The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

For me this man McCracken was bad luck. Like a black cat or the number thirteen for some people. He didn’t want to be bad luck any more than a cat does. He just was.

To start with, he lost me my chance at the daily double. It was New Year’s Day, and the Fair Grounds was jammed with people. Christmas week had made a cut in my paycheck and I was trying to get well with ten bucks on the double, which my old agent, who is still around chiseling the boys out of their fees, had put down for me. I’m a track cop and not supposed to bet. Extra Trouble had taken the first one all right, and now if Doomsday came through, the payoff would be $22.40 for each two-buck ticket.

I hadn’t gone to the paddock, so I didn’t see Doomsday until the horses were on the track. And when I saw him I leaned over to Dud Harris, who is a rat-faced private detective and a louse and happened to be standing beside me.

“He’s got a needleful,” I said.

“So it would seem indeed,” Dud said.

Doomsday was wet with sweat, with foam white along his neck and around his mouth, and he was tiptoeing along, chiefly on his hind legs. He made a couple of breaks toward the infield and he took a nip at the number four horse’s rump. The boy on him, an apprentice who’d been riding about three months, was so scared you could tell it by looking at him. As they paraded past — I was standing at the rail near the finish line — I yelled to Johnny on the lead pony and he turned around, meaning to get a hand on Doomsday’s reins.

And then some damn fool threw a New Year’s firecracker right over on the track!

The guy who threw it was standing a few yards from me, and I saw his hand go up in the air, the sparks sizzling off the fuse. A man close to him — later I learned it was this man McCracken, who at the time I had never seen — yelled, “Hey!” and grabbed the thrower’s wrist, and the firecracker, instead of sailing up the track, went straight out between Doomsday’s feet.

It and the horse exploded together. Doomsday made two corkscrew turns, and, on the second one, the jockey took off like a pebble out of a slingshot. Then the horse came straight at the rail, fear-crazy, and jumped it. The crowd was so thick that persons against the rail didn’t have a chance. The fall broke Doomsday’s right foreleg and his neck, or only God knows what would have happened; but he had already done damage enough. There was one man killed, another with a dislocated shoulder, a woman with a bloody nose, and my ten bucks gone to hell. The drunk who’d thrown the firecracker wasn’t hurt.

The man with the dislocated shoulder was this McCracken. David McCracken, he said his name was, and he said the dead man was a friend of his named Andrews. Doomsday had come right down on top of this Andrews, crushed his skull and broken his neck. I was told to go along to the hospital with the injured man and learn just how bad the lawsuit was going to be.

When I finally got to talk with McCracken he turned out to be a pretty nice fellow; an average-sized blond man with an average face. He said he realized the track wasn’t to blame — and the drunk who’d thrown the firecracker didn’t have money enough to be sued. All McCracken asked for was money for his doctor’s bill and a pass to the track.

He couldn’t tell me very much about the dead man, a fellow named Arthur Andrews, except that Andrews had been a small-time commercial artist and writer. “Told me he did articles on outdoor life and illustrated them himself,” McCracken said. “He’s got a wife somewhere in New York City. I can probably find her address for you.”

It seemed this McCracken was a bachelor who lived on a comfortable but fairly moderate income and spent his time wandering around the world. He had met Andrews two weeks before at a little fishing camp near the mouth of the Mississippi; they’d got to be friends and had come to New Orleans together for New Year’s.

The police checked this as a matter of routine and proved it was true. To everybody’s surprise Andrews’ wife didn’t sue the track for a dime. She just had her husband’s body sent to New York and buried it. The only person who sued was the woman who’d got a bloody nose. She said her beauty had been ruined forever and she sued for a hundred thousand dollars. I said I was going to sue because my ten bucks had been on Doomsday, but the stewards reminded me they couldn’t have been because a track cop isn’t allowed to bet.

So that, we thought, was that. But it wasn’t.

I saw McCracken a few times. Twice he asked me up to his hotel to poker games, and both times I lost. For me he was plain bad luck.

It was about two weeks later that the girl turned up at my apartment and asked if I could find David McCracken. “He’s my uncle,” she said, “and I’ve got to find him, and he seems to have disappeared all of a sudden.”

I looked the girl over and decided maybe McCracken wasn’t such bad luck after all. She wasn’t more than five feet tall, with black hair cut in a long bob, and she was cute and sleek as a two-year-old. I like small women because I’m little myself. I’m too heavy to ride anymore, though I rated with the best for three years, and I brought home Morning Glory in the Derby; but I still don’t reach over five feet six without jumping... and this girl was small, but oh my!

“The clerk at Uncle’s hotel told me to come to you, Mr. Rice,” she said. “He said you knew my uncle personally and that you were a detective and could find him, if anybody could.”

“Maybe he’s left town,” I said.

“He was here three days ago when I arrived and telephoned him. He said he would come over to my hotel to see me — and he never got there. No one has seen him since, but his hotel says he has phoned several times to ask if he had any mail. And he’s still registered there.” She looked me squarely in the eyes. “If you could find him, it might be worth money to both of us. He’ll be getting six months’ income in a few days, and I want to make a touch. I’ll pay you ten percent of what I wiggle out of him.”