Epitaph

by James Siegel

  "It's just a story I made up. I needed to find you. I have."

  "Find me. What for?"

  "For the same reason Jean Goldblum wanted to find you. Did he?"

  "Who's Jean Goldblum?"

  "Guess not."

  "Who's Jean Goldblum? And who are you? You're not a lawyer, fine. Who are you?"

  "Could we meet someplace and talk about it?" He wanted to see him in the flesh; he suddenly felt a real need to do that.

  "What's wrong with talking on the phone?"

  Yes, what was wrong with talking on the phone? People talked on the phone every day, all sorts of things got done on the phone. And it was raining cats and dogs outside, that too. It's just that he'd been out chasing phantoms in places called Magnolia Drive and Coral Avenue and Beaumont Street, and now he wanted to press some flesh.

  "It's a little complicated, Mr. Shankin. I've got a lot of questions."

  "Oh yeah?" A drawn-in breath, a slight grunt, William could almost hear his fingers drumming on an armrest. "Okay-but you'll have to come here-I've got a bum leg. You want to talk to me about something, you've got to come here."

  "Sure. Where are you?"

  "Ten-thirty-two Cherry Avenue in Whitestone. Know where that is? The house at the end of the block. You know where Whitestone is?"

  "Yeah, I'll find it. In an hour?"

  "Okay, in an hour. Why not?"

  Yeah, why not.

  William put away his lists and tucked away his theories, each and every one of them, from the half-baked ones to the seriously delusional ones. Perhaps he wouldn't need to search for a beginning after all. Perhaps he was being given the ending. Maybe he'd been on the proverbial wild- goose chase and perhaps everyone had known it but him. Arthur Shankin was alive and well and living in White- stone. Maybe they all were-maybe they all were alive and well and living somewhere-in Whitestone or Florida or Pango Pango. Maybe Jean had just been an old man telling tales and he'd just been an old man listening to them. The truth was, he felt foolish, as foolish as old fools are supposed to feel he guessed, which is very foolish. Maybe it was time to put an end to it, to order the cheese and crackers and lay on the Mantovani. So let's.

  He called a cab company; he was becoming quite the spendthrift these days, plane rides and taxis and all in the same week. Then again, it wasn't every day someone came back from the dead-the last time it happened they'd gone and started a religion about it. Besides, from the sound of it, the rain had gotten nastier-not just cats and dogs anymore, but alley cats and rottweilers maybe.

  He heard the beep of the Dial-A-Cab just as he was leaving his room. Mr. Leonati opened his door and peered out at him.

  "Off again?" he whispered.

  "Just for an hour."

  "It's raining," he said.

  "Yeah?"

  "Where's your umbrella?"

  Good question. Where was his umbrella? Better yet, did he actually have an umbrella, or did he just used to have one but not any longer?

  "Take mine," Mr. Leonati said, ever generous with his suitcases, travel tips, and now umbrellas. "Five bucks from a guy on the corner."

  "Thanks."

  When William finally arrived downstairs, then finally opened and closed his five-dollar umbrella, and finally crawled into the backseat of the taxi, it looked very much like William was finally going to become the victim of urban angst. One of those unfortunate people who happen to get on the nerves or get on the bad side of or just get in the way of a seriously pissed-off member of a service industry. The taxi driver was upset with him, with him or with his day or his job or with all of the above. He glared at William and cursed at him in an unfamiliar language, Turkish maybe or Russian or Romanian-something, anyway, that was Greek to him. You couldn't mistake the tone though: The tone said if I had a gun I would shoot you with it. It made William wonder if they put those bulletproof dividers in taxis to protect the drivers from the passengers or vice versa. He was glad, anyway, that it was there.

  He told him the address, which seemed to calm him down a little, or at least shut him up. The rain swept across the windshield like runoff from a flood, bubbling up against the back window like seltzer. The cab didn't so much as drive its way there as slosh its way there, through knee-high puddles black as oil. And the humidity seemed to have followed him from Florida; it felt like he was pasted to the seat.

  "Cherry Avenue," the driver said after fifteen minutes or so, or actually Cherkavy or Sherrynue or something anyway that sounded enough like Cherry Avenue for William to think that it actually was. William paid him, making sure to leave a healthy tip, so that he might stay that way too. He got out.

  Right into a puddle. It was up to his ankles and surprisingly cold. He dodged the cab's ensuing wake, for that was the only word to describe it, and opened up Mr. Leonati's umbrella again.

  Ten-thirty-two Cherry Avenue was at the end of the block. It was too dark to make out much of it, but the address was clearly decipherable on the tin mailbox by the garden gate.

  William walked into the garden-arborvitaes and aza- leas-and up to the front door. He knocked.

  "Come in," he heard Mr. Shankin say.

  William opened the door onto pitch blackness.

  "Let me turn the light on," Mr. Shankin said. "Come on in."

  William stepped in, and then remembered, just a bit embarrassed now, that he'd forgotten to close Mr. Leonati's umbrella. Which, as it turned out, might have been bad manners but wasn't too bad a thing. After all, according to those who would later piece it together, it saved his life.

  EIGHTEEN

  Someone had been walking their dog, a gray Chihuahua named Mitzi, extremely fussy about where it deposited its Chihuahua-sized excrement. It liked to deposit it after ten, and it liked to deposit it on Cherry Avenue-just about where the last house stood, because its owner let Mitzi do it on the lawn there. No one ever complained because no one lived in that house anymore. Because of the fire. Which had gutted its insides and left a hole about thirty feet deep.

  Which is why, when the owner of the gray Chihuahua saw William walk in the front door, she thought that man must be lost or that man must be mistaken or just that man must be crazy. And went off to investigate. Which, like the open umbrella, was a good thing-for that too helped save William's life.

  The umbrella first-five dollars off some guy on the corner-but in its own fashion, sturdy enough. Which, as it turned out, it had to be.

  For when William took his second step into the house, he thought, for the briefest moment, that he was stepping onto the softest carpet. Carpet soft as air, which unfortunately, it was. He fell-just like in those dreams of falling, where it seems to take forever to reach the bottom, as if you're suspended by parachutes. In this case he was suspended by Mr. Leonati's five-dollar umbrella, which, half closed when he stepped into air, sprouted into full flower a quarter into his descent and helped, ever so slightly, but ever so critically, to deaden his fall. He landed with a thud on a pile of mud and lumber. And mercifully, blacked out.

  And if it wasn't for the owner of Mitzi the Chihuahua, who arrived at the door about a minute later, he no doubt would have stayed that way. Permanently. She, of course, couldn't see anything at first. But she'd seen him go in and she hadn't seen him come out, which meant there was only one place he could've gone: down. She left, yapping Chihuahua in tow, to find, one: flashlight. And, two: husband. Which, by the way, allowed the inhospitable Mr. Shankin to leave unnoticed. That, however, was figured out later when William was bandaged up and conscious. For the moment, he was neither.

  The owner of the yapping Mitzi-whose toilet routine was in the process of being royally screwed up and was letting everybody but everybody know it-returned not only with flashlight and husband, but husband's friend as well, both of whom thought she was crazy and both of whom said so. But when she shone her flashlight into the pit, revealing the what-must-have-been-ghastly sight, they apologized, sort of, which means they stopped calling her crazy bitch and starting callin
g the fire department.

  It took six firemen to get him out, two to lower themselves down into the hole attached to safety lines, two to pull him out-tightly strapped to a canvas stretcher- and two to complain about it. About the heat in there, about the rain out there, about the spaced-out geezer down there. All in all, they would have rather been fighting fires. Anyway, William slowly surfaced, like the disappeared person in a magic act come back to the stage, still, by the way, mercifully unconscious.

  Mercifully, because the fall had broken two ribs, one navicular bone, and one toe, not to mention given him a nasty bruise on the head. This they ascertained at Booth Memorial Hospital after a half a dozen X rays. Which is just about where he woke up. And screamed. They quickly shot him with painkiller and back he went, back to dreamland.

  They never took a police report. He told them-the doctors and admitting administrators-that he'd gotten the wrong house, that's all; he'd gotten confused, entered the wrong house, and paid for it. Honest. One look at the birth date on his out-of-date driver's license and they had no trouble believing him. They asked him a lot of questions having to do with his memory and a few more about Farmer Brown having two dozen eggs and needing to give half a dozen to one neighbor and two or four or a dozen more to his other. Farmer Brown was one generous farmer, William thought. At the rate he was giving out eggs, he'd be on a federal subsidy program in no time. Perhaps if he, William, didn't have Alzheimer's, Farmer Brown did. Sooner or later they were going to find him sleeping with his cattle. Or just walking into the wrong farmhouse in the middle of the night and knocking himself unconscious.

  The question, the real question here, the question they should have been asking if they'd known enough to ask it, was why William was lying. That was an interesting one, absolutely. After all, he could have told them the literal truth, that he was in the middle of an investigation and that he was just trying to get to the bottom of things-ha, ha. Or he could have told them a half-truth, or maybe a quarter or sixteenth-which would have merely mentioned a particular or two maybe: phone call, taxi, and free fall. But he didn't. Maybe he didn't because they'd really think he was crazy then-who's the old guy think he is, Mickey Spillane? Or maybe he didn't because he really didn't have that much to tell anyway. Much that made any sense at least. Or maybe he didn't because he was determined to finish it just the way he'd started it. By himself. Those were good reasons, each and every one of them. Sure they were. They just didn't happen to be the right reasons. The actual reason he hadn't told them the truth had nothing to do with finishing what he'd started, because it had everything to do with his recent decision to not finish at all. His very recent decision. So recent, in fact, he'd barely had time to tell himself. Himself was pleased though. The road had been exhilarating, at the very least interesting, but he was getting off. In fact, there was the exit sign straight up ahead.

  Someone had tried to kill him. He'd gotten too close to something or someone and they'd tried to kill him. That might've made him defiant, or real determined, or plain stubborn, or just pissed off, but what it actually made him was scared to death. The real world had given him back his fear of death. So okay, he'd keep it. Besides, he owed nothing to nobody-certainly not to Jean, whom he hadn't worked with in years and hadn't liked when he had, and certainly not to those twelve old people who'd gone to Florida by way of the Bermuda Tri- angle-none of whom he'd seen, ever.

  William the Conquerer was going back into mothballs. William the Meek was now taking calls.

  One from Jilly-all the boys down at OTB say hello, and don't worry, your job's still waiting here for you when you get back on your feet. One from Mr. Brickman-you sound groggy, William, just wanted to say I'll be stopping by.

  And making calls too. At least one call, just to tidy things up a little. A week after his admittance, wrapped in a soft cocoon of bandages and morphine-induced haze, he rang up Mr. Greely.

  "No," Mr. Greely said, "no one called me. But I put out the word."

  "The word?" thinking that Mr. Greely sounded like a missionary.

  "Sure. The word. I said you were looking for Arthur. You understand, in case anybody heard from him."

  "Who did you put out the word to?"

  "Who remembers. You know, people. In the building. Whatever. So did you find him or didn't you?"

  "Didn't."

  "Too bad."

  "Yeah."

  End of inquiry, end of the road. He owed nothing to nobody.

  So he kept reminding himself, as the nurses dressed and redressed his bandages. The neck bone's connected to the chest bone, he sang in his head, the chest bone's connected to the rib bone, the rib bone's connected to a twenty- four-volt battery that was mercilessly sending rivers of pain down his body. That's what it felt like. Question: How do you make your arthritis feel better? Answer: You fall down a thirty-foot hole and smash your ribs to bits. Which guarantees that you won't even notice your arthritis; arthritis, what arthritis? Old bones, that's what the nurses said he had. And old bones take a long time to mend. He needed time to recuperate-that's what the rest of his life was perfect for. If he needed purpose, he'd found one. To mend.

  And yet he kept thinking about Jean. How he didn't owe him anything. It was the shots that did it, he thought. Painkillers, mind-numbers, narcotics of one form or another, they kept him dreaming. One minute he was stuck painfully in the present, the whoosh of the air conditioner, the wheeze of the bronchial patient in the next bed, the whine of the TV And he did mean whine. My Wife Doesn't Dress Sexy Enough. My Wife Dresses Like A Slut. My Husband's A Drag. My Husband's In Drag. She's Vain. He's Stupid. She Eats Too Much. He Cheats Too Much. A nonstop litany of peeves, complaints, potshots, and outright humiliations. One minute he was there, wondering if Caught My Husband Wearing My Shoes should go a little easier on Thinks Wife Should Share. The next minute he was back fifty years or so and staring at Lost My Soul In Nazi Death Camp, at Jean, for the first time.

  It was Santini who first brought Jean in. William had just left Mutual of Omaha-five years of being a claims investigator and he'd had it. Santini had left over a year ago-or been asked to. Something about a fraudulent claim that he'd either engineered, overlooked, or just plain screwed up. It didn't matter to William. They'd worked together a couple of times over the years and they'd gotten along fine. So they were going to start a detective agency together. Which is what ex-claims investigators did in those days if they didn't stay for the gold watch. William and Santini, the Two Eyes. Except Santini had somebody else he wanted to bring aboard.

  Jean was a charity case. Which isn't what Santini said- but is what he was. What he said was that Jean had been doing the legwork for a highly disreputable agency down- town-highly disreputable in Santini's book being a euphemism for highly successful. Highly successful being the exact opposite of his recent forays into betting the over- unders in college basketball, bets that he'd placed with a certain Mr. Klein. Who was highly successful, not to mention highly fortunate, having sat out the Holocaust comfortably ensconced in a 32nd Street brownstone, and not somewhere in Poland like his late uncle Lou. Which, the truth be told, made him feel just a little guilty, which caused him to actually chair a number of very legitimate refugee programs after the war. America, which was feeling just a bit guilty itself, had finally opened its doors to a number of Jews who were still breathing. Not a large number, not a number with a lot of zeros behind it, but a decent number. And a suddenly decent Klein was there waiting for them, with warm clothing and hot soup. And in Jean's case, a job. Jean, whom he'd found with just the shirt on his back, that faded snapshot in his pocket, and some ugly blue numbers on his arm. Not to mention a chip the size of Mauthausen on his shoulder. Mr. Klein had apparently taken to Jean, to his story anyway, which was of someone who'd actually tried to do something in a time and place where everyone mostly did nothing. Everyone, that is, who wasn't committing crimes against humanity on a regular basis. Jean had helped smuggle Jews out of occupied France, onto ships in Marseilles
and then south, to Argentina maybe. But Jean had been seized, been tortured, and nearly been killed. That he wasn't, that he'd survived all that, was something of a miracle. That San- tini was into Mr. Klein for four figures was something of a pain. Giving Jean gainful employment was something of a solution.

  Not that Santini had been thrilled about it, at least, not at first, especially after they'd received a notice from Bellevue-or at least Jean had, a notice which had somehow been intercepted by Santini, who'd placed it on William's desk with a mournful look of dread.

  "Jesus," he told William. "The guy's wacko."

  "What?"

  "Jean. He's nuts. They had him in Bellevue. Jesus Christ. Look at the notice, for Chrissakes. Due for a follow-up. Do you see that? We've got a nut on our hands."

  Which was true and not true. The actual story, the one Santini pieced together later after he'd paid Mr. Klein a visit, was a lot less alarming. All survivors in this particular refugee program had been offered psychiatric therapy; Jean had apparently accepted it. Which didn't much mollify Santini any-crazy was crazy. What did mollify Santini was that Jean began to show how good he was, that his hard-won knowledge of the darker impulses of humankind was paying dividends. Jean wasn't making any friends but he was making lots of clients. So while crazy was crazy-money was money. His place was secure, even though one of the friends he wasn't making, was William.

  Though William, of course, had tried. He'd greeted the frail, wasted soul before him with pity and been met squarely with a roundhouse right of scorn. Of course, he understood-Mauthausen and all. He'd tried flattery too, told Jean how proud he was of what Jean had attempted, told him how special heroism was in a world with so little of it. Jean told him to shut up. If Jean was a hero, he was a reluctant one. He'd seen the real human spirit at work; he'd seen it man an assembly line of death with crackerjack efficiency. Heroism-he wanted no part of it. And he wanted no part of William either-William, whom he saw as just one more bleeding heart. And maybe, William thought now, stuck back in the present with its wheezes, whooshes, and whines, he was right.