary One charge hanging over his head. So he stood exactly where he was, unmoving in the center of the street, waiting for the light to change again, and the traffic to ease.

When it did, he walked back to the curb and thought The hell with the jacket, I have had enough of this chasing after pots of gold at the ends of rainbows, and then was inordinately annoyed once again by the jacket’s obstinacy. He liked to think of himself as a system player, and surely such a player was capable of piercing whatever stubborn disguise K and his fellows had concocted. The best system he had ever devised was based on the Martingale double-up or progressive system that expounded the theory of doubling your bet each time you lost, betting four dollars if you lost two dollars, for example, and then eight if you lost the four, and sixteen the next time out, and so on until — when you finally won — you were getting back all of your previous investment plus a two-dollar profit as well. Securely based on this premise, his own system (which he was thinking of putting into soft covers as Mullaney’s System , if he could only find a publisher) was a variation of the theme, a sort of double-up retreat system, a sort of progressive-regressive system wherein he doubled his bet only four times if he was losing, and then began a process of reversal, halving his bet, and then quartering it, until he was back to betting only two dollars, after which he once again began doubling. The theory worked on the basis of simple gambling common sense: Mullaney knew that a run of bad luck could sometimes outlast even a very large bankroll. So he premised his system on the hope that enough winners, small or large, would come in over the progressive-regressive long run to allow a steady profit, enough to keep him in franks and beans, enough to keep him alive and betting.

Thus far, the system hadn’t worked too well.

But a man who had devised such a scheme, a man who had painstakingly figured it out with pencil and paper, was surely a man who possessed the intelligence and ingenuity to crack the jackets stubborn facade. Determined, he clenched his fists and marched up the steps to the subway platform, mindful that George or even poor Henry might get off at the next station stop, double back, and shoot him on the spot; well, those are the chances you have to take, he thought, if you want to get anywhere in this world.

The woman in the change booth was a very healthy person wearing a green eye shade and a tan cardigan sweater, the sleeves of which had been cut off raggedly at the elbows. She had muscular forearms that rippled with power as she arranged small piles of tokens on the counter top. One of her arms was tattooed with the name MIKE in a heart pierced by an arrow. Her hair was up in curlers, so Mullaney figured she was preparing for a heavy date later on that night.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, “but...”

“Miss,” she corrected. She did not look up from arranging her little piles of tokens.

“I left a shopping bag on the train...” he said.

“Lost Property Office,” she answered without looking up.

“Thank you.” He started to walk away from the booth, turned, went up to the cage again, and said, “Where is that, miss? The Lost Property Office?”

“Phone book,” she said without looking up.

“Thank you,” he said. He found a telephone booth alongside the newspaper stand at the rear of the station, and quickly searched the Manhattan directory. He tried Interboro Rapid Transit System first and found Interboro Time Clock Co and Interboro Trucking Co Inc but nothing in between. So he decided to try Brooklyn Manhattan Transfer and found Bklyn Mchy Warehse Corp and Bklyn-Manhatn Trial Counsel Assn Inc, but nothing between those two, either. So he looked up Independent Subway System and found Independent Subway Call NY City Transit System ULstr 2-5000, which he called, but got no answer. He began leafing through the telephone book again, thinking there might be a listing for the Lost Property Office under New York City Transit System, but all he found was a listing for NY City Transit Police Patrolmen’s Benevolent Assn, which he did not think would help him. He closed the book and walked back toward the change booth. The woman was still arranging tokens. She had made perhaps thirty little piles of tokens already.

“Excuse me,” he said.

“Yes?” she said without looking up.

“I can’t find it in the telephone book.”

“New York,” she said, “City of.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“New York, City of,” she said.

“Oh, thank you,” he said, and went back to the telephone book and found, just three pages before the Transit Police Patrolmen s Benevolent Association listing, a thousand or more New York City listings, including frequently called numbers like City Prisons and Hack Licenses and Rent & Rehabilitation Admin and — I’ll be damned, he thought — a listing under transit authority for Lost Property Office, MA 5-6200; he supposed a lot of people were losing things in the subways nowadays. He fished into his pocket for the dime again, dialed the number, and let it ring ten times before hanging up. He retrieved his dime from the return chute, went out of the booth, and back to the woman in the sawed-off cardigan. There were perhaps forty or fifty little piles of tokens on the counter now.

“Excuse me,” he said.

“Yes?” she said without looking up.

“I called them and there was no answer.”

“Who?” she said.

“The Lost Property Office.”

“That’s right,” she said, “they’re closed on Saturdays.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, what am I supposed to do about my shopping bag?”

“Go fight City Hall,” she said, and continued piling tokens. “Thank you,” he said.

“Don’t mention it,” she answered.

He walked away from the booth. Well, that’s that, he thought. I tried. I really tried, so the hell with it. Well, he thought, you haven’t really tried until you’ve exhausted every possibility, there is half a million dollars at stake here, or have you forgotten that? He reached into his pocket, extracted his remaining money and — spreading it on the palm of his hand — began counting it. He had exactly a dollar and fifteen cents in change. He wondered how far that would take him, and decided it would take him quite far enough. He went down the steps to the street, hailed the first taxicab he saw, and said to the driver, “Follow that el.”

“What?” the driver said.

“Follow that el.”

“You mean follow them tracks up there?”

“That’s right.”

“To where?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m looking for somebody.”

“Who’re you looking for?”