Evan Hunter - A Horse’s Head

Ground floor? he thought.

Middle floor?

Top floor?

It is always best to start at the bottom, he thought, and work your way up, so what I’ll do is go to the very bottom, which is the basement. In that way, I may catch some ladies still doing their wash, and thereby save myself the possibility of duplication; if I hit the basement last, I may run across some of them I’ve already talked to, yes, it’s best to hit the basement first, that’s exactly what I’ll do. Something was bothering him, but he didn’t know quite what yet. He found himself trying to decide whether he should take the money and go to Jakarta, or whether he should take it and go to Monte Carlo, or London (which is where it was happening, baby, all sorts of gambling action there) or perhaps Sicily where he could live like a king on two dollars a week, playing bocce for money with Mafiosi — all sorts of possibilities churned around in his skull, but of course he first had to find the jacket. And yet finding the jacket was not what bothered him, it was something other than that, though he could not yet put his finger on it.

Something though.

Something.

There was only one lady in the basement, taking her wet laundry out of the washing machine. He approached her and asked whether she had perhaps picked up a Judy Bond shopping bag on the train that afternoon, he being the rightful owner of the bag, and willing to offer a reward for its recovery since, well (using K’s identical line), let us say it has sentimental value. The woman was a very pleasant type who looked as Irish as Irene, though nowhere near as pretty, thirty-five or thirty-six years old, with weary lines around her sharp blue eyes. Oh my, she said, I do wish I could help you, but you see I got up at five-thirty this morning to make my husband breakfast before he went off fishing in Long Island Sound, and then I did his breakfast dishes and woke the children and dressed them and fed them and got them ready to be picked up to be taken to Prospect Park where the school is having a picnic, and then I did their breakfast dishes, and vacuumed, and dusted, and my mother-in-law came over for lunch which I had to make for her, she loves fried chicken, and then I did her lunch dishes, and changed the slipcovers on the furniture, and tried to get the stain out of the living-room rug where the dog dirtied, and then had to wait for the electrician who was coming to fix the door on the refrigerator, the light won’t go out when you close it, he didn’t come until about three o’clock, and he finally got it fixed by four, it cost five dollars for a service call and a dollar seventy-five for parts, and my husband came home with some very nice flounder and blackies that I had to clean and put in the refrigerator, the light wouldn’t go out again not ten minutes after the electrician had left, and then I came down here with my laundry at about four-thirty, and, as you can see, I’m just now taking the last load out of the washer, and now I’ll have to go hang it up outside, and then go upstairs and prepare dinner for the family, the children are supposed to be home at six if the bus is on time, so you see I didn’t have much time to ride the subway today, or to pick up a Judy Bond shopping bag with sentimental value, I’m terribly sorry.

Mullaney thanked her and was starting up out of the basement when he heard voices coming from one of the small rooms off to the side near the furnace. He approached the room confidently, expecting to find some more ladies chatting about the day’s events, and was disappointed to discover only three tiny little girls sitting around a wooden table, playing jacks. The room, he saw, had been whitewashed and hung with cute little nursery-type cutouts of the Cat and the Fiddle and Old King Cole and the like. A bare light bulb hung over the wooden table, which had been shortened to accommodate the four tot-sized chairs around it. The table was painted a bright yellow, the chairs a bright pink. The three little girls were each perhaps eight years old, each wearing a pastel dress that blended nicely with the yellow table and pink chairs and whitewashed walls and cute nursery-school cutouts. They were shrieking in glee at the progress of their game and paid not the slightest bit of attention to Mullaney, who stood quietly in the doorway, watching. Unobtrusively, he turned to leave, and then saw something on the floor beside the pink chair of the little dark-haired girl who sat at the far end of the table.

The something was his Judy Bond shopping bag.

His heart lurched.

He recognized the girl at once as the button-nosed little tyke who, with her mother, had been sitting opposite him in the subway car. He took a step into the room, and then noticed that her small chubby fist was clasped firmly around the handles of the shopping bag. She glanced up at him as he abortively hesitated in the doorway, her dark brown eyes coming up coolly and slowly to appraise him.

“Hello,” he said weakly.

“Hello,” the other little girls chirped, but the dark-haired one at the end of the table did not answer, watched him intently and suspiciously instead, her hand still clutched around the twisted white paper handles of the shopping bag.

“Excuse me, little girl,” Mullaney said, “but is that your shopping bag?”

“Yes, it is,” she answered. Her voice was high and reedy, it seemed to emanate from her button nose, her mouth seemed to remain tightly closed, her eyes did not waver from his face.

“Are you sure you didn’t find it on a subway train?” he asked, and smiled.

“Yes, I did find it on a subway train, but it’s mine anyway,” she said. “Finders, keepers.”

“That’s right, Melissa,” one of the other little girls said. “Finders, keepers,” and Mullaney wanted to strangle her. Instead, he smiled sourly and told himself to keep calm.

“There’s a jacket in that bag, did you happen to notice it?” he asked.

“I happened to notice it,” Melissa said.

“It belongs to me,” Mullaney said.

“No, it belongs to me,” she answered. “Finders, keepers.”

“Finders, keepers, right,” the other girl said. She was a fat little kid with freckles on her nose and braces on her teeth. She seemed to be Melissa’s translator and chief advocate, and she sat slightly to Melissa’s right, with her hands on her hips, and stared at Mullaney with unmasked hostility.

“The jacket has sentimental value,” Mullaney said, trying to look pathetic.

“What’s sentimental value?” the third little girl asked.

“Well, it means a lot to me,” he said.

“It means a lot to me, too,” Melissa said.

“It means a lot to her , too,” her translator chirped.

“Thank you, Frieda,” Melissa said.

“Well,” Mullaney said, smiling, and still trying to look pathetic, “what can it possibly mean to you, an old jacket with a tom lining and...”

“I can do lots of things with it,” Melissa said. She had still not taken her eyes from his face. He had thought only snakes never blinked, volume SN-SZ, but apparently Melissa was of a similar species, cold-blooded, with hoods over the eyes, never blinking, never sleeping, never relinquishing her coiled grip on the shopping bag.

“Name me one thing you can do with it,” Mullaney said.

“I could throw it in the garbage,” Melissa said, and giggled.

“She could throw it in the garbage,” Frieda said, and also giggled.

“Throw it where?” the third girl, who was apparently deaf, asked.

“In the garbage, Hilda,” Melissa said, still giggling.

“Oh, in the garbage ,” Hilda said, and burst out laughing.

The three of them continued laughing and giggling for quite some time, while Mullaney stood foolishly in the doorway, trying to look pathetic, and beginning to sweat profusely. There was no window in the small basement room, and he could feel perspiration on his brow and under his arms, trickling over his collarbones, sliding onto his chest.