Epitaph For A Dead Beat

CHAPTER 13

I pulled out the knife, staring at him. I didn’t say a word.

He showed me several large teeth. “Scared you, huh?”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that either. I was still holding the bottle, so I let him watch me run the blade around its neck. Then I flipped the knife over in my palm, hefting it. Its lethal end could have pinned my hand to the table with about five inches of steel to spare.

He smelled unsubtly of sweat. He had a clean white basque shirt on, but the jacket over it was the same seersucker he’d worn the other night. The jacket looked as if he’d been sleeping in it ever since. A few more jolly little tricks with the knife and someone would bury him in it.

“That was neat,” I told him finally. “You develop the skill with practice, or did it just come to you during one of those naked Zen sessions on the living-room couch?”

“Hell,” he said. He flushed. “But I suppose that slut would shoot off her mouth at that, wouldn’t she?”

I pressed the point of the blade back into the wood, snapping it shut. “If you mean Fern Hoerner, maybe you ought to call her by name.”

“Sure. Okay, so you got friendly — I didn’t know. So I’m even sorry. Hell, you don’t think I was especially happy about that mess over at Vinnie’s? I don’t usually go around slapping females.”

“Or shooting them, evidently.”

He gave me a wry grimace. “You’re funny. They let me out this afternoon. How about the knife, huh?”

He lifted a hand, but I shook my head.

“Okay, so keep the thing. I just found it back there in the hall five minutes ago anyhow. It might be McGruder’s.”

“He shaves with it.”

The little man shrugged, then stepped past me. I poked a Camel into my mouth and watched him pour himself a glass of white wine. I realized I wasn’t really surprised to see him. A record stopped with another screech, this time sounding like chalk going the wrong way on a blackboard. Ephraim winced.

“You were with her when she found Josie?” he said then.

I nodded. He was being pleasant enough, but there was something almost spinsterish about his manner. In spite of his baby face he made me think of things that get shriveled up, like prunes. “How come they let you scram?” I asked him.

“I had an alibi. They finally got around to believing it.”

“What about that gun?”

“Aw, hell—” He screwed up his enormous forehead in disgust. “People know about my record. Every damned time something gets stolen around here I get put down for it. Just because I got arrested for shoplifting in California once. You know what I hooked? Six cans of smoked oysters and a slab of Bel Paese cheese. I was trying to write a blank verse epic on Sacco and Vanzetti and I was practically starving. Boy, I began to feel like Sacco and Vanzetti myself over there this week. You know who they were?”

“Vaguely. Somebody planted the gun after the killing— picking you because it would look convincing?”

“I’ll plant something on him quick enough, when they find out who. Sacco and Vanzetti were two Italians up in New England in the—”

“A lot of people know about the smoked fish?”

“Oysters are animals, not fish. Sure, that’s the trouble. I gave the fuzz at least twenty names.”

“Just names wouldn’t convince them.”

“I told you. I had an alibi. A guy was with me — he even walked me to Vinnie’s, just before I ran into you.”

Somebody named Peters—”

He started to answer, then stopped. “—Somerset Maugham?” a voice wailed. “Somerset Maugham!”

“Evidently it took your pal a while to show up,” I said.

He was considering me. “He got drunk that night,” he said after a minute. “He didn’t hear about anything until today.”

“I thought the upstairs neighbor said you were alone over there?”

“Pete was down on the landing. The human eye isn’t constructed to see around corners.” He grinned suddenly. “You’re asking as many questions as they did.”

I didn’t smile back. “I just realized I know more than they do,” I told him.

He had been drinking. He lowered the glass, then reached to the table and set it down. “Just what is that supposed to mean, huh?”

“Nobody walked you as far as Vinnie’s,” I said without emphasis. “Maybe I didn’t make it clear to the police, but you came in there on the dead run. It doesn’t prove anything about the killing — just that for one reason or another both you and Peters are lying.”

“Why, you son of a—”

His face got livid. June Allyson could have made herself look more ferocious with a minimum of effort, and I was a little sorry I had badgered him. I had simply been thinking out loud, and there wasn’t any real reason for it.

“So run the hell back and tell them,” he snarled then. “Don’t you think they checked the story? What’s it your business anyhow, you—”

I didn’t answer him. I was chewing on a knuckle awkwardly when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I started to turn, thinking that it was probably Henshaw.

It was Mount Everest.

It fell on me.