“What do you mean, I stuck it on my thing there?”
“Well, take a look,” Mullaney said. “I had a grilled cheese sandwich and a Coke, it’s right on your thing there.”
“This thing here?”
“Yes.”
The cashier pursed his lips, shook his head, and pulled the bill spindle closer to the register. He studied the top check (which had been given to him by the hawk-nosed man) and he studied the check under that (which had been given to him by a man in a grey sweater) and then he studied the check under that (the one that had been paid by the fat lady in the flowered bonnet) all the while muttering, “No grilled cheese sandwich here, you must be crazy,” and finally came to Mullaney’s check, sure enough, skewered on the long metal spike. He pulled it off the spindle, shoved his glasses up onto his forehead, held the check close to his face, peered myopically at it, and said, “Grilled cheese sandwich and a Coke, is that what you had?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You gave me five dollars?”
“Well, check your drawer there. I’ve been standing here for maybe ten minutes, waiting for my change.”
“Why didn’t you speak up?”
“Well, I saw you were busy.”
“You should speak up,” the cashier said. “You won’t get no place in this world, you don’t speak up.”
“Well,” Mullaney said shyly, and watched while the cashier rang up a No Sale, and then reached into the drawer for four singles and fifty-five cents in change, the grilled cheese sandwich having cost thirty cents, and the Coke fifteen cents, for a grand total of forty-five cents — “Four fifty-five,” the cashier said, “is that correct?”
“That’s correct, thank you,” Mullaney said.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” the cashier said.
“That’s quite all right,” Mullaney said. He walked back to the end of the lunch counter, left a twenty-five-cent tip for the waitress, and then nodded to the cashier as he walked out of the luncheonette, vowing to return with the money as soon as his ship came in.
He could not find the proper labyrinth.
He kept trying doors as he had last night, but somehow the magic was missing, he could not find the one that opened on the jacket’s hiding place, the secret book-bound glade wherein he had claimed his maiden, promising her the world and then some. But then, at last, frantic and exhausted, he found a door that opened on what seemed to be a familiar passageway, and he followed it between rows and rows of books, the dust rising before his anxious feet, saw a red light burning somewhere in the distance, made a sharp turn, found himself in the remembered cul-de-sac, and immediately saw the jacket. Untouched, it lay on the dusty floor where he had dropped it, surrounded by the paper scraps that had been sewn into its lining.
His hands trembling, he picked it up.
There was nothing terribly remarkable about it, it seemed to be an ordinary-looking jacket, made of black wool, he supposed or perhaps worsted, which was probably wool, he was never very good on fabrics, FA-FO with four round black buttons on each sleeve near the cuff, and three large black buttons at the front of the jacket opposite three buttonholes in the overlapping flap, a very ordinary jacket with nothing to recommend it for fashionable wear, unless you were about to be buried. He opened the black silk lining again, and searched the inner seams of the jacket, thinking perhaps a few hundred-thousand-dollar bills were perhaps pinned up there somehow, but all he felt was the silk and the worsted, or whatever it was. He thrust his hand into the breast pocket and the two side pockets, and then he searched the inner pocket on one side of the jacket and then on the other, but all of the pockets were empty. He crumpled the lapels in his hands, thinking perhaps the real money was sewn into the lapels, but there was neither a strange sound nor a strange feel to them. To make certain, he tore a lapel stitch with his teeth, and ripped the entire lapel open, revealing the canvas but nothing else. He was extremely puzzled. He buttoned the jacket and looked at it buttoned, and then he unbuttoned the jacket and looked at it that way again, but the jacket stared back at him either way, black and mute and obstinate.
He put the jacket aside for a moment and picked up one of the New York Times scraps, not knowing what he would find, or even what he was looking for, but hoping one of the scraps might give him a clue to what the jacket was supposed to possess. He began methodically studying each scrap, not actually reading all of them, but scrutinizing the newsprint to see if any word or sentence had been circled or marked, but none of them had. As he turned each scrap over in his hands, he remembered what McReady had said last night, “Let us say that where there’s cheese, there is also sometimes a rat.” Now what the hell was that supposed to mean? He sighed heavily; there were far too many bogus bills. He finally spread them out haphazardly on the library floor, using both hands, and then only scanned them, making a spot check now and again, picking up one bill or another to scrutinize, and deciding on the basis of his sampling that none of them had any of their corners clipped or trimmed or scalloped or dog-eared or folded or anything.
Well, he thought, I don’t know.
I just don’t know what the hell it is.
He picked up the jacket and slung it over his arm, thinking he might just as well hang onto it in the event he had a brilliant inspiration later, which inspiration seemed like the remotest possibility at the moment, and then decided he had better get himself out to Aqueduct before the second race went off without him. He didn’t know what good it would do to be there, since he now possessed only four dollars and ten cents. With subway fare costing twenty cents, and admission costing two dollars, he wouldn’t even have enough left to lay a two-dollar bet on Jawbone.
Well, he thought, we shall see what we shall see.
He left the library the way he had come in, though now he was carrying the black-buttoned, black worsted jacket over his arm. On his way to the IRT in Grand Central, he passed a department store, and saw two pickets out front. One of them smiled, walked over to him, and said, “Shopping bag, sir?”
“Thank you,” he said.
The shopping bag was white with large red letters proclaiming JUDY BOND BLOUSES ARE ON STRIKE! Not being a union man himself, but being of course in sympathy with working men all over the world, Mullaney accepted the shopping bag, dropped the jacket into it, and hurried to Grand Central Station.
10. Mona girl
It took him forty-five minutes to get to Aqueduct from Grand Central via the IRT Lexington Avenue line to the Fulton Street-Broadway station where he changed to an IND “A” train that took him to Euclid Avenue in Brooklyn where he changed for a Rockaway train that took him directly to Aqueducts own million-dollar station overlooking the racetrack.
He had been to the Big A more times than he could count in the year since he had taken the gamble. He felt now the same surge of excitement he experienced each time he approached the modern structure with its manicured lawns and blooming flowers, sprinkler systems going, a mild breeze blowing in off Flushing Bay. A smile erupted on his face. Still carrying the free shopping bag with its Judy Bond message, he walked jauntily up the wide concrete path to the grandstand entrance. He paid the man in the booth his two-dollar admission fee, bought a twenty-five-cent program and a copy of the Morning Telegraph from a hawker on the main floor, and then took the escalator up to the first floor. The track’s ceilings were high and soaring, built to accommodate the huge, hanging Totalisator boards that blinked electronically with changing odds every few seconds, harmonious browns and beiges and corals blending to form a serene backdrop for the surging excitement on the betting floor.