Epitaph For A Dead Beat

by David Markson

  He was serious. He had a vacuous, inoffensive Nordic face that would never mean anything except exactly what it said. “I looked it over first,” I told him. “The can was all misted up. I could see there were no prints on it.”

  He pondered that with all the efficacious ratiocination his ninety-two-point-four I.Q. would permit. “Well, I hope you’re sure.” He turned to his sidekick. “It looks under control, Eddie. You better wait in the heap.”

  Eddie shrugged, then wandered off apathetically. Santayana shut the door after him, taking a smoke. “Must have been quite a shock for a private citizen. Finding a deceased, I mean.”

  “It’s been hours since the last one. I was beginning to think I was slipping.”

  “What? Oh, a joker.”

  “Makes it easier to take.”

  “Sure. Common psychology. Friend of yours, huh? Kind of a sloppy place he kept. All them goddam books, will you look?”

  He stuck his face into the back, being curious, but he was just minding the store until some authority got there. I found myself a chair near the front windows.

  The patrolman was on a second cigarette when the knock came. He butted the smoke fast and headed for the door, not quite making it. It was shoved inward so abruptly that it almost hit him.

  DiMaggio had done the shoving. He stared at the body from the threshold for perhaps six seconds, then turned toward me. His blunt jaw was set squarely, and he had not stepped far enough inside for Toomey to get by. He held his breath. It was another ten seconds before he paid any attention to the patrolman.

  “Stand by down below,” he snapped then.

  “I’ll have to see some identification, sir. You’re not in my precinct—”

  DiMaggio was already past him. The patrolman glanced at Toomey hesitantly and Toomey flashed a badge. “The sergeant’s had a long night, Mac. You know how they fall.”

  “Sure. Yes, sir. Just following regulations—”

  “Can the goddam talk,” DiMaggio said. “Get that door shut.”

  The patrolman pulled it after himself, glowering in my direction as he went. DiMaggio had taken a stance about four feet from my chair with his legs planted wide. “On your feet, Fannin,” he said.

  Toomey sauntered over. I sat there.

  “Did you hear me, buster?”

  “We got to it a lot fester the last time without the drama,” I said.

  DiMaggio was kneading his right fist with his left hand. “You got a gun?”

  “Four. All home in a drawer next to the Three-in-One oil.”

  “Make sure.” He spoke to Toomey without looking at him.

  Toomey was at my side. “You 11 have to get up—”

  I did what he told me, chewing my lip. He ran me down quickly, then gestured.

  “Put the cuffs on him,” DiMaggio said.

  Toomey’s hand was still raised. “Oh, now look, Joe—”

  DiMaggio came a step closer. His lips were bloodless. Toomey sighed almost inaudibly, finally reaching toward a hip.

  I held out my wrists and the metal went on and locked, not tightly. Toomey didn’t look at me. Just once I was going to meet two cops and the reasonable one was going to have the rank.

  DiMaggio’s eyes were as dark as wet tar. He was being as outraged as Captain Bligh when Clark Gable set him adrift in that dory. “You lied to me, Fannin.”

  I shook my head wearily. He ignored it.

  “You used Captain Nate Brannigan’s name and he okay’d you when I checked. So it isn’t just a precinct sergeant the lie fixes you with.”

  This time I grunted. He didn’t want answers anyhow.

  “You found the Welch body and I let you convince me you weren’t working on anything. The way I read it, the things you didn’t see fit to tell the department Tuesday night might just have prevented the Grant girl’s death and this one too, whoever this one is—”

  “I didn’t have a job Tuesday,” I said.

  “Don’t lie to me a second time, Fannin. I don’t like to be suckered.”

  Toomey had found something to contemplate on Grant’s shoe, most likely a hole. “Why don’t we find out what he’s got to say first, Joe?”

  DiMaggio kept measuring me. His forehead was slightly pocked. He flexed his fingers.

  “Ten minutes, no more.”

  “I’ll need closer to thirty.”

  “I’ll know damned well when it stops meaning anything.” He turned toward a chair. “You start at the beginning, Fannin, you got that?”

  “Don’t tell me how to tell it, DiMaggio.”

  He whirled back. I hadn’t moved.

  Toomey was still at the body. “Tallest man since Wilt the Stilt,” he said idly.

  “Maybe he’d rather tell it under the lights,” DiMaggio said. “Maybe he thinks it’s more romantic that way. Or maybe he thinks he’ll get somebody else instead of me. Is that it, Fannin? You think because it involves two precincts the boys from Central will take over? Your buddy Captain Brannigan maybe? Well, I’ll let you in on a departmental secret, how’s that? Central’s a little busy tonight, you understand? It so happens this case is mine—so I’m the baby you’re going to have to chat with wherever we do it. And wherever we do it, I still think you’re dirt.”

  “The corpse was named Ulysses S. Grant,” I said quietly. “He hired me tonight to find his daughter, Audrey Grant.”

  “The corpse was named—why, you fatuous son of a bitch, if you think I’ve got time for a goddam joke—”

  Toomey sprang across quickly, stopping him with a hand. “Hold it, Joe—” He flipped open the sandwich-sized wallet

  I’d seen when Grant was in my office. “Ulysses S.on his voter’s registration.”

  294

  DiMaggio curled his lips, controlling himself. “The rest of it, Fannin.”

  “I was finished.”

  “What the hell—”

  I’ve identified my client and told you what kind of a job I was on. I didn’t even have to say that much without a lawyer, not once you put these cuffs on. Although for the record I had a lot more in mind until about twelve seconds after you brought your bedside manner through that door.”

  He got around to it then. It was a hard enough punch but I was set for it as well as possible. I caught it along the upper jaw. I hit the cushions of Grant’s couch, elbows first, then slid to the floor with the cuffs biting.

  That fluttered a few feathers again. I supposed I could always report him for disturbing evidence before his technicians got there.

  Toomey was between us, but DiMaggio had walked off. “Let that team take him in,” he said tightly. “We got work to do here.”

  Toomey opened the door and held it for me, saying nothing. DiMaggio was standing over the body with his back turned. I stared at him for a minute and then went out.

  That baby was screeching again, or still. I heard it through only one ear. Toomey rang for the elevator. “That was pretty dumb,” he said.

  I didn’t answer him.

  “So he called you a liar. It ain’t such a highly illogical conclusion under the circumstances, you know. And you got to tell it anyhow, for Chrissake.” The door slid open and he chuckled as we got in. “On the other hand I suppose all we can legally slam you for is leaving that stiff downtown, since you’re right about not having to talk once we make you look like a suspect. If it turns out you’re clean the sergeant will sweat all night, wondering if you’ll mention the incident to your friend Brannigan. The Commissioner’s been pretty touchy about the rough stuff lately. Poor old Joe.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Do me a favor, huh?”

  “What’s that?”

  “These cuffs—wipe my nose if I cry.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Someone had taped a newspaper photo of Marilyn Monroe behind the door of the interrogation room. One of her eyebrows was raised, and she was pouting, and she definitely had something in mind.

  They’d taken my cuffs off, but for forty minutes she had been my only compa
ny. Now Toomey was straddling one of the rooms two desks, and a severely combed civil service stenographer in a shapeless brown suit had just taken a chair near the far wall. It was 2:26. Behind the other desk a mountainous Laird Cregar type in shirtsleeves was considering me impersonally. His name was Vasella and he was a detective lieutenant. He had a chest like a tombstone.

  His tone was completely neutral. “You’re ready to make that statement now, I assume?”

  I nodded.

  I’ve spoken to Nate Brannigan,” he said, “and he’s given me the same endorsement of you he gave Sergeant DiMaggio three days ago. He might be getting tired of it, which is neither here nor there.” He sat down. “DiMaggio told me what went on uptown. He also told me that he’d been handling a separate homicide entirely before your call came in tonight and hadn’t seen bed for thirty hours. I don’t offer this as any sort of apology, but I don’t like to work in bad air.”

  He did not wait for any comment on my part, turning to the stenographer. He gave her my name, my office address and my state license number, reading from a sheet he’d brought in, probably my statement about Josie Welch. “Nothing between your previous declaration and the time you were retained by this Ulysses Grant?” he asked me.

  “Nothing.”

  “We’ll start there, then. You’ve done this before.”

  I nodded again, taking a Camel, and then told it. I was able to forget Constantine’s request for silence, since the telegram had taken me off the hook in that regard, although I did skip the matter of Margaret Constantine’s exotic automatic. The whole thing took less than twenty minutes.

  Neither Vasella nor Toomey had interrupted. Vasella had taken out a thick yellow copy pencil, which he clicked against his front teeth. “Turk is the keystone, of course,” he said. “But I’d be more comfortable if Grant’s money were all there was to it.”

  “Why Turk?” I said.

  He looked toward Toomey, who was lounging against the doorjamb. “After that party quieted down over there,” Toomey told me, “this swish who lives in the place, McGruder—he told us that Turk was married to Audrey Grant.”

  I frowned at him.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Toomey said. “But according to McGruder it happened about six months back. There was a crew of them, they got one of these automobile bugs and wound up in Maryland. Just for laughs the girl and Turk woke up some J.P. and got spliced. Then she laughed in his face when he tried to claim his rights as a husband. McGruder says there wasn’t much gossip about it because people felt sorry for Turk— evidently he’s that kind of fool. We’re checking it, but McGruder was sure the girl never did anything to cancel it out. The way these fruitcakes live down here—”

  “You bring Turk in?” I asked him.

  “Nah, that’s the trouble. I suppose you did as well as you could at the party—just reporting the kill and then locking that room, I mean. In fact it was probably best that way, since we were able to surprise the whole mob.” Toomey snorted. “Some screwball dame was standing on a chair in a bedsheet singing old labor songs, for Chrissake—’Join the Needle Workers’ Union.’ We got all the names and addresses, and we got statements from everybody who had anything to tell. But then, like I say, all of a sudden McGruder remembered this marriage bit—only Turk wasn’t there. His name wasn’t on the list, which means he’d ducked out before we showed up.”

  Vasella was toying with the pencil. “Turk was the one you booked on the Welch killing Tuesday. I thought he had a corroborated alibi.”

  “It has to be fishy under reconsideration, lieutenant,” Toomey said. “This guy Peters didn’t show up with his story until today—said he’d been on a bat. But here’s the thing. Half a dozen people mentioned the brawl he had with Fannin over there tonight, but Peters wasn’t on the list either. He must have scrammed the same time Turk did. DiMag put through an all-areas pick-up on the pair of them. We get Peters in here now, we’ll find out he was just covering for the other guy. Turk could buy an awful lot of alibi for a share in that thirteen million he’s due to inherit.”

  “A man would have to be little short of moronic to kill three people for a legacy when everything would point to him,” Vasella said dubiously. “Or even to arrange for the killings. That knife—no one saw it after Fannin was hit?”

  “It’s McGruder’s,” Toomey said. “He said he always kept it in the latrine. But after Fannin it doesn’t get mentioned.”

  Vasella shook his head. “All right, let’s assume for the moment that Fannin’s basic interpretations are correct. Audrey Grant and Josephine Welch are half-sisters. If Audrey Grant is going to inherit Grant’s money and subsequently die herself, the Welch girl would have a strong claim on the estate. So she’s disposed of first. Then Grant, and then Audrey Grant—the order leaves Turk clear title. But damn it—” He made a wet sound between his lips. “Grant is sent those clippings the day he’s going to die. He contacts his lawyer about them and then he contacts a EI.—but even if he hadn’t done either of those things we’d still probably find the clips in his apartment. The man hadn’t seen his daughter in ten years, and it’s possible that no one would have connected the deaths—but this way we can’t fail to. Except why would anyone want the connection made? If we didn’t know the Grant girl had been worth all that money for the last four hours of her life we’d have no motive to hook Turk on. He could wait almost indefinitely to claim the legacy, or even claim it from somewhere he’d be nonextraditable—or try to.”

  “There’s more than just Turk,” I said. “Both of those girls told Constantine they were coming into money.”

  Vasella’s hand lifted to slap the desk. “Which would appear to indicate they themselves knew Grant was going to die—”

  “Where does that take us, now?” Toomey said. “It’s as if the three of them were in it together—and then Turk crossed the two dames.”

  “No one talks about money someone is going to be murdered for,” Vasella said. “It’s too self-evident to mention. You don’t think they could have been referring to some other money altogether?”

  “Grant’s dead,” I said.

  “So he is. Could this Constantine have been lying—repeating something which hadn’t been said?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t get it, if he was. The only reason I went to Grant’s was because of what he told me. Grant’s money has to be the motive, one way or another.”

  “Something’s missing, all right.” Vasella reached to a phone. “This O. J. Fosburgh—you have any idea where he lives?”

  “His office would probably have an all-night service.”

  He told his switchboard to put through the call, hanging up again. “There a collect-for-questioning on Constantine?” he asked Toomey.

  “DiMag put it through as soon as we got the message on that telegram. Vice Squad finally admitted they’d heard of him, once we gave them the full name.”

  “Yeah, that telegram—wherever that fits in.” Vasella puffed a cheek. “I think we better see that painter in here also, Floyd-Ivan Klobb. If he’s able to provide girls for the racket there could be some sort of intimidation involved.”

  Toomey went out. The stenographer was still sitting, patient as a tin can on a shelf. Vasella nodded her out also. The phone rang before the door had closed after her.

  Vasella identified himself and then apologized for the hour. There were pauses while he told Fosburgh about Grant’s death. He verified my position, and after that there was considerable talk about Grant’s financial situation. I sat there contemplating Marilyn again.

  I decided she had a face that should have been given even more currency than it was. In fact currency was what it belonged on. They should have printed her picture on the one-dollar bill.

  Toomey came back just as Vasella hung up. “No one gets it,” Vasella said.

  I dropped a cigarette into a dented brass spittoon, waiting.

  “I mean no individuals. Grant was to receive all income the trust earned for the duration of hi
s life, but the capital itself couldn’t be touched. Now it gets distributed to charitable and educational organizations. All of it—there’s absolutely no provision for any of Grant’s own heirs.”

  “People wouldn’t have to know that,” Toomey said. “Or anyhow, look at the interest on thirteen million bucks. Even at an improbable three percent it’s what?—roughly four hundred thousand a year. The guy lived like he was on relief. Take off three-fourths for taxes—Turk’s still in line for a cool hundred grand—”

  Vasella got to his feet heavily. “We’ll get nowhere until we talk to these people,” he said. “I want you to ride herd on those pick-ups, Floyd. Let’s see some action.”

  He started for the door. “You want any more from me?” I asked him.

  He stopped. “You admit having had one of the murder weapons in your possession within a half hour of the first killing tonight,” he said with no intonation. “You left that corpse and went almost directly to another, telling us it was only your professional sense of deduction which sent you there.” He pressed his lips together. “Should I be able to think of anything else we might want you for? You can sign the statement if it’s ready, or tomorrow if it isn’t. Thank you for your cooperation.”