David Markson - Epitaph For A Tramp

“The Perry Street apartment’s in the block between Fourth and Bleecker,” I told him.

He’d had the car idling. He grinned at me, shifted and swung out. He went across to Second Avenue and straight down. He drove like most cops, treating the general run of working men’s cars like moving targets. Once or twice he gave me a nudge and I opened the siren for him. If I’d been in a better mood I would have watched the street corners for familiar faces to wave to.

“You were going to tell me about Coffey,” I said after a while. “What the hell, he walks around as if he knows where the department hides the bodies.”

He stopped the shenanigans with the car when I asked him that, punching his tongue into the side of his cheek for a minute before he answered. “Coffey’s all right,” he said then. “His wife and kid were killed in an auto smash up near Poughkeepsie about two months ago. Son of a bitch driving the other car was drunk as a calf and walked away without a bruise. They booked him on vehicular manslaughter but I don’t suppose that helps Coffey much.”

“He’s going to work it off, you think?”

“Either that or he’ll walk in on some trigger-happy junkie one afternoon and not get his own gun out in time, and who’s going to know whether he was really trying or not? I talked it over with the day chief. At least he still gets things done. He’s thorough.”

“He would be,” I said meaninglessly. I sat there remembering how I’d needled him.

We cruised through the Village slowly. Brannigan cut west on Charles Street, so that we could come back along Perry with the one-way traffic. “I want to roll by once,” he told me. “Perry’s left-side parking only, so the stake-out will be on my side. I’ll tell him to give us a horn signal if anything comes up while we’re inside.” He glanced at his watch. “Not that anything will, though. Sabatini’s had more than three hours since he slugged you. He was probably down here long before I had a chance to put anybody on it.”

“He’ll be back,” I said.

“You got reasons?”

“Two. He still doesn’t know she’s dead. Also he won’t be expecting badges. He thinks I’m in it alone. I’m the same kind of grafter he is.”

We had made the turn from Hudson Street and I could see Sally’s building up ahead. I pointed it out but Brannigan was more interested in locating his stake-out. He was moving on little more than half a horsepower. “Ought to be along in here. Yeah, the Ford. Joe Turner. Now what the silly hell’s he got his motor running for?”

We stopped next to the Ford. The detective named Turner was being busy with a day-old Journal but he had spotted us before we came alongside. He gave Brannigan a nod instead of a salute, showed me a sallow, pock-marked face I had seen in a squad room once or twice and was talking before Brannigan could say anything.

“You’re just on it, Capt’n. Green Chevy sedan, ‘56. The guy driving checks out perfect with the Sabatini make. He’s cruised by twice, circling the block and looking at the house. I was going to wait until I catch him in the mirror again and then pull out easy — let it look as if I’m giving up the parking space but then block him when he gets in close. The street’s narrow enough.”

“How long’s it take him to make it around?”

“Four, five minutes. He’s about due. You want to pull up the block so I can have room to—”

“Too late,” I said.

Turner and Brannigan looked. “That’s it,” Turner said. The green car had just made the turn a block and a half away.

“I’ll fake a stall up ahead,” Brannigan said quickly. “Pull out behind him, Joe. We’ll box him.”

Brannigan accelerated slowly, watching the rear-view mirror. Sabatini was coming on in a crawl. We crept past five or six parked cars, then came to a hydrant area. Brannigan swung left and into it, then backed out again. Sabatini wouldn’t see the hydrant. Nate was being just another incompetent driver, misjudging the size of a parking slot.

Sabatini kept on coming. One more ridiculous maneuver and we were angled across the middle of the road like beginners flunking the test. Brannigan cut the ignition then. “Wait for Turner,” he muttered. He bent forward and began to aggravate the starter noisily.

I was slumped low and out of Duke’s line of vision. He had held up about fifteen yards behind us, probably ready to start leaning on his horn. And then Turner pulled out to barricade the street behind him.

“Now,” Brannigan said.

Duke’s car was facing us like the stem on a letter “T.” Brannigan was on the side closest to him. He threw open his door and swung out fast. I had to go out the opposite side and chase around the rear of our car. Brannigan’s hand was in his jacket before I was moving.

“Police, Sabatinil Get out of there with your hands high!”

But Duke wasn’t buying. His eyes shot to the rear and he saw Tinner running toward him. His gears clattered and the Chevy leaped forward with a roar like something being abused in a wind tunnel.

It lurched wildly. There was no room in the street for it to get by. So Duke decided to take the sidewalk. Brannigan let out a yell and heaved himself aside and I saw him go sprawling into the gutter.

I was coming around from behind our car on the dead run, between it and the curb — just where Duke was aiming the Chevy. I snatched at the post of a no-parking sign to stop myself. My.38 was in my right hand so I snatched with my left. I swung up and around like a kid on a maypole. And then the streamer broke and the playground came up and whacked me in the shoulder.

I heard Turner’s Special fire twice, still from behind Duke somewhere, but somehow I didn’t seem to care. Not really. All I cared about were the four thousand dollars in the First National City Bank it had taken me thirty-one years to accumulate. I lay on the sidewalk, feeling very sad and wishing I’d had the sense to blow some of the money on a little fan in my youth, while the Chevy rocked along the concrete directly at me.

I rolled. I squirmed. I even slud, like in “He slud into third base,” from the collected writings of Jerome Herman (Dizzy) Dean.

There was a barred window at ground level in the building nearest me. I was over there and hugging the bars like a frenzied chimpanzee who can’t reach the peanuts when the car screamed in my ear and jerked around at a lopsided angle back into the street.

Turner sprinted after it. He stopped, fired five more times. The fifth one was the click of his hammer striking an empty shell.

“Son of a—”

I got back on my feet fast. The rear window of Duke’s car was shattered and half torn away, which stopped him as much as water stops a trout. He was a hundred yards off before Brannigan heaved himself into our car. I grabbed up my gun from where it had slithered away and threw myself into the back just as Nate ground gears and started up.

I yanked myself to my knees, clutching the top of the front seat. Brannigan was cursing like an upstaged heroine. We were still angled across the roadway and so he took the curb himself when he swung around. Turner yelled once from somewhere near us.

We were a fall block behind the Chevy before we accelerated past the first corner. Brannigan had it down to the floor, muttering between clenched teeth. “Trying to run us down like—”

He didn’t finish. Tires screeched up ahead. The signal on Seventh Avenue was red and there was a heavy stream of vehicles crossing the intersection. I saw four cars swerve at once as Duke tried to force the Chevy into the line of traffic.

The screeching stopped. A big, Winesap-colored Olds was cutting sharply away as Duke wheeled to the right. There was a fraction of a second of absolute stillness, as expectant as if Mitropoulos had just lifted his baton.