David Markson - Epitaph For A Dead Beat

A cop from technical detail came in. They had shut off the plumbing in Fern’s apartment and drained the pipes. No burned papers, no trace of anything that could have been the original sheets in Vaulking’s handwriting. The search for the gun which had killed Grant was also getting nowhere.

I told it one last time at two o’clock, and this time they had me throw it at Fern. She’d gotten that beauty rest, and after it she’d wriggled into a tight black jersey blouse and a tweed skirt that clung to her hips like the primer coating on an Alfa-Romeo. “You deny having made the confession Mr. Fannin claims you made?” Brannigan asked her.

“Wouldn’t you?” she said.

“These pages of your manuscript at Audrey Grant’s — how would Fannin have known about them if you hadn’t told him?”

“Gracious me, how should I know how he knew? Certainly there can’t be any harm in copying out passages of one’s book as a memento for a dear friend? Does someone have a cigarette, please?”

She crossed her legs, waiting. The publisher went over, offering her a Pall Mall.

“Actually there is one thing I might mention,” she decided then. “Embarrassing as it is, it seems pertinent. I spent a certain portion of Tuesday evening in Mr. Fannin’s apartment — after we discovered Josie’s body. It wasn’t really a very successful arrangement. I hadn’t thought of it before, but I imagine the fact that I repudiated Mr. Fannin’s subsequent advances — once I ceased to be vulnerable — might well have some bearing on this curious behavior of his.”

“You spent—” A gleam had come into the publisher’s eyes. “Where is the press room, please? I should like to announce our position.”

There weren’t any reporters, whatever his position was. The police had issued no statement except that unnamed suspects were being questioned, and legally Fern was a material witness only. “We’d like to keep it that way for now,” Vasella said reasonably.

“I’m sorry — but I’ve quite made up my mind. The public must be informed. This girl is innocent. Plagiarism indeed— the whole idea is preposterous—”

“Thank you, Ernest,” Fern told him.

“You poor girl, not at all. I can only hope you’ll learn to forgive me for having permitted myself any doubt—”

She dismissed his chagrin with a gesture, and he turned to motion one of his lawyers to the door. “Phone them,” he said. “All the local papers, the wire services. Yes, don’t forget the wire services—”

Brannigan kicked a drawer shut with a noise like a truck backfiring, walking out. He couldn’t prevent the calls, and once Fern’s identity was made known the department would have to commit itself about booking her. Every tendon in his thick neck was visible when the publisher stopped him in the doorway.

“You’ll make arrangements for her release now, naturally? The entire situation is unthinkable, subjecting one of our most talented writers to this indignity—”

Brannigan brushed the man’s hand from his sleeve as if it were something with eight legs and a sting. “Get me a writ,” he said. “Until then I’d suggest you offer no more advice about police procedure.”

“Well, I certainly shall, if this is to be your attitude.” The publisher waved off another member of his portable bar association to wake up a judge or two. “Call Learned,” he said.

“This man Fannin thinks he is some kind of Sampson,” he told reporters thirty minutes later, “out to betray Delilah. A Delilah whose favors he demanded when she was too stricken with remorse to protest—” He glared at me for emphasis, presumably the way he would glare at some untutored wretch of an editor who’d rejected Bishop Sheen and Jim Bishop on the same afternoon. “But the Philistines shall rise up and slay him,” he went on. “Fern Hoerner’s brilliant novel will be on the best-seller lists within the week, and her thousands of readers will vindicate her. As will millions of other fair-minded Americans when they applaud the film for which negotiations are already underway. Indeed, I’m having lunch with Marlon this Tuesday—”

“Marlon who?” a reporter said.

They tried to corner me when he’d run dry, but Dunn from the D.A. s office told them they would have to wait. They popped bulbs anyhow, wanting to know who had chewed up my face, and I was just sore enough to say a pimp named Oliver Constantine and to toss in the address. They began yelling for shots of Fern and the publisher insisted that they get them. Brannigan blew up then and restricted everybody to the outer lobby, then locked himself in an office with Vasella, Dunn and two of the publisher s lawyers. That left me eating Camels in a corridor, inconsequential as a raindrop in the Irrawaddy.

I was hunting for a drinking fountain up a flight when I ran into Ephraim. The police no longer had any interest in him and he was on his way out, looking whipped. He’d put on a suit before he’d turned himself in, cheap cord off the basement racks in a lower-grade shop and far from new. Tin sorry I tried to hit you last night,” he said clumsily.

“Forget it. Poets are out of my league anyhow.”

He didn’t smile. “Fern did it — there’s no question?”

“A question of proof.”

“Will they prove it?”

“If they don’t come up with anything besides my version they’ll never get into court to try.”

“What happens then?”

I nodded toward the street. “Cocktails with the bookish set. A week from now she’ll be telling Katherine Anne all the clever little things Vladimir said to Tennessee, between canapés.”

That made twice he didn’t smile, but I decided it wasn’t particularly hilarious. “She won’t go to any cocktail parties,” he said.

I looked at him with care. “If that means you know something, now’s the time to spill it, Ephraim.”

The expression on his face was reflective, gloomy, without much meaning. “I don’t know anything,” he said.

He scuffed away, plunging his hands into his pockets. I scowled after him, then got my drink and went back downstairs myself.

The conference had broken up and they were letting the publisher play in the schoolyard again, which could only mean one thing. Nothing had developed which had given me any reason not to expect it. He was chatting with Dunn and one of his attorneys, and he broke away from them beaming like a gimcrack Cary Grant when he spotted her.

“Fern, I’ll escort you home—”

She was coming out from the rear with Vasella. “Thank you again, Ernest, sincerely. You’ve been great—”

“Nothing, nothing—”

“Are there martinis tomorrow, did you say—?”

“Everyone will be there — J. D., E. B., W H., E. E.—”

They went by arm in arm, clucking, like a couple of celibate hens who’d just got word about the new rooster. I was a handful of yesterday’s feed they didn’t glance at in passing.

She had a second thought when she reached the head of the steps. She stopped, said something to the publisher, and then came back.

“I really must say thanks, Harry, since its worked out so beautifully.” She was cooing. “After all, it was you who put the idea into my head. A mock confession to three murders I didn’t commit — perfectly safe, and probably the greatest publicity idea in the history of literature.”

“God almighty—”

“You don’t think it’s possible, do you? In spite of how ripe you were?” She laughed. “Oh, Harry, if you could only have seen the outrage in your face — you were so shocked you even gave these people a more convincing story than I gave you. Ah, well, not that it matters what you believe, not that it matters in the least—”

Bulbs began to flash in the stairwell. A nerve was jumping in my cheek as I watched her walk out of there.