Epitaph For A Dead Beat

CHAPTER 9

His marriage had lasted seven years. He did not tell me in so many words why it had broken up, although he implied that his wife had been something of a tramp.

At the time of the divorce their daughter was six. The girl, named Audrey, went with the mother. Elizabeth Muller Grant asked for no alimony, and Grant assumed she had met another man. She did not marry again, however.

Grant did not question this, asking only to be allowed to visit the child regularly. He also did not question the fact that, two years later, Elizabeth Muller gave birth to a second daughter, not his, who was quickly sent out for adoption. The woman herself was living well, and his own child appeared to lack nothing.

He did not see the girl as frequently as he had intended. Explaining this, Grant said that his vision had taken a severe turn for the worse in that period, and, fearing total blindness, he had begun to keep to himself. Too, the girl had been enrolled in an out-of-state boarding school and was rarely home. The visits had become entirely unrewarding when they died of their own inertia in 1950, when Audrey was fourteen.

Ten years later, and two months before he appeared in my office, Grant happened upon the newspaper obituary of an Elizabeth Muller of Manhattan. It listed as her only survivor a daughter, Miss Audrey Grant, also of New York. Funeral services at a midtown chapel were announced for the following day.

Ulysses Grant evidently lived in considerable disorder. He read the death notice only because, having misplaced his magnifying glass, he found it resting on that page of an opened Times. It did not occur to him to check the date on the paper. When he arrived at the mortuary at the specified hour he learned that the funeral of Elizabeth Muller had been held nine days before.

The mortician was able to furnish Grant with two addresses. The first, Elizabeth Muller’s, led him to an expensive furnished apartment in the East Fifties. There he was told that the personal effects of the deceased had been removed by her daughter almost a week before. The second address was that of a residence hotel in Greenwich Village, where Audrey Grant had rented a single room for several years. She had left no forwarding address when she moved out three days before Grant asked for her.

Grant took about fifteen minutes to tell me all this, gesturing now and then with a hand like a hungry skeleton’s. When he finished he reached into an inside pocket for a billfold fat enough to have his lunch in it. He searched around and came up with a folded white envelope, then did not pass it across. A muscle in his throat might have been working slightly beneath that parched beard.

“This was early in the summer?” I asked him.

“In early July, yes.”

“And you haven’t done anything about it since?”

The hand lifted. “I went to both of those addresses on the first day,” he said. “That night I had second thoughts. The girl knows she has a father. I’ve lived in the same apartment all her life. She could have—”

He turned away. There were traffic noises below the window, remote but savage. It was moving up on six o’clock.

“But now something’s come up to change your mind again?”

“I hadn’t quite changed my mind to start with, Mr. Fannin. Not about wanting to see the girl, or to help her if she needs it. Let us merely say — well, that I held the matter in abeyance. About a month ago I asked Fosburgh to look into the question of my ex-wife’s finances. It was something to be discreet about, since it was no business of mine, but evidently there was no will. I assumed Elizabeth had—”

He studied the linoleum. I waited for him.

“Men would have supported her,” he went on. “She was handsome enough to have lived well in concubinage. She might have left some small amount of cash — it would have been like her to keep money lying about her apartment. And she would have told Audrey about it, I’m sure. The superintendent at the building said that two young women had been there frequently during her illness. It was cancer, I believe—”

“One of the two girls was definitely Audrey?”

“The superintendent knew her by name.”

“Any assumptions about the second one?”

“If you mean it might have been Elizabeth’s other child, yes, I’ve thought of the possibility. In any event the second girl would be of no concern to me.” He realized he was still holding that envelope. “This arrived today, special delivery as you can see.”

The envelope was plain bond, addressed to Grant in a southpaw scrawl, with no return address. It had been postmarked at nine that morning in a Village sub-station. It contained two newspaper clippings.

One of them was a two-column photograph of three men and a girl seated at a table. I recognized one of the men before I read the caption:

BEATNIK TO READ: As part of the new trendin nightclub entertainment, the Blue Soldier in Greenwich Village has announced a series of poetry recitations by noted writers of the Beat Generation. Featured this weekend and next will be Peter J. Peters, novelist and poet, left. Also shown are poet Ephraim Turk, painter Ivan Klobb, and Beatchick Audrey Grant.

The shot had been clipped from the top of a page in the Post and the date had been left above it. It had appeared exactly a week ago. Audrey Grant was a brunette and could have been reasonably attractive. Peter J. Peters had a neatly trimmed beard. Ivan Klobb, who looked old enough to know better, had a sloppy one.

The news story I had not seen, but only because I don’t read the Journal. It was one day old:

BEATNIK WRITER

HELD IN MURDER

It said nothing that DiMaggio had not told me on the phone, except that Turk had been officially booked on suspicion. They were still calling me Henry. I frowned at the two pieces, not really thinking about anything.

“No idea who they came from?”

Grant shrugged.

“Fosburgh told you he knew me when he saw them?”

“He phoned the police first, since your name was incorrectly reported. Then it seemed only logical to come here.”

I nodded. “I know a little about the murder, Mr. Grant. Until now it hasn’t been any of my business. It probably still isn’t.”

“I don’t quite follow you.”

“There doesn’t have to be any connection between your daughter and the killing — except insofar as it’s already been made. Someone could simply be using it as an incidental, to point out to a man worth thirteen million dollars that his little girl is pretty chummy with the riffraff.”

“A crank, you mean?”

“You run into any before?”

“Nothing of any consequence. The usual absurd requests.”

“You want me to try and find out who sent the stuff?”

Grant had wet his lips. He stood up. “I don’t care about the clippings, Mr. Fannin. If it seems necessary to investigate their origin in finding my daughter you may do so.” He shook his head. “I have told you a lot about myself, sir. It has not been pleasant for me, nor, I’m sure, especially interesting for you. I would like to speak to Audrey. Merely once. If she desires no further communication I will not trespass in her life again. You may tell her so.”

“I will,” I said. “Before the end of the weekend.”

“It will be that simple?”

I’ve met some of these people. I might be able to find her at that bar tonight — the Blue Soldier — or there’s a chance I can do it on the phone. After all, she’s not missing in the usual sense.”

He nodded thoughtfully. I had come around the desk, but we did not shake hands. ‘“I’ll call you as soon as I get something,” I told him.

“Yes. Thank you.” He turned to the door, stopped a minute, then went out without adding anything.

He’d run out of geese. Talking about his troubles had even given him a shabby sort of dignity. I supposed loneliness could do that, even if money couldn’t.

Philosophical Fannin. I went back to the desk, got out a manila folder, slipped the clippings and the envelope into it. I scribbled William Tecumseh Sherman on the folder and stuck it away. I locked the office and left.

A block away I passed a haberdashery which wasn’t yet closed. I caught Grant out of the corner of my eye, towering over a neat little clerk like a sequoia over a sightseer. The clerk was busily showing him something that might have been a shirt.