David Markson - Epitaph For A Tramp

“But n aa -tur-a-lly. Surely you didn’t miss the darling signs?”

Brannigan had wanted to know what I felt. I could have told him now. Just tag along, Harry, come meet all the jolly sorts she’d shared her Ju-Jubes with in the past dozen months. I felt an incipient nausea just looking at this one.

We’d gone in. Neva had the fall floor, and most of it was one stadium-size room with windows along the rear and a skylight in the roof. The place might have been the ballroom in a sorority house for unmatriculated screwballs on party night.

Instead of chairs there were pillows scattered everywhere, all of them violet and all about the size of recumbent hippopotami. Most of the wall space was taken up with weird, leering African masks, and there were Chinese lanterns hanging from the ceiling like Yuletide at the Mao Tse Tung’s. A broad platform raised the level of the floor about ten inches in a far corner, and in the middle of the platform, draped in pink, was the largest bed I had ever seen. It would have accommodated the starting five from the Harlem Globetrotters and probably two or three substitutes. They could have practiced in it if they didn’t feel like sleeping. A white picket fence ran around the outside edge of the platform, and in the center of the fence was a little red gate. A lantern hung on the gatepost. A sign said: Neva.

The photographic equipment stood by itself in another corner, near a door marked: Dark Room — For Pictures, Silly. There was another door near that one with a large half moon carved into the paneling.

Neva was reading Brannigan’s shield and being remotely concerned. “But, dears” he was saying, “what can you want with little old me?”

I took a cigarette. I was running out of them.

“Neva, I’ve got some questions and I want some answers,” Brannigan told him. “Straight answers without the phony affectations. Save that for the misfits you think you have to impress. You got some clean young boy who’ll give you an alibi for last night?”

“Have I got — oh, come there, must you be so crude, Mr. Brannigan? And you haven’t even been polite. The least you might do is introduce me to your hand-some friend.”

He looked at me with a sly, simpering sort of grin that was supposed to be clever and quaint and superior all at once. It made his face about as appealing as the back end of a dachshund. I went over to a window and stood there, which was the only thing I could think to do to keep from drop-kicking him through the skylight.

“Neva, I asked you about last night.”

“Well, of course I was with someone, darling. Isn’t everyone?”

Brannigan had meant it about not being on the market for the gay talk. Neva finally got the clue when he found himself being hoisted by the front of the sweater and dumped onto one of the huge purple pillows. He let out a gigglish little squeal, like a goosed hyena.

“You needn’t be so aggressive! Please, my analyst says my psyche is very delicate. I just mustn’t get upset!”

“I bet. And your analyst can lick my old man any day of the week.” Brannigan was towering over him. “I won’t say it a second time, Neva. Anymore of that ‘darling* routine and you’ll do your answering down at headquarters under lights that’ll make that mascara of yours run down into your socks.”

Neva was pouting again. He got to his feet with a gesture like petals opening, then stood there posing with his hands limp in front of him. He nodded grudgingly.

“Who were you with last night?”

“A chap named Anton Quayles. We were developing—”

“Here?”

“—pictures. Here, yes.”

“What time did he leave?”

“About nine o’clock this morning. We were working quite late.”

“He going to admit that?”

“If you’re as offensive with him as you’ve been with me, I’m certain he’ll have no choice.”

“Never mind the editorial comment either. You have any other visitors?”

“Would you?”

“Damn it, Neva—”

“No, no other visitors. We were quite alone.”

“ When’s the last time you saw Catherine Hawes?”

“Catherine—” Neva pursed his lips. His hands were still raised limply, as if he’d just finished an exhausting concerto at an invisible Steinway, but he seemed suddenly conscious of the gesture. He opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it.

“When, Neva?”

“I — well, it’s been weeks, we—”

Brannigan had him by the sweater again, jerking him forward. Neva squirmed, trying to draw away. He kept running his tongue over his lips, and now his eyes were darting from Brannigan’s to mine and then back. I went over there.

“What about her, Neva?”

“I — they weren’t pornography,” he gasped then. “They were art. Anyhow I didn’t send any of them through the mail so there’s no charge that can be—*

“Son of a—” Brannigan flung him aside like something unclean. Neva went to his knees. He snatched at one of the pillows, hugging it to himself and cowering behind it. He had begun to whimper like a setter pup with its first dose of worms.

“There was only one set. Only one, honestly. That’s all I ever printed. And I never took any others. You can ask anyone. I’m a very serious portrait photographer. Some of my young men’s faces have won awards in—”

“Get’em, Neva.”

“But I—”

“Get them!”

Neva swallowed once, getting to his feet, then scampered across the room toward a filing cabinet with a series of mincing, tight-cheeked little steps. A high-jumper with hemorrhoids would have moved just about the same way. Brannigan had glanced at me. I ground my cigarette into the floor with my heel.

Neva was rummaging through a top drawer. He was mumbling.

“Talk up, damn it,” Brannigan said.

“I merely tried to say that it wasn’t my idea, not at all. We were — well, it was after a party and she was tipsy, and the boys she was with were tipsy too, and I—”

“Boys she was with—”

Brannigan took three strides toward the cabinet. “Get the grease off your fingers and hand them over here, Neva!”

“Yes, yes, I—” Neva scurried back toward us, white-faced. He held out a manila folder awkwardly.

I was staring at the palm of my right hand when Brannigan opened it. He did not say anything. He looked at the picture on the top of the pile long enough to flush and then he dropped his hand without looking at any of the others.

“Let’s see them, Nate.”

He handed them over. They were about what I expected. Neva was not even much of a photographer. I had seen better at stag parties in college.

I looked through all of them. Cathy’s eyes were squinting against the light as if she’d been hopped up on marijuana when they were taken, but I did not bother to mention it. I handed them back without saying anything at all.

They would have made splendid illustrations for a book I had just begun thinking about writing. I was calling it Fannin Grows Up.

“Get the negatives, Neva.”

Neva brought out a smaller folder. Brannigan lifted out one negative, held it to the light, put it back. There was a sink on a wall behind us and he went over there. He tore the prints into pieces, then crumpled the negatives on top of them.

“There anymore of these? Anyplace?”

“No, honestly, none at all. Just the single set.”

Brannigan dropped a match into the sink, standing there while the pile flared up. There was a quick stench from the negatives.

He turned back after a minute, talking quietly now. “Neva, if I didn’t want to keep the girl’s name out of a mess like this on top of everything else I’d take you in so fast your jeans would unravel. I’ll forget I ever saw those things, or for that matter you. Especially you. But I’ll give you fair warning. If I ever hear your name once in connection with anything that comes through the department, I’ll have a vice squad cop on your neck twenty-five hours a day and thirty on Sundays. I’ll have you hauled in and booked if you so much as shake hands with a business acquaintance on the street. You got that straight?”