David Markson - Epitaph For A Dead Beat

“I know who she is.”

“Oh?” He glanced at me, then nodded. “Dana had been angry at Josie Welch,” he said. “Apparently Dana thought she had — well, that she had certain claims on me, and lately I’d been spending more time with Josie. On top of which Dana also knew about me being with Audrey this week. So Ephraim decided it was jealousy, that Dana—” He flushed. “I can’t explain this too well, but Ephraim is capable of thinking a girl would kill two others because of me. He looks up to me, and he’s made me into sort of an idol, as if—”

“The way it was with Lucien Vaulking—”

“You’ve been talking to people. Yes, the same way. But in any event I know he couldn’t have been faking — he was even a little irrational. He said he was going to look for Dana. He ran out. I went over to Dana’s myself, trying to find him, but there was a cop out front — that was Audrey’s apartment too, of course.” Peters bit on the handkerchief. “I guess the impact of everything suddenly panicked me. The next thing I knew I’d gone home and gotten my gun.”

I had run out of cigarettes. I went over to a shelf and took down a fresh pack. He was watching me.

“You’ve played at being a fag, Peters,” I said. “All right, maybe it didn’t take. But maybe you’re also fonder than you think about the idea of a frustrated little man following you around—”

He didn’t flush this time. “I suppose McGruder told you about that. Look, that’s all past — it’s not influencing me in any way about Ephraim’s innocence. Oh, gosh darn it, I don’t expect people to comprehend how we live. Don McGruder is a poet, a fine one, with a clear, radiant vision. We were empathic to each other — we could communicate without even finishing sentences. So we talked gloriously night after night and it led to a homosexual affair — would I know more about the human heart if it hadn’t happened? I’m trying to be alive in the fullest way I can. To be a writer I’ve got to experience all griefs and all joys, I’ve got to touch the inmost soul of man, to—”

“You’ve got to feel the throbbing pulse of the corner grocer, to contemplate the navel of the Chinaman who does your shirts. Oh, sweet damn, okay, you can take me to church some Sunday, we’ll both be better for it. But not tonight, huh? Listen, is it an ecclesiastical secret, or do you think you just might get around to telling me what you wanted up here anyhow?”

He drew in his breath. “I might have known you’d be a square. The complacent, scoffing masses — dear God, a religious revelation could appear on their television screens and they’d phone for a repair man.” He threw the handkerchief away from himself bitterly, like Billy Graham giving up on Las Vegas. “What I had hoped was that, since it’s your profession, you’d come back downtown out of ordinary human compassion and help me find Ephraim before he gets into more difficulties. But I guess I can put it on a strictly business basis. Dedicated people like us don’t have much money, but I can pay you off eventually.”

“People like you—” I pulled a hand across my face. “Look, Peters, maybe you mean it. Maybe you’re a serious writer and all this apocalyptic crap has some point — I wouldn’t know. But I saw that mob down at McGruder’s, and if there’s any religious awakening underway somebody better get Congress to repeal the First Amendment. This is a murder case, not a fraternity bull session on salvation. If your chum Ephraim’s as beatific as you claim, he won’t get into anymore trouble — and if he killed those two girls he’s already bought all he’ll ever need. The gosh-awful truth is that it’s pushing four o’clock in the morning and I don’t much care. For that matter I don’t much care about your offer of an installment payment plan either. I had my client for the weekend, except that somebody killed him.”

“Him?” He had gotten up, gaping at me. “Somebody — you mean three people are—?”

“Yeah. It’s been a long night, padre. You hit me, that wasn’t too bad. But then a cop hit me and that I didn’t like. I’m tired, my jaw aches, and I’m about due to lay me down to sleep. You can go to the cops or you can sack in here if you want, on the couch. I’d advise the former, especially since they already damned well know you lied about Thesday night—”

“Huh?”

I didn’t say anymore. The telephone was ringing and I went across to answer it.

I recognized the voice at a word in spite of its tone. “Harry,” she gasped. “Thank God you’re there! Something’s happened, can—”

“Easy, Fern. What’s—?”

“It’s Dana O’Dea. She just came up the stairs and fell into the apartment looking like — well, as if a truck had hit her. He beat her terribly. I’m afraid he might have followed her, we—”

I cursed once, glancing at Peters. “You mean Ephraim?”

“Ephraim? No — I don’t understand it too well, she’s barely told me anything — but it was Ivan. Ivan Klobb, the painter. You remember, I introduced him to you—”

“You got the door locked?”

“Yes, but—”

“I’ll be about twenty minutes, Fern. If anything happens before I get there call the police. I mean that.”

“Oh, thank you, Harry—”

I hung it up and turned into the bedroom. Peters came into the doorway hesitantly. I yanked open the bottom drawer of the dresser, pushed aside some summer shirts, then settled for the first piece my hand touched, my Colt.357 Magnum. I checked the load, jammed the weapon into a clip holster and slapped that into my hip pocket. “Pick up that relic of your own,” I said. “If you’ve got any sense at all you’ll drop it in the first sewer you pass on the way to the precinct house.”

“God,” he said. “Oh, God! Listen, what’s going on? Has something happened to Fern now too? Will you—?”

“No.” I shoved past him, motioning toward his gun.

“Can I leave it here? Oh, golly, I guess I’ll go down now after all. I won’t stop home—”

“Come on.”

I ushered him out of there and around the corner to the garage, walking hard and not talking. The late-shift attendant looked at me as if I were asking him to change the color on a battleship he’d just that minute finished painting, but for the pound of flesh I was paying they could shuffle the Chevy in and out ten times a night and like it. I broke half a dozen vehicle regulations going down, but all the traffic clicks were busy mooching coffee someplace. Peters sat mutely and meditated on his reflection in the windshield.

I dumped him in front of an all-night restaurant two blocks from Fern’s, roughly the same distance from the station. He started to say something but I didn’t wait. I would read all about it when they updated the Gospels. At the moment I was too busy speculating about an artist with an exhibition scheduled soon in an exclusive uptown gallery, and about a pair of dead prostitutes who had known enough about his spare-time occupation to have shut down the show before the canvases dried.

Most of it still did not make sense. But even an unenlightened sinner like myself could see where blackmail might have played hell with the revival meeting.

Fern made me repeat my name twice through the door of the apartment before she opened up. She had on a pale blue bed jacket which fell just to her fingertips, and her face was wan.

I saw Dana beyond her shoulder, slumped on the low modern couch at the far wall. She was wrapped in an oversized yellow beach towel. There were raw, ridged welts, like parasitic worms, across her naked arms and along her thighs. A cigarette was burning in a tray on the end table near her, and her dark eyes studied me intently as she reached for it.