by Ed McBain
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 torn 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.
“Well,” he said, “if you’re going to throw it in the garbage, you might just as well give it back to me, seeing as it has sentimental value.”
“Then I won’t throw it in the garbage,” Melissa said.
“What will you do?”
“I’ll cut off all the buttons.”
“Why would you do that?” Mullaney asked.
“To sew on Jenny’s dress.”
“Who’s Jenny?”
“My dolly.”
“Well, you wouldn’t want to sew those big ugly buttons on a dolly’s dress, would you? Little dollies should have small bright shining buttons on their dresses.”
“I could paint them bright and shining,” Melissa said. “Anyway, it’s my jacket and I can do what I want with it. Finders, keepers.”
“Losers, weepers,” Frieda said.
Hilda giggled.
“Look,” Mullaney said, “I’ll pay you for the jacket, how’s that? I’m really very attached to it, you see, and I …”
“How much?” Melissa said.
“Fifteen cents,” Mullaney said, which was all the money he had in the world.
“Ha!”
“Well … how much do you want?”
“Half a million.”
“It’s … it’s not worth anywhere near that,”
Mullaney said, thinking the child was omniscient. “It’s just an old jacket with a torn lining, it couldn’t possibly be …” He wet his lips. “Look, Melissa … is that your name? Melissa?”
“That’s my name.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do …”
“Mister,” Frieda said, “we’re trying to play some jacks here, do you mind?”
“I certainly don’t want to interrupt your game, but I don’t think you understand how much that jacket means to me,” he said, thinking I must be out of my mind trying to reason with a bunch of fourth-graders, why don’t I pimply grab the damn jacket and run? Sure, with Melissa’s grubby little fist wrapped around it, miserable unblinking little reptile, I’ll have to grab the jacket and the shopping bag and her in the bargain; I can just hear the unholy clamor that little gambit would raise.
“Mister,” Frieda said, “why don’t you go home?”
“Because I want my jacket,” Mullaney said, somewhat petulantly.
“It’s your turn, Hilda,” Melissa said.
Hilda picked up the jacks, held them in her hand for an instant, and then dropped them onto the table top. There were ten jacks, each made of metal, each shaped like an enlarged asterisk. They fell onto the table top separately, or in pairs, or in small groups, tumbling and rolling and finally coming to rest. Hilda eyed them critically.
“Go on,” Melissa said.
“I was examining them,” Hilda replied.
“Don’t be such an examiner,” Frieda said.
“Examine when you come to foursies or fivesies. Don’t examine so much on onesies.”
“How do you play that game?” Mullaney asked suddenly.
“Oh mister, please go away,” Melissa said.
“Seriously, seriously,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “How do you play it?”
“You throw the ball up,” Melissa said, “and it bounces, and if you’re going for onesies, you have to pick up one jack each time before you catch the ball. When you’re for twosies, you have to pick up two jacks each time.”
“And so on,” Frieda said.
“How do you win?” Mullaney asked.
“When you reach tensies,” Melissa said.
“Tensies?”
“When you bounce the ball and pick up all ten jacks before you catch it.”
“Are you a good player?”
“I’m the best player in the building.”
“She’s the best player in Brooklyn,” Frieda said.
“Maybe in the world,” Hilda said.
“Mmm,” Mullaney said. He unbuttoned his jacket, took it off, threw it on the table top, and said, “You see that jacket? Easily worth fifty dollars on the open market, almost brand-new, worn maybe three or four times.”
“I see it,” Melissa said.
“Okay. My jacket against the one in the bag, which is torn and worthless, and which you’re going to throw in the garbage anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll play you for the jacket in the bag.”
“Play me what?”
“Jacks.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Melissa said.
“She’ll murder you,” Frieda said.
“She’ll mobilize you,” Hilda said.
“My jacket against the one in the bag, what do you say?”
Melissa weighed the offer. Her free hand clenched and unclenched on the table top, her lips twitched, but her eyes remained open and unblinking. The room was silent. Her friends watched her expectantly. At last, she nodded almost imperceptibly and said, “Let’s play jacks, mister.”
He had never played jacks in his life, but he was prepared to play now for a prize worth half a million dollars—“I’ll cut off all the buttons,” Melissa had said, smart little fat-assed snake-eyed gambler. He sat in one of the tiny chairs, his knees up close near his chin, and peered between them across the table. “Who goes first?” he asked.
“I defer to my opponent,” Melissa said, making him feel he had stumbled into the clutches of a jacks hustler.
“How do you … how do you do this?” he asked.
“He’s got to be kidding,” Frieda said.
“She’ll mobilize him,” Hilda said.
“Pick up the jacks,” Melissa said. “In one hand.”
“Yes?” he said, picking them up.
“Now keep your hand up here, about this high from the table, and let them fall. Just open your hand and let them fall.”
“Okay,” he said, and opened his hand and let the jacks fall.
“Oh, that’s a bad throw,” Frieda said.
“You’re dead, mister,” Hilda said.
“Shut up, and let me play my own game,” he said. “What do I do next?”
“You throw the ball up, and let it bounce on the table, and then you have to pick up one jack and catch the ball in the same hand.”
“That’s impossible,” Mullaney said.
“That’s the game, mister,” Melissa said. “Those are the rules.”
“You didn’t say the same hand,” Mullaney said.
“It has to be the same hand,” Frieda said.
“Of course it has to be the same hand,” Hilda said.
“Those are the rules.”
“That’s the game.”
“Then why didn’t you say so when I asked you before?” Mullaney said.
“Any dumb ox knows those are the rules,” Melissa said. “Are you quitting?”
“Quitting?” he said. “Lady, I am just starting.”
“Then throw the ball, and start already,” Melissa said.
“Don’t rush me,” Mullaney said. He eyed the field. This was surely a simple game if these little fourth-graders could play it, hell, he had seen little girls of five and six playing it, there was certainly nothing here that an expert dice thrower couldn’t master. “Here goes,” he said, and threw the small red rubber ball into the air and reached for the closest jack, and grabbed for the ball, and missed the ball, and dropped the jack, and said, “Oh, hell” and immediately said, “Excuse me, ladies.”
“Your turn, Melissa,” Frieda said.
“Thank you,” Melissa said.
He watched her as she delicately scooped up the ten jacks in her left hand, watched as she disdainfully opened her hand to allow the jacks to spill onto the table top in a clattering, tumbling cascade of metal, watched as she coldly surveyed the possibilities, bounced the red rubber ball, picked up a jack, closed the same hand around the falling ball, bounced the ball again, picked up another jack, bounced it, another, bounced it, another, another, another, oh my God it is going to be a clean sweep, Mullaney thought, she is going to go from onesies to tensies without my ever getting another turn.
“That’s onesies,” Melissa said, and held the jacks above the table again, preparing to drop them. He watched very carefully as she opened her hand, trying to determine whether there was any secret to the dropping of the jacks, deciding that this part of it, at least, was all chance, and then concentrating on her technique for picking up the jacks. She worked so swiftly, bounce went the ball, out darted her hand like a snake’s tongue (she is surely a pit viper or an adder, Mullaney thought), back it came in time to catch the descending ball, two jacks at a time now (that’s right, she’s going for twosies; going for it, my eye, she’s almost finished with it), bounce went the ball again, out came the grasping hand, one unblinking eye on the falling rubber ball, pick up the jacks, catch the ball, “That’s twosies,” Melissa said.
“You’ve still got a long way to go,” Mullaney said.
“She beat Selma Krantz,” Frieda said.
“She even beat Rosalie Krantz,” Hilda said.
“Play, play,” Mullaney said.
“Threesies,” Melissa announced, as though she expected to proceed directly from there to foursies (announcing it) and fivesies (again announcing it) and straight through to tensies, after which she would take the jacket bequeathed to him by a Negro ten times the man he was (or
so the legend went) and go up to dinner, goodbye, Mullaney, unless you are ready to commit homicide.
The possibility intrigued him.
Melissa rapidly picked up three jacks, and then another three, and then another three, leaving a single jack on the table.
“What about that one?” he asked.
“If there’s any left over,” Melissa said, “if it doesn’t come out even, you just pick up what’s left over.”
“Oh.”
“Yes.”
“Those are the rules,” Frieda said.
“That’s the game,” Hilda said.
Melissa bounced the ball, picked up the remaining jack, and caught the ball in the same hand.
“If you drop a jack, you’re out,” she said.
“Those are the rules.”
“That’s the game.”
“I see.”
“Foursies,” Melissa announced.
She went from foursies to fivesies to sixies with remarkable speed while Mullaney watched, figuring he had better learn this game damn quick because if she ever lost possession of the ball (which seemed highly unlikely) he would be called upon to perform once again, and his next chance would undoubtedly be his last and only chance. He began willing her to drop the ball, or to drop a jack, or to miss the ball, or to pick up only six jacks when she was supposed to pick up seven, but no such luck, flick went her hand, fingers closing on seven jacks, down came the ball into her open palm. Three jacks were left on the table now. She demolished those on the next bounce of the ball, and then announced, “Eightsies.”
Mullaney wiped his brow with the back of his hand.
“It’s very hot in here,” he said.
“It’s going to get hotter, mister,” Melissa said, and giggled.
Hilda and Frieda giggled, too.
“Come on, play,” Mullaney said irritably.