David Markson - Epitaph For A Tramp

He stopped. When he did I heard an alarm clock ticking. It was the first time I’d heard it. Observant Fannin, the astute private eye. I, eye. Ask me what the bedroom looked like and I’ll tell you it had some walls.

I was trying to see her driving the car. For the experience. I looked at Sally Kline. She was staring at the Castro they’d squeezed in against a far wall. They could squeeze it out again.

“Tell me the rest,” I said.

“There ain’t no more. The bananas leave me to take the rap. But I get a break. Some dame in a Caddy is pulling up just as I start to run. She’s still got her keys in her hand and I grab ‘em and shove her the hell out of the way and take the Cad. Me an’ Duke had this other car stashed, see? That was the thing, we’d switch cars and beat it out of town easy. But I donno the town so good and when I get to the place where the other heap is, Duke and the broad is already there an gone. I kept the Caddy as far as Albany and then dumped it and swiped an Imperial.

“What time did you get back here?”

“Five, maybe. I couldn’t see pushin’ it, not in a stolen heap.”

“Then what?”

“What the hell you think? I start lookin’ for the rat.”

“Where?”

“Where he lives. The joints he hangs out. Here.”

“Where?”

He gave me addresses. Nice addresses, if you were a pander or a two-bit hustler. You’d be sure to tuck a picture of your mother in your locket when you went down there.

“Where’s he live?”

“This hotel on lower Bleecker. The Watling. But he ain’t gonna show up there again. All right, I tole ya. How about a smoke now, Jack?”

I threw him one. He picked it up with his left hand and put it where you use those things and looked at me.

“You’ll get a match when I get the rest of it.”

“What else? Damn, I tole ya the whole thing.”

“How did you get her into it? What did Duke have on her?”

“Have on her? Bananas. Don’t make me laugh, will ya? He dint have nothin’ on her, not on that one. The minute she got wise that we were onto somethin’ she started squealin’ she wanted in. Hell, you couldn’t keep her out of it.”

“Tell me.”

“Tell ya what?”

“You want to Indian wrestle, Bogardus? I’ll give you the edge, my left hand against your right.”

“Okay, okay, just tell me what you wanna—”

“ Where’d Duke meet her? How’d she get into it?”

I was leaning forward. I wasn’t sure whether I was going to hit him on principle or just throw up. I could feel Sally watching.

“Harry?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you really want to hear it? Does it make any difference now?”

“Sure,” Bogardus said, “why all the interest anyhow? What is she, your ex-piece or somethin’?”

If s nice when other people make your decisions for you. The back of my hand took him across the jaw and the cigarette shot out of his mouth like something researched by Wernher von Braun. He let out a yelp like an unpaid madam.

I was standing there. Maybe Sally was right, maybe there was no point in finding out how she’d gotten into it. Maybe there was no point in breathing. Sometimes you wonder. I went back to my chair.

Bogardus was being a stretcher case again. He was huddled over the wrist like a monkey trying to make time with a football.

“You keep grinding your teeth like that, I’ll sharpen a file in there.”

“Okay, okay. But ifs just like I tole you. She’s just nuts, is all.” He took a deep breath and sat up. I showed him another Camel.

“We met her in this bar,” he said wearily, “maybe three weeks ago. Yeah, that’s all, maybe three weeks. Duke was half bagged and he shot off his mouth some. He’s always talkin’ anyhow. He starts braggin’ about jobs we pulled. The broad’s eyes all lit up, for hell’s sake. Duke took her to the hotel and he saw her a lot o’ times after that. He said she wanted to go along on it. We was gonna do it alone, just leavin’ the motor on while we was inside, but he said she could push the wheel until we switched cars. I tole him she’d probably chicken out but he said she wouldn’t. Duke drove up from here in the morning. We had the second car goin up, the one we stashed to switch to later. That one was stole, too, but it was fixed up, you know? We got there about noontime, maybe, an’ we met Duke’s cousin on his lunch hour. We put the car in the place we were supposed to an then he helped us swipe another one for the job. He had it all lined up. The broad was scared while we were waitin’. She was all white, like. We killed an hour in this lunchroom and she dint eat nothin’. I tole Duke he shouldn’t ought to let her drive but he said she’d be okay when it got movin. I guess maybe she was, I donno. She pulled in by the freight door okay, and she waited okay, even when the old geezer saw us comin’. I donno whether it was her idea to pull out without waitin’ for me or whether Duke tole her to. I donno nothin’ else. Damn, Jack, what else do you want me to tell you? She’s just a broad, is all. Just a broad wants some kicks.”

I gave him the cigarette and lit it. “What was the setup for last night? For when you got back to New York?”

“Nothin’. We were gonna come down here, to this joint. We figured we’d get here before this other broad — dame — got home. We were gonna split the take, me and Duke and a corner for his cousin. Then I was gonna blow. I dint have no special plans.”

“Not split for the girl?”

“Let Duke worry. He brung her in on it, not me. But she dint want none anyhow. Like I’m tellin’ ya, she comes in on it for laughs. Different, she says. Just to see what it feels like. How you gonna figure broads anyhow?”

“She supposed to go somewhere with Duke?”

“Who knows? Duke was tryin’ to talk her into it but she wouldn’t say. But anyhow, we figured we didn’t have to leave

New York. Hell, Troy’s a hundred-sixty, a hundred-seventy miles up. Once we got clear this was as good a place as any.”

“What kind of heap is the doctored one?”

“Chevy sedan. Fifty-six. Dark green.”

“You know the plates?”

He shrugged.

“You call here before you came up?”

“Two, three times, yeah. I wanna see who’s answerin.”

I looked at Sally. “Three calls?”

“I think so, yes.”

“You ever hear of Harry Fannin?”

“Just when this here broad said the name. That you?”

“Ain’t it been a pleasure?”

Bogardus grunted. I sucked on a knuckle, wondering who’d phoned me that way. There’d been that one anonymous call just before Sally’s. Cathy herself maybe, checking to see if I was there before she came over? Or Duke? Duke would know more about her background than this clown did. If they’d gotten split up he might have called, decided she hadn’t gotten there yet, then parked himself along the street to wait. It would have been a fair bet for him if he hadn’t been able to find her anywhere else.

I sat there staring at Bogardus. He still looked like exactly what he was, a poolhall rumdum whose head would shrink in a light rain, and the trouble with his story was that you could believe it. You could see her doing it, see her getting just fed up enough with her Keats-spouting Village boyfriends to think that Duke might be exciting. Exciting. And what will we do after we give syphilis to all the natives, Mr. Columbus?

“Duke Sabatini,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“I suppose he’s another rugged ninety-seven-pound terror just like you. What’s he look like?”

“Taller ‘n me.”

“I suppose he’s got the same greasy hair you pretty bastards put up in curlers every night, too. I suppose he’s—”

“I don’t put up my—”