Epitaph For A Dead Beat by David Markson

Author:David Markson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-03-07T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

I stood in front of a door marked 5-D at the end of a corridor which had last been mopped during the candidacy of Alf Landon. There were other doors behind me, all closed, but judging from the odors they would have opened onto three stables and a sty. The Nineties, just east of Broadway. The neighborhood had been more than decent when Grant had first moved in.

Ask a landlord about the rot and he would blame it on the influx of Puerto Ricans. He would be well informed about Puerto Ricans. You would probably have to go to a beach in the Caribbean to find him.

Fannin, the social critic. Try the door, Fannin.

It had taken a cab fifteen minutes to get me across town. I’d pressed a bell at random to get a buzz, since Grant’s had not answered. I could still have been wrong, and there was still that local pub for him to be in. But if Audrey Grant and her half-sister had talked about expecting money this was the only place I knew that it could be coming from.

Try it, Fannin.

A notice for an undelivered telegram was sticking out under the door. I took out a handkerchief before I worked the knob.

I could have been wrong. I’m never wrong. Somewhere down the hall a baby began to cry and I closed the door behind us, against the sound.

A window was open, and in the brief draft a single feather stirred near my foot, then fell again. He’d bought that white shirt.

Another body. Describe it, Fannin. The bullet which took him on the cheek, shattering too much bone to be a .22 this time. The mess where it had emerged at the base of his skull, making it a .38 at least. The whole thing, like how many others? It didn’t make me light-headed this time. I slumped against the wall and stared at my hands, not upset either, just tired.

There were more feathers. They were from an ordinary bedroom pillow which had been used to muffle the report. I wondered remotely if the feathers were goose down.

What else, Fannin? A smashed alarm clock on its back, its hands stopped at 5:47. That was a mistake, although a minor one. Grant had been in my office at 5:47. But he had still been dead three or four hours longer than his daughter, which seemed to be the point the killer had hoped to suggest. He was cold as oceans.

There was a phone. I used the handkerchief again, dialing Western Union. A woman with seaweed in her mouth repeated Grant’s name and address and then said: “‘For information about your daughter try a man named Constantine. Can be located through Morals Squad.’ The message is signed, A Friend.’” I thanked her.

I wasn’t with it. I wasn’t anywhere. Every seemingly logical thought in my head went just so far and then reversed itself like a buttonhook. If Josie and Audrey had anticipated an inheritance they had to have been involved in Grant’s murder themselves.

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