Epitaph

by James Siegel

  He walked down the same crowded streets, even recognized a few of the Chinese merchants, Korean fruit sellers, and Cambodian newsstand vendors. Old friends now, all of them. Even his fellow pedestrians seemed, well, a little pedestrian now, a little familiar, save for the fact they seemed to be moving a bit faster than before, as if they were running from the thunderstorm that was hiding somewhere in the inky clouds and cloying humidity. There were no shadows today, William noticed, but there should have been. Twelve shadows at least, maybe more.

  Arthur Shankin. He'd lived in a modest building of red brick. A woman lay out in front on a green lawn chair; maybe once there'd even been a green lawn to go with it, but not now. It was all dirt and crabgrass now.

  Yes, the woman said, she'd known Mr. Shankin. But no, she hadn't known him well. Try Mr. Greely, she said, Mr. Greely on the second floor-he and Mr. Shankin were friends.

  He checked for Mr. Greely's name on the mailboxes- 2E-then went up the elevator.

  "Glad to see you," Mr. Greely said, when he opened the door, a man of about eighty with a fairly nasty squint, "who are you?"

  William explained: lawyer, inheritance, last address.

  "Of course," Mr. Greely said. "Anything I can do."

  Mr. Greely was, of course, his first stop of the day, but as it turned out he could've closed shop right then and there. For though he would make twelve other stops that day, twelve destinations on the William Express that would leave him tired and very wet-the rainstorm was but minutes away-he would learn no more and no less than he would from Mr. Greely. For each stop had its own Mr. Greely-the woman next door, the man downstairs, the friend down the hall, and the story Mr. Greely told would turn out to be pretty much the story they all told.

  "He went to Florida," Greely said, "some time ago."

  "Do you know where? Did he give you an address?"

  "Oh sure." And Greely got it for him. It matched the address in Jean's file to a T, just as the other addresses he'd get from the other Mr. Greelys would too. Which wasn't really surprising, since that's precisely where Jean had gotten them from too.

  "It seems like I did this before," Mr. Greely said, "but I don't know why? You know… deja vu."

  No, William thought, just dejd Jean.

  It was Florida all over again. For he'd arrive at a place only to discover that Jean had been there first. He was still working backup, still following taillights in the dark.

  "Do you keep in touch, Mr. Greely?" he asked. "Do you ever hear from Mr. Shankin?"

  "Not really. He sent me a postcard after he got down there. The weather's fine, he said. The weather's fine and I'm fine."

  "Was he?"

  "Was he what?" Mr. Greely squinted at him.

  "Fine?"

  "I suppose."

  "Did you answer him back?"

  "What for? He knows what the weather's like up here."

  William didn't know if Mr. Greely was trying to be funny or just was-funny in the head maybe, no one home, bats in the belfry, all those quaint terms for something so clearly terrifying. But he thought maybe Mr. Greely was neither-just funny by accident, like someone who's always slipping on banana peels.

  "Is that why Mr. Shankin went down to Florida? For the weather?"

  "I suppose."

  "And you haven't heard from him since?"

  "Nope."

  "Why?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why do you think you haven't heard from him? After all, you were friends, weren't you? Wouldn't a friend write you again?"

  Mr. Greely didn't seem to understand.

  "I never thought about it. He's down in Florida. I'm here."

  "Yes, you're here." But he's not in Florida, William wanted to add. I've been there, and he's not. You're here but he's nowhere. He's missing. But he didn't say that, any of it. Instead he asked: "Do you still have the postcard?"

  "I suppose."

  "Could I see it?"

  "What for?"

  "An example of his handwriting. A formality where large sums are concerned." Funny how lies came so easily now, lies that you speak out loud as opposed to lies that you tell yourself. He'd always been good at one, now he was good at the other, a complete liar now, becoming more polished with each "lawyer," "inheritance," and "sum."

  "Arthur's gonna be rich, that it?"

  "You never know."

  "Hmmm…" Mr. Greely murmured, as if that explained a lot. Then he went looking for the postcard, which he returned with in his hand; he blew a layer of dust off it.

  "All yours," he said.

  Mr. Greely was right. The weather's lovely, Mr. Shankin had written. And I'm doing fine. That, more or less, was it. It was postmarked Florida-dated ten years ago almost to the day.

  "How rich is Arthur going to be?" he asked.

  William ignored him; he had another question.

  "Mr. Greely, Arthur have any family?"

  "Don't think so."

  "There was just you then. And he sent you a postcard and he said I'm fine."

  "Right," Mr. Greely said. "So how rich exactly…?"

  But William was already on his way.

  The other Mr. Greelys:

  Where Mrs. Timinsky used to live-stop two on the Express to Nowhere-it was the lady in the next apartment over. One Mrs. Goldblatt, who offered him tea and cookies and two pillows which she insisted he put under his ass when he sat down on the couch.

  She'd gotten a postcard too, but she didn't have it anymore and didn't remember what it said.

  "It's the best thing for her," she told William.

  He didn't understand.

  "Florida. The very best thing."

  Mrs. Timinsky had suffered from a liver disorder, she went on to say. Not to mention psoriasis, palsy, lumbago, and a general lack of anything to do.

  "Florida's got lots of elderly people," she said, as if she was talking about people she had absolutely nothing in common with, though she couldn't have been younger than seventy. Well, age is a state of mind, they say. What they don't say is what that state of mind is exactly, which is generally poor, generally, unrelentingly miserable, as a state, akin to, say, the State of Nevada, half of which was bombed out and chock-full of radioactive half lives. Mrs. Goldblatt however was still in the state of cheeriness, or perhaps in the state of self-denial, just passing through on the way to the state of lunacy where Mr. Koppleman now resided.

  "She'll fit right in there," Mrs. Goldblatt said, still talking about the State of Florida.

  "She went there for her health, then?"

  "Thank you very much-you look in good health too." Mrs. Goldblatt, apparently, was blessed with the one ailment that came in handy in the New York of the late twentieth century: encroaching deafness. William finished off his lemon butter cookies and his cup of tea; he left. And so it went. Halfway between Mrs. Goldblatt and the place where Mrs. Winters used to live, the rainstorm hit. It came like a slap in the middle of a quiet conversation, followed by deathly silence, then tears. Marble-sized raindrops knocked him back and forth across the sidewalk; he began to stagger. When he finally reached Mrs. Winters's old haunt, a boarding house not unlike the one he lived in, he was very cold, very wet, but also, he supposed, very pitiable. And pity wasn't too bad a thing to have going for him, he thought-it was, after all, a staple of beggars, and what was he but a beggar in nice clothes. Okay-decent clothes, clothes just this side of Goodwill. He'd picked Mrs. Winters third because of his hunch that if there was a Mr. Greely here, his name would be Raoul, instead of say, Sam. It was. He was, as it turned out, the landlord. Sure, he remembered Doris, he said, as he worked on a washing machine in the basement. Doris Winters. Nice old lady. She'd lived there for years. Then? She took off to Florida. He was a sort of friend of hers? No, not really. But they kept in touch? No, not really. Never wrote her a postcard? Not once? Well, now that he mentioned it, yes, once. A Christmas card. Any answer? No, now that he mentioned it, no answer. Not that he remembered, anyway. Though he did remember someone els
e asking him about Mrs. Winters-friend of his, perhaps? Perhaps. Washing machines were the worst, he said. Can't fix them. Never could. Any idea why she went to Florida in the first place? In the first place, it wasn't his business. In the second place-he thought her doctor had recommended it. That's what he thought. And any family to speak of? There was family. But not to speak of. A kid on the West Coast somewhere, maybe some grandkids too. A Christmas card every year and maybe they called her if she was lucky. Family, but not to speak of. So she didn't. Just another old person with nobody. He told Raoul thank you. He told him he'd been very helpful. If you say so, Raoul said, going back to his washing machine. William went back to the street.

  SEVENTEEN

  A lawyer William used to see a great deal of once said to him: Never ask a question you don't know the answer to. Not in court and not in bed either. Especially in bed.

  For the rest of the day then, William felt like a lawyer. A good one too. He asked questions but he already knew the answers, and by heart. The questions differed a little, here and there they did, but the answers were always the same. It was like interrogating the same witness twelve times, or perhaps twelve different witnesses, but to the same crime. The problem was, of course, that no one had actually seen a crime.

  All they'd seen were twelve old people going off to Florida-innocuous enough, because they'd seen that every day. They didn't know that they'd never-with the exception, of course, of Mr. Koppleman-arrived there, that when they'd disappeared from the White Pages, they'd disappeared from the earth. If you were headed to the dog races, the woman had said to him, you took the wrong turn. Only there were twelve wrong turns here, and at the end of the street, something waiting.

  Something that had taken all of them, but spared one.

  Why were you spared? Jean had asked Koppleman. Why you?

  Okay, this was something Jean had known, something Florida had just affirmed for him. You find what you look for. And he had, he had.

  And now, sitting in his room at the end of the day, William was trying to find something too. A beginning.

  Because that's where you begin. At the beginning.

  It was still raining out. The sound was almost numbing; on another day, in another life-for instance, last week's-he might have slept to its simple rhythm. Dreamed about Rachel, wrestled a few demons, sawed a few logs. But this was this week, and this week he was William the Conquerer as opposed to William the Meek, William with the emphasis on will. In that he had one, in that it had allowed him to get on a plane to Florida and do a little old-fashioned gumshoeing in Flushing. Okay, the humidity in the room felt a little like tension- yes it did. His upper lip was stained with sweat, his palms were a trifle slippery. His shoulder was crying uncle- that too. But here he was, present and accounted for.

  Here he was with two lists spread out in front of him- one with the names of the unspared-the unspared and Koppleman, the other with the ambiguous numbers in Jean's file, trying like mad to make a connection.

  It was Koppleman, however, that kept taking the brunt of his scrutiny. The odd man out. And it was the odd that gave you an even chance, wasn't it. Like those grade school primers where five farm animals were followed by a clock. Which one didn't belong? Which one and why? The truth was, he hadn't been very good at those kind of questions. He was too left brain, maybe-he kept thinking the clock was too easy, that there were clocks on farms, that it might be the pig or the chicken. He hadn't been good at questions like that, and he still wasn't.

  If Koppleman stood out, it was hard to see why, maybe even impossible. Beside each name he'd listed all that he'd learned about that particular person. They were all old; they'd all gone to Florida; they all had either no family or none worth mentioning; they'd all disappeared. Excepting Koppleman. The similarities ended there.

  Some of them were Jewish. Some of them weren't. Some were born abroad. Most weren't. Some had sent postcards. Some hadn't.

  Now the postcards, here's where things got interesting. He'd been able to collect two more-one from a next- door neighbor of Mr. Waldron's, the other from Sarah Dillon's companion-a spinsterish woman of fifty-five who'd lived below Mrs. Dillon and had, for a salary of twenty-five dollars a week, cleaned, cooked, and cared for her.

  At first glance the postcards were entirely ordinary. One was of Miami Beach circa 1960. Two were of Sea World- Shamu and a couple of dazed-looking sea lions. Even what was written on them was ordinary, as dull and predictable as most postcards are. But here, ladies and gentlemen, was what was extraordinary. Ready, sitting up now? What was extraordinary, extraordinarily strange- okay, a little redundant, but so what-and extraordinarily chilling, was that the dull and predictable things Arthur Shankin had written to Mr. Greely were the same dull and predictable things Joseph Waldron had written to his next-door neighbor and the very same dull and predictable things Sarah Dillon had written to her companion. Not sort of the same. Not kind of the same. The same. Exactly the same. Word for word. Period for period.

  The weather's lovely. And I'm doing fine.

  Times three.

  And yet the handwriting was different on each card- in fact, both Mrs. Dillon's companion and Mr. Waldron's next-door neighbor had sworn the handwriting genuine. The message was the same, but the authors weren't.

  What to do. Call Ripley maybe and have it put under Strangest Coincidences. Call Mr. Brickman and listen to everything he didn't want to know about Mr. Wilson's funeral. Call Elsa the She Wolf of the SS and pay homage to her tattoo. Call a good private investigator.

  Call it quits.

  After all, William the Meek would be delighted by that, might even throw a party and invite the whole house in for cheese dip and Mantovani. This William the Con- querer fellow was getting annoying lately, was making him go on trips and stay in broiling hotel rooms and talk to all sorts of people he didn't like. He was making him puzzle things out, and he wasn't good at that stuff; why you had to spell things out for this guy, fling open the curtains at the Par Central Motel and say see before he even suspected his wife was employing the services of the Three Eyes Detective Agency on a regular basis. And it's not like he got around so good anymore either, he had some physical limitations here, he had pain. Maybe calling it quits was just what the doctor ordered.

  But William the Conquerer would have none of that- he could tell; he'd heard the arguments but he wasn't buying. After all, he was still staring down at the lists- he hadn't put them away, they were still there. He was stymied by one, fine, but he'd gone on to the other- those numbers, which despite a modest proclivity for mathematics, were proving hard to figure.

  He'd at least, okay the very least, matched a person to the names, but he'd matched the numbers to zilch, to the sorriest number there was, to zero. Even their appearance had him stumped; the names and addresses had been as neat and orderly as wedding invitations, but the numbers had been written down haphazardly, as if Jean had been jotting down the license plates of a speeding car. That, of course, had been his first guess: license plates-buzzzz, oh, we're sorry, care to try again? (They were too long for license plates.) Okay, zip codes. Buzzz. Telephone numbers. Buzzz. Social Security numbers. Buzzz. Credit card numbers. Buzzz. And they weren't passport numbers, driver's license numbers, model numbers, combination numbers, lottery numbers, prison numbers, or even Numbers numbers. He knew only that they were annoying numbers.

  The phone rang.

  William stared at it as if it were something strange, a meteorite perhaps, a moon rock, perhaps even a blue moon rock, for that's about as often as it rang these days-once in a blue moon. And when it did, more often than not it was a wrong number, the caller embarrassed by his mistake, William embarrassed at knowing it before even picking up the phone.

  But this time, it wasn't a wrong number.

  "Is this, uh… William?" the caller said.

  William said that it was.

  "But who's this?" he asked, thinking that it was probably someone trying to sell him a subscription, or
a time share in the Poconos, or even that it was someone looking for William, but not this William. That's what he thought, that's what he would have bet on-but conforming to his track record at every track in the metropolitan area, he was wrong. In fact, he could have guessed all day, and guessed all night, and taken a slow boat to China and back and continued guessing, and he wouldn't have come close. The fact was, the person on the other end of the line was the very last person on earth he would've expected. At least, one of the twelve last people on earth. Mainly because he didn't think that person was actually still on the earth.

  "This is Arthur," the caller said. "Arthur Shankin. I've heard you've been looking for me."

  "Yes," William said, once he could form the words and actually get them out, "I have."

  Yes. I have.

  Three small words, but under the circumstances, a speech. I have been looking for you, I've been looking for you in Florida, and I've been looking for you here, and I didn't find you and I thought you were dead, you and eleven others of you. Of course, he didn't say that, or anything close to that. What he said was: "How did you get my number?" "It's in the book." "Yeah. But who-?" "What kind of inheritance?" Mr. Shankin interrupted. "A relative or something? What about it, am I rich or what?" "Mr. Shankin, is this a local call?" "That's right." "So you're not in Florida anymore?" "Not unless Florida's local." "But you were in Florida?" "Sure. Why?" "You sent a postcard to a friend. Mr. Greeman-" "Greely." "Of course, Greely, and you put a return address on it." "So?" "That address doesn't exist." "So I made a mistake. What's the difference. Do I have money coming to me or don't I…?" "How long you been back?" "Oh… six months I suppose." "Six months-and not even a hello to your old friend Mr. Greely?" "As a matter of fact, I said hello to my old friend Mr. Greely today. And old friend Mr. Greely told me about new friend William. He said you were a lawyer and that you had a nice present for me. An inheritance. So what about it, what about this inheritance…?" "There isn't any." "Come again?" "I'm not a lawyer. There isn't any inheritance." "Okay. There isn't any inheritance. You just like to tell people there's an inheritance. Why do you do that exactly?"