Epitaph For A Dead Beat

CHAPTER 7

She was gone when I woke up. I’d never heard her.

I hadn’t heard the alarm either, and it was after nine. There wasn’t any note. She’d disappeared without a trace, like Cinderella.

Cinderella would have forgotten a slipper. Three or four meager hours of sleep had left me just groggy enough. I actually caught myself searching around for one of those tennis shoes.

I got to the office by ten, but it was a meaningless achievement. The waiting room was as barren as Pompeii.

I looked her up and dialed the Grove Street number. I didn’t get an answer.

It made the afternoon papers. Not much space, no photo. Police were questioning several unnamed suspects. The body had been discovered by a Miss Fern Hoerner, roommate of the deceased, along with a private investigator named Henry Fannin. I tried her again at four.

I supposed the daylight had made it easier for her to go to a girlfriend’s. I also supposed I might come up with a client if I sat there patiently again tomorrow. I locked the office and went home.

DiMaggio was easy. I caught him at nine-thirty. “We found the gun,” he told me. “In our sneak thief s apartment. I had a hunch.”

“T\irk?”

“Yeah, the first place we looked. Ifs Miss Hoerner’s — it was registered. No prints — he’d wiped it clean — but Ballistics fired it and the slug matched. He claims if s a plant, of course — says he never saw it before. But we also found a neighbor who heard him pounding on the door over there about two hours before you called in. Made enough of a racket so that she took a peek down the stairway, and she’s willing to make a positive identification. She says she heard him threaten the Welch girl with bodily harm if she wouldn’t open up.”

“She hear the shot?”

“No. She says he quieted down, either he was let in or else he went away and came back. Turk is screaming about an alibi, says a friend was with him all evening, but the friend hasn’t shown. We’ll get a confession sooner or later.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“They usually are, Fannin. You should know that.”

“The others get themselves clear?”

“We’re not really interested in them. For the record, that girl Dana O’Dea was too blotto to have handled that kind of shooting. Toomey practically had to carry her in to the station when he picked her up. Which is nice work — she’s quite a looker.”

“Peter J. Peters?”

“Never questioned him. The girl wasn’t pregnant, which eliminates his interest. He’s the friend Turk claims he was with. It’s up to Turk to produce him, if he really is an alibi — which I doubt. The neighbor says she didn’t see anybody else in the hall. It looks pretty cut and dried.”

“I’d hate to think a man was stupid enough to leave a murder gun under his nightshirt.”

“In a coat pocket. Hell, we got over there before three o’clock. He probably planned to dump it later.”

“You look into this uptown joker — Connie?”

“Vice Squad can’t make him for us. Miss Hoerner could be right about him being a married man. I’m not going to worry about it — it’ll be Turk. You know this Village gang, they’re all psycho. We’ll get our confession and then instead of a lawyer hell bring in a head doctor to prove it was his mother he was really mad at.”

“She loved him.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing, nothing. Thanks for all the dope.”

“See you around. I spoke to your friend Captain Brannigan, by the way. I’ll mention your name, somebody needs something that isn’t strictly departmental.”

“Ill appreciate it.”

I watched the last few innings of the Yankee game. Jimmy Piersall beat them with a double in the eleventh and it wound up after midnight. Her girlfriend had an extra bed. She was sleeping over.

DiMaggio would be right about the Village. Artists, social exiles — there was always a lot of sensitivity on the loose down there, a lot of overplayed emotion. Even on the chance that it wasn’t Ephraim it would still be something simple. I did not have any investment in it.

She didn’t answer Thursday morning either. There was a girl I had charmed, all right. She was probably locked in a phone booth somewhere, still telling them all about it back home.

I sat some more. The detective profession was on the skids. I hadn’t had a paying customer in eight or ten days.

Maybe it was all in my mind, but the whole building seemed remarkably quiet. Nobody came, nobody went. Only Fannin, who paid the rent.

Percy Bysshe Fannin, the Shelley of the Sherlocks. The Keats of the Keyhole. Me and Ephraim.

So she’d needed a shoulder to dig her nails into, and mine had been closest. So there was another shoulder someplace with her name stenciled on it. So there hadn’t been any reason to mention it.

I couldn’t remember a week so hushed since the Giants went west.

I tried her one more time that evening. I tried another girl after her, and I got an excuse and a promise. I had a substantial file of both items. I didn’t want to see the other girl anyhow.

I was a fool. I sat there again Friday. Nobody wrote me any letters except the University of Michigan Alumni Association, looking for contributions. I sent them what I had left of Mrs. Skelly’s largess. Nobody dialed my number, even by mistake. I stared at the back of the door to the reception room.

Apropos of nothing at all, I wondered whatever became of Wrong Way Corrigan.

It was something to do. I wondered whatever became of Schoolboy Rowe. For that matter, whatever became of Doyle Nave, who beat Duke with that pass in the ‘39 Rose Bowl game? Whatever became of Jean Hersholt?

Oh, sure — poor old Jean Hersholt. So then whatever became of Sonny Tiifts? Sonny Tufts? Whatever became of Lucius Beebe? Who the hell was Lucius Beebe? Whatever became of Sir Stafford Cripps?

So it’s my office, I damned well guess I can use it for what I please.

I decided I better get out of there. It was ten to five. I shut the drawer I’d been occupied with. Since I was leaving I had to take my foot out of it anyway.

I was lifting my jacket off the hook when the buzzer rang, meaning that someone had opened the outer door. It could have been another tenant from along the corridor, wanting a little group therapy. Someone like that would just look in.

Nobody did, so I went over and looked out.

There was a man in the reception room. I stared at him.

I decided I was going nuts altogether.