Epitaph For A Dead Beat

CHAPTER 33

Hiram Henshaw was perched cross-legged on a deformed hassock in his living room, squinting at me like a myopic canary from behind his thick lenses. He was wearing a stained sleeveless undershirt and a pair of pegged pants the color of rotted apricots. Except to whistle once or twice he had not made a sound in the ten minutes I’d taken to tell him the story.

I wasn’t sure why I was up there. My viscera were still rattling around like loose bolts, and I felt about as sociable as a hangman. It was well after nine o’clock.

He picked at a splotch of dried shaving lather in his left ear. “So you’ve been pacing the paranoic pavements ever since you left the law, like?”

“A couple hours. I had coffee just down the block—” “Indeed, indeed, glad to be of sympathy. I can see how the circumstances would make a cat start gnawing on his nearest leg. Like rough. But man, you couldn’t have been cognizant that crazy Turk would perforate the chick’s pajama tops. Or that he’d do unto himself like he did.”

“Okay, I guess I couldn’t have been. But still, I—” “Still you’re dogged by dismal doubt. She came on with this parting bit about how she’d extemporized the whole solo, and you’re sure she had to be just giving you the big razzoo — but you’re not that sure—”

“You’ve got it, friend.”

“Yet you voiced the conclusion yourself — the chick was the only one with motive for the mayhem, nest pas? This is not reassuring enough for your caviling conscience?”

I shook my head. “I’ve got to come up with something concrete. If I could just prove she’d stolen the book—”

“Oh, yes. But she would have held flame to that script of old Loosh Vaulking’s first thing — tell-tale page after tell-tale page, gone, gone. Alas, I dig your dilemma, I truly do.”

“Yeah.” I took a smoke. “How do writers work, Henny? Damn it, I suppose once a guy copied over a new draft of something he wouldn’t have any reason at all to save the earlier version—”

Henshaw shrugged. “Like as not, not, like. But on the other hand since when does a cat need a reason to save things? Like I cherish three hundred and thirty-seven unpaid traffic tickets in a scented drawer, you know? And—”

He stopped abruptly, tilting his head to one side. His brow was wrinkled. After a minute he began to talk to himself. “In Vinnie’s Place? Surely, in Vinnie’s. Just making idle talk, and Loosh declared — hmmm, now what did Loosh declare? Like his pad had gone to pot since the domestic tranquility had terminated. Like Fern had left his bed and board, his bed and broom, and that cat was such a slob he couldn’t live in the same room with himself. So like he’d been — like — well, pull my daisy—”

He faced me again. He pursed his lips. Very slowly he got to his feet. “Now leave us not let hope spring too eternal, lad, but Loosh Vaulking had this brother. Upstate a ways — where, where? Dobbs Ferry, oh, yes. Oh, yes, indeed. And in his brother’s pad are many mansions, you dig me? And like Loosh had taken to stashing stuff for storage—”

Henshaw giggled. And then he bowed from the waist. “Like I reiterate, there could be nothing up there but bags of old bread. But if you’ll remember to make restitution for the long-distance chatter before you debouch, man, there’s like a telephone on the floor under yon sagging chair—”

And it was that simple. That simple. The draft was sketchy, and far from finished, but it was indisputably the same novel. Roger Vaulking, his wife and a housemaid were able to swear it had been in a closet in their home, along with other possessions of Lucien’s, for over two years. An immediate injunction was granted against sale of the Blalock edition, and Roger Vaulking told reporters he would eventually release the work through another firm, but not until its notoriety had substantially lessened. Review copies with Fern’s name on them were around, of course, and Dana O’Dea got hold of one and sent it to me from San Francisco about a month later.

She’d hung around for a day or two, but my ribs got worse before they got better, and that baseball nostalgia goes only so far. I was sorry, but even Medwick had to leave potential scores on base once in a while. I rewrapped the book and mailed it to Sergeant DiMaggio that November, when Constantine and Ivan Klobb were indicted on assorted counts of prostitution.

Not that there was much point in the gesture. The sergeant probably never read it either.