David Markson - Epitaph For A Dead Beat

“Ravishing,” he said.

“Hello, Ivan. Ivan Klobb, Harry Fannin.”

Klobb gave me a firm right hand. “Fannin? The chap who was with Fern on that unfortunate evening?”

“I’d hate to have it make me a celebrity.”

“You’re a private detective, the newspapers said.”

I nodded. He did also. I didn’t like him. There was something bland about his expression, almost vicious. After a moment he took Fern’s arm. “Indeed, yes. Well, look, you two, I hope you’ll pardon the intrusion, but if you’re not discussing something earth-shaking, I’d like to speak with you, Fern. A personal matter — five minutes, no more.” She glanced at me uncertainly. “I’ll bring you back, old girl, if it’s worrying you. You don’t mind, my good man, do you?”

I minded the phony English accent more than anything else, although I had decided what it was about him that grated. Without the beard he would have had a face just like those I remembered from old newsreels of Bund meetings in the days of Fritz Kuhn, when he himself would have been a susceptible twenty.

“You won’t be leaving, Harry?” Fern asked me.

“I’ll see you later.”

“Do, please.” Her hand touched my wrist. I watched them walk off toward one of the rear doors.

Henshaw had disappeared, I hoped in search of Audrey Grant. I took a drink of the whisky I had been carting around and made a face. Evidently McGruder had had some empty bottles stored away. What he had poured into the one with the Canadian Club label had not been Canadian. I turned back to the bar and added water to the glass.

“—James Gould Cozzens?” someone moaned. “James Gould Cozzens! You’re mad— ”

A record ended with a screech and someone started to monkey with the machine. Near me the Negro tapped a brief staccato on the bongos in the break. Before I looked he was lolling back against the wall, as if it had all been reflex.

“Go ahead, Rosie, take off on it!” someone yelled.

The man made an indifferent gesture. “I thought maybe Donnie wanted to read us some bright new words now,” he muttered.

People turned toward Don McGruder, but he dismissed them with a flutter of that pale palm. “Later, dears, later. Play some of those old Bird Parkers like a sweet lad, why don’t you, Nicky?”

The boy at the phonograph began to dig through a stack of records. Behind me two others were raving.”—Hitch-hiked all the way? Well, man, I hope you read On the Road— ”

“—Now how could I read when I’m on the road? I mean, I’ve got my duffle in one hand and I’m using the other to thumb with, so how could I hold a book?”

A new record started. I saw Dana O’Dea’s red sheath disappear into a cluster of five or six men, several of whom had run out of razor blades as long ago as Klobb had. One of them might have been Pete Peters. I had been trying to spot him out of curiosity, but I was a bust as a beard watcher.

Even water hadn’t helped McGruder’s whisky. I checked the stock more carefully and came up with a fifth of Old Crow on which the seal had not been broken. I was looking around for something to cut it with when I heard a sharp metallic twang, like that of a small spring being released, just off to my right.

A gleaming switchblade flipped past my arm and gouged itself into the bar. It shivered to a stop no more than two inches from my hand.

“Try that on your bottle, hot shot,” a voice said. “And consider yourself lucky you didn’t get it in the ribs about three nights ago.”

I let out my breath. Ephraim Turk was not quite grinning at me.

I pulled out the knife, staring at him. I didn’t say a word.

He showed me several large teeth. “Scared you, huh?”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that either. I was still holding the bottle, so I let him watch me run the blade around its neck. Then I flipped the knife over in my palm, hefting it. Its lethal end could have pinned my hand to the table with about five inches of steel to spare.

He smelled unsubtly of sweat. He had a clean white basque shirt on, but the jacket over it was the same seersucker he’d worn the other night. The jacket looked as if he’d been sleeping in it ever since. A few more jolly little tricks with the knife and someone would bury him in it.

“That was neat,” I told him finally. “You develop the skill with practice, or did it just come to you during one of those naked Zen sessions on the living-room couch?”

“Hell,” he said. He flushed. “But I suppose that slut would shoot off her mouth at that, wouldn’t she?”

I pressed the point of the blade back into the wood, snapping it shut. “If you mean Fern Hoerner, maybe you ought to call her by name.”

“Sure. Okay, so you got friendly — I didn’t know. So I’m even sorry. Hell, you don’t think I was especially happy about that mess over at Vinnie’s? I don’t usually go around slapping females.”

“Or shooting them, evidently.”

He gave me a wry grimace. “You’re funny. They let me out this afternoon. How about the knife, huh?”

He lifted a hand, but I shook my head.

“Okay, so keep the thing. I just found it back there in the hall five minutes ago anyhow. It might be McGruder’s.”

“He shaves with it.”

The little man shrugged, then stepped past me. I poked a Camel into my mouth and watched him pour himself a glass of white wine. I realized I wasn’t really surprised to see him. A record stopped with another screech, this time sounding like chalk going the wrong way on a blackboard. Ephraim winced.

“You were with her when she found Josie?” he said then.

I nodded. He was being pleasant enough, but there was something almost spinsterish about his manner. In spite of his baby face he made me think of things that get shriveled up, like prunes. “How come they let you scram?” I asked him.

“I had an alibi. They finally got around to believing it.”

“What about that gun?”

“Aw, hell—” He screwed up his enormous forehead in disgust. “People know about my record. Every damned time something gets stolen around here I get put down for it. Just because I got arrested for shoplifting in California once. You know what I hooked? Six cans of smoked oysters and a slab of Bel Paese cheese. I was trying to write a blank verse epic on Sacco and Vanzetti and I was practically starving. Boy, I began to feel like Sacco and Vanzetti myself over there this week. You know who they were?”

“Vaguely. Somebody planted the gun after the killing— picking you because it would look convincing?”

“I’ll plant something on him quick enough, when they find out who. Sacco and Vanzetti were two Italians up in New England in the—”

“A lot of people know about the smoked fish?”

“Oysters are animals, not fish. Sure, that’s the trouble. I gave the fuzz at least twenty names.”

“Just names wouldn’t convince them.”

“I told you. I had an alibi. A guy was with me — he even walked me to Vinnie’s, just before I ran into you.”

Somebody named Peters—”

He started to answer, then stopped. “—Somerset Maugham?” a voice wailed. “Somerset Maugham!”

“Evidently it took your pal a while to show up,” I said.

He was considering me. “He got drunk that night,” he said after a minute. “He didn’t hear about anything until today.”

“I thought the upstairs neighbor said you were alone over there?”

“Pete was down on the landing. The human eye isn’t constructed to see around corners.” He grinned suddenly. “You’re asking as many questions as they did.”

I didn’t smile back. “I just realized I know more than they do,” I told him.