Epitaph For A Tramp

by David Markson

  I still didn’t answer him. I took a cigarette and pulled on it deeply, watching the smoke break against the windshield.

  “All right,” he said, “so it’s none of my business. You want to go in?”

  I nodded, opening the door. I hadn’t answered him because I didn’t have any answers. I’d spent a year trying to get rid of what I’d felt about Cathy and then this morning had brought it all back. It was still rotten, thinking that things might have been different for her if she’d had some help, and I had to feel guilty about that. But I was not feeling much of anything else now. Brannigan was probably right that it would be something you would figure out sitting at a desk or using a phone, and even that did not bother me the way it would have six or eight hours before.

  We were walking across. “Soon as we see this one we’ll check Coffey out,” he was telling me.

  Leeds was listed for 3-B and it was another one we didn’t have to ring. Some misguided soul had hooked back the outside door in the hope that it might let a little cool air in. Maybe there was cool air on Annapurna or Orizaba. I dragged myself up the two rickety flights like an old-age pensioner. We found the door we wanted at the end of a corridor and Brannigan rapped on it.

  That was when I noticed that the heat was getting to Brannigan also. He was sweating badly and his face was flushed. We heard a voice say, “Get that, will you, Henry,” and then when Henry opened the door and said, “Who intrudes?,’’ Brannigan did not ask for Leeds the way he had asked for Sommers or Neva. He had his wallet in his hand and he lifted it with a tired gesture and said, “Police.”

  The man in the doorway did almost nothing. He squinted out at us behind thick glasses as if he had not heard us correctly, and then he turned to repeat the word over his shoulder. “Police, dads?” he said curiously.

  He didn’t get an answer. There were about six quick footsteps and then there was the sound of a chair clattering to the floor. A second after that a window went up, hard, jarring the weights inside its molding. The man in the doorway had blocked us unintentionally, but I had a hunch the elbow I planted in his liver would remind him to be less careless in the future. I saw the second man’s back as he cleared the window ledge, which was about twenty feet away in the far wall of a rear room, and then he was out of sight and rattling down a fire escape.

  Twenty feet. A man with my stride, or Brannigan’s, can cover the distance from a standstill in approximately a second. We both started to, but neither of us quite made the window. Because the second hadn’t fully elapsed when the sound began, and when it came we were both rooted like snow-heavy birches, bent forward and frozen.

  It was a man’s scream. I had heard one exactly like it a dozen years before in North Africa. Press me and I could tell you the date, the name of the crossroads, exactly what I’d been doing when it happened. The G.I. had been sleeping off a binge on the edge of a ditch. When they’d backed the tank off him you could have peeled up what was left of his legs to wrap your holiday mailing.

  Brannigan looked out first. He said, “Oh, God, oh, my God,” and a priest giving final rites would have had a voice just as hushed. After that he choked and was fighting to keep himself from vomiting and you could hardly blame him for that.

  The man had gone down one flight of the fire escape toward the narrow yard below and then had changed his mind. There was an alley behind the building which faced on the next block and he had decided to go over there. There was a spiked fence between the yard and the alley, with its spikes sticking up about a foot above the crossbar which held them in place. The spikes were about an inch thick at the bar, tapering sharply to four-sided points from there upward. Evidently the man had climbed the railing at the second landing and tried to jump it.

  Whoever he was, athletics obviously hadn’t been his long suit. Half of him had gotten across.

  He was hanging face-downward with his arms and trunk over the far side and his legs toward us. The spikes were set closely enough together so that he had caught three of them in the bowels. They were sticking up through the back of his pants like dirty fingers through a moth-eaten scarf.

  The shoelace he had tripped over was still swinging loose.

  CHAPTER 15

  I climbed out. Brannigan was turning back to the man called Henry as I went, but Henry was not leaving. He wanted a look, too.

  He got it as I was climbing down. From the way it tore him up, I gathered that the lad on the fence would be a grief he’d find hard to sustain. “Man,” I heard him say, “like shishkebob!”

  I got down there. “Any point in an ambulance?” Brannigan said.

  “Hearse, Nate.”

  The deceased had been about thirty-five and a redhead, but you could not tell much from his face about anything else. He had bitten a deep gash into his tongue, which was hanging out like an empty mitten, and his eyes were bulging.

  I stood there for a minute. He was impaled at just about the level of my shoulders and he did not look heavy. He would have leaked, however.

  I glanced up. “You want me to?”

  Brannigan’s face was drawn. The other man was still gaping. He was small and thin-faced and maybe forty, and his lenses looked thick enough to double as casters. “Leave him,” Brannigan said finally. “Wait a second.”

  He moved away from the window. There was already a fly or two at the man I supposed had been Arthur Leeds. I doubted that he was the boy who had killed Cathy, since he would not have been just waiting around for us that way, so I shooed the flies off.

  Brannigan came back. He had a balled-up tan bedspread in his hands and he tossed it down to me. He was right enough about that. There were only eight or ten windows looking out that way, but sooner or later someone’s favorite aunt was going to open one of them to sprinkle the geraniums. Some of them should have shot up when he’d screamed. Probably there was a quiz show on.

  I billowed out the spread and threw it over him, then ripped it across some of the spikes so that it would not slip off. I left him like that.

  The other man was slumped in a straight chair when I came up. He was wearing a red and gray plaid jacket that some peddler’s stout horse was happier for the lack of, and a black string tie which disappeared into the top of his pants. That left all of four inches of the tie showing, since the pants ended under his armpits somewhere. He had taken off his glasses and was holding them, and it seemed to have finally gotten through to him. His face was the color of soggy oatmeal.

  Brannigan was standing over him with his hands on his hips. “Leeds, man, oh, yes,” the man was muttering. “Arthur indeed. Like wow, what a fadeout!”

  “Damn it,” Brannigan said, “what was it all about? What made him run?”

  “Sugar, man, you’re the flatfoot. I just spin tunes, you know? Like I mean, you ought to know what he bugged out for.”

  Brannigan hit him. He brought the back of his hand across the man’s jaw from right to left and the man sucked in his breath with a sound like a punctured accordion. He scrambled backward, losing the chair. It started to go over and he caught it with one hand, dancing behind it and waving his glasses hysterically. “Don’t, man!” he screeched. “Like don’t! Sugar, it ain’t none of mine! Like I couldn’t whistle note-one of that tune, that’s for real, except that he just now told me. I just ambled over to spin some lyrics, you know? Like right there—there’s my notebook on the piano, see? Oh, yes, oh, yes, Henry Hen-shaw, like it’s got my name on the cover. Like I wouldn’t even blow my mother-in-law’s coin for that stuff, you dig me? I ain’t been hooked for lo, these ten years. I—”

  His voice trailed off as Brannigan stood up. Brannigan’s jaw was set and his lips were tight. He grunted disgustedly. “What did he have? Had Narcotics been on to him?”

  “The real goods, oh, yes. Far out. The mighty H, like. He announced they had been bugging him bad. They picked him up two weeks ago but he was clean. But like he was terrified, man. He just got in this new horn full. That cat on the fence, you know? I mean not
me. All this is just what he mentioned in passing. True, dad, that’s straight. I don’t lay a hand on hide nor hair, you know? Like I don’t even want to hear any of that chatter, not Henry Hiram Henshaw!”

  “He push it?”

  “I’m weak on details, man. Like he’s in the middle someplace, kind of a transfer point, you take my meaning? Like some cat dumps it into his pocket and another cat lifts it out again. He gets maybe two bills a week for this inconvenience, like it’s better than they leave it in a locker in Grand Central. He—”

  “Where is it? Where’s he keep it?”

  “In yon head. Like that’s what he informed me. You dig how calm and cool I’m telling you, don’t you, man? Like I mean, sugar, why ought I not? I’m just here to spin a tune, oh, yes, oh, yes. If I just happen to be coincidentally cognizant of the feet that the cat stashes his nasty old heroin under the sink, like, that saves labor all around, does it not? Doesn’t it?”

  Brannigan did not answer him. He nodded to me and I went into the latrine and felt around on the underside of the sink. It was taped into place but it pulled away easily. It was a carton about the size of two packs of Pall Malls end to end, maybe a little more thick. I brought it out.

  Brannigan’s mouth was still set. The carton was sealed with transparent tape and he tore it open. He glanced inside.

  Henshaw giggled, clutching the back of his chair. “Like you want to be sure of the contents,” he said, “you sniff it. Ha! Like you could be the coolest cat in coptown, man. Hahahaha!

  Brannigan walked across the room and set the carton on top of the piano. It was a fairly new upright, probably the only item in the apartment which did not come with the rent. Everything else had that same twenty-seven-tenants-and-still-holding-its-own look of the stuff in Sally’s place.

  When Brannigan turned back he was taking out a set of cuffs. Henshaw had just gotten seated again. He jerked himself upright with his knees drawn up and his heels clutching the front edge of the seat. “Hey, man, like ain’t I been coming on real cooperative like? True now? Am I to be a victim of circumstance? I, Henshaw, innocent bystander? Like I’ve got my rights—”

  Brannigan ignored him. He yanked Henshaw’s left wrist toward him and clicked the bracelet into place, then locked the other ring around a narrow steam-heat pipe which ran up to the ceiling next to the chair.

  “Like help, now,” Henshaw kept protesting. “For crying out loud, dad, I want a lawyer. I want ten lawyers. I want my agent. You can’t bug me like this, I’m—”

  Brannigan took him by the lapels. “Shut up,” he said. He did not raise his voice. “Just shut up and don’t say another word. If you’re clear you’ll get offand that will be the end of it. But in the meantime you’re going to sit here until I straighten this thing out and you’re not going to be any bother. You’re not going to talk unless you’re spoken to. You’re going to be seen and not heard. You’re not even going to breathe too heavily. You got that?”

  Henshaw gulped helplessly. He glanced toward me but I did not have anything for him. He opened his mouth, had a second thought, said nothing. He stared at the cuffs as glumly as a stripteaser confronting a low thermometer.

  Brannigan had picked up a phone across the room. He dialed a number. When he got it he said, “This is Nate Brannigan, Central. Give me somebody big in Narcotics, will you? Somebody who knows what’s current. Charley Peakes, maybe. ...Sullivan’ll do. Thanks.”

  He looked back to Henshaw while he was waiting. “Where was Leeds last night?”

  “We were blowing, your majesty, sir,” Henshaw said bitterly. “This joint over on Second Street. We’re there four nights a week, you know?”

  “How late?”

  “We retired early, your highness. One A.M., your kingship. We had another session scheduled for après that, but Leedsie wasn’t coming on too cool. Sir. Like he was all shook up on this police bit, comprenez vous? He kept flatting. What occurs if I got to go to the head here? I am like sometimes prone to have complications with my kidneys. They—”

  Brannigan had gotten his connection. “Brannigan, Sully. Fine. Listen, an Arthur Leeds, Jones Street—there be a reason why he’d take a dive out a window rather than talk to two cops at the front door?”

  The Narcotics man had a gravel voice and I caught a few random words as he talked. He went on for a minute or two and Brannigan frowned once or twice. “Yeah,” he said finally, “working on something else entirely. Just walked in on it. Yeah, dead. No, that’s all right, Sully, I’ll call. But I’ve got what reads like eight or ten thousand dollars’ worth of the stuff sitting on a piano here, so you can send a pick-up on that. I’ve got a pal of his cuffed to a pipe also, name of Henshaw. Might be a delivery, I’m not sure, but I’ll leave him for your boys at the same time. No, never mind, I’ll get a precinct wagon for the body. Right. You want to give me a switch? Thanks. See you in church, Sully.”

  He turned back to me while he was waiting for his transfer. “They’ve been sweating him out for months,” he said, “trying to get a make on his contacts. Some bonehead rookie picked him up by mistake two weeks ago and they figured the whole thing was shot. If Henshaw here isn’t their boy it’s dead now completely. Leeds was a heavy traffic point.”

  “Me!” Henshaw screamed. He clattered his cuffs. “Hey, now, man, like I declared, I was just here to spin a—”

  Brannigan got his other call. “Brannigan, Central,” he said. He gave the Jones Street address. “Corpse impaled on a fence, accident while fleeing interrogation. Central operation. A wagon, one car. No, nothing else, it’s a Narcotics mix. They’re on the way. Right, I’ll be here. Yes.”

  He hung up and glanced my way again. “Twice,” he said. “Twice in one morning. That punk through the shop window and now this. Damn it.”

  I didn’t say anything. He stood there a minute, staring at nothing, and then he dialed once more. He was looking rotten. “Brannigan,” he said. “Get me Pete Weller in my office.”

  I sat down across from Henshaw and took a cigarette. It was my last one.

  “Me, Pete,” Brannigan said. “What’s with the Hawes sheet? Coffey make that hotel check? Yeah, I expected as much. You match up the Bogardus story with what came out of Troy? Right. What about the run-down on Fannin’s block? That too, huh? Hospital report on Sabatini? Well, that’s something, at least. What’s on red MG’s? Oh, sweet damn. No, give it to me now, just read them down so I can see if any of the locations sound interesting—”

  He listened expressionlessly to something for several minutes. “Hell,” he said finally. “All right, yeah, tell him to keep checking in. No, all looks like a big bust. Yeah. Stick on it. So long.”

  He put the phone back and looked at me. “Last Monday I had three different tips on the same horse,” he said somberly. “Three. Thirty bucks I put down, money the wife doesn’t even know I’ve got. You know where the horse comes in? I should have known what kind of week it was going to be.”

  “All of it?”

  “All of it. Coffey couldn’t get a tumble at any of the hotels. About sixty different overnights and any names in the bunch could have been Sabatini and the girl. The plainclothesmen I had checking your street for possible witnesses got nothing at all, a couple of people might have heard tires screech around three-thirty but nobody bothered to look out of any windows. Sabatini’s all right, but his version of the story pairs up with the other punk’s—no variations, no loose ends to make anything of. All we’ve got are red MG’s. You know how many of them? Forty-one, for hell’s sake. Twenty-eight cops and thirteen hack drivers saw vehicles of that description on the streets last night, but not one of them had any reason to pay attention to plate numbers. Forty-one, all the way from the Cloisters down to the Battery and back, all between roughly two and three-thirty in the morning. Every shoe clerk and his brother drives a red MG, for crying out loud. And not one of the locations fits with anything we know so far—none here or at Neva’s or at Sommers’s. Nobody even saw it parked out in
front of your place. Damn it to hell. We’re nowhere, Harry. Except at a nice rosy dead end.”

  He walked across the room and parked himself heavily on a studio couch, then took out a cigar and looked at it. When he did, Henshaw began to giggle.

  Brannigan heaved the cigar at him. The small man ducked, but he reached out deftly with his free hand at the same time and snatched the cigar out of the air. He righted himself and flipped it into his mouth, wrapper and all, and sat there grinning smugly.

  Dead end—except that we’d forgotten to wind up one small aspect of the interrogation. Henshaw had the cigar tilted up at a rakish angle, watching me merrily as I walked across.

  “Okay,” I told him, “so like it’s a canary. So swallow it or spit it out. What did Leeds do after one o’clock?”

  He wiggled the cigar. He tittered. He slapped his knee. “The Hawes sheet,” he chortled. “Oh, I dig that, oh, yes, oh, yes! That’s what the man said, is it not? The Hawes sheet? What a far-out place to get high! Who needs a measly fix when the Hawes sheets lie awaiting!”