Evan Hunter - A Horse’s Head

“Thank you,” Mullaney said. “A girl , did you say?”

“Yes. Carrying that shopping bag you were talking about.”

“Thank you,” Mullaney said, and jumped out of the cab. He began running in the direction the driver had indicated, but he saw no one, male or female, carrying a Judy Bond shopping bag. He saw a lot of old women carrying plain old brown shopping bags or A&P shopping bags, and one earning an Abraham & Straus shopping bag, but he did not see anyone carrying his shopping bag, the bag containing the goddamn jacket.

The trouble with New York City, he thought, is that there are too many people living here, and they all look exactly alike. Also, he thought, if you want to get right down to it, all the various boroughs of the city look exactly alike, too, with the possible exception of Manhattan and Staten Island. Take this sidewalk along which I am now running, pushing my way through the baby buggies and the kids roller skating and the old ladies gossiping and the teenagers giggling, take this street in the shadow of the elevated structure (whatever street it may happen to be, I haven’t the faintest idea), but take it and add up all the butcher shops on it, the delicatessens and grocery stores, add up the shoemakers and dry-goods stores and luncheonettes, the record shops and jewelers and vegetable stands, the photography joints, and furniture stores and bakeries, add them all up and you no longer have a street in Brooklyn in the shadow of the elevated structure, you also have a street in Queens in the shadow of the el, and a street in the Bronx in the shadow of the el — they are all different and yet they are all the same. I could be searching for that girl with the Judy Bond bag on any one of those other streets as well (I never dated a girl from Brooklyn, what a pity, the Bronx is so very far away, my dears, the opposite end of the earth).

But identical.

Goddamn bloody well identical, he thought, and suddenly was stricken by a revelation so clear and so sharp that he almost forgot all about the shopping bag, stopped dead in the center of the sidewalk and allowed himself to be jostled by the crowds passing by, stood glassy-eyed and amazed and thought I’ll bet by Christ there are streets in the shadow of the el in Rome, or London, or Paris, not literally in the shadow of the el because they probably haven’t got elevated structures such as these beauties that support our transit-system tracks, but I’ll bet it’s the same there, I’ll bet the people look exactly the same there. I’ll bet even in Yokohama — which has got an elevated structure because I once saw a movie — I’ll bet even there everybody looks exactly the same, oh my God I feel like a carbon copy.

Is it this way in Jakarta? he suddenly wondered.

He saw his shopping bag going around the comer in a flurry of Saturday-afternoon humanity, a boy on a skateboard rushing past, two old ladies carrying groceries, a man wearing a straw hat and drinking beer from a bottle, he saw only the disappearing end of the bag as it rounded the comer and did not see who was carrying it, saw only a portion of a word, IKE! and hurried to reach the comer, almost knocking over a man carrying a Christmas tree, a what? turning to look back at the man — sure enough, he was carrying a goddamn Christmas tree in the middle of April — ran past the gardening shop on the comer, saw pines and spruces potted in tubs (is there Christmas in Jakarta? he wondered), said, “Excuse me,” to a lady in slacks and high-heeled pumps, suddenly transported to Brentwood in Los Angeles 49, California, where Irene’s aunt lived and where they had spent the entire summer of 1962 watching middle-aged ladies in gold #lame pants and sequined slippers shopping in supermarkets, all the same, all the same, reached the comer, turned the comer, saw a row of empty lots, a single huge apartment house — but not his shopping bag.

His shopping bag, carried by a girl he had not yet laid eyes on, had disappeared.

He stood on the sidewalk and counted thirteen stories in the apartment building, and then started counting windows in an attempt to learn how many apartments there were, counting ten windows on each floor across the front face, and figuring another ten windows for each floor at the rear of the building, two windows to each room most likely. That would make it at least ten apartments on each floor, multiplied by thirteen (unlucky number) for a total of one hundred and thirty apartments. It suddenly occurred to him that the Judy Bond shopping bag he had seen might not be his shopping bag. Suppose he knocked on a hundred and thirty doors only to discover that the bag contained, for example, a pair of men’s pajamas or a lady’s bathrobe? Besides, even if it was his shopping bag, he still didn’t know exactly why the jacket was worth retrieving. K and his fellows knew that, but the last time he’d seen them they were struggling with problems of their own. Except McReady. Mmmm, Mullaney thought, and immediately hailed another taxi, coldly calculating the petit larceny he was about to commit against the driver, but figuring C’est la guerre, and giving him the address of McReady’s Monument Works in Queens.

This has got to be the end of it, he thought.

If that really is my shopping bag, then I know where the jacket is, or at least approximately where it is — there’s only one apartment building on that block and the girl certainly didn’t vanish into thin air. On the other hand, K and McReady and Purcell all know the secret of the jacket. So the ideal thing is to form a partnership, fifty-fifty, I tell you how to get the jacket, you tell me how to get the money, okay? Is it a deal?

No, they will say, and shoot me through the head.

But then they don’t get the jacket.

I certainly hope they want that jacket.

“Have you been bereaved?” the cab driver asked.

“No, not recently,” Mullaney said.

“I thought perhaps you had been bereaved, since you are heading for a gravestone place.”

“No, I’m heading there to consummate a rather large business deal.”

“Oh, are you in the gravestone business?”

“No, I’m...”

He hesitated.

He had almost said, “I’m an encyclopedia salesman,” which he had not been for more than a year now.

“I’m a gambler,” he said quickly.

“I take a gamble everytime I pick up a passenger,” the cab driver said, which made Mullaney feel a bit uneasy. He had only fifteen cents in his pocket, and the meter already read forty cents.

“Really?” he said.

“Certainly. You’d be surprised how many times a year I get stiffed,” the driver said. “You wouldn’t believe how mean and rotten the people in this rotten city are.”

“Really?” Mullaney said.

“I get guys in this cab,” the driver said, “they look like respectable businessmen, nice, you know what I mean? Dressed neat, just like you. We reach where were going, they get out and tell me they’ll be right back, I should wait for them, psssssst, the great disappearing act.”

“Really?” Mullaney said, and cleared his throat; he had planned a similar disappearance, but now he wondered whether he dared attempt it. “What... uh... do you usually do when something like that happens?” he asked.

“I wait

“How long do you wait?”

“Five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes, sometimes a half-hour. By that time, I realize I’ve been stiffed.” The driver shrugged. “So I drive away. What else can I do? It’s a gamble, this whole rotten business. I wish I was in gravestones, like you.”

“No, I’m not in gravestones,” Mullaney said.

“That’s right, you ain’t,” the driver said. “And you think hiz-zoner the mayor gives a damn about us? You got to fight tooth and nail for everything you get in this rotten city, we’re like the coolies of the western world, they should give us them rickshas and them little straw hats and let us pull people around that way, it’s the same rotten thing. What business did you say you were in?”