Epitaph

by James Siegel

  Jean wasn't retired and Jean had chased runaways. But then he'd stopped chasing runaways-because he got a real case.

  "This real case? What was it?" It was a little like old times, wasn't it-rattling off questions he didn't really want the answers to.

  "The biggest case of his life," she said.

  William didn't think he'd heard her right. Was sure he hadn't.

  "What?"

  "The biggest case of his life."

  Now what was he supposed to make of that? You think about it and tell me you wouldn't want to double over with laughter.

  "Okay," William said, "and what was the biggest case of his life?"

  "Look." She was bored with this-with him. "He was an old man. He said he had a case. I said what case. The biggest case of my life. I said that's nice-what is it? I can't tell. You can't even tell me a little bit? No. I can't even tell you a little bit. But it's the biggest case-I know, I said, of your life. I'm glad for you. Then I changed the subject. Okay?"

  She was bored with him-she walked over to the door.

  "Thanks for dropping in," she said.

  Outside in the hall, then later as he walked past the doorman, who seemed to admonish him with a dour shake of his head, and even later as he walked to the subway in the sticky summer heat, he tried to picture his day tomorrow. Breakfast at the luncheonette: two eggs over easy and some OJ. Then the paper: racing first, Yankees second, Mets who cares. He tried to picture it, but his day seemed to pale before his eyes, a Polaroid in reverse. The biggest case of his life. He tried to remember if he had a token. Had he bought two on the way over-or just one? The biggest case of his life. He'd lied to her. A washed-up detective down to picking clients off milk cartons and so he'd lied to her. The biggest lie of his life. Even she thought so. And even if it wasn't a lie, who cares. What did it matter now? But he had lied to her. He had. Of course he had.

  EIGHT

  The Mustang's air-conditioning was still broken; the Florida sun was still brutal. And so far, so was his day.

  He'd managed to cover two more addresses. Two more names on the list, and though he hadn't found them, he'd continued to find someone else.

  Hello Jean.

  He was pulling backup again-that's what he was doing. It was the old days all over again, and he was following one of the other Three Eyes around in the dark because they were going in blind and needed some protection. Only this time he was the blind one and the Three Eye he was following was dead.

  The first stop of the day had been 1610 Beaumont Street, a tenement only days away from demolition, its only remaining tenants a pair of emaciated crack addicts who shared a first-floor apartment-and who at first refused to answer the door, thinking, perhaps, that William was a narc. Only a close-up view through the peephole, in this case, an actual hole big enough to put a fist through, was able to rid them of that particular notion. William, after all, was too old to be anything but what he said he was-someone looking for a friend.

  However, they'd never heard of this friend, although one of them thought the name-Mr. Shankin-sounded suspiciously like his third-grade teacher.

  "Thank you," William said.

  The second address, third of the trip, belonged to a pet shelter.

  "Are you here for a cat?" the fuzzy-haired girl asked him at the front desk.

  "No," William replied. "I'm here for Mrs. Timinsky."

  But Mrs. Timinsky, needless to say, wasn't there-and as far as the girl could ascertain, never had been.

  Yet someone else, of course, had. Just as he'd been at Magnolia Drive and at Beaumont Street too.

  Samuels to Shankin to Timinsky to…

  "Someone else was here looking for that woman," the girl behind the counter said.

  Yes, William thought, Mr. Samuel's brudda. And at Beaumont Street, one of the junkies had sung the same sad refrain.

  "Sorry about not opening the door," he said, "but we get hassled. Someone came here about a month ago and nearly tore the place apart."

  "What did he look like?" William asked, thinking that junkies were more polite than he'd remembered, or maybe just the ones down here in the Sunshine State.

  "Like you," the other one said.

  So pet lover Goldblum had been there too.

  Later William found himself back at the National Inn, staring at plane after plane taking off into a nearly indigo sky, and wishing silently that he was on one.

  He found something. Remember-he'd looked like he found something.

  But what?

  And even if he found what it was, would he know what it meant?

  He had one hope, one admittedly, frail, feeble-assed hope: that Jean would somewhere, somehow, show him the way. Okay, Jean, I'm waiting.

  And now, clinging to this hope the way people his age tend to cling to religion, reality intruded. His shoulder began to throb, to scream, to make a god-awful racket. Slowly, gingerly, he unbuttoned his shirt, then walked into the bathroom where he ran a towel under a warm tap.

  The problem was, they'd left the bullet in, not all of it, but most of it, enough of it so that it hurt whenever the weather turned humid, or turned cold, or, in fact, turned. Sometimes it hurt in the morning, and sometimes it hurt at night, and though sometimes it didn't hurt for weeks at a time, sometimes it did. It was, he thought now, hard to predict.

  There was a pink and wrinkled scar there, as if they'd gone and shot him a new asshole. He pressed the towel directly onto the pain with his right hand, then walked back out into the room.

  He stood before the dresser mirror and stared at himself. He generally avoided mirrors the way he'd once avoided obituaries, but now that he'd looked at one he thought he might as well see the other. It wasn't, he thought now, a pretty sight. They say that age becomes a man, but the they who said it must have been guys as old as him, because while it might be true of middle age- this improving-with-years business-it definitely stopped there. It was kind of sad that at the very time in life when you stop thinking of yourself as a physical entity, your physical limitations force you to think of yourself as nothing else. One sad-ass poor physical entity at that. An entity that seemed to be caving in on itself, the top of his chest seemingly trying to touch the bottom, his skin starting to hang on his bones like wet laundry. Age doesn't become a man; it humiliates him.

  Once, along with his Social Security check, they'd sent him a brochure on something called the Senior Citizen Workshop, a place, he supposed, where you learned to be a senior citizen. The brochure referred to something called the prime of your life and talked about being free from work and free from raising a family and free from building a future. And yet, as he was reading it, all William felt was free from hope. He'd thrown it into the trash out front-though later he'd seen it pressed between the pages of one of Mr. Wilson's Harlequin Romances. Mr. Wilson, free from raising a family, from work, and from building a future, and now free from getting beaten to death as well.

  Outside, another plane was taking off, heading nearly straight up now, so that it looked for a moment like one of those visions you read about in the paper. You know the kind. Christ's face in a cornfield, or on a can of Campbell's soup, or on some billboard in Appalachia. This looked suspiciously like the cross itself, the red taillights like spots of blood on wrists and ankles. It looked that way at least until it flattened out over Biscayne Bay and disappeared into a bank of thunderclouds. And William, tired now as tired can be, fell asleep for the second time that day.

  The first break came with his third stop of the day.

  Follow the list, William, it's all you have.

  His first two stops had been much like yesterday's-a candy store in the let's kill whitey part of town-Mr. Who?-the proprietor asked William, and a vacant lot, which according to a homeless person named Queen, had once been a hooch house for the rich. How long ago was that, William asked him. Let's put it this way, the man said, longer than I can count.

  William, however, had no trouble counting. The vacant lot had made
it five. Five addresses: no one home. He was slowly exhausting the list, playing connect-the- dots on his smudged and sweat-soaked map, but all he was getting was crayon scrawl.

  Who are they, Jean?

  Samuels-Shankin-Timinsky-Palumbo. Who are they?

  His third stop of the day: 1021 Coral Avenue.

  The first good omen he had was that it actually ex- isted-a rather chichi-looking place guarded by a black brass jockey and tall hedge. The second good omen was that when the lady of the house heard who he was looking for, she didn't turn away, or scratch her head, or ask him to get lost.

  "Funny," she said. "I think I've heard that name before. Mrs. Winters-is that who you said?"

  Samuels-Shankin-Timinsky-Palumbo-Winters.

  William nodded; that's who he'd said.

  The woman before him had reached a sort of limbo between youth and middle age-it all depended on how the light hit her, and where. It reminded him of those Empress Nera rings he'd had as a kid, where the Empress changed position every time you moved the ring. Now smiling and confident, now in desperate peril.

  "I'd ask you to come in," she said, "but I don't know you."

  "Yeah."

  "Who did you say you are? Her lawyer?"

  "Not her lawyer. It concerns an inheritance. Mrs. Winters has some money coming to her. We heard she used to live here."

  "I don't think so. I've been here, let's see… six, seven years. We got the house from an Italian family." She pronounced it eyetalian. "I can't remember their name, but trust me-it wasn't Winters."

  "You said something about having heard that name before," thinking now that she'd probably heard it from Jean, that in a minute she'd remember all about it and tell him about the other old man who'd come to her door asking for Mrs. Winters.

  But no.

  "A card," she said. "That's it."

  "A card?"

  "Yeah. Someone sent us a card. I think it was to a Mrs. Winters-you know, a Christmas card."

  William felt the faintest hint of… what? Excitement? Maybe just relief.

  "Did you send it back?"

  "Uh uh. Who has the time?"

  "You kept it then? You still have it?"

  "I doubt it. But you never know. Look-why don't you come in… you look like you're about to keel over. I'll take a look."

  Yes, why not. He probably was about to keel over. When he walked in he was slapped by a blast of central air-conditioning gone amok; it felt like the meat section at Pathmark.

  She was gone about two minutes. Two minutes William spent slumped in a wicker chair suspended from the ceiling by long white chains. No kidding. He felt kind of precarious and completely silly. All that was missing was a playground buddy to push him back and forth.

  "Here," she said, reentering the room. "The truth is, I never throw anything out-not if I can help it."

  The truth was, William felt like thanking her for that. But he didn't, of course. Instead he took the off-white card from her hand and looked at it carefully.

  Dear Mrs. Winters, it said inside. Merry Christmas. Signed Raoul. That was it, all she wrote, as if it was sent by someone used to paying by the word.

  "The envelope?" William asked.

  "Well, I don't keep everything."

  "Sure. But maybe you remember where it was posted from?"

  "Absolutely. New York."

  "And the address…?"

  "Are you kidding? I didn't get it yesterday."

  "You're sure it was New York though?"

  "Yeah. New York. Look," she said, "aren't you pretty old for a lawyer?"

  It was as if she'd just looked at him maybe. Okay, Perry Mason he wasn't.

  "Sure, but think of all my experience." He was still sitting in that stupid swinging chair; she was still standing over him like a concerned mother checking for boo-boos. Where does it hurt…?

  William got up, but it was like trying to disembark from a moving ship. He teetered, he tottered, he fell back down in the chair.

  "Whoa," she said, taking him by the inside of his arm and pulling him up and out. "Take it easy, okay," leading him to the door as if he were Ray Charles maybe. "It's plenty hot out there."

  Plenty.

  "Oh," William said, "one thing. We sent a representative down here some time ago, but we never heard if he contacted you."

  "Representative? Uh uh. I didn't see him. But then I've been in and out."

  "Sure," William said. "Thanks anyway."

  "Don't mention it. You can keep the card if you want."

  But William was already ahead of her; he had it firmly tucked inside his pocket. He shook her hand, then walked back out into the furnace.

  Okay, he wasn't ready to yell eureka. He was still running on fumes; he didn't have much of anything. But he had that card. You follow a list with names on it and none of them are where they're supposed to be. None of them exist. Up till now. Mrs. Winters was on the list, but Mrs. Winters was real. Because someone else had known her too. Someone in New York, someone who liked to send Christmas cards. He didn't have much, but he had that.

  Merry Christmas, William.’

  NINE

  Somehow William managed to make it back from the hooker's apartment in one piece.

  Then he made the awful mistake of waking up.

  First of all, there was the hangover: Someone had been using his head as a Chinese gong.

  Second of all-there was the room: Someone had criminally assaulted someone else and not even bothered to cover up the evidence. Absolutely.

  There was that overturned coffee table at the foot of the bed, and just look at his clothes-strewn all over the place as if they'd been ripped right off his body. Of course someone had assaulted someone else-only that someone was him-so was the someone he'd assaulted. He'd beaten himself up-with a little assistance from his good friend Jack. Take a bow please.

  He surveyed the crime scene with sober dispassion- okay, almost sober, gazing at his twisted shirt stained with vomit, at his pants, each leg pointing in a different direction, at something caught just beneath the right leg, the tip of it barely peeking out. What's this?

  He reached down and lifted it up.

  The photograph. Santini, Jean, and himself. Three Eyes. It had fallen out of his pocket.

  He stared at it through barely opened eyes. Still, this time he noticed things he hadn't seen before, little things: the very edge of a gun peeking out from the waistband of Santini's pants, a white streak on the toe of Jean's left shoe, and about himself-the way his jacket cuffs didn't match, one being clearly shorter than the other. He remembered now; Rachel was going to take it to the tailors, was just about to do that. But then Rachel had taken his heart to the cleaners instead, and so he'd continued to wear it that way until he'd worn it out.

  Of the three of them, Santini looked every bit the detective. He was the only one who did. Jean, on the other hand, resembled a jailhouse snitch loaded with secrets, and he looked exactly like what he was. A fish out of water, someone who'd gone from investigating car accidents to investigating human ones with no particular talent for either.

  William went into the shower and hung his head under a cold spray.

  He felt like he'd been away-to a foreign country maybe, on some whirlwind tour like the kind Mr. Leonati went on-Mr. Leonati who lived across the hall and always left for these things looking calm and relaxed but always returned from them looking dazed and battered. The hotels had overbooked; the buses had broken down; someone had stolen his money. All those brochures filled cover to cover with pretty pictures of tranquil places had lied to him. It hadn't turned out the way they said it would. And now William, who'd never been on a whirlwind tour, or any tour for that matter, thought that this is what it must feel like.

  He'd gone on a journey too-and with similarly false expectations. He'd gone to bury Jean; instead he'd dug him up.

  And now he remembered other things-his trip home for instance; she showing him to the door through his stench of vomit, spending most
of the nauseating subway ride home replaying what she'd told him, all the while consumed by something. What? Envy, fear, hilarity? Okay envy-from someone who'd been put out to pasture to someone who was maybe still in the race. And just a little fear too-that all the things he thought were far behind him weren't, that the compromises he'd made, that that tidy little armistice he'd signed-were about to be challenged. I know. Silly of him perhaps, but age does that to you. It's the biggest case of my life-that's what Jean said. Between pictures probably.

  Poor Jean, he thought, as he trudged out of the shower and spent five minutes over the toilet-courtesy of his nagging prostate. Then back to the comfort of his chair where he downed three Bayer aspirin with a cup of stale orange juice.

  Why had he said it? What did it matter? So Jean was down to chasing runaways. Have you seen this child? So Jean had maybe found a rich runaway, at least one with rich parents who'd been tremendously grateful when Jean collared them on the phone. So maybe he was going to get a big reward and retire to a big house where he could tell big stories to Miss Eat Your Heart Out-all about how he used to dig up big-time dirt on big-time people and dish it out to big-time lawyers, occasionally throwing the juicier tidbits to Confidential or certain columnists who'd print it blind. What Park Avenue shyster is tiptoeing through the tulips in very light loafers? What very hot chanteuse is doing the rhumba with what very hot politico? Remember? If not the biggest case of his life-maybe the biggest payoff, and these days maybe that made it the biggest case of his life.

  He was an old man, she said. Sometimes that's what old men do. They lie-to themselves, to hookers with crimson tattoos on their thighs.

  And even though, as he put forth this perfectly reasonable explanation, as he ridiculed the very notion of Jean back on a case-on any case-even as he knew that in large part it was a story created to appease the storyteller, knowing that didn't alter a thing. Not yet. After all, the storyteller was appeased. Just look at him.

  Okay, almost appeased. Ninety-nine percent appeased- ready to stand up to anyone who'd dare suggest-what if what he said is true-and show them the door.