Epitaph For A Dead Beat

by David Markson

  He let me meet his gaze for another few seconds and then went out, a ponderous, not quite impassive man who did not like having rank pulled on him any better than DiMaggio did, but who would always be too efficient a cop to let it interfere with the way he thought he should do his job. Toomey gave me a parting wave and said, “Take it slow,” but after two meetings Toomey would have found it hard to be unkindly disposed toward Attila the Hun. I made a mental note never to use

  Brannigan’s name again, short of finding myself on the wrong end of a hose.

  I patted Marilyn on a cheek, following after them. I still liked the idea, although not on paper money at that, and not just her face. Molded on a coin, front and back side both.

  I was being light-headed again after all, but I realized I was bushed. The statement wasn’t ready. I took a cab to the lot near the Blue Soldier where the Chevy had been since nine o’clock.

  I picked up a Mirror and checked the ball scores, but that only made me feel more stale. Ted Williams had gone hitless, and they’d had Stan the Man on the bench. The good people were getting old. A lot of them were already long dead, like John Garfield, Marcel Cerdan, Mel Ott. Fred Allen was dead too. Pretty soon I’d have no heroes left, unless I could teach myself to believe in Sal Mineo.

  I left the car in the garage on Third, walked back the two blocks, climbed my one flight. The overhead bulb in the hall outside my door had burned out. They weren’t making bulbs like they used to.

  They weren’t making private detectives like they used to either. I’d already turned the key before it occurred to me to find out who had wanted to make the next flight dark enough to hide on.

  It was Peter J. Peters. He was sitting four steps up, as still as hewn rock, but I couldn’t miss the gun in his hand.

  I got the door open, grinning from ear to ear.

  The gun was a Smith and Wesson military .38, but it might have been a musty volume of Spinoza he’d been browsing through. I went up quietly and worked it out of his fingers before I woke him.

  CHAPTER 22

  He hadn’t been shooting anybody. There was so much rust in the bore that the weapon might have blown up in his face if he’d tried.

  He was slumped against the wall. He started, opening his mouth and blinking. His lips looked pink and wet behind the beard. He saw the revolver and frowned.

  “You intend to use this for the next round in our little competition?” I asked him.

  “Oh, my gosh—’

  I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, so I stood there while he shuddered a couple of times. I supposed he had been wearing the same Levis and turtleneck sweater before, but the view from McGruder’s floor had not been remarkably vivid. He wasn’t as big as I’d thought, but he was big enough. He was also handsome, although in a sallow sort of way.

  “What’s on your mind, Peters?”

  “Oh, golly, I wish I knew—” He swallowed. “I had to talk to somebody. I saw Henshaw, and he said you were—listen, do you have something to drink, I—”

  “Sure. I’m always good for refreshments. Ill open some beer and we’ll nibble on the pistol, like with pretzels.”

  He looked at me blankly. For a minute I thought he was going to be another of those blissful nits you can’t affront. His nostrils quivered. Then without any other sign he threw himself against the balustrade and began to sob like a baby.

  That moved me. Two hundred pounds of blubbering Beatnik. He’d probably gone home and found a rejected manuscript in the mailbox.

  He got to his feet, sniffling. I motioned him into the small dining area between the kitchen and the living room, then tossed the gun on the couch and dug out an open bottle of Jack Daniels. I poured two shots and sat down across from him at the table.

  His shoulders were still twitching, and he was clutching an unclean white handkerchief. “Suppose we start with where you came by the firearm,” I said.

  “Oh, dear, I didn’t mean for you to think—” He gulped the bourbon. aI work part-time as a security guard,” he said then. “Night watchman jobs—it gives me a chance to write and make some money at the same time. I’ve never carried it before except to work, honestly, I—”

  “ Where’d you see Henshaw?”

  “Late, after they let people leave the party. We’d been watching from down the block, Ephraim and I—”

  I gestured. “Take it from scratch, huh?”

  He nodded, sighing. “We left McGruder’s after the fight. I felt—well, gauche. Lord only knows what possessed me, hitting you that way. I deserved the punch you gave me and more. I hope you’ll—”

  “Yeah. You beat it right away?”

  “It was five minutes at most. I stopped to wash up first.”

  “Ephraim with you all the time?”

  “He waited in the hall. But look, if you think he did it—that’s the whole point. That’s why I went to the police with that false alibi to start with—”

  I stared at him carefully. His expression should have been grim, but it wasn’t. He would have had the same look on his face if he’d been caught slipping a book under his coat at Brentano’s.

  “I guess it was a pretty dumb stunt?”

  “If he’s guilty you’ll do time for it.”

  “Oh, gosh, I know. We were together a few hours Tuesday, not all night. But I know he didn’t do it. Darn it, Ephraim is one of the most angelic people you’ll ever meet. Why, he’s almost saintly, he—”

  “We went through all this before—”

  “But it’s true. Deep down he’s so sensitive it hurts him to be alive. Why, he could no more have killed those two girls than—”

  “They both treated him sensitively, from what I hear.”

  “Oh, I know all that. But Eph isn’t like ordinary people. He’s beautiful inside, priestly. Josie and Audrey were the only girls he’s ever been intimate with. He knows the kind of unsanctified lives they led, but it still made them special to him. Loving them both in his tormented way has been a cross he bears, it—”

  “All right, already—I’ve got a Gideon bible around someplace, he can autograph it. Skip Ephraim—was the rest of your story straight, at least? About being drunk all week?”

  He lowered his eyes. “I wasn’t drunk. I was with Audrey Grant.”

  That did get my attention. “That why you ran tonight?”

  “I didn’t run. Oh, darn it, we just left for a while. We were on our way back when we saw the police cars. And then when Henshaw told us what happened to Audrey—”

  He refilled his glass, spilling some. He started to wipe the table absently with a sleeve, then remembered the handkerchief.

  I had a vague thought. “When you went to the cops—did Audrey Grant know you were going to alibi Ephraim?”

  “I didn’t make up my mind myself until I was almost at the station/’

  “Henshaw noticed her just after she spotted Ephraim tonight—evidently she didn’t seem to like the idea he’d been released. You remember if she mentioned anything during the week about having any other thoughts? I mean about it not being him to start with?”

  “No.” He frowned. “Audrey was painfully upset, and we tried to occupy ourselves with other things. That’s why we went off together—she needed solace, spiritual consolation.”

  I sucked in air. “You read Corso and Ginsberg to each other—”

  “Why, no, as a matter of fact we studied the exalted truths of Sakyamuni, about the suppression of anxiety, but why do you—?”

  I lifted a hand. “Never mind,” I managed. All this through that mouth full of starchy confections I’d come to love. “The girl was killed right after that scrap of ours,” I told him in a minute. “Ephraim had time to do it, Peters, if you were alone in the John for a while.”

  “Look, please—I’d swear he didn’t. Anyhow, I’m certain of it because of the way he reacted later. Oh, that poor martyred boy, if he—”

  He stared at his palms. A little more and I’d be staring at them myself, watchi
ng for stigmata. “Something happened after you saw Henshaw?” I said.

  “We went to this composer’s studio—the place I’d been with Audrey, in fact. It belongs to a friend of mine who’s out of town. Then Ephraim suddenly got the idea that Dana O’Dea had done it. She was Audrey’s roommate, she—”

  “I know who she is.”

  “Oh?” He glanced at me, then nodded. “Dana had been angry at Josie Welch,” he said. “Apparently Dana thought she had—well, that she had certain claims on me, and lately I’d been spending more time with Josie. On top of which Dana also knew about me being with Audrey this week. So Ephraim decided it was jealousy, that Dana—” He flushed. “I can’t explain this too well, but Ephraim is capable of thinking a girl would kill two others because of me. He looks up to me, and he’s made me into sort of an idol, as if—”

  “The way it was with Lucien Vaulking—”

  “You’ve been talking to people. Yes, the same way. But in any event I know he couldn’t have been faking—he was even a little irrational. He said he was going to look for Dana. He ran out. I went over to Dana’s myself, trying to find him, but there was a cop out front—that was Audrey’s apartment too, of course.” Peters bit on the handkerchief. “I guess the impact of everything suddenly panicked me. The next thing I knew I’d gone home and gotten my gun.”

  I had run out of cigarettes. I went over to a shelf and took down a fresh pack. He was watching me.

  “You’ve played at being a fag, Peters,” I said. “All right, maybe it didn’t take. But maybe you’re also fonder than you think about the idea of a frustrated little man following you around—”

  He didn’t flush this time. “I suppose McGruder told you about that. Look, that’s all past—it’s not influencing me in any way about Ephraim’s innocence. Oh, gosh darn it, I don’t expect people to comprehend how we live. Don McGruder is a poet, a fine one, with a clear, radiant vision. We were empathic to each other—we could communicate without even finishing sentences. So we talked gloriously night after night and it led to a homosexual affair—would I know more about the human heart if it hadn’t happened? I’m trying to be alive in the fullest way I can. To be a writer I’ve got to experience all griefs and all joys, I’ve got to touch the inmost soul of man, to—”

  “You’ve got to feel the throbbing pulse of the corner grocer, to contemplate the navel of the Chinaman who does your shirts. Oh, sweet damn, okay, you can take me to church some Sunday, we’ll both be better for it. But not tonight, huh? Listen, is it an ecclesiastical secret, or do you think you just might get around to telling me what you wanted up here anyhow?”

  He drew in his breath. “I might have known you’d be a square. The complacent, scoffing masses—dear God, a religious revelation could appear on their television screens and they’d phone for a repair man.” He threw the handkerchief away from himself bitterly, like Billy Graham giving up on Las Vegas. “What I had hoped was that, since it’s your profession, you’d come back downtown out of ordinary human compassion and help me find Ephraim before he gets into more difficulties. But I guess I can put it on a strictly business basis. Dedicated people like us don’t have much money, but I can pay you off eventually.”

  “People like you—” I pulled a hand across my face. “Look, Peters, maybe you mean it. Maybe you’re a serious writer and all this apocalyptic crap has some point—I wouldn’t know. But I saw that mob down at McGruder’s, and if there’s any religious awakening underway somebody better get Congress to repeal the First Amendment. This is a murder case, not a fraternity bull session on salvation. If your chum Ephraim’s as beatific as you claim, he won’t get into anymore trouble—and if he killed those two girls he’s already bought all he’ll ever need. The gosh-awful truth is that it’s pushing four o’clock in the morning and I don’t much care. For that matter I don’t much care about your offer of an installment payment plan either. I had my client for the weekend, except that somebody killed him.”

  “Him?” He had gotten up, gaping at me. “Somebody—you mean three people are—?”

  “Yeah. It’s been a long night, padre. You hit me, that wasn’t too bad. But then a cop hit me and that I didn’t like. I’m tired, my jaw aches, and I’m about due to lay me down to sleep. You can go to the cops or you can sack in here if you want, on the couch. I’d advise the former, especially since they already damned well know you lied about Thesday night—”

  “Huh?”

  I didn’t say anymore. The telephone was ringing and I went across to answer it.

  I recognized the voice at a word in spite of its tone. “Harry,” she gasped. “Thank God you’re there! Something’s happened, can—”

  “Easy, Fern. What’s—?”

  “It’s Dana O’Dea. She just came up the stairs and fell into the apartment looking like—well, as if a truck had hit her. He beat her terribly. I’m afraid he might have followed her, we—”

  I cursed once, glancing at Peters. “You mean Ephraim?”

  “Ephraim? No—I don’t understand it too well, she’s barely told me anything—but it was Ivan. Ivan Klobb, the painter. You remember, I introduced him to you—”

  “You got the door locked?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I’ll be about twenty minutes, Fern. If anything happens before I get there call the police. I mean that.”

  “Oh, thank you, Harry—”

  I hung it up and turned into the bedroom. Peters came into the doorway hesitantly. I yanked open the bottom drawer of the dresser, pushed aside some summer shirts, then settled for the first piece my hand touched, my Colt .357 Magnum. I checked the load, jammed the weapon into a clip holster and slapped that into my hip pocket. “Pick up that relic of your own,” I said. “If you’ve got any sense at all you’ll drop it in the first sewer you pass on the way to the precinct house.”

  “God,” he said. “Oh, God! Listen, what’s going on? Has something happened to Fern now too? Will you—?”

  “No.” I shoved past him, motioning toward his gun.

  “Can I leave it here? Oh, golly, I guess I’ll go down now after all. I won’t stop home—”

  “Come on.”

  I ushered him out of there and around the corner to the garage, walking hard and not talking. The late-shift attendant looked at me as if I were asking him to change the color on a battleship he’d just that minute finished painting, but for the pound of flesh I was paying they could shuffle the Chevy in and out ten times a night and like it. I broke half a dozen vehicle regulations going down, but all the traffic clicks were busy mooching coffee someplace. Peters sat mutely and meditated on his reflection in the windshield.

  I dumped him in front of an all-night restaurant two blocks from Fern’s, roughly the same distance from the station. He started to say something but I didn’t wait. I would read all about it when they updated the Gospels. At the moment I was too busy speculating about an artist with an exhibition scheduled soon in an exclusive uptown gallery, and about a pair of dead prostitutes who had known enough about his spare-time occupation to have shut down the show before the canvases dried.

  Most of it still did not make sense. But even an unenlightened sinner like myself could see where blackmail might have played hell with the revival meeting.

  CHAPTER 23

  Fern made me repeat my name twice through the door of the apartment before she opened up. She had on a pale blue bed jacket which fell just to her fingertips, and her face was wan.

  I saw Dana beyond her shoulder, slumped on the low modern couch at the far wall. She was wrapped in an oversized yellow beach towel. There were raw, ridged welts, like parasitic worms, across her naked arms and along her thighs. A cigarette was burning in a tray on the end table near her, and her dark eyes studied me intently as she reached for it.

  “It is you, isn’t it? We never did get ourselves formally introduced.”

  I grinned at her. “You were pretty soused.”

  “You could be right—although I�
�ve got a hunch I was sober as a hen about two seconds before you gave me that smack.” She puckered her bright lips wistfully. “Hell of a thing for a man to do. I seem to recall I’d been pretty darned accommodating, myself.”

  I laughed. “You’re feeling all right?”

  “Grand, grand.” She touched her fingers to a swollen bruise at the side of her nose. “Half the pain was mental anyhow.”

  Fern was standing near me. “Do you think she needs a doctor, Harry? I didn’t put anything on them except disinfectant—”