Epitaph For A Dead Beat

by David Markson

  She turned aside. I waited again.

  “The cops will have one other set of questions, Fern—”

  Her breasts rose and fell sharply in profile.

  “I got to Vinnie’s Place about ten to twelve,” I said. “They’ll want to know what time you got there.”

  “I saw you come in,” she said distantly. “I couldn’t have been there more than fifteen or twenty minutes. Gregory and Allen might know, those two boys I was sitting with.”

  “Before that?”

  “I went to see that old Humphrey Bogart film. Casablanca. Over on Sixth Avenue. I guess I went about eight-thirty.”

  “Alone?”

  The cigarette lifted in a gesture of futility. “I just wish that were all that was on my mind.”

  I watched her. Her hands were across her knees. Smoke trailed up from one of them, disappearing against the sheen of her hair.

  “That bullet—it was from a twenty-two, wasn’t it?”

  “It looked like it.”

  “It will be. I owned one. A Colt Huntsman that someone gave me once.”

  “Owned?”

  “It was stolen out of my dresser. Two weeks ago. I didn’t report it, because we’d had a party that weekend and I thought some poet had probably pawned it for a meal. But now—”

  The siren cut her off, whining once like a troubled animal outside. She was looking down desolately and she drew in her breath, holding it. And then she did something that twisted my stomach into a sick knot.

  I got over there as fast as I could, but not fast enough. She hadn’t said a word, moving only the hand which held the cigarette. I was standing over her when she let the dead butt drop to the floor.

  “Fern,” I said. “Oh, Christ—n

  She got up, shaking. I stared at her lifted wrist. The doorbell rang with a single authoritative blast.

  The foul odor of singed flesh followed me when I went to the buzzer.

  CHAPTER 5

  The cop who caught it was a lean, long-necked, wide-shouldered sergeant named DiMaggio. He had a face roughly the shape and color of a clumsily peeled Idaho potato, and he had a jaw like the end of a cigarette carton.

  He was strictly business. He let us tell him that we had come in together and found the body, and then he spent twelve or fourteen minutes supervising his lab men. After that he spent twenty more with Fern in her bedroom. There was another detective with him, an amiable, laconic redhead named Toomey.

  Fern stayed inside when they came out. Toomey rejoined the technicians and DiMaggio indicated the kitchen with a nod. I followed him. He hoisted one flat hip over the edge of the sink, then swung the door shut with the toe of a shoe big enough to row.

  “You have something with your name on it?” he asked me.

  I gave him my wallet, open to my state license. He stared at the ticket for a lot more time than it would take to read it. Then he let out his breath, with all the weary resignation of a plumber finding a coat hanger in a drain.

  “A private detective,” he said without inflection. He handed the wallet back. “Must be an exciting line of work. Thrills, adventure—”

  He wasn’t smiling. I didn’t say anything.

  “Anything exciting happen to you lately, Mr. Fannin?”

  I supposed I was expected to lend myself to the routine. “I had a real scary one two weeks ago,” I said.

  “What would that have been, Mr. Fannin?”

  “A dognaping,” I said.

  “Oh?”

  “The owner decided to pay the ransom. I had to meet the dognaper in a dark street in Flatbush at four o’clock in the morning.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Things work out without trouble?”

  “The dog bit me.”

  That changed his expression the way drops of syrup change the expression on a buckwheat cake, no more. He took a cigarette.

  “What are you working on now, Mr. Fannin?”

  DiMaggio. Toomey had called him Joe, which people would do. On his birth certificate it probably said Melvin.

  “I was in a bar on Hudson Street,” I told him mechanically. “Vinnie’s Place. Before midnight tonight I’d never seen Fern Hoerner in my life. Somebody insulted her and I walked her home. She was in here and I happened to look into that bedroom. Before approximately twelve forty-five I’d never seen the Welch girl either. Anything else I can tell you would be hearsay, based on conversation with Miss Hoerner. Except for what went on in the bar—that involved Josie Welch also.”

  “Tell it.”

  I went into detail about Ephraim Turk, then summarized what Fern had said about background. When I finished he leaned there chewing on it. He was an obvious kind of cop and there would be an obvious question for him to ask. He had already asked it once.

  “What are you working on, Fannin?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “You simply happened to be in Vinnie’s. You weren’t there because you were trying to make contact with Miss Hoerner for some reason—or to get into this apartment?”

  “Oh, now look, just because I’ve got this license—”

  “Just because. I want to know what you’re working on, Fannin. I think I want to know right about now.”

  I sat there for another minute. He had too many preconceived notions and too much sheer habit to take any story of mine on faith. “Would Captain Nate Brannigan be on duty up at Central Homicide tonight?” I asked him.

  He stared at me. “Exactly what does that mean?”

  “It means I went in there for a drink. All the rest was just luck.”

  He cracked a knuckle the size of a walnut, not looking at me.

  “I had a security case,” I told him then. “Woman named Skelly found some cash. She decided to leave it in the precinct safe instead.”

  “You could have mentioned this before, you know.”

  “We got off the road.”

  “So we did.” He finally made up his mind to smile, although it was still an effort. “You know Brannigan pretty well?”

  “Four, five years.”

  He went to the door. “What the hell—it didn’t look very kosher.”

  “I figured it wouldn’t.”

  “Yeah. You’ll have to see a stenographer later. Stick around if you want.”

  “Thanks.”

  Toomey was alone in the living room. “Watch your language in front of the man, Floyd,” DiMaggio told him. “He’s a P.I. with connections.”

  “I’m genuflecting,” Toomey said.

  “Ah, I guess he’s not pushing it.” DiMaggio went back into the second bedroom. The lab men had left and someone else was in with the body, probably the M.E. Toomey went to the bottle.

  “What’s his real first name?” I asked.

  “Who, Joe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Joe.”

  “Joe?”

  “So there’s two of them. You know something makes it illegal?”

  I let it pass, getting a new drink for myself. Toomey sat down in one of the sling chairs and scratched an ankle.

  People wandered in and out. It was only 1:47 when they came for the body, which meant it was a quiet night at the morgue. Maybe the juvenile delinquents had declared a truce for Tuesdays. Fern’s door remained shut while they were getting the stretcher out.

  DiMaggio was on the couch. “You see that bankbook in there?” he asked me.

  “I didn’t dig around.”

  He punched his tongue into his cheek. “Pretty queer. According to Miss Hoemer the girl was nineteen—came here after high school in Kansas City two years back. So first we get regular weekly deposits, checks, which would be a salary from somewhere—” He flipped pages in a notebook. “Yeah, here. Fifty-eight bucks and change. But then for the last eleven, twelve months the girl’d been putting away between one and three hundred a week—”

  Toomey whistled. DiMaggio nodded and went on. “Spending a fair bit, but the income is regular enough—all deposits in cash, and never more than an even h
undred at one time.” He grunted. “And no visible means whatsoever—at least none since Miss Hoerner met her. The girl claimed a relative was supporting her—”

  “Uncle Aga Khan,” Toomey said.

  DiMaggio looked from him to me. “The uptown chum?” I said. “This Connie?”

  “There’s an address book, but nobody with the name. I think I’m ready to lay about eight to five she was on call.”

  “Age nineteen,” Toomey said. “You suppose Vice Squad will have a make on the guy?”

  “I want the other end of the odds on that one. Hell, there’s a high-class pimp working out of every other nightclub these days. But anyhow, one other thing. Like I say, all deposits are fairly consistent—and then two months ago there’s a fat one. July tenth. One thousand, eight hundred and fifty-two bills— again cash.”

  “Daily double at Belmont,” Toomey said.

  DiMaggio did not smile. “Miss Hoerner says she knows nothing about the uptown pitch—she’d rather read this Connie as a married cheater. There’s no lead to him—no letters, not even an uptown match folder. The girl was neat as a squirrel. Almost too neat, as if she had something to hide. And just incidentally we’ve got no family address either. We’ll have to contact Kansas City and see what they can file.”

  He dropped the notebook into a side pocket of his jacket. After a minute he lifted his face toward me, squinting. “Ephraim Turk—a runt of a guy with a face like a sponge? A writer?”

  “Close enough.”

  “For Chrissakes, sure, that son of a bitch has a shoplifting record. Six, eight months ago—somebody had a party, reported some stones missing. One of those rich hens who thinks it’s quaint to let a pack of poets with greasy hands paw the draperies. We checked the guest list and this Turk’s background came out—he’d done a suspended on the coast someplace. San Francisco. We never did find the gems. Yeah, yeah, Turk left the party with friends and slept in someone else’s apartment. It gave him an out, since he didn’t have time or opportunity to get rid of the haul.”

  “I remember,” Toomey said. “But didn’t we decide it was too big a job for him?”

  “Swiping Miss Hoerner’s twenty-two wouldn’t be,” Di-Maggio said.

  “I just thought of something,” I said.

  DiMaggio raised his cardboard jaw an eighth of an inch.

  “It doesn’t have to mean much,” I said. “Turk didn’t have his fight with the Welch girl until just recently. The gun was taken two weeks ago.”

  DiMaggio traced his tongue across the tips of his teeth. “Okay, it’s a point. Still, we run him in the same time we run in these others. This Dana O’Dea, the girl Welch had the fight with at that party. And this Pete Peters—Peter J. Peters, Miss Hoerner says. Although well need the pregnancy report to bring him into it—”

  “Me, I like the uptown bird,” Toomey said.

  “I’ll let you fly up and find him for us,” DiMaggio said. He glanced toward Fern’s door, then puckered his lips.

  “Hell,” I said.

  “She has to be automatically suspect.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  “Okay, you too.” DiMaggio got to his feet. He fished around in his breast pocket and came up with a small white card. “You and Miss Hoerner can see the steno anytime—in the morning, if she doesn’t feel up to it now. Tell her, will you? Meanwhile, here—it’s got my home number on it. In case you just happen to be in some more bars and run into something before we wrap it up.”

  I took the card. Only a rare cop would have one. It said:

  Giovanni Boccaccio DiMaggio Detective Sergeant

  Toomey laughed nasally, heading out.

  CHAPTER 6

  Once, long ago, a girl had let me kiss her on a darkened stone stairway on a quiet street. Now she was letting me hold her hand, but she wasn’t the same girl, and my hand was any old hand. She would have held Iago’s, if he was the guy she happened to have to go to the station house with.

  We had the statements to make. That sent us back past Vinnie’s and around a corner, then up a flight of worn concrete steps between two concrete pillars with green globes at their tops. And then we were in another country.

  Cop Country. As bleak as picked bones, as dismal as the floor of the sea. DiMaggio had been and gone, and a young patrolman took down what we had to say in shorthand he had probably learned in hope of a promotion. He was no more than twenty-five, and a promotion was the only thing he would ever hope for in life. He had a face which had already seen everything twice, and had been bored the first time.

  Cop Country. As cheerful as a leg in traction, as inviting as a secondhand toothbrush. Other cops came and went while we sat on a bench waiting to sign the typed copies. Cops with faces like wet gray sand, cops with eyes like whorls in hardened wax. One of them passed us carrying what might have been an undershirt. “He still bleeding?” I heard somebody ask him. “You need boots in the squad room,” he said.

  Cop Country. It was pushing three o’clock when we got out. It hadn’t taken long. It had only seemed that way. It always will.

  That corner of the Village was even more quiet than before. We had not spoken fifty words in an hour, but I stopped her when we came back past the Chevy. She was still wearing that work shirt, and there was a Band-Aid on her wrist.

  “Listen—you don’t want to spend the night home alone. Is there some girl you can call? I’ll drop you anywhere you say.”

  She stared at the pavement, animated by all the spontaneous gaiety of Joan of Arc on her way to the stake. “I don’t want to call anybody, Harry. Not to have to tell them about it, not tonight.”

  “I know. Play it again, Sam.” I opened the door at the curb. “Come on,” I told her.

  We got in. Halfway uptown she said, “Damn, oh damn,” and then nothing else. I lived on 68th and used a garage on Third, but there was an empty slot a few doors down from the apartment on the side which would be legal in the morning. I locked the car and we went up the one flight.

  I had two and a half rooms. I’d gotten the place as a sublet five years before and the original tenant had never come back. He’d sold me the furniture by mail after a year, most of it battered and masculine, and then a girl named Cathy had added a few things in the ten months she’d used my name. Fern saw that. I’d turned on a Japanese lantern and she fingered its shade, not looking at me. “A woman bought this,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “A mess?”

  “A mess.”

  She slouched to the front windows. The blinds were separated and she stood with her back toward me in the shadows.

  There was nothing to look at out there. Her hair glinted, highlighted by a streetlamp down below.

  “I guess I know without asking,” she said. “Are they always so rotten? God, but mine was.”

  I didn’t say anything, but I did not care if she talked. I could not think of many things she could do or say that I would mind. I might have wished it were another night, when she would not be so vulnerable, but there was nothing I could do about that.

  “I was twenty when I married him,” she said. “He was a writer, older than I was. I thought he was a good one, too, and I had all the proud dreams about giving up my own absurd ambition so he could fulfill himself. I quit college and got a job so he could stay home and work. Selfless, dedicated little Fern. It took me two years to discover that he hadn’t done two fall months’ writing in all that time. When he wasn’t in the bars all day he had women in. In the apartment I was paying rent for—”

  She let it die, standing there. She did not expect an answer. After a while I crossed behind her and went into the bedroom. I put on another small light.

  She followed me. She was toying with the adhesive.

  “That hurting?”

  “Not at all. It’s almost strange.”

  I punched her lightly on the cheek. “It’s just chance, but a maid comes in on Tuesdays. Everything’s fresh. Towels and stuff* in the closet in the John. I’ll throw a
sheet on the couch.”

  “Breakfast in bed in the morning?”

  “Go ahead, be merry. I know how you feel.”

  “No, you don’t—”

  The way she said it stopped me. I had been headed toward the closet. She was staring at me, and her hand was at the lamp. The light snapped off.

  I went across. The girl had hit me hard, but it was still the same bad night. I put a hand on her sleeve. She was shaking.

  “Oh, God, does it make me terrible if I want—if I need—?”

  I kissed her so hard that my mouth ached. I had to, once at least. Then I picked her up with one arm behind her knees and the other at her shoulders. I put her down on the bed.