A Horse’s Head

by Ed McBain

  “Me neither.”

  “Hey, you know what?” Henry said.

  “What?”

  “We could take him to that little park they got there outside the U.N. building, you know that little park I mean?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, and walk him over to the river where that thing juts out over the water, you know where I mean?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, and hit him on the head and just dump him over the side there.”

  “Well, that’s the river again, ain’t it?” George said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean, that’s just the damn river all over again.”

  “Yeah.” Henry seemed crestfallen. “Well, what do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know,” George said. “What do you want to do?”

  “Gee, I don’t know,” Henry said.

  Mullaney heard the sound of an alto saxophone, and thought at first that someone in the car had turned on a transistor radio. New Yorkers were all so musical, always singing and dancing wherever they went, just like Italians, gay and light-hearted and singing, dancing, playing all the time. But as he turned toward the sound, he saw that a live musician had entered the far end of the car and was making his way, step by cautious step, toward where Mullaney and his potential assassins were sitting.

  The man was blind.

  He was a tall thin man wearing a tattered maroon sweater similar to the one Mullaney had worn all through college, dark glasses on his nose, his head carried erect, as though on the end of a plumb line, the saxophone mouthpiece between his compressed lips. The saxophone was gilded with mock silver that had worn through in spots to reveal the tarnished brass beneath. A leather leash was fastened to the man’s belt and led to the collar of a large German shepherd who preceded the man into the subway car and led him step by step up the aisle, sitting after each two or three steps while the man continued playing a song that sounded like a medley of “You Made Me Love You” and “Sentimental Journey.” The man, though blind, was a terrible saxophonist, miskeying, misphrasing, producing squeaks in every measure. The German shepherd, dutifully pausing after every few steps into the car, walked or sat at the man’s feet in what appeared to be a pained stupor, a glazed look on his otherwise intelligent face. The blind man swayed above him, filling the car with his monumentally bad music while on either side people rose from their seats to drop coins into the tin cup that hung from his neck, resting somewhere near his breastbone, its supporting cord tangled in the leather strap that held the saxophone. The dog was similarly burdened, carrying around his neck a hanging, hand-lettered placard that read:

  MY NAME IS ROLLO.

  DO NOT PET ME.

  THANK YOU.

  The blind man had reached the center doors of the car now. The dog dutifully sat again with that same pained and patient expression on his face, and Mullaney wondered why a nice-looking animal like Rollo would wear a sign asking people not to pet him. The train had pulled into another station, and people were rushing in and out of the doors, shoving past the blind man, who immediately stopped playing. But as soon as the doors closed and the train was in motion again, he struck up a lively chorus of “Ebb Tide,” and then modulated into “Stormy Weather,” which he played with the same squeaking vibrato and fumbling dexterity while the dog continued to look more and more pained. They were still coming up the aisle, slowly making their way toward where Mullaney sat. He had not thought to count the time it took for the train to go from one station to another, that was his mistake, he now realized, he had counted the wrong thing. The blind man and Rollo stopped, the swelling sound of the saxophone drowned out the speculations of Henry and George (they were debating the possibility of garroting Mullaney) and filled the car with horrendous sound. Coins continued to rattle into the tin cup, music lovers all along the car reaching gingerly into the aisle and dropping pennies, nickels and dimes in appreciation as Rollo and the blind man moved a few steps, paused, moved again, paused again, they were perhaps three feet away from Mullaney now. The dog is probably vicious, he thought, that’s why you’re not supposed to pet him, he’s a vicious dog who’ll chew your arm off at the elbow if you so much as make a move toward his head. The train was slowing, the train was pulling into a station, Rollo and the blind man were moving ahead again, two feet away, a foot away, the train stopped, and the dog sat in the aisle directly in front of Henry.

  Mullaney begged the forgiveness of polite society, he begged the forgiveness of God, he begged the forgiveness of tradition, but he knew he had to save his life, even if the only way to do it was to take advantage of a blind man. He began counting the moment the train stopped, one, two, three, the doors opened, he had eleven seconds to make his move, win or lose, live or die. He Suddenly grabbed Henry’s right arm, cupping his own left hand behind Henry’s elbow, pushing his own right hand against Henry’s wrist, creating a fulcrum and lever that forced Henry out of his seat with a yelp. The dog was sitting at Henry’s feet, and Mullaney, counting madly (five, six, seven, eight, those doors would close at fourteen), hurled Henry directly at Rollo’s pained magnificent head, saw his jowls pull back an instant before Henry collided with the triangular black nose, saw the fangs bared, heard the deep growl start in Rollo’s throat, nine, ten, eleven, he bounded for the doors as George came out of his seat, drawing his gun, twelve, thirteen, “Stop!” George shouted behind him, he was through the doors, fourteen, and they closed behind him. Through the open windows of the car, he could hear Rollo tearing off Henry’s arm or perhaps ripping out his jugular while the blind man began playing a medley of “Strangers in the Night” and “Tuxedo Junction.” George was across the car now and leaning through a window as the train began moving out of the station. He fired twice at Mullaney, who zigzagged along the platform and leaped head first down the steps leading below, banging his head on a great many risers as he hurtled down, thinking this was where he had come in, and thinking By God, he missed me! He heard the train rattling out of the station, and was certain he also heard applause from the passengers in the car as Rollo eviscerated poor Henry. He got to his feet the moment he struck the landing, began running instantly, without looking back, thinking I’m free at last, I’m free of all of them, and running past the change booth and then bounding down another flight of steps to the street, not knowing where he was, Brooklyn or Queens or wherever the hell, thinking only that he had escaped, finding himself on the sidewalk, good solid concrete under his feet, glancing up at the traffic light, seeing it was in his favor, and darting into the gutter.

  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 base
d 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 mail who possessed the intelligence and ingenuity to crack the jacket’s 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?”

  “I’m not sure. Somebody with a shopping bag.”

  The driver studied him silently for a moment. Then he said, “I got to have a destination, mister. I got to write down a destination on my call sheet.”

  “Okay, write down Radio City Music Hall.”

  “Is that where you’re going?”

  “No, but you can say that’s where I’m going. Then I’ll change my mind as soon as I spot whoever has my shopping bag. I’m allowed to change my mind.”

  “That’s true, you’re allowed to change your mind.”

  “Okay, so write down Radio City.”

  “How you gonna find this person with your shopping bag?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I’ve got to keep my eyes open until we catch up with the train.”

  “What train?”

  “The one up there heading for Manhattan.”

  “Mister, there are a hundred trains up there heading for Manhattan.”

  “Yes, but this one just left about five minutes ago. I’m sure we can catch it.”

  “Mister,” the driver said, “I’ll tell you the truth, I was just on my way in to the garage, you know? So why don’t I just help you get another cab, huh?”

  “No, this’ll be fine,” Mullaney said. “Here,” he said, and handed the driver his dollar and fifteen cents. “This is all the money I’ve got. Just keep driving until the meter hits ninety-five cents, and keep the twenty cents for your tip. If we haven’t caught up with the train by then or found my shopping bag by then, well, that’s that, we tried, right? We can’t go looking all over the city for that pot of gold, now can we?”

  “Not on a buck-fifteen, we can’t,” the driver said.

  “Right, so let’s get moving, right?”

  “This won’t take you to Radio City,” the driver said, pocketing the money and throwing the cab into gear.

  “I know, but that’s okay because I’m not going to Radio City, remember?”

  “Yeah, yeah
,” the driver said.

  “You forgot to throw your flag,” Mullaney said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” the driver said.

  “Do you know what time it is?” Mullaney asked.

  “Quarter to four,” the driver answered. “You know, don’t you, that the minute I throw this flag, you got thirty-five cents on the meter right off.”

  “Yes, I know that.”

  “What I’m saying is this money ain’t gonna take you very far. I mean, I don’t know what kind of manhunt you got in mind here, but this money ain’t gonna take you very far at all, if you know what I mean.”

  “Well, that’s a chance I’ll have to take, right?” Mullaney said. “Life’s full of little chances one has to take, right?”

  “If you say so, mister,” the driver said, and lowered the flag, starting the clock on the meter.

  “Please drive as slowly as you can,” Mullaney said. “I have to look at the people. One of them may have my shopping bag.”

  “Mister, do you know how many people live in the borough of Brooklyn?”

  “How many?”

  “I happen to live in the borough of Brooklyn myself,” the driver said, “and so I know whereof I speak. There happens to be 2,018,356 people living in this borough, and on a Saturday afternoon like this, with the sun shining and it so nice out, I’ll bet you half of them are out here in the street. And I’ll bet you furthermore that half of them that are out here in the street are carrying shopping bags. Now how do you expect to find …”

  “Slow down, slow down,” Mullaney said.

  “… a person carrying your shopping bag?”

  “It’s a very special shopping bag,” Mullaney said.

  “Oh? It has your name on it or something?”

  “No, it has Judy Bond’s name on it.”

  “Who’s Judy Bond? A relation to James Bond perhaps?” the driver said, and burst out laughing. Undoubtedly thinking Mullaney had not heard him, he said again, “A relation to James Bond perhaps?” and laughed again. “You now have forty-five cents on the meter, mister.”

  “I see it,” Mullaney said.