David Markson - Epitaph For A Dead Beat

Brannigan’s name again, short of finding myself on the wrong end of a hose.

I patted Marilyn on a cheek, following after them. I still liked the idea, although not on paper money at that, and not just her face. Molded on a coin, front and back side both.

I was being light-headed again after all, but I realized I was bushed. The statement wasn’t ready. I took a cab to the lot near the Blue Soldier where the Chevy had been since nine o’clock.

I picked up a Mirror and checked the ball scores, but that only made me feel more stale. Ted Williams had gone hitless, and they’d had Stan the Man on the bench. The good people were getting old. A lot of them were already long dead, like John Garfield, Marcel Cerdan, Mel Ott. Fred Allen was dead too. Pretty soon I’d have no heroes left, unless I could teach myself to believe in Sal Mineo.

I left the car in the garage on Third, walked back the two blocks, climbed my one flight. The overhead bulb in the hall outside my door had burned out. They weren’t making bulbs like they used to.

They weren’t making private detectives like they used to either. I’d already turned the key before it occurred to me to find out who had wanted to make the next flight dark enough to hide on.

It was Peter J. Peters. He was sitting four steps up, as still as hewn rock, but I couldn’t miss the gun in his hand.

I got the door open, grinning from ear to ear.

The gun was a Smith and Wesson military.38, but it might have been a musty volume of Spinoza he’d been browsing through. I went up quietly and worked it out of his fingers before I woke him.

He hadn’t been shooting anybody. There was so much rust in the bore that the weapon might have blown up in his face if he’d tried.

He was slumped against the wall. He started, opening his mouth and blinking. His lips looked pink and wet behind the beard. He saw the revolver and frowned.

“You intend to use this for the next round in our little competition?” I asked him.

“Oh, my gosh—’

I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, so I stood there while he shuddered a couple of times. I supposed he had been wearing the same Levis and turtleneck sweater before, but the view from McGruder’s floor had not been remarkably vivid. He wasn’t as big as I’d thought, but he was big enough. He was also handsome, although in a sallow sort of way.

“What’s on your mind, Peters?”

“Oh, golly, I wish I knew—” He swallowed. “I had to talk to somebody. I saw Henshaw, and he said you were — listen, do you have something to drink, I—”

“Sure. I’m always good for refreshments. Ill open some beer and we’ll nibble on the pistol, like with pretzels.”

He looked at me blankly. For a minute I thought he was going to be another of those blissful nits you can’t affront. His nostrils quivered. Then without any other sign he threw himself against the balustrade and began to sob like a baby.

That moved me. Two hundred pounds of blubbering Beatnik. He’d probably gone home and found a rejected manuscript in the mailbox.

He got to his feet, sniffling. I motioned him into the small dining area between the kitchen and the living room, then tossed the gun on the couch and dug out an open bottle of Jack Daniels. I poured two shots and sat down across from him at the table.

His shoulders were still twitching, and he was clutching an unclean white handkerchief. “Suppose we start with where you came by the firearm,” I said.

“Oh, dear, I didn’t mean for you to think—” He gulped the bourbon. aI work part-time as a security guard,” he said then. “Night watchman jobs — it gives me a chance to write and make some money at the same time. I’ve never carried it before except to work, honestly, I—”

“ Where’d you see Henshaw?”

“Late, after they let people leave the party. We’d been watching from down the block, Ephraim and I—”

I gestured. “Take it from scratch, huh?”

He nodded, sighing. “We left McGruder’s after the fight. I felt — well, gauche. Lord only knows what possessed me, hitting you that way. I deserved the punch you gave me and more. I hope you’ll—”

“Yeah. You beat it right away?”

“It was five minutes at most. I stopped to wash up first.”

“Ephraim with you all the time?”

“He waited in the hall. But look, if you think he did it — that’s the whole point. That’s why I went to the police with that false alibi to start with—”

I stared at him carefully. His expression should have been grim, but it wasn’t. He would have had the same look on his face if he’d been caught slipping a book under his coat at Brentano’s.

“I guess it was a pretty dumb stunt?”

“If he’s guilty you’ll do time for it.”

“Oh, gosh, I know. We were together a few hours Tuesday, not all night. But I know he didn’t do it. Darn it, Ephraim is one of the most angelic people you’ll ever meet. Why, he’s almost saintly, he—”

“We went through all this before—”

“But it’s true. Deep down he’s so sensitive it hurts him to be alive. Why, he could no more have killed those two girls than—”

“They both treated him sensitively, from what I hear.”

“Oh, I know all that. But Eph isn’t like ordinary people. He’s beautiful inside, priestly. Josie and Audrey were the only girls he’s ever been intimate with. He knows the kind of unsanctified lives they led, but it still made them special to him. Loving them both in his tormented way has been a cross he bears, it—”

“All right, already — I’ve got a Gideon bible around someplace, he can autograph it. Skip Ephraim — was the rest of your story straight, at least? About being drunk all week?”

He lowered his eyes. “I wasn’t drunk. I was with Audrey Grant.”

That did get my attention. “That why you ran tonight?”

“I didn’t run. Oh, darn it, we just left for a while. We were on our way back when we saw the police cars. And then when Henshaw told us what happened to Audrey—”

He refilled his glass, spilling some. He started to wipe the table absently with a sleeve, then remembered the handkerchief.

I had a vague thought. “When you went to the cops — did Audrey Grant know you were going to alibi Ephraim?”

“I didn’t make up my mind myself until I was almost at the station/’

“Henshaw noticed her just after she spotted Ephraim tonight — evidently she didn’t seem to like the idea he’d been released. You remember if she mentioned anything during the week about having any other thoughts? I mean about it not being him to start with?”

“No.” He frowned. “Audrey was painfully upset, and we tried to occupy ourselves with other things. That’s why we went off together — she needed solace, spiritual consolation.”

I sucked in air. “You read Corso and Ginsberg to each other—”

“Why, no, as a matter of fact we studied the exalted truths of Sakyamuni, about the suppression of anxiety, but why do you—?”

I lifted a hand. “Never mind,” I managed. All this through that mouth full of starchy confections I’d come to love. “The girl was killed right after that scrap of ours,” I told him in a minute. “Ephraim had time to do it, Peters, if you were alone in the John for a while.”

“Look, please — I’d swear he didn’t. Anyhow, I’m certain of it because of the way he reacted later. Oh, that poor martyred boy, if he—”

He stared at his palms. A little more and I’d be staring at them myself, watching for stigmata. “Something happened after you saw Henshaw?” I said.

“We went to this composer’s studio — the place I’d been with Audrey, in fact. It belongs to a friend of mine who’s out of town. Then Ephraim suddenly got the idea that Dana O’Dea had done it. She was Audrey’s roommate, she—”