David Markson - Epitaph For A Dead Beat

I grunted. “I hear she slept with enough of them. You should pardon the expression.”

He still didn’t grin. “She did chase around a lot,” he said. “Too much. But she never found any satisfaction in it. I think it was a fairly obvious syndrome — a way she had of getting even.”

“You’re going to lose me,” I told him.

“Oh, you know what I mean. Giving her body contemptuously, almost as if she wanted to watch men make fools of themselves.”

That was worth another grunt. “You didn’t know she was a call girl?”

McGruder’s head jerked, it startled him that much. “You’re joshing?”

“I might be. But the possibility existed when the cops started digging Tuesday night. I’d guess it’s pretty high on their agenda now that Ephraim’s out.”

He was scowling. “She could be a bitter girl sometimes. I even used to think she was capable of — well, violence. But I never suspected she’d found that sort of outlet. All of this is why you’re down here, I suppose?”

I started to shake my head, then clamped my teeth together. A great Georgia halfback named Frank Sinkwich once played a fall season with his jaw broken. I wondered how it felt to be beyond human frailty. “I’m looking for Audrey Grant. Strictly a family interest.”

McGruder lifted an eyebrow, then shrugged as if he were disappointed. “She’s around somewhere. I’ll try to find her, if you’d like.”

Td appreciate it. Nothing personal, but I’ve had about enough of your party. And thanks.”

“You already paid me by hitting Pete.” He tittered suddenly. Just as suddenly he was the old McGruder again, the one that all of two or three people undoubtedly treasured. “The big butch used to be my husband. We had four months of sheer bliss together before he decided to go straight. He’s been just impossible ever since!”

That white hand went limp again. I sighed, watching him use it to toss some of that drooping hair out of his eyes. Zen Fruitism. By the time he was ready to flutter away he wasn’t even touching the floor.

They’d gotten Peters off the launching pad and into an aid station somewhere. Henshaw was at the bar and I headed back over. The girl Peters had fallen against was standing behind him. I took a second look and decided I might have been hit too hard at that.

It wasn’t the same girl. I realized that the one Peters had crashed into had not been the Ginsberg-Corso rooter I’d seen before either. But all three of them had the same stringy black hair and scrawny figure, the same black jersey, the same black stockings. They could have been members of some new uniformed sect.

“Something called The History of Rome Hanks” I heard this one say. “The paperback title is Dishonored Flesh—”

Henshaw was grinning at me. “Slugger,” he said. “What do you do with the right hand — save it for Guy Fawkes’ Day?”

“I work out two or three times a week. It gives me an edge.”

“Like a cleaver. You saw the chick, huh?”

“When? When I was on my back?”

Henshaw was drinking. “I thought maybe previous to that. I spied her back in the end corridor. It was a trifle queer, come to reconsider.”

I had picked up the Old Crow. “Queer how?”

“Ephraim. I guess people haven’t been made cognizant he’s one of the populace again. The Grant chick ambled out of the head back there and sort of turned sallow when she spotted him, you know? Real shook up.”

I had put down the bottle. “Then what?”

“Well, man, I was sort of more interested in your small brawl. She’s still yonder, I presume. I saw Ivan Klobb back there, but whether or not they made words I cannot avow.” He looked at me, puzzled, then whistled softly. “Hey, like I see some light. If Ephraim is out, some other cat is due to go in, no? You think the sight of him gave the Grant chick some ideas? Like maybe, since it ain’t Eph, she’s got a hunch who?”

I was staring at him.

“Although on third hand I could be blowing hysterical,” he decided. “Missing the whole beat. The chick might have just had heartburn, you know?”

“A brunette,” I said. “What was she wearing?”

“Man’s T-shirt.” Henshaw giggled obscenely. “I am not as observant as many, but the Grant chick in a man’s T-shirt I would long remember. Like better men than I have left hearth and home for dream of what lies beyond yon distant hills, you dig me?”

He was smirking into his glass. I left him with it, heading back toward that corridor.

The corridor was roughly the length of a bowling alley. There were four closed doors along its left-hand side, and evidently it turned at the rear. The dim rose glow of the kerosene lamp made it hard to be sure. The sudden proximity of Dana O’Dea made it harder to be interested.

She swam up in front of me just as I reached the doorway. I stopped, and not just because I remembered that she lived with Audrey Grant. That red dress had made her noticeable from a distance, but at close range she would have been noticeable in a diving rig.

She was a big girl. Her fall breasts swelled up out of the sheath into a pair of fleshy shoulders as sensuous as heavy cream, and there was enough ripe womanhood in her bare arms alone to melt nonferrous metals. She had boldly painted lips and flashing dark eyes, and her hair was so brilliantly black that it looked almost wet. She was as luxuriously molded as the hull of a yacht.

She was also drunk as a tadpole.

She pulled up short a foot in front of me, swaying, and then she almost fell. She took a fall breath. “Wow,” she said.

“Wow,” I told her. She swayed some more. Those milky shoulders were unbelievable. I reached out with a finger and touched the dress where it turned beneath the fold of her arm.

She eyed me speculatively. “Excuse me,” I said. “I just wanted to see if it was painted on.”

She gave me a smile that could have paid her rent for a year. I grinned back at her. I would have liked to spend a year doing it.

“You know where your roommate is?”

“Audrey?” She frowned. “You know Audrey? Audrey know you? Whore you?”

Her voice was no thicker than bread pudding. She steadied herself with a hand on my sleeve, looking at me more intently.

“Audrey doesn’t know you,” she said. “You know something? I’m glad. Don’t even care what your name is.” She nodded profoundly. “Don’t care ‘tall. Like you anyhow. You know my name? My name’s Dana ‘Dea. You know something else? I’m drunk. Been drinking since three ‘clock this afternoon. Home all alone. You ‘magine that?”

“You could do better,” I told her. “Why don’t we find Audrey? The three of us can get drunk together.”

“Sure. Find Audrey. Good old Au’rey. Swell idea.” She turned back into the corridor, took two steps and then almost went over again. I caught her by the wrist, so she decided to play. She hung away from me, balanced on her heels, and let me take all her weight. She had a few more pounds of it than the boys in the fashion business would have allowed, but then the same guys would design a blanket roll without ever spending a night in the woods. She was as yielding as gelatin. I hauled her back onto a level keel, so then she tittered and poked a finger into my chest. “Nope,” she said emphatically, “don’t know you. Wish I did.”

“Audrey, huh? Like a pal?”

“Abs’lutely.”

She had slithered away from me once more when a girl with a face like a wedge of cheese stepped past us into the hall. She was a mousy, intellectual sort, hiding a concave chest behind a bulky yellow sweatshirt. She glanced at Dana, then paused, lifting an eyebrow. “My heavens, girl,” she said.