David Markson - Epitaph For A Dead Beat

“I thought you’d be out soothing the savage breast,” I told him.

“Oh, man, don’t bring up the subject, huh? That sax of mine is practically atrophied from lack of use. Last I looked there was rust on the reed. I haven’t seen a taxable dollar since Morgenthau stopped signing them.”

He gripped my hand, then went across to a piano bench against a smeared wall. There wasn’t any piano, but that would not mean anything in there. Everything else in the room had come in on the tide after the Lusitania went down.

I’ve got a small fin not going anywhere, Hiram. A girl named—”

“Man, man!” He gestured excitedly, putting a finger to his lips. He cocked an ear toward the back of the apartment. “Like, shhh—”

I grinned, waiting. Finally he nodded. “Pianissimo on the do-re-me, huh? That witch could hear a dime drop in a deep well. A fin for a chick named—?”

“Audrey Grant. You know where she sleeps?”

He chuckled. “You phrase that question ambiguously. If you mean whereabouts does the damsel have a pad she can call her own, sure. If you want to know where she is prone to rest her bones of an evening, I trust you’ve got an hour or two.”

“Easy mark?”

“Every doll to her own debauch. Leave us just say she is wont to wander.”

“What’s the mailing address?”

“East Tenth.” He gave me a number. “This an event sinister, Harry? I would sleep poorly if I thought I was fingering a frail.”

“Nothing important, Hiram. Just family business.”

“Tame, tame. You anxious to make contact pronto?”

“Wouldn’t hurt.”

“Well, there’s this brawl. A cat named Don McGruder just sold a slim volume of verse and is howling. Audrey Grant swings with that crowd, so McGruder’s is where you’d latch on.”

“A guy need an invitation?”

“To a pad in Crazytown? Man, you just sort of go, you know? But if you’re shy, I could clutch your clammy little hand. For, say, another thin fin?”

“The wife won’t care if you scram?”

He made a face, standing. “So who inquires? Like it’s peaceful coexistence, comprenez?”

I dug out a ten. His eyes went to the rear again, and then the bill jumped out of my hand and into his breast pocket like something unbaited from a mouse trap. “Man, I appreciate that, I truly do. Hell of a thing, but I must be blowing flat lately. I wouldn’t touch your gelt if I could get work, Harry.”

“Sure.”

He had one hand on the doorknob. “Hey, now tromp my tenor, I plumb forgot. I hear tell you were the lucky winner who helped Fern Hoerner strip the cellophane off Josie Welch that dreadful day—”

“Just chance. I ran into her in a bar.”

“Yeah, yeah, Vinnie’s. That creepy Turk. Boy, them poets. Deep, man, deep. I wouldn’t have thought Ephraim could swat flies. Curious. Indeed, curious.”

“Something on your mind, Hiram?”

He nodded absently, pacing back to the bench. “Like sit a second,” he said. I watched him pop a filter cigarette into his mouth and chew on it as if it were a cigar. “Probably it’s idle scratch,” he decided. “Just dust on the needle, you dig me? But a small thought’s been bugging me. I know beans about pistolas, but a bird would have to have a keen eye to commit the big deed with a twenty-two, nest pas?”

“Or else a lot of luck.”

“Yeah, curious. Curious.” He sucked on the cigarette. “So the minute I became cognizant of the gory details, Lucien Vaulting hove into mind. He was my age, but one of them screwball athlete types, you know? Always rupturing himself with a football over in the Square, making bets with the young cats like how many push-ups they could do, all that boff. But the thing that bugs me, he was flipped over guns. He even got hauled in by the fuzz one time for practicing on a roof. But good, man, good—”

He laughed abruptly. “Except here’s the hitch. Loosh bought the box about a year ago. Had a ticker attack, trying to chin himself at a party. Poor old Loosh.” He studied his cigarette, then looked across again. “But like I say, it’s still weird. I mean Josie Welch, and now you put me on about the Grant chick. Loosh was the local thigh man, had a hand under every skirt. But the chicks who were current when he copped out were these very two. I mean simultaneous-current, you dig me? Neither of the wenches bunked with him steady, but the pair of them would be pattering about his pad together on many a cozy night. On many a frosty morn. According to community folk tale, it was a real squooshy ménage-a-trois.”

I took a cigarette of my own. “I don’t get what’s on your mind, Hiram.”

“Man, like I don’t either. Just chatter, you know? But Ephraim bugs in here also. This Lucien was a writer. He scribbled two novels, both pretty hip — anyhow none of this sloppy Beat boff that’s all mushy chorus and no melody. The word was out that he was probably compounding something real far out when he died, because it had been nigh on to half a decade since he’d last spoke for publication, but there weren’t any pages. Like the manuscript had blown away. Probably he’d just dried up — what I mean, down here most of the cats dry up before they get wet, comprenez? Anyhow, Ephraim had a case on him, hero worship. Like if Loosh came into a bar, say, Ephraim had to scoot over and dust off a stool for him. And then when Loosh played the last note Eph started chasing both the chicks. Like he was trying to make it with the pair of them because Lucien did. Identification with the master, like—”

“Trying to beat him, even—”

“Indeed, indeed. Except what’s the moral? Just that Eph finally flipped enough to lay out poor Josie. Writers, man. Too much brain work. It gets real hot inside the skull, you know?”

I didn’t see what point he had. I decided he didn’t have any at all. “A guy named Pete Peters,” I asked him. “I hear he saw a lot of Josie Welch also.”

Henshaw shrugged. “Like saying a cat goes to a house of ill fame two, three times a week. Those beds are swinging when the cat is not there, too.”

“Who’s a painter named Ivan Klobb?”

“A cool specimen. He’s got a showing in some far-out uptown gallery next week. I mean you take a look, you know whether it’s a sunset or a commode. Mucho nudes. Josie Welch used to hold still for him sometimes. So does your Audrey Grant, although mostly he works with a real built body named Dana O’Dea. Sure, I forgot — this O’Dea rooms with the chick you’re looking for. If Audrey Grant isn’t swinging at this ball tonight, Dana probably will be. You can’t count on the Grant chick — she comes, she goes. A traveler. Like I’ve spied her making for home at maybe eleven bells in the morning.’’

“Out all night, you mean?”

“Indeed, but not down here among the peasants. Up where the tall money flows, the nightclub circuit.”

“She goes up—” I cut it off I took a slow breath, staring at him.

“Have I like served up something with a bone in it, dads?”

I didn’t answer. I was looking for Audrey Grant because her father wanted to chat about the family estates. It was supposed to be an innocent matter, and maybe it still was. Maybe the girl had friends uptown. Maybe not one of them was somebody named Connie.

“Let’s check that party, Hiram,” I told him.

It was just after ten when we got to the McGruder place. Henshaw had taken me five blocks west along Christopher Street, then through an iron gate and down a hand-truck ramp into a cluttered alley. Light came from a turning in the rear, where it gleamed on a dozen battered trash cans. There were sounds of a cool horn that could have been Miles Davis as we went back, and there was talk. The air was rank.