Epitaph For A Dead Beat

by David Markson

  I started to shake my head, then clamped my teeth together. A great Georgia halfback named Frank Sinkwich once played a fall season with his jaw broken. I wondered how it felt to be beyond human frailty. “I’m looking for Audrey Grant. Strictly a family interest.”

  McGruder lifted an eyebrow, then shrugged as if he were disappointed. “She’s around somewhere. I’ll try to find her, if you’d like.”

  Td appreciate it. Nothing personal, but I’ve had about enough of your party. And thanks.”

  “You already paid me by hitting Pete.” He tittered suddenly. Just as suddenly he was the old McGruder again, the one that all of two or three people undoubtedly treasured. “The big butch used to be my husband. We had four months of sheer bliss together before he decided to go straight. He’s been just impossible ever since!”

  That white hand went limp again. I sighed, watching him use it to toss some of that drooping hair out of his eyes. Zen Fruitism. By the time he was ready to flutter away he wasn’t even touching the floor.

  They’d gotten Peters off the launching pad and into an aid station somewhere. Henshaw was at the bar and I headed back over. The girl Peters had fallen against was standing behind him. I took a second look and decided I might have been hit too hard at that.

  It wasn’t the same girl. I realized that the one Peters had crashed into had not been the Ginsberg-Corso rooter I’d seen before either. But all three of them had the same stringy black hair and scrawny figure, the same black jersey, the same black stockings. They could have been members of some new uniformed sect.

  “Something called The History of Rome Hanks” I heard this one say. “The paperback title is Dishonored Flesh—”

  Henshaw was grinning at me. “Slugger,” he said. “What do you do with the right hand—save it for Guy Fawkes’ Day?”

  “I work out two or three times a week. It gives me an edge.”

  “Like a cleaver. You saw the chick, huh?”

  “When? When I was on my back?”

  Henshaw was drinking. “I thought maybe previous to that. I spied her back in the end corridor. It was a trifle queer, come to reconsider.”

  I had picked up the Old Crow. “Queer how?”

  “Ephraim. I guess people haven’t been made cognizant he’s one of the populace again. The Grant chick ambled out of the head back there and sort of turned sallow when she spotted him, you know? Real shook up.”

  I had put down the bottle. “Then what?”

  “Well, man, I was sort of more interested in your small brawl. She’s still yonder, I presume. I saw Ivan Klobb back there, but whether or not they made words I cannot avow.” He looked at me, puzzled, then whistled softly. “Hey, like I see some light. If Ephraim is out, some other cat is due to go in, no? You think the sight of him gave the Grant chick some ideas? Like maybe, since it ain’t Eph, she’s got a hunch who?”

  I was staring at him.

  “Although on third hand I could be blowing hysterical,” he decided. “Missing the whole beat. The chick might have just had heartburn, you know?”

  “A brunette,” I said. “What was she wearing?”

  “Man’s T-shirt.” Henshaw giggled obscenely. “I am not as observant as many, but the Grant chick in a man’s T-shirt I would long remember. Like better men than I have left hearth and home for dream of what lies beyond yon distant hills, you dig me?”

  He was smirking into his glass. I left him with it, heading back toward that corridor.

  CHAPTER 15

  The corridor was roughly the length of a bowling alley. There were four closed doors along its left-hand side, and evidently it turned at the rear. The dim rose glow of the kerosene lamp made it hard to be sure. The sudden proximity of Dana O’Dea made it harder to be interested.

  She swam up in front of me just as I reached the doorway. I stopped, and not just because I remembered that she lived with Audrey Grant. That red dress had made her noticeable from a distance, but at close range she would have been noticeable in a diving rig.

  She was a big girl. Her fall breasts swelled up out of the sheath into a pair of fleshy shoulders as sensuous as heavy cream, and there was enough ripe womanhood in her bare arms alone to melt nonferrous metals. She had boldly painted lips and flashing dark eyes, and her hair was so brilliantly black that it looked almost wet. She was as luxuriously molded as the hull of a yacht.

  She was also drunk as a tadpole.

  She pulled up short a foot in front of me, swaying, and then she almost fell. She took a fall breath. “Wow,” she said.

  “Wow,” I told her. She swayed some more. Those milky shoulders were unbelievable. I reached out with a finger and touched the dress where it turned beneath the fold of her arm.

  She eyed me speculatively. “Excuse me,” I said. “I just wanted to see if it was painted on.”

  She gave me a smile that could have paid her rent for a year. I grinned back at her. I would have liked to spend a year doing it.

  “You know where your roommate is?”

  “Audrey?” She frowned. “You know Audrey? Audrey know you? Whore you?”

  Her voice was no thicker than bread pudding. She steadied herself with a hand on my sleeve, looking at me more intently.

  “Audrey doesn’t know you,” she said. “You know something? I’m glad. Don’t even care what your name is.” She nodded profoundly. “Don’t care ‘tall. Like you anyhow. You know my name? My name’s Dana ‘Dea. You know something else? I’m drunk. Been drinking since three ‘clock this afternoon. Home all alone. You ‘magine that?”

  “You could do better,” I told her. “Why don’t we find Audrey? The three of us can get drunk together.”

  “Sure. Find Audrey. Good old Au’rey. Swell idea.” She turned back into the corridor, took two steps and then almost went over again. I caught her by the wrist, so she decided to play. She hung away from me, balanced on her heels, and let me take all her weight. She had a few more pounds of it than the boys in the fashion business would have allowed, but then the same guys would design a blanket roll without ever spending a night in the woods. She was as yielding as gelatin. I hauled her back onto a level keel, so then she tittered and poked a finger into my chest. “Nope,” she said emphatically, “don’t know you. Wish I did.”

  “Audrey, huh? Like a pal?”

  “Abs’lutely.”

  She had slithered away from me once more when a girl with a face like a wedge of cheese stepped past us into the hall. She was a mousy, intellectual sort, hiding a concave chest behind a bulky yellow sweatshirt. She glanced at Dana, then paused, lifting an eyebrow. “My heavens, girl,” she said.

  “It’s disgusting, isn’t it?* Dana agreed. “Started drinking at three ‘clock. You ‘magine that?”

  “I don’t have to imagine,” the girl said. “You’re a mess.”

  That disheartened Dana briefly. “I am?” She glanced down into the pasteurized cleavage at the top of her dress. Then she looked back to the mousy girl, lifting her gaze to approximately the same anatomical vicinity. It wasn’t being very fair. Several seconds passed. Then Dana snickered.

  “Well, of all the—” The girl whirled and stomped off.

  Dana sighed. “All I said was I was drunk. She didn’t have to call me a mess. You think I’m a mess?”

  “You’re no mess,” I said. She wasn’t. She had too much raw sensuality to move sloppily. She just swelled and receded, like surf.

  “I’m glad you say that,” she told me. “Been drinking all day, you know?”

  “Audrey,” I said.

  “Oh, sure, Audrey.” She brightened up again, nodding toward the first closed door. She beckoned. “Shhh—”

  I followed her over. She twisted the knob, then pushed in the door silently. The room was dark and I reached past her and fumbled for a switch. A muffled masculine voice changed my mind.

  “Let’s just leave it be, shall we?”

  “Oops!” Dana fell against me. I could see the vague form of a bed in the gloom as I
eased her out of the way.

  I got the door almost back where it belonged, then stopped again. There were two pair of shoes on the floor, both at least size twelve.

  “Not Audrey,” Dana told me with assurance. “Not Audrey ‘tall.”

  I closed it, then stood there shaking my head. It didn’t rattle. There had been two motorcycle crash helmets inside also.

  Dana was already lurching onward, undismayed. She turned and winked at me from the next door, then threw it inward gleefully. This time there was a light on. I followed her in, a little grimly.

  Furniture was not one of McGruder’s passions. The room contained a single uncovered cot set about a foot away from a side wall, a straight chair under a high barred window, a telephone on the floor. I supposed we would have to make the grand tour. I turned back, but Dana had slipped around me to the door.

  She was being playful again. She pushed the door shut and leaned against it, peering up at me slyly from under her dark brows. That made her about as coy as Mae West. The girl would have been bringing out the eroticism in every man who had run into her since she was fifteen, and I had to wonder what she would be like when she was sober. I pressed a fist along her cheek, then gestured toward the outside.

  “Uh-huh.” She nodded sincerely. “Find Audrey. Lil while. That’s a promise.”

  “The faster we find her, the faster we get drunk.”

  “Drunk already. Started to get drunk at—”

  “I know. Three o’clock. You were home all day.”

  “I tell you that?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  She frowned. “You’re not drunk ‘tall, are you?”

  “Things keep coming up. You know how it is.”

  “Shame,” she said. “Guy like you.” Her eyebrows had knit. Then suddenly she beamed. “Got it,” she told me brightly. “Doesn’t matter if you’re drunk or not.”

  “I’m glad. You’ve got what?”

  “Nope, doesn’t matter ‘tall. Got something better. Was going to save it, but it just makes me sick when I’m drunk myself.”

  I had a pretty good idea what she was talking about. I waited while she hunched those lush shoulders and reached into her bosom, showing me the top of her gleaming dark oblivious head. It was folded into a small tube of white tissue, and she had difficulty unwrapping it. Finally she held out the thin marijuana reefer.

  I gave her my best rueful smile.

  “You mean you don’t want it?”

  “Maybe later, huh? As soon as we find Audrey.”

  She was pouting. “Just don’t understand. Don’t understand ‘tall. Not drunk. Won’t accept generous’st offer I can make. What do you do for kicks, anyway?”

  In her soused way she was seriously troubled. I had to grin at her.

  It took a minute. Then her eyes lit up. She giggled absurdly.

  “Well, crying out loud, why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

  I grinned some more. “We can go now, can’t we?”

  “Crying out loud. Never thought of it. How do you like that?” She pursed her lips. Then she nodded decisively. “Well, by golly, nobody’s going to say Dana ‘Dea’s no sport. No, sir, nobody’s going to say that. You just don’t go ‘way and I’ll—”

  This time she was a step ahead of me. She lurched downward, pawing at the hem of her skirt, and came up with two handfuls of it. There was no slip under there to hamper the friendly little impulse. She laughed in delight, crossing her arms as she straightened, and then yanked upward. Her head disappeared in a twisted red tangle.

  She got stuck, squirming like something trying to work its way out of a cocoon, and her voice came merrily out of the depths. “Well, where’d you go? Crying out loud, have to give a poor girl some help—”

  She needed as much help as Lady Chatterley. She was stumbling toward the cot, bent from the hips. I was probably going to regret it on cold winter nights in the future. I knew I was. The girl had a pair of thighs that could have sent the Crusades wandering off down the wrong roadway. I gave her a swift whack where her bright orange girdle was stretched most memorably and sent her sprawling.

  She let out a startled little cry, skidding across the mattress with her arms flung outward and her calves flailing. I headed for the door.

  I stopped again. I wasn’t sure why, except that the incident should have merited some inane comment or other, and she hadn’t made any. She had scampered to her knees and was staring into the gap between the cot and the wall. The dress had unfurled a bit, but she was still going to catch half a cold. She turned toward me, grinning stupidly.

  “Told you,” she said. “Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t believe me. Said I’d find old Audrey.”

  I had taken out a cigarette. Dana frowned then, but not because I dropped it.

  “Don’t understand. Lots of swell beds around. Why would she sleep on the floor?” She shook her head. “And how do you suppose she went and got all bloody that way?” she said.

  CHAPTER 16

  She was down there, all right. Her skin was warm and pliant, but there was no trace of a pulse.

  I hadn’t expected one. The knife was still sticking out of her breast, like a pencil out of a sharpener.

  I turned fast because of Dana. She was on her feet, beginning to get it. She was standing lopsidedly, missing a shoe. A minute earlier it would have made her fall on her face.

  “Is she—is she—?”

  “Yes.”

  Her eyes widened. Her mouth opened again but this time it made only some small gurgling sounds, like a clogged toilet. She spun, breaking for the door.

  The dress was still knotted around her hips. I caught a fistful of it. Something tore when I jerked her back.

  “Kiss me!” I told her.

  She looked at me as if I were mad. I was mad as a loon, but I knew enough to keep her away from that mob out front. She was still gaping when I brought up a short right and tagged her on the point of her gorgeous chin.

  I got an arm around her before she could fall. It was like carrying a Volkswagen, but I got her onto the mattress.

  It left me light-headed. It also left me with a corpse on the floor and an unconscious girl on the bed. I had a remote idea that the situation called for some firm, decisive action.

  So I raised Dana’s hips and pulled her dress down.

  Middle-class morality is primeval. There was a key in the door and I got myself over there to turn it. I came back and eased the cot farther from the wall. The body rolled onto its spine.

  Audrey Grant. She had on that T-shirt that had made Hen-shaw rhapsodic. The blade had slashed through it just below the heart. A thin red stream had traced itself onto the waist of her green skirt, but it had not been a prolonged bleeding. It could not have taken her much more than six or eight seconds longer to die than it had taken Josie Welch.

  I had told Ulysses Grant there did not have to be any connection between the two girls. Astute, discerning Fannin. I probably would have told Alexander Graham Bell he’d never make a connection either.

  Audrey Grant. Why? I didn’t know why. It was 11:18. Less than six hours ago Grant had been in my office. That was why.

  Now what the hell did that mean, exactly? Nothing, nothing at all. Fannin was just raving, in lieu of thought. Worry about it tomorrow, Scarlett, when your brains stop palpitating.

  She had been a pretty girl. She had been tall, but a daughter of Grant’s would have to be. She was leggy, and she had almost too much bosom for her slight shoulders and long neck. There was a tiny gold chain around the neck, twisted now so that the locket lay on the outside of the shirt. I didn’t open it. There would be a picture of Philo Vance inside, sticking his tongue out at me. I kept staring at the knife instead.

  That did it. I had simply not been conditioned to come suddenly upon the violently dead. Even when my hand lifted to my pocket it didn’t register immediately. The knife was an exact duplicate of the one I’d taken from Ephraim.

  I didn’t have any kni
fe in my pocket.

  So I’d lost it when I’d been hit. Any one of fifty people could have picked it up.

  There was a deduction for you.

  Td talked to Henshaw right after the brawl. No, first to McGruder. Henshaw had said Ivan Klobb was back in the corridor. Had Fern still been with him? Where had Ephraim and Peters gone?

  The next question has several parts, Mr. Fannin. Name all the National League batting champions from 1900 to the present, in chronological order, with their averages. You have thirty seconds in the isolation booth.

  Zen Boothism. I went to the telephone. There was a book lying under it. The Subterraneans, by Jack Kerouac. I got Central, then the desk at the local precinct. The man said DiMaggio was out. He said Toomey was out also. “You 11 have to do,” I told him.

  “Sure, and for what? Just who might this be?”