David Markson - Epitaph For A Dead Beat

“Listen — you don’t want to spend the night home alone. Is there some girl you can call? I’ll drop you anywhere you say.”

She stared at the pavement, animated by all the spontaneous gaiety of Joan of Arc on her way to the stake. “I don’t want to call anybody, Harry. Not to have to tell them about it, not tonight.”

“I know. Play it again, Sam.” I opened the door at the curb. “Come on,” I told her.

We got in. Halfway uptown she said, “Damn, oh damn,” and then nothing else. I lived on 68th and used a garage on Third, but there was an empty slot a few doors down from the apartment on the side which would be legal in the morning. I locked the car and we went up the one flight.

I had two and a half rooms. I’d gotten the place as a sublet five years before and the original tenant had never come back. He’d sold me the furniture by mail after a year, most of it battered and masculine, and then a girl named Cathy had added a few things in the ten months she’d used my name. Fern saw that. I’d turned on a Japanese lantern and she fingered its shade, not looking at me. “A woman bought this,” she said.

“Yes.”

“A mess?”

“A mess.”

She slouched to the front windows. The blinds were separated and she stood with her back toward me in the shadows.

There was nothing to look at out there. Her hair glinted, highlighted by a streetlamp down below.

“I guess I know without asking,” she said. “Are they always so rotten? God, but mine was.”

I didn’t say anything, but I did not care if she talked. I could not think of many things she could do or say that I would mind. I might have wished it were another night, when she would not be so vulnerable, but there was nothing I could do about that.

“I was twenty when I married him,” she said. “He was a writer, older than I was. I thought he was a good one, too, and I had all the proud dreams about giving up my own absurd ambition so he could fulfill himself. I quit college and got a job so he could stay home and work. Selfless, dedicated little Fern. It took me two years to discover that he hadn’t done two fall months’ writing in all that time. When he wasn’t in the bars all day he had women in. In the apartment I was paying rent for—”

She let it die, standing there. She did not expect an answer. After a while I crossed behind her and went into the bedroom. I put on another small light.

She followed me. She was toying with the adhesive.

“That hurting?”

“Not at all. It’s almost strange.”

I punched her lightly on the cheek. “It’s just chance, but a maid comes in on Tuesdays. Everything’s fresh. Towels and stuff* in the closet in the John. I’ll throw a sheet on the couch.”

“Breakfast in bed in the morning?”

“Go ahead, be merry. I know how you feel.”

“No, you don’t—”

The way she said it stopped me. I had been headed toward the closet. She was staring at me, and her hand was at the lamp. The light snapped off.

I went across. The girl had hit me hard, but it was still the same bad night. I put a hand on her sleeve. She was shaking.

“Oh, God, does it make me terrible if I want — if I need—?”

I kissed her so hard that my mouth ached. I had to, once at least. Then I picked her up with one arm behind her knees and the other at her shoulders. I put her down on the bed.

I touched her hair. “Get some sleep, Fern.”

She didn’t say anything. Something caught in her throat, but it was only a sob. I went out of there.

It was easy. Like walking out of the Kimberly mines with nothing in your pockets. I tried to remember when I had held a girl as breathtaking. It had been the week before they knifed Julius Caesar. It was when they were starting the Pyramids. I got myself a drink. I managed not to spill too much of it.

I needed a pillow and a couple of sheets. I waited fifteen or twenty minutes, until I was sure she would be asleep. I couldn’t come out of there a second time if she wasn’t. Martin Luther couldn’t have.

She had not gotten undressed. She was breathing softly. I untied the tennis shoes, hardly touching them, and eased them off.

“Do I get a bedtime story also?”

“Oh, hell. Oh, sweet hell.”

She laughed, reaching toward me. “I’m all right now, Harry.”

“You’re all right now,” I said. “That’s fine. I mean I’m glad. You’re sure you’re all right now—”

“I think you’re a little crazy.”

“Yes. I may well be. Yes, indeed. And you’re being a great help. You’re all right now—”

“Oh, heavens, come here. Will you come here—”

We weren’t in another country anymore.

She was gone when I woke up. I’d never heard her.

I hadn’t heard the alarm either, and it was after nine. There wasn’t any note. She’d disappeared without a trace, like Cinderella.

Cinderella would have forgotten a slipper. Three or four meager hours of sleep had left me just groggy enough. I actually caught myself searching around for one of those tennis shoes.

I got to the office by ten, but it was a meaningless achievement. The waiting room was as barren as Pompeii.

I looked her up and dialed the Grove Street number. I didn’t get an answer.

It made the afternoon papers. Not much space, no photo. Police were questioning several unnamed suspects. The body had been discovered by a Miss Fern Hoerner, roommate of the deceased, along with a private investigator named Henry Fannin. I tried her again at four.

I supposed the daylight had made it easier for her to go to a girlfriend’s. I also supposed I might come up with a client if I sat there patiently again tomorrow. I locked the office and went home.

DiMaggio was easy. I caught him at nine-thirty. “We found the gun,” he told me. “In our sneak thief s apartment. I had a hunch.”

“T\irk?”

“Yeah, the first place we looked. Ifs Miss Hoerner’s — it was registered. No prints — he’d wiped it clean — but Ballistics fired it and the slug matched. He claims if s a plant, of course — says he never saw it before. But we also found a neighbor who heard him pounding on the door over there about two hours before you called in. Made enough of a racket so that she took a peek down the stairway, and she’s willing to make a positive identification. She says she heard him threaten the Welch girl with bodily harm if she wouldn’t open up.”

“She hear the shot?”

“No. She says he quieted down, either he was let in or else he went away and came back. Turk is screaming about an alibi, says a friend was with him all evening, but the friend hasn’t shown. We’ll get a confession sooner or later.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“They usually are, Fannin. You should know that.”

“The others get themselves clear?”

“We’re not really interested in them. For the record, that girl Dana O’Dea was too blotto to have handled that kind of shooting. Toomey practically had to carry her in to the station when he picked her up. Which is nice work — she’s quite a looker.”

“Peter J. Peters?”

“Never questioned him. The girl wasn’t pregnant, which eliminates his interest. He’s the friend Turk claims he was with. It’s up to Turk to produce him, if he really is an alibi — which I doubt. The neighbor says she didn’t see anybody else in the hall. It looks pretty cut and dried.”

“I’d hate to think a man was stupid enough to leave a murder gun under his nightshirt.”

“In a coat pocket. Hell, we got over there before three o’clock. He probably planned to dump it later.”

“You look into this uptown joker — Connie?”

“Vice Squad can’t make him for us. Miss Hoerner could be right about him being a married man. I’m not going to worry about it — it’ll be Turk. You know this Village gang, they’re all psycho. We’ll get our confession and then instead of a lawyer hell bring in a head doctor to prove it was his mother he was really mad at.”