Epitaph For A Dead Beat

by David Markson

  She said nothing, watching me. “Not that you needed the help,” I went on, “since you’d already established a connection between Grant and his heirs by sending those clippings. Or no, you threw in that telegram also, didn’t you? Just in case Ephraim didn’t work out as a patsy, an investigation of Constantine would lead to Ivan Klobb. So he’d be the one the cops would have thought had been blackmailed—”

  I let it trail off, feeling unsteady again. “Is this all?” she said.

  I nodded. “Although some small items begin to fit now also. Like the twenty-two you said you got as a gift. Vaulking was a marksman. It isn’t important, but it’s a good bet he was the one who gave you the gun—which you planted at Ephraim’s when you were supposed to be at that revival of Casablanca. You didn’t go to the picture, Fern. After we made our statements that night, standing by the car—I said, ‘Play it again, Sam/ It’s ten years since I saw the film, and I don’t even know if Bogart uses the line more than once, but I still remember it. You didn’t react. At the time I chalked it up to your being upset. And sure, one other triviality. Tonight at the party—why was I there? You didn’t ask. You knew the minute you saw me—that Grant had contacted me because of my name being in the paper. I suppose you did have a minute of panic Tuesday when you found out the sucker you’d picked to hold your hand was a private cop. Jesus, I can just see it. If I hadn’t poked my face into that bedroom you would have found a pretense to look in yourself, of course, but what was next on the schedule? A coquettish little scream, a demure faint—?”

  There was a minute. “I hope you’re going to notice just a few of the flaws in all this,” she said then. “Audrey and Josie were blackmailing me. And yet Audrey didn’t suspect me in the least when Josie was killed.”

  “She did suspect you—tonight, when she saw that Ephraim was out. The gun in his apartment fooled her first, sure, like it fooled the cops. But she got scared the minute she spotted him at McGruder’s. She knew the police didn’t have anything on him. Then you knifed her about three minutes later—”

  I had leaned against the table, and my ribs contracted sharply. “I suppose you would have killed her sooner,” I said, “if she hadn’t run off with Peters for the few days. But you were probably fairly sure they’d show up at the party. What weapon did you have for that one, Fern—I mean before you picked up the knife? The same gun you shot Grant with earlier?”

  She ignored the question, toying with the top button of her jacket. I could have made more sense out of her reaction if she’d shaved her head and danced on a chandelier. “I killed Ulysses Grant to make Ephraim’s inheritance look like a motive,” she said. “But suppose Ephraim hadn’t gotten out of jail before tonight’s deaths—who would be the murderer then?”

  “The cops thought of that. Thirteen million would buy a lot of partner—they would have worked like hell to bring Peters into it.”

  She wet her lips. “And you’ve concluded all of this on the basis of something I said which I wasn’t supposed to know. Suppose Dana had made the same slip—could you have built a case against her the same way?”

  I must have been staring at her stupidly. “Damn it, Fern, what kind of dumb irrelevancy is that? You made the slip, not Dana. It’s going to send you up for life at the least—can’t you comprehend the fact?”

  “Is it? What a shame—just when we were beginning to get along with each other, too.” She came off the bed. I hadn’t believed she could do anything with her face which might distort its beauty, but her lips twisted into a snarl that was more than ugly. “So I couldn’t have known about the third killing,” she said.

  I didn’t answer her, but only because the dizziness came back. I had to shut my eyes, fighting a sudden mounting nausea.

  “I couldn’t have known,” she repeated. “Well, maybe you ought to ask Pete Peters if I couldn’t have, mister. Or wake Dana—she was here when we heard.”

  My head was swimming. “Heard—?”

  “Yes, heard. Pete called here, damn you, just a minute before you came down—after you’d dropped him off. He brought up the third killing—which you’d just told him about.”

  I forced myself off the bench. The room was murky as a steambath, and I could hardly hear her. “My lover man. I think you better scram, Fannin, before I really do get sore—”

  I reached toward her, but I grabbed only mist. I hit the open door with a shoulder, stumbling, before blackness swirled over me like a shroud.

  CHAPTER 29

  I was back in the magic time machine again. I was a small boy in a white bed in an antiseptic hospital room. I lay with my head buried against an arm, spurning the complicated, pernicious adult world about me.

  “Little Harry is just shy,” a voice said. “There’s someone to visit you, Harry, come to cheer you up. It’s that baseball player whose photo you’v tacked on the wall. It’s Mr. Medwick.”

  “Ducky Medwick?” I said. “Ducky—is it really you? Will you hit a home run for me today? Will you hit one off Carl Hubbell?”

  But Hubbell wasn’t pitching. Someone named Bowman was. Bowman? I remembered too late. Medwick was already at the plate and the ball was rocketing toward him, faster than I could see. My heart stopped in anticipation of the hideous, ringing carom. When I dared to look again the great idol of all my boyhood lay pinioned on his back with his arms outstretched, like a man crucified to earth. He didn’t move, he didn’t move at all.

  The machine went out of focus, and a nurse was hovering near me. “No,” I cried, “never mind me, take care of Ducky first—” She was a beautiful nurse, although I was seeing her through a smog. Her hair was the color of golden silk.

  “You did it,” I told her.

  “You still think so. In spite of my so-called slip not being a slip at all. You poor tenacious sap.”

  “I saw you,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You beaned him. You beaned the only man who ever led the National League three consecutive times in runs-batted-in.”

  “More delirium—”

  “Shoot,” I said. “Shoot if you must.”

  “Poor Harry. What are you jabbering about?”

  Who knew? I thought it might help if I got my eyes open, but it didn’t. All I could see was bedroom floor. My entire body was drenched with perspiration. I was weak as a watered cobweb.

  A hand pushed something under my nose. “Here—see if you can drink the coffee before it gets cold.”

  I tried to lift myself. I couldn’t.

  “Drink it, Harry.”

  “Drink it yourself. Drown in it.”

  “Oh, now don’t tell me you re angry? At little old me?” She tittered. “Just because I upset all your clever deductions? Would it make you feel better if I confessed, Harry? I think perhaps I will. It might be fun to talk about it.”

  She thought perhaps she’d confess. Because it might be fun. Somebody in that room was as batty as Lady Macbeth, but I didn’t have time to figure who. I was too preoccupied with the blur in front of my face. Out, damned spot.

  “You’re right about it being Lucien’s book, of course. Shall I tell you the details, Harry?”

  I shuddered. Audio-hallucination, without doubt. Maybe if I concentrated hard enough on something it would all go away.

  Famous dates. 1066, the Battle of Hastings. 1215, the Magna Carta. 1649, Charles the First lost his head. If you can keep your head when all those about you are losing theirs...

  “—He’d fiddled with the manuscript for five years. That son of a bitch, treating me like dirt, running around with tramps who weren’t worth my little finger—but that’s beside the point. The book is good, all right. He always liked to get my judgment on things—he thought I had a fair ear, and I was also familiar with what he was trying to bring off He gave me the final handwritten draft to read on a Thursday, and the next night he died. Showing off at a party, doing chin-ups to impress a couple of simpering girls as if he’d been fourteen instead of forty. Nobody knew I had the sc
ript—”

  —1620, the Pilgrims. 1773, the Boston Tea Party. Tea? 1588, Spanish Armada...

  “—Josie and Audrey were the only two I was worried about. He never let anyone see anything that wasn’t finished, but he’d been playing his he-man games with the pair of them for six months or so, and there was a chance they might have gotten a look. Audrey was over here one day after I had galley proofs and I left the first sheet in the living room deliberately, as a test. She did recognize it, and of course she told Josie. Josie herself wouldn’t have recognized The Scarlet Letter if her name was Hester. Audrey said that she had three pages of manuscript in Lucien’s handwriting hidden away—part of an earlier draft he’d given her as a souvenir. They told me they wanted ninety percent of everything I made.”

  I forced my head up then. She was sitting with her legs crossed. Her face was flushed, and her eyes were gleaming, not looking at me. She wasn’t Mrs. Macbeth, but that didn’t keep the thing from being creepy. She was talking almost mechanically.

  “They made it so absurdly easy. They told me they had the three sheets in a safe-deposit box.” She grunted. “I found them in Josie’s closet Tuesday afternoon. They’d put them in the obvious place, thinking I’d never look. Like all stupid people they thought everyone else was stupid too. A hundred thousand dollars from Hollywood alone, not to mention the reputation that goes with it, and they thought I’d crawl, let them hold the lie over my head for as long as they lived. Fools—”

  She wasn’t conscious of me at all now. I could feel the Magnum on my hip when I shifted my weight. Her hands were in her lap, empty. That made things even weirder.

  “You weren’t quite sure why Audrey didn’t suspect me when Josie died. She did, of course, although she couldn’t be sure until she learned if I’d located the three pages. So she ‘dropped in’ yesterday. She brought Pete with her, although he had no idea what was going on. I knew damned well she wanted a look at that closet, so I let her have one. I made a pretense about needing something from the drugstore, and even asked Pete to walk me down so she could be alone in the place. Except by then I’d substituted three pages on matching paper in my own handwriting—close to Lucien’s but unquestionably mine. I didn’t know exactly when or where to kill her yet, you understand. She stole the pages—meaning she didn’t notice the substitution. They’ll most likely turn up in her apartment—absolutely meaningless. That was enough to convince her that I wasn’t involved. I did have some luck with the timing on some things, but then everything was in my favor to start with—the degenerate way these people live, all the sordid relationships, Ephraim and his mockery of a marriage—God, how weary I’d gotten of all that. But I’m out of it now, you see. I’ll be somebody—a rich somebody.”

  “With a number over your breast pocket,” I said. “You’ll be able to buy cigarettes and soap for everybody else in death row.”

  “Well, the man is recovering.” She came back from wherever she’d been. “He’s his ironic old self again. How droll.”

  I used all my hands on the bed, getting to my knees. She watched me indifferently. After a minute she smiled.

  “You’re not really one of the stupid ones, Fannin—you’re just stubborn. Why do you think I’ve told you all of this? You’ll go to the police, of course—”

  I didn’t answer, busy breathing.

  “You will, all right. It’s really quite amusing—except for one thing.”

  “I know,” I said. “But you tell me anyhow.”

  “You’re dopey. You staggered up here looking like somebody Noah left off the passenger list, and you collapsed on my floor. Tell them I did it. You won’t even be able to explain what gave you the idea to start with, it’s based on such a false premise.” She laughed, rising gracefully in a little half-pirouette. Then she cocked an eyebrow toward the bed. “There truly isn’t any point in rushing about it, you know. I’ve got a hunch your immediate future would be considerably less frustrating if you spent it sleeping. Shucks, I might even fondle you where it hurts.”

  I made it the rest of the way up, staring at her. I was gritting my teeth so hard I could hear them. “Three,” I said. “One a man nearly blind you didn’t even know.”

  “Two cheap whores and a filthy, odorous wretch who tried to put his hands on me when I walked in claiming to be a friend of Audrey’s. An overwhelming loss to the world.”

  “You found the three sheets and killed the girls anyhow, because even without the proof they could still talk and cause doubt. You killed Grant only to cover your trail. Why did you bother? Why, if you were going to tell me all of this?”

  “Oh, but I hadn’t intended to tell you anything, you see. This was just impulse—”

  “Just—” I swallowed. “My God, I thought people like Ephraim and Peters were in bad shape. Harmless phonies who simply haven’t outgrown their adolescence. But you—”

  “What about me, Harry? You were getting stuck on me, to tell the truth, weren’t you? Say that you weren’t, especially after Tuesday night. When I wept on your manly chest, Harry— remember when I cried?”

  “I’ll get over it, Fern. “I’ll spend a night in a cesspool.”

  “Heck, that’s a pretty flimsy parting line. Too bad you’re not one of those Mickey Spillane detectives—you could shoot me in the belly and be done with it. But that would be murder, wouldn’t it? I mean, since after all, you can’t prove a thing.”

  She laughed again, slipping the robe off her shoulders. She glided to the bed, naked as a reptile. “You will excuse me then, but I do have to get my rest—a girl ought to look her best for the reporters. Yes, my little confession—just an impulse, but what a brilliant one. I wonder how many copies it will sell—a million, do you think? Surely, at least a million.”

  The light snapped off, and I heard sheets rustling, with sounds like nuts being shelled. “Drop in again, why don’t you—sometime when you’re feeling a little more friendly. I might even autograph a copy for you—’To helpless Harry, who had no proof.’”

  I did shoot her—through her twisted, malevolent brain, with every bullet in the Magnum, savoring each separate recoil as it jarred my arm to the shoulder—but only in my imagination, only in my imagination.

  “Good night, lover,” she said.

  CHAPTER 30

  There was a Benzedrine inhaler in the bathroom. I crushed the gummy substance out of the tube with my heel, then chewed on the stuff as long as I could stand the taste. Dana was torpid from the barbiturates, and I had all the capacity for exertion of an anemic amoeba, but I wasn’t going to leave her in that apartment.

  It took a glass of water in her face to get her into a sitting position, and she kept mumbling something incoherent about San Francisco while I yanked the red sheath over her head. We went down into the street like walking wounded, but nobody asked us how the rest of our boys were doing at the front. She was out cold again the minute she hit the car.

  I double-parked and left her for the five minutes it took to get some response from Joey Pringle, a hophead musician who lived on the third floor of my building. Between the pair of us we carted her up the one flight. Pringle didn’t ask what was going on either, but only because at 7 A.M. he’d be operating on two hours’ sleep at best, all of it induced intravenously.

  I showered, worked myself into fresh clothes, then reheated yesterday’s coffee and forced down two cups. After that I got Dana stripped again and between the sheets. I did it with all the jaded worldliness of an aging gynecologist. I made the precinct house just as Lieutenant Vasella was finishing his night’s tour.

  If I sounded as inane to him as I did to myself, he didn’t show it. It took the two patrolmen still posted at Audrey Grant’s apartment exactly sixteen minutes to locate the three manuscript pages under the base of a lamp. Their existence proved nothing about Fern’s guilt, but at least suggested that my story wasn’t sheer fantasy. The downtown lab had no sizable samples of either Fern’s or Lucien Vaulking’s handwriting with which to compare
them, but within thirty minutes more Vasella was informed that the writing had been done long after Vaulking’s death, in fact most likely within the last seventy-two hours.

  A car was dispatched to my office with instructions for finding my Grant file under S, like in General Sherman, which I actually should have been asked to turn over earlier. Central Identification had Fern’s prints on record, because of secretarial work she had once done for an insurance firm which registered all employees, but we learned quickly that they matched none of those on the newspaper clippings or the envelope in which Grant had received them. What prints there were belonged to Grant himself, his lawyer Fosburgh, two mail clerks, a letter carrier and me.