David Markson - Epitaph For A Dead Beat

Ask a landlord about the rot and he would blame it on the influx of Puerto Ricans. He would be well informed about Puerto Ricans. You would probably have to go to a beach in the Caribbean to find him.

Fannin, the social critic. Try the door, Fannin.

It had taken a cab fifteen minutes to get me across town. I’d pressed a bell at random to get a buzz, since Grant’s had not answered. I could still have been wrong, and there was still that local pub for him to be in. But if Audrey Grant and her half-sister had talked about expecting money this was the only place I knew that it could be coming from.

Try it, Fannin.

A notice for an undelivered telegram was sticking out under the door. I took out a handkerchief before I worked the knob.

I could have been wrong. I’m never wrong. Somewhere down the hall a baby began to cry and I closed the door behind us, against the sound.

A window was open, and in the brief draft a single feather stirred near my foot, then fell again. He’d bought that white shirt.

Another body. Describe it, Fannin. The bullet which took him on the cheek, shattering too much bone to be a.22 this time. The mess where it had emerged at the base of his skull, making it a.38 at least. The whole thing, like how many others? It didn’t make me light-headed this time. I slumped against the wall and stared at my hands, not upset either, just tired.

There were more feathers. They were from an ordinary bedroom pillow which had been used to muffle the report. I wondered remotely if the feathers were goose down.

What else, Fannin? A smashed alarm clock on its back, its hands stopped at 5:47. That was a mistake, although a minor one. Grant had been in my office at 5:47. But he had still been dead three or four hours longer than his daughter, which seemed to be the point the killer had hoped to suggest. He was cold as oceans.

There was a phone. I used the handkerchief again, dialing Western Union. A woman with seaweed in her mouth repeated Grant’s name and address and then said: “‘For information about your daughter try a man named Constantine. Can be located through Morals Squad.’ The message is signed, A Friend.’” I thanked her.

I wasn’t with it. I wasn’t anywhere. Every seemingly logical thought in my head went just so far and then reversed itself like a buttonhook. If Josie and Audrey had anticipated an inheritance they had to have been involved in Grant’s murder themselves. But then they would not have talked about it. Also they should not have been dead.

Button, button, who’s got the button? Not Fannin, not now. I lifted the directory and fumbled pages until I found McGruder, D., Christopher St.

It rang twice. Grant was on the floor in back of me. His daughter was on the floor three feet from where it was ringing. My hand shook.

“Detective Toomey.” A voice said.

“This is Fannin.”

“Oh, brother — where are you?”

I gave him the street number. “I’ve got another one.”

He whistled. “A couple more, you can start charging the department a commission.”

“Yeah.”

“But don’t tell anybody I’m making with the jokes. You’re lucky the sergeant’s in the next room or you’d hear the steam through the wire. You better get yourself down here fast, chum.”

“I just leave this for whoever wanders in?”

“Since when would that be a new trick for you? Hell, stay there, I guess. We might even do you the honor ourselves— we’ve accomplished about all we can in this madhouse anyhow.”

He hung up. I felt like a crankcase full of sludge. I needed draining.

The place was cluttered. Everything was scarred, dilapidated. There were thousands of books. A console phonograph was fairly new, and there were at least two hundred records stacked near it. There was a complex radio mechanism, and there was a tape recorder.

The playthings of a man almost blind, who would have given special devotion to sound. There was no television set.

More books in cartons in the bedroom. The bed unmade, and a week’s filthy laundry flung around the floor, looking like soggy flotsam on an unswept strand. An autographed photo of Eugene V. Debs framed on a wall.

A cockroach scuttled along the drain when I flipped the light in the kitchen. Thoreau’s Walden was propped against a sugar bowl on the table, and something called The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha was held open by a half loaf of black bread. A broken Chablis bottle lay on the window ledge.

Thirteen million dollars. The papers had played Josie’s death as a Beatnik killing, and they would do the same with Audrey’s. If the concept meant anything at all, Grant had been a Beatnik long before they invented the word. Ulysses, son of Thaddeus, by way of Harold Lloyd and Lemuel Gulliver. That classic raincoat was draped over a chair, trailing along the pitted linoleum, and I fingered it. There were even books in the bathroom.

Too many books. A lifetime full, and nothing else, nothing else at all. I found a cold can of Ballantine ale in the refrigerator and I nursed it, waiting for the badges.

I got a pair of them, patrolmen, in about ten minutes. They were both younger than I was, and they took in the situation with all the sentiment of retired storm troopers. “You’re Fanning?” one of them asked me.

I nodded. “They want you to wait here,” he said. He noticed the beer. “Don’tcha know you’re not supposed to touch anything?”

He was serious. He had a vacuous, inoffensive Nordic face that would never mean anything except exactly what it said. “I looked it over first,” I told him. “The can was all misted up. I could see there were no prints on it.”

He pondered that with all the efficacious ratiocination his ninety-two-point-four I.Q. would permit. “Well, I hope you’re sure.” He turned to his sidekick. “It looks under control, Eddie. You better wait in the heap.”

Eddie shrugged, then wandered off apathetically. Santayana shut the door after him, taking a smoke. “Must have been quite a shock for a private citizen. Finding a deceased, I mean.”

“It’s been hours since the last one. I was beginning to think I was slipping.”

“What? Oh, a joker.”

“Makes it easier to take.”

“Sure. Common psychology. Friend of yours, huh? Kind of a sloppy place he kept. All them goddam books, will you look?”

He stuck his face into the back, being curious, but he was just minding the store until some authority got there. I found myself a chair near the front windows.

The patrolman was on a second cigarette when the knock came. He butted the smoke fast and headed for the door, not quite making it. It was shoved inward so abruptly that it almost hit him.

DiMaggio had done the shoving. He stared at the body from the threshold for perhaps six seconds, then turned toward me. His blunt jaw was set squarely, and he had not stepped far enough inside for Toomey to get by. He held his breath. It was another ten seconds before he paid any attention to the patrolman.

“Stand by down below,” he snapped then.

“I’ll have to see some identification, sir. You’re not in my precinct—”

DiMaggio was already past him. The patrolman glanced at Toomey hesitantly and Toomey flashed a badge. “The sergeant’s had a long night, Mac. You know how they fall.”

“Sure. Yes, sir. Just following regulations—”

“Can the goddam talk,” DiMaggio said. “Get that door shut.”

The patrolman pulled it after himself, glowering in my direction as he went. DiMaggio had taken a stance about four feet from my chair with his legs planted wide. “On your feet, Fannin,” he said.

Toomey sauntered over. I sat there.