David Markson - Epitaph For A Tramp

I took my time walking back to the Drive. I supposed I’d expected exactly what I’d gotten from Moss. I knew I’d expected it. I didn’t have a gun. I’d walked in on two of them already that morning, and I wouldn’t have rapped on the door to the vestry at St. John’s Cathedral without the Luger if I’d seriously thought I might run into a third.

I cut through Central Park and made it across town in the MG without getting squashed by any of the large economy-size models. It was just 7:42 when I swung off Lexington toward my apartment building. I didn’t go all the way down the block. I didn’t go down the block at all. I jerked the car over to the side just after I made the turn and pulled in at a fire plug. I sat there for a minute, watching him.

Anybody could stare at the house. At least a dozen other people were doing it, either at the building itself or at the three squad cars parked out front. Most of them were clustered on the other side of the street but there were also two or three near the door, talking to the plain-clothes cop on duty who wouldn’t be telling them anything but to move along. But the one I cared about was a good hundred yards up from the others, standing alone almost directly across from me.

He was wearing a brown tweed sports jacket that Brooks Brothers had never been ashamed of, and the lizard briefcase under his left arm would have gone for close to a hundred dollars in any shop on the same avenue. In the light of day the crewcut took ten years off his age, even with the gray at the temples. His tie was Countess Mara or Bronzini and every bit as sleek as the stained one he’d probably tossed under the bed a few minutes after I’d seen him that morning.

I was over there next to him before he noticed me, and then his head did an almost imperceptible nervous shudder before he turned fully. But if it should have been an ace of a hangover there wasn’t any other sign of it.

“You selling many of those policies?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It is insurance?”

“Why, yes, only I don’t seem to recall—”

“Must have been at the lodge. I’ll tell you though, I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. Maybe you’re right. Fellow shouldn’t go round with such inadequate coverage, certainly not a family man like myself. I’m afraid I’ve misplaced your card, but if you could spare another I’d—”

“Why certainly/’ I stood there while he slipped a calfskin wallet out of his jacket and fumbled in it. “Spragway,” he was saying. “Ethan J.” I’d already looked at him so I let him look at me while I read the card. It listed a Lexington Avenue agency address in one corner and a Park Avenue home address in the other. The home number would be only two or three blocks from where we were.

“I’m frightfully sorry, but I don’t seem to recall your name at all.” He had decided to frown slightly.

“Hobbes. Thomas Hobbes.”

“How curious. Just like the philosopher.”

“Doesn’t bother me if he doesn’t mind. Something going on down the block there?”

“Evidently. Well, yes, good to have seen you again, Hobbes. Afraid I’ve got to be running.”

“You didn’t notice anything when you passed here last night?”

“Last night?” Spragway frowned fully now. “Here? What makes you suggest that I—?”

“Come off it, mister. You were here all right, drunk as an owl. A little before four. I asked you if you noticed anything.”

He got indignant. “My good man, if I happened to come down this street last night, or for that matter any night, it would be because I live only two blocks away — as you saw on my card and which, it strikes me now, is no business of yours. I am not accustomed to being called an alcoholic. Good day, Mr. Hobbes.”

He turned on his heel and I let him go, the only insurance man in captivity who ever let a prospect slip by without taking an address and phone number. I supposed a respectable drunk would have a lot of practice deliberately not remembering people he’d met when he was boozed up. Even one whose eyes were perfectly clear four hours later and whose breath smelled of nothing stronger than Ipana.

I stood there sucking air through my teeth and thinking about nothing while he disappeared around the corner.

The plainclothes dick in front of my building started toward me with an expression of bored annoyance when I eased the MG between two of the squad cars, all three of which were double parked. He reached the curb being so weary of the stupidity of the unenlightened masses that it was killing him.

“This look like a parking field, Mac?”

“I could have sworn.”

“Move it! Move it!”

“How you going to watch it if I do that? Its evidence. I was even thinking maybe we ought to wrap it in tissue paper or something.”

He grimaced sourly. “Funny man. They been biting their nails upstairs there, waiting for all the jokes. Lets see it, huh?”

I showed him the wallet. He glanced at it and then nodded.

They had cleaned up the blood, or probably they’d let the superintendent do it after they’d gotten their pictures. A well-clipped poodle was sniffing at the sawdust. He went off, limping a little in the left forepaw.

The door was wedged open with a folded tabloid. BERRA HITS TWO, YANKS… something or other, it said. When I turned at the top of the stairs I could see that the apartment door was open also. There was another detective in the hall, a gaunt, underfed younger specimen of the breed with a neck as long as a beer can.

“Fannin,” I told him.

He turned to relay the name inside but he didn’t get to say anything. Young cops rarely do. Brannigan came into the doorway, a beefy, red-faced, Sequoia-size man I’d once seen get jumped by a trio of longshoremen during a rackets case. He hadn’t had time to get his gun unsheathed and so he’d used his fists. He’d left the three of them propped unconscious against a wall like so much garbage. His tie was pulled down now and he was looking at me in a way that was supposed to make me stand on one foot with my head hanging. He got over that in a minute, not saying anything. He jerked his thumb disgustedly and went in.

A hawk-nosed medical examiner I had met once or twice was just leaving. “I’ll send the wagon,” he told Brannigan. He had to step across the body to get out.

Someone had covered her with my raincoat, probably Dan. He was sitting near a window in his shirtsleeves, dark-eyed and unshaven and looking sleepy. He nodded, smoking.

There were dead flash bulbs in a couple of ashtrays and one or two drawers were open. Print powder was dusted around. The laundry bag was on the floor and the money was stacked up in piles of different denominations on the desk. Home. The place looked as inviting as the rumpus room at Buchenwald.

There was one other detective with Brannigan, a lieutenant named Coffey who was totally bald. The skin under his eyes was pouchy and discolored. Possibly too much night duty had done that, I didn’t know. But it hadn’t put the glaze of menacing resentment in his eyes that you saw the minute you looked at him. That would be part of the personality and it was probably why he was a cop. A grand cop, and I was glad he was there. If we had to use a rubber hose on anybody he’d have two in each pocket.

I said a single filthy word which no one paid any attention to. Finally I went in and walked around to the kitchen and stuck my fingers into five glasses and picked up the bottle of Jack Daniels I’d left out earlier. I carried the bottle and the glasses back into the living room. I poured myself about an inch of the sour mash and drank it straight. I poured myself one more, not drinking it, and left the bottle open. “Fannin’s back,” I said. “Party time.”