Epitaph For A Dead Beat

by David Markson

  The original message form for Grant’s telegram had been picked up at a midtown Western Union office, but this also bore no prints of any interest. It had been filled out laboriously in left-handed block printing by a right-handed person, and the line requiring identification of the sender listed the name R. E. Lee. The civil service intellect. No clerk had been alert enough to take a second glance at someone who had appended that signature to a communication addressed to one U. S. Grant.

  The knife which killed Audrey Grant had been handled with cloth, and there was nothing which could establish Fern’s presence in the death room. The same was true at Grants. A check of the Hudson River near his apartment was already underway in an attempt to turn up the third murder weapon— a .38—and sewers in his neighborhood were being dredged also.

  I learned most of this before ten o’clock, by which time the amphetamine and lack of sleep had me flighty. Vasella brought in an M.E. to look me over and the man decided I had a fracture of one rib, the obvious contusions but no damaged bones in my face, and only a lingering trace of my concussion. He taped me up and Vasella told me to get some rest.

  Dana was still drugged. She tossed for half a minute when I woke her, then did a double take about the unfamiliar bedroom. She closed her eyes again, turning away with a moan. “Oh, heavenly damn,” she said. “Dana, you done did it again.”

  She did another confused shudder when she got a look at my face. “You didn’t done it either,” I told her. She stared at me while I gave her the shortest condensation which would make sense, sitting up with a blanket around her bruised shoulders. I asked her if she could think of anything which might help, but she could only shake her head.

  “Boy, I guess I owe you some thanks for getting me out of there. Leave it to perceptive O’Dea to pick the right girl to run to in an emergency.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  She fingered one of the welts on her arm. “Delicate to the touch, hung over and still woozy from those pills—otherwise downright jovial.” She glanced toward her clothes, then smiled. “I suppose it would be sort of superfluous to ask you to leave the room while I get dressed, wouldn’t it?”

  “Hell, there’s no need to scram—the couch is okay for me.”

  “Oh, stop. You look like you fell under a tractor.”

  I grinned. “I’ll tell you what. They strapped about sixty yards of adhesive around my middle—I’m as safe as Don McGruder, if you want to take a chance on moving over half a foot.”

  She lifted an eyebrow impishly. “Like old folks—cohabitation for companionship alone?”

  “At least give it some dignity. Like wounded tigers, sulking—”

  The clock on the dresser said twelve when I woke up. I had the bed to myself, but I saw the red dress still draped over the chair. I was stiff as Nebuchadnezzar’s femur. My robe wasn’t behind the door so I limped out front in my shorts and found her wearing it, reading something in my big chair.

  “You’re a good-looking girl,” I told her. “You were pretty drunk at that party.”

  “I’m a shopworn Greenwich Village slut with acute dislocation of all functioning parts,” she said. “I’m twenty-six. I fell in love with a guy when I was nineteen, the way it only happens once—a beautiful goddam scatterbrained hunk of test pilot who got himself disintegrated over some salt flats exactly one year to the day after we were married. Sex was the first thing I tried, then dope. I haven t quite abandoned either, but I guess I prefer Scotch. Although it’s funny—I found where you cache the booze a good two hours ago, and I haven’t had a drop. Did Fern really kill them, Harry?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll make you some breakfast, or whatever you call it at midnight. Bacon and eggs?”

  “Four eggs. We did sulk at that, didn’t we?”

  “You kissed me once—on the ear. And then you started muttering. Oh, sure, I meant to ask you about that. You were insisting that somebody named Bowman had hit you in the head with a baseball. Do you often have delusions of grandeur— I mean mixing yourself up with Ducky Medwick?”

  “For crying out loud, how would you know who—?”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Older brothers. The louts used to beat it into me. Who do you want, the old St. Louis Gas House Gang? Durocher, Medwick, Dean, Rip Collins, Pepper Martin—”

  “Marry me,” I said. “Or at least bring your fielder’s glove and move in for a month or two.”

  “You might just get me to think about it, if you were looking at me instead of the telephone. Call them, for heaven’s sake.”

  I got Vasella, and since I asked he told me he’d slept in the office. “We decided to bring her in,” he said. “About seven o’clock. She denies everything, of course. We checked Peters on that slip—he did tell her about the third killing.”

  I swore. “She booked?”

  “We’d need a good deal more than we have. It’s an odd one, all right—the girl couldn’t be more sure of herself. We allowed her a phone call after a couple of hours, but do you think she contacted a lawyer? She called her publisher. He’s been pacing halls here ever since, trying to make up his mind.”

  “I don’t get you—”

  “Evidently the book is in the process of being shipped all over the country to go on sale in a few days, with her name on the cover. They don’t know whether to back her or not. He’s anxious to hear things from you directly. Oh, yeah, just incidentally, our friend Ephraim Turk finally appeared—walked in on us twenty minutes ago. Considerate of him, we feel.”

  I said I’d be down, then ate and got dressed. Dana had to tuck in my shirt. I told her I’d meant it about sticking around, especially if she didn’t want to spend time alone in the place she’d shared with Audrey. She said she’d stay the rest of the night.

  I saw the publisher. He was five-feet-two at most, forty-five at least, shoulderless, pleatless, impeccable. He carried a severely rolled British umbrella, an alligator attaché case, a Burberry.

  He was what all good little status-seekers get to be when they grow up.

  “I just don t know,” he said. “I’m shocked at the implications. On top of which I was supposed to have dinner this evening with Papa and I had to cancel—”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “I had copies of the novel rushed to a number of critics by special messenger the moment we heard, along with samples of Lucien Vaulkings work for comparison, but no one seems to want to make an unequivocal judgment about authorship. Lionel and VanWyck and Cleanth have phoned saying they have to have more time, and I haven t yet heard from Edmund. Edmund is in Connecticut, of course—”

  “Of course—”

  “It’s like Shakespeare and Bacon, isn’t it? I wonder what Bennett would do in such a situation. Perhaps I’ll call him—”

  He wandered away to call Bennett. He finally decided to call his lawyers also, three or four of them. A soft-spoken, darkly shaven young man named Dunn from the District Attorney’s office had been brought in, and I told the story again for his benefit. I was going to get it by heart, like Galia omnia divisa est. At 1:10 my friend Nate Brannigan appeared from Central Homicide, big and beefy and sinewed like an ox, assuming responsibility probably because no one else could verify my reliability. “What are we doing about long-range background,” he wanted to know. “Her relationship with this man Vaulking— how much did she see him after the divorce? Can we establish that he’d been writing?”

  Floyd Toomey was handling that end of the investigation. He kept looking at me as if he hoped I might disappear into an open manhole. “We’ve dug up four neighbors from when they lived together, captain,” he said. “Two of them claim he worked a lot, all the time.”

  “Would seem to indicate there should have been a script,” Brannigan said.

  “The other two say he never worked at all,” Toomey went on stonily. “Old ladies. Both of them swear he kissed his wife good-by when she went to work in the morning, then used to crawl back into the sack. Had female visitors th
ree or four times a week. They’re both sure Vaulking is roasting in hell—Tin quoting here—while his wife suffered and was a dear.”

  A cop from technical detail came in. They had shut off the plumbing in Fern’s apartment and drained the pipes. No burned papers, no trace of anything that could have been the original sheets in Vaulking’s handwriting. The search for the gun which had killed Grant was also getting nowhere.

  I told it one last time at two o’clock, and this time they had me throw it at Fern. She’d gotten that beauty rest, and after it she’d wriggled into a tight black jersey blouse and a tweed skirt that clung to her hips like the primer coating on an Alfa-Romeo. “You deny having made the confession Mr. Fannin claims you made?” Brannigan asked her.

  “Wouldn’t you?” she said.

  “These pages of your manuscript at Audrey Grant’s—how would Fannin have known about them if you hadn’t told him?”

  “Gracious me, how should I know how he knew? Certainly there can’t be any harm in copying out passages of one’s book as a memento for a dear friend? Does someone have a cigarette, please?”

  She crossed her legs, waiting. The publisher went over, offering her a Pall Mall.

  “Actually there is one thing I might mention,” she decided then. “Embarrassing as it is, it seems pertinent. I spent a certain portion of Tuesday evening in Mr. Fannin’s apartment—after we discovered Josie’s body. It wasn’t really a very successful arrangement. I hadn’t thought of it before, but I imagine the fact that I repudiated Mr. Fannin’s subsequent advances—once I ceased to be vulnerable—might well have some bearing on this curious behavior of his.”

  “You spent—” A gleam had come into the publisher’s eyes. “Where is the press room, please? I should like to announce our position.”

  There weren’t any reporters, whatever his position was. The police had issued no statement except that unnamed suspects were being questioned, and legally Fern was a material witness only. “We’d like to keep it that way for now,” Vasella said reasonably.

  “I’m sorry—but I’ve quite made up my mind. The public must be informed. This girl is innocent. Plagiarism indeed— the whole idea is preposterous—”

  “Thank you, Ernest,” Fern told him.

  “You poor girl, not at all. I can only hope you’ll learn to forgive me for having permitted myself any doubt—”

  She dismissed his chagrin with a gesture, and he turned to motion one of his lawyers to the door. “Phone them,” he said. “All the local papers, the wire services. Yes, don’t forget the wire services—”

  Brannigan kicked a drawer shut with a noise like a truck backfiring, walking out. He couldn’t prevent the calls, and once Fern’s identity was made known the department would have to commit itself about booking her. Every tendon in his thick neck was visible when the publisher stopped him in the doorway.

  “You’ll make arrangements for her release now, naturally? The entire situation is unthinkable, subjecting one of our most talented writers to this indignity—”

  Brannigan brushed the man’s hand from his sleeve as if it were something with eight legs and a sting. “Get me a writ,” he said. “Until then I’d suggest you offer no more advice about police procedure.”

  “Well, I certainly shall, if this is to be your attitude.” The publisher waved off another member of his portable bar association to wake up a judge or two. “Call Learned,” he said.

  “This man Fannin thinks he is some kind of Sampson,” he told reporters thirty minutes later, “out to betray Delilah. A Delilah whose favors he demanded when she was too stricken with remorse to protest—” He glared at me for emphasis, presumably the way he would glare at some untutored wretch of an editor who’d rejected Bishop Sheen and Jim Bishop on the same afternoon. “But the Philistines shall rise up and slay him,” he went on. “Fern Hoerner’s brilliant novel will be on the best-seller lists within the week, and her thousands of readers will vindicate her. As will millions of other fair-minded Americans when they applaud the film for which negotiations are already underway. Indeed, I’m having lunch with Marlon this Tuesday—”

  “Marlon who?” a reporter said.

  They tried to corner me when he’d run dry, but Dunn from the D.A. s office told them they would have to wait. They popped bulbs anyhow, wanting to know who had chewed up my face, and I was just sore enough to say a pimp named Oliver Constantine and to toss in the address. They began yelling for shots of Fern and the publisher insisted that they get them. Brannigan blew up then and restricted everybody to the outer lobby, then locked himself in an office with Vasella, Dunn and two of the publisher s lawyers. That left me eating Camels in a corridor, inconsequential as a raindrop in the Irrawaddy.

  I was hunting for a drinking fountain up a flight when I ran into Ephraim. The police no longer had any interest in him and he was on his way out, looking whipped. He’d put on a suit before he’d turned himself in, cheap cord off the basement racks in a lower-grade shop and far from new. Tin sorry I tried to hit you last night,” he said clumsily.

  “Forget it. Poets are out of my league anyhow.”

  He didn’t smile. “Fern did it—there’s no question?”

  “A question of proof.”

  “Will they prove it?”

  “If they don’t come up with anything besides my version they’ll never get into court to try.”

  “What happens then?”

  I nodded toward the street. “Cocktails with the bookish set. A week from now she’ll be telling Katherine Anne all the clever little things Vladimir said to Tennessee, between canapés.”

  That made twice he didn’t smile, but I decided it wasn’t particularly hilarious. “She won’t go to any cocktail parties,” he said.

  I looked at him with care. “If that means you know something, now’s the time to spill it, Ephraim.”

  The expression on his face was reflective, gloomy, without much meaning. “I don’t know anything,” he said.

  He scuffed away, plunging his hands into his pockets. I scowled after him, then got my drink and went back downstairs myself.

  The conference had broken up and they were letting the publisher play in the schoolyard again, which could only mean one thing. Nothing had developed which had given me any reason not to expect it. He was chatting with Dunn and one of his attorneys, and he broke away from them beaming like a gimcrack Cary Grant when he spotted her.

  “Fern, I’ll escort you home—”

  She was coming out from the rear with Vasella. “Thank you again, Ernest, sincerely. You’ve been great—”

  “Nothing, nothing—”

  “Are there martinis tomorrow, did you say—?”

  “Everyone will be there—J. D., E. B., W H., E. E.—”

  They went by arm in arm, clucking, like a couple of celibate hens who’d just got word about the new rooster. I was a handful of yesterday’s feed they didn’t glance at in passing.

  She had a second thought when she reached the head of the steps. She stopped, said something to the publisher, and then came back.

  “I really must say thanks, Harry, since its worked out so beautifully.” She was cooing. “After all, it was you who put the idea into my head. A mock confession to three murders I didn’t commit—perfectly safe, and probably the greatest publicity idea in the history of literature.”

  “God almighty—”

  “You don’t think it’s possible, do you? In spite of how ripe you were?” She laughed. “Oh, Harry, if you could only have seen the outrage in your face—you were so shocked you even gave these people a more convincing story than I gave you. Ah, well, not that it matters what you believe, not that it matters in the least—”

  Bulbs began to flash in the stairwell. A nerve was jumping in my cheek as I watched her walk out of there.

  CHAPTER 31

  I didn’t tell them. I didn’t say a word. Vasella had gone into the interrogation room, and he and Brannigan were pacing with all the pent frustration of castr
ated steers when I looked in. Brannigan snorted once and told me to go back to bed.

  The Chevy was on Hudson Street. I sat in it for a while, mumbling.

  She’d made up the whole story. That was all I would have needed to mention. Pardon me, fellas, tee-hee-hee, but now she says she was just playing. So she could sell her book, you know? You know? I’m really sorry if I’ve put anybody to any trouble…

  The girl was as nutty as a two-headed gnu.

  Even thinking about it was absurd. There wasn’t anyone else in it. I could run it up and down the flagpole all day, she’d still be the only one to salute.

  Okay, Ebenezer. But what have you got to show proof-wise, like?

  Let the cops prove it. Me, I’d had enough. I was going back to sleep like the captain said.

  Sure I was. So I drove up Hudson two blocks and then parked again. The image in my rear-view mirror was leering at me. I leered back.