Epitaph For A Dead Beat

by David Markson

I touched her hair. “Get some sleep, Fern.”

  She didn’t say anything. Something caught in her throat, but it was only a sob. I went out of there.

  It was easy. Like walking out of the Kimberly mines with nothing in your pockets. I tried to remember when I had held a girl as breathtaking. It had been the week before they knifed Julius Caesar. It was when they were starting the Pyramids. I got myself a drink. I managed not to spill too much of it.

  I needed a pillow and a couple of sheets. I waited fifteen or twenty minutes, until I was sure she would be asleep. I couldn’t come out of there a second time if she wasn’t. Martin Luther couldn’t have.

  She had not gotten undressed. She was breathing softly. I untied the tennis shoes, hardly touching them, and eased them off.

  “Do I get a bedtime story also?”

  “Oh, hell. Oh, sweet hell.”

  She laughed, reaching toward me. “I’m all right now, Harry.”

  “You’re all right now,” I said. “That’s fine. I mean I’m glad. You’re sure you’re all right now—”

  “I think you’re a little crazy.”

  “Yes. I may well be. Yes, indeed. And you’re being a great help. You’re all right now—”

  “Oh, heavens, come here. Will you come here—”

  We weren’t in another country anymore.

  CHAPTER 7

  She was gone when I woke up. I’d never heard her.

  I hadn’t heard the alarm either, and it was after nine. There wasn’t any note. She’d disappeared without a trace, like Cinderella.

  Cinderella would have forgotten a slipper. Three or four meager hours of sleep had left me just groggy enough. I actually caught myself searching around for one of those tennis shoes.

  I got to the office by ten, but it was a meaningless achievement. The waiting room was as barren as Pompeii.

  I looked her up and dialed the Grove Street number. I didn’t get an answer.

  It made the afternoon papers. Not much space, no photo. Police were questioning several unnamed suspects. The body had been discovered by a Miss Fern Hoerner, roommate of the deceased, along with a private investigator named Henry Fannin. I tried her again at four.

  I supposed the daylight had made it easier for her to go to a girlfriend’s. I also supposed I might come up with a client if I sat there patiently again tomorrow. I locked the office and went home.

  DiMaggio was easy. I caught him at nine-thirty. “We found the gun,” he told me. “In our sneak thief s apartment. I had a hunch.”

  “Tirk?”

  “Yeah, the first place we looked. Ifs Miss Hoerner’s—it was registered. No prints—he’d wiped it clean—but Ballistics fired it and the slug matched. He claims if s a plant, of course—says he never saw it before. But we also found a neighbor who heard him pounding on the door over there about two hours before you called in. Made enough of a racket so that she took a peek down the stairway, and she’s willing to make a positive identification. She says she heard him threaten the Welch girl with bodily harm if she wouldn’t open up.”

  “She hear the shot?”

  “No. She says he quieted down, either he was let in or else he went away and came back. Turk is screaming about an alibi, says a friend was with him all evening, but the friend hasn’t shown. We’ll get a confession sooner or later.”

  “You make it sound easy.”

  “They usually are, Fannin. You should know that.”

  “The others get themselves clear?”

  “We’re not really interested in them. For the record, that girl Dana O’Dea was too blotto to have handled that kind of shooting. Toomey practically had to carry her in to the station when he picked her up. Which is nice work—she’s quite a looker.”

  “Peter J. Peters?”

  “Never questioned him. The girl wasn’t pregnant, which eliminates his interest. He’s the friend Turk claims he was with. It’s up to Turk to produce him, if he really is an alibi—which I doubt. The neighbor says she didn’t see anybody else in the hall. It looks pretty cut and dried.”

  “I’d hate to think a man was stupid enough to leave a murder gun under his nightshirt.”

  “In a coat pocket. Hell, we got over there before three o’clock. He probably planned to dump it later.”

  “You look into this uptown joker—Connie?”

  “Vice Squad can’t make him for us. Miss Hoerner could be right about him being a married man. I’m not going to worry about it—-it’ll be Turk. You know this Village gang, they’re all psycho. We’ll get our confession and then instead of a lawyer hell bring in a head doctor to prove it was his mother he was really mad at.”

  “She loved him.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing, nothing. Thanks for all the dope.”

  “See you around. I spoke to your friend Captain Brannigan, by the way. I’ll mention your name, somebody needs something that isn’t strictly departmental.”

  “Ill appreciate it.”

  I watched the last few innings of the Yankee game. Jimmy Piersall beat them with a double in the eleventh and it wound up after midnight. Her girlfriend had an extra bed. She was sleeping over.

  DiMaggio would be right about the Village. Artists, social exiles—there was always a lot of sensitivity on the loose down there, a lot of overplayed emotion. Even on the chance that it wasn’t Ephraim it would still be something simple. I did not have any investment in it.

  She didn’t answer Thursday morning either. There was a girl I had charmed, all right. She was probably locked in a phone booth somewhere, still telling them all about it back home.

  I sat some more. The detective profession was on the skids. I hadn’t had a paying customer in eight or ten days.

  Maybe it was all in my mind, but the whole building seemed remarkably quiet. Nobody came, nobody went. Only Fannin, who paid the rent.

  Percy Bysshe Fannin, the Shelley of the Sherlocks. The Keats of the Keyhole. Me and Ephraim.

  So she’d needed a shoulder to dig her nails into, and mine had been closest. So there was another shoulder someplace with her name stenciled on it. So there hadn’t been any reason to mention it.

  I couldn’t remember a week so hushed since the Giants went west.

  I tried her one more time that evening. I tried another girl after her, and I got an excuse and a promise. I had a substantial file of both items. I didn’t want to see the other girl anyhow.

  I was a fool. I sat there again Friday. Nobody wrote me any letters except the University of Michigan Alumni Association, looking for contributions. I sent them what I had left of Mrs. Skelly’s largess. Nobody dialed my number, even by mistake. I stared at the back of the door to the reception room.

  Apropos of nothing at all, I wondered whatever became of Wrong Way Corrigan.

  It was something to do. I wondered whatever became of Schoolboy Rowe. For that matter, whatever became of Doyle Nave, who beat Duke with that pass in the ‘39 Rose Bowl game? Whatever became of Jean Hersholt?

  Oh, sure—poor old Jean Hersholt. So then whatever became of Sonny Tiifts? Sonny Tufts? Whatever became of Lucius Beebe? Who the hell was Lucius Beebe? Whatever became of Sir Stafford Cripps?

  So it’s my office, I damned well guess I can use it for what I please.

  I decided I better get out of there. It was ten to five. I shut the drawer I’d been occupied with. Since I was leaving I had to take my foot out of it anyway.

  I was lifting my jacket off the hook when the buzzer rang, meaning that someone had opened the outer door. It could have been another tenant from along the corridor, wanting a little group therapy. Someone like that would just look in.

  Nobody did, so I went over and looked out.

  There was a man in the reception room. I stared at him.

  I decided I was going nuts altogether.

  CHAPTER 8

  He said his name was Ulysses S. Grant.

  I didn’t argue. For at least fifteen seconds all I could do was gape. He was possibl
y the tallest man I had ever seen. He also might have been the filthiest.

  He reached seven feet at the least. He was as gaunt as he would have to be, and there was no way to guess his age, partly because of his sunken cheeks and his oddly dull eyes, and partly because of his beard. The eyes were a shade of gray I had never seen before, almost opaque, like damp cardboard. The beard was scraggly and needed trimming, preferably with garden shears. It and his hair were the color of rotting straw. So were his teeth.

  He had on a raincoat. I thought it was a raincoat. Someone had been wearing it to change truck transmissions in. The coat was torn in a few places also, but no more than five or six.

  He was grinning at me, but I wasn’t the man he wanted. He wanted someone at the Bowery Mission, maybe the basketball coach.

  “Grant,” I said finally. “Like in Appomattox.”

  He had a smudged, dog-eared card to prove it. Just the name, nothing else. Cards were the rage that season. I was thinking of having some done up myself. Also just my name. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

  “A whim of my father’s,” he said. “His own name was Thaddeus.” He had a voice about four reaches below baritone. “You are Mr. Fannin?”

  “There is that possibility,” I said. I nodded, but I could not take my eyes off that coat. It was streaked, splotched, spilled on. Even a lazy research chemist could have had a field day, taking samples from it. In some remote future era it was going to drive an archaeologist insane.

  It bothered Ulysses S. Grant not at all. I’ve grown fond of it,” he told me idly. He brushed at something on a sleeve, soot from the Chicago fire. “One of these days I suppose I ought to drop it off to be cleaned.”

  “I think so,” I said. “But not an established firm. Maybe you can find a new shop, one that just opened.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Why a firm which—”

  “Someone just starting out in the business,” I told him. “Trying to make a reputation.”

  He laughed. Not a laugh in any ordinary sense. It came honking up out of his throat like a flight of geese out of a marsh. Of course it would. Friday afternoon, and diligent Fannin had to hang around, wondering whatever became of Jeeter Lester. I trudged back into the office and sat down.

  I waved him into a chair. Trying to ignore him would have been like trying to ignore Kanchenjunga.

  He had opened the raincoat. That didn’t make the day any brighter. Grandma Moses wiped her paint brushes on rags cleaner than the shirt he had on under there. I leaned forward on my arms, pushing a stray pencil back and forth across the blotter.

  He was still clucking. “Trying to make a reputation, indeed!

  Excellent. Oswald told me to be prepared for your irreverent sense of humor.”

  “Oswald did,” I said aimlessly.

  “Oswald Fosburgh, yes. It was he who recommended you.”

  I was sure of it then. I was a sick man, sicker than I knew. O. J. Fosburgh, attorney at law. His Park Avenue office was not much more plush than the Four Seasons. I picked up the pencil and tossed it into the tray.

  “Oswald J. Fosburgh,” I said. “You and he share the same locker at the Harvard Club.”

  “Hunk!” said Ulysses S. Grant. It was only one goose this time, caught on the wing by a load of twelve-gauge shot. He slapped himself on the knee. “Indeed, indeed! Ozzie also informed me that you were not particularly subtle. What you mean, of course, is that you cannot conceive of any connection between myself and someone of the stature of O. J. Fosburgh.”

  I shrugged. “Okay,” I said. “You’re an eccentric millionaire.”

  Ulysses S. Grant pursed his lips. Slowly he began to nod his head. Then he beamed at me.

  I had been reaching for a cigarette. I stopped. I put my hands flat on the desk top.

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  I heaved a sigh. Ulysses S. Grant heaved one in sympathy.

  “Millions?” I said.

  “Actually only thirteen,” he said cheerfully. “And not the principal, merely the interest. To tell the truth it’s all relatively new. Thirteen is what remained after taxes. My father—”

  “Old Thaddeus—”

  “The same. Yes. He passed away a year or so ago. I was the sole heir. Coffee, I believe it was. South America.”

  He believed it was coffee. I had my head in my hands. I hoped I had a handkerchief. I thought I might weep.

  Td like someone located, Mr. Fannin. A daughter, by a marriage long since dissolved. I believe the girl is living in Greenwich Village.”

  He flicked away some ashes with an unwashed finger which appeared to have enough joints to bend into a square knot. He was studying me with those odd eyes and he missed the standing ashtray by a foot. I was surprised he hadn’t dropped them into a cuff.

  “You appear curiously indifferent, Mr. Fannin?”

  “No, no,” I said. “Just a little relieved, maybe.”

  “Relieved? I’m sorry, I don’t see—”

  “Nothing.” I was reaching for the phone directory. “No, I guess I don’t mind looking for people. I just thought it might be some sort of dull security job. I’ve had a little bad luck with them lately.”

  “Security? But I still—”

  “All that coffee. I thought maybe you had it piled up in the breakfast nook and wanted a watchman.”

  More geese went honking southward. Geese, ganders, goslings. I wondered what it would take to offend the man. I dialed the number I wanted and waited.

  “You remember an old American League outfielder named Goose Goslin?” I asked idiotically.

  “I don’t know baseball,” he said. “Why?”

  “Nothing. I was just wondering whatever became of him.”

  I got my party. “Harry Fannin calling,” I said. “Can I reach Mr. Fosburgh at this hour?”

  The girl asked me to please hold on. Grant raised a bushy eyebrow at the mention of the name.

  “Be sneaky if I waited until you were gone,” I told him.

  Fosburgh came on. “Fannin,” he said, “how’s the lad?”

  “I’m not quite sure.”

  He chortled into the wire. “I should have phoned, but I thought you might find him amusing. It’s all strictly on the up and up, you know. Thaddeus Grant was one of my first clients, left a considerable sum in trust for Ulysses last autumn. Surprising in a way, since they hadn’t seen each other in twenty years. On the other hand he’d been supporting Ulysses all that time. Anything in particular I can help you with?”

  “Not at the moment, Mr. Fosburgh, no.”

  “He’s there with you, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see.” He laughed. “Actually I can probably anticipate your key question. Old Grant sent him two hundred dollars a month for all those years. I imagine Ulysses got used to living as a bohemian and hasn’t quite gotten around to changing.”

  “Literally.”

  “Indeed, yes. Although you shouldn’t underestimate him. He’s a bright fellow—could have been a writer, perhaps even a lawyer. But that two hundred started coming in during the depression and for some reason it seemed unnecessary for him to do anymore than live off it. I don’t imagine I’m abusing any confidences here, since he’ll be a client of yours also. He drinks, of course, but at the same time he’s read more books than you or I have heard of. He’s forty-six—tallest man in captivity, isn’t he? I hope you can help him out, Fannin. He’d like to find that girl, assist her in whatever way he can.”

  “We haven’t gotten to that yet.”

  “Oh. Well, I can’t say I blame you for checking first. I’ll admit quite frankly he has been something of an embarrassment at times. Bill my office when you’ve wound it up, eh?”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  “Not at all. Don’t hesitate to give me a ring if I can aid you.”

  We said something pleasant to each other and hung up. Ulysses S. Grant had been waiting patiently, picking his nose behind a red bandana
he could have been carrying since Madrid fell. He was still being amused.

  “I hope you’re reassured?”

  My hand was draped across the phone. I lifted the hand, frowned at it, dropped it again. I looked around the office.

  I decided it was a pretty shoddy place. I supposed I was fond of it, but only in small ways, and only in spite of some of the people who’d sat in that chair Grant was in at the moment. Hoodlums, junkies, crooked cops, racketeers, at least one murderer. Td taken them as they came because they were part of the business, and even the conventional, ordinary customers had always made me a little blue—people with problems, a lot of them piecing out my retainer in crumpled bills I’d known they had hoped to buy some small joy with, instead of the grief which had brought them there. Very few of either kind ever came in with as good a guarantee behind them as O. J. Fosburgh.