Epitaph For A Tramp

CHAPTER 5

It was not a very nice gun. It was home-made, of the sort that enterprising young high-school boys put together in machine shops when teacher is preoccupied with the bottle in the cloakroom. I stared at it, giving it about C-minus for sloppy craftsmanship.

There was a voice behind it somewhere. “Okay, Jack,” it told me. “Inside.”

The voice was not particularly nice either, nor was it Sally Kline’s. Hormones, my dear Watson. Two sexes, don’t you know? Elementary. Sure. So meanwhile what do we do now?

We close the door. Because whoever he was, Zip-Gun was not much of a thinker. The rod and the fist holding it were poked out at an angle through the eight-inch crack like roses ftom a bashful admirer. And my own hand was still on the knob.

There was not much noise, just a quick muted cracking. A broken ulna generally makes that kind of sound. Or maybe it was the radius that went. One of those insignificant bones about two inches above the wrist.

The gun clattered to the floor without going off. I’d heaved myself to the side, but I hadn’t seriously expected it to fire. Jam your wrist into a vise and your fingers open, they don’t close on any triggers.

My friend had let out a sickening gasp. He let out a louder one when I grabbed the wrist. It made a nifty fulcrum, bent that way. I jerked him forward and shouldered the door inward at the same time, then swung the arm in a fast arc so that his body followed it around. I could feel the cracked end of the bone through the skin when I pressed the arm up between his shoulderblades.

“You may take one giant step,” I told him then. He didn’t want to so I shoved him. My foot got in his way and the poor slob fell on his face into the room. He lay there clutching the break and sucking air through his teeth like the little choo-choo that couldn’t.

I let him lie for a minute. They’d be running off the next few heats without him.

I picked up the zip-gun. It was taped together. I broke it apart, dropped the handle section onto a chair just inside the doorway, slipped the lethal end of it into my pocket. The barrel had been cut from an automobile aerial, most of which are perfectly chambered for.22’s. Detroit ingenuity. I found a lamp switch and shed a little light on the subject.

I was in the living room. It was an ordinary middle-class furnished apartment. Grand Rapids had been nuts about it once. Nothing had been changed in it since the Titanic went down and wouldn’t be until it came up again. Off to the left there was a closed door with a crack of light under it and that was the only element of the decor which interested me.

My welcoming committee was still chewing a corner of the carpet. He made a feeble effort to get to his feet when I closed the door to the hall. I caught him by the back of his collar and helped him along.

“No more,” he said. “Damn, Jack, no more.”

“Mr. Jack to you.” I could have wheeled him around like a pushcart by latching onto the wrist again, but I decided it would be easier with the Luger. “This one’s glued together nicer than yours,” I told him. “How about you and me taking a stroll to that bedroom, huh, doll?”

He looked at me with glassy black eyes that were either out of focus from too many needles or else were naturally bleary. Anyhow they hadn’t gotten their dim look from poring over books. He was a punk as I had thought, maybe a year or two past twenty, narrow-jawed with a lot of greasy black hair and a mustache like an eraser smudge. If the leather jacket was in hock he’d have it back as soon as he jimmied his next pay phone. He said nothing and his breath was still coming hard.

“Move,” I told him.

He was no bigger than he had felt when I’d handled him in the darkness. He shuffled forward without much enthusiasm, protecting the wrist as if he thought I might not let him have his share when mealtime came around. When he got to the door he stopped again.

“You want the other one, too? You want it so you can’t bat from either side of the plate?”

He opened it. I elbowed him in but he didn’t go anxiously. He was hurting but he was also scared now. Nobody told me why. Bright Harry. I just had to look at the girl who would be Sally Kline.

She was a pretty girl. She was a redhead, with freckles and green eyes, and she had lovely high breasts. I could see clearly how lovely they were, because Junior hadn’t bothered to cover them up when he’d come out to answer the door.

She was tied into a chair with her arms drawn back and locked behind it. There was a gag over her mouth that was probably her last matching nylon. She was wearing slacks the color of crème de menthe and she had on a yellow pullover blouse which Junior had ripped down the front and left hanging open. Her torn brassiere was on the floor.

The cigarette Junior’d been puffing for something more than the simple joy of fine tobacco was still burning in an ashtray near her.

Junior’s head was tilted around and he was looking at me now. He hadn’t moved away from the muzzle of the Luger but you could see from the quiver in the line of his jaw that he guessed the latrine didn’t quite pass inspection. You could also see from the way his shoulders were drawn up that he knew damned well he was about to get a scolding.

Now a Luger does not have a particularly heavy barrel, but you do the best you can. The front sight helps some. I laid his skull open to the bone with the first one and then I gave him two more, which made one for each of the dirty black burns on the upper curve of the girl’s left breast. He was already going down when the second one landed. The third one was a knee in the neck to get him out of the way of the decent folk as he fell.

The girl’s eyes were wide and she was still frightened. The knot in the stocking came apart quickly and her head drew up and back and she sucked in air. I untied the belt from around her wrists.

Her hands went to her face. For a minute she sat forward, breathing deeply. Then she began to sob.

Junior was going to nap until Mommy kissed him and brushed back his precious locks. I put the Luger away and went into the John. There were a couple of washcloths on a rack and I held one of them under the warm water, then wrung it out.

“Easy,” I told her then. Her head was on the back rest of the chair now and her arms were limp at her sides. She was still inhaling deeply and her eyes were closed. I stood next to her and pressed the wet cloth across the upper part of her breast, cupping it there but not rubbing it. Most of the ash came away.

I went back and found some Unguentine. She sat there while I coated the burns with a heavy film. I lifted a torn half of her blouse and tried to drape it across her. I kept running out of material.

She’d stopped crying. She lifted the other half of the blouse herself, holding it and looking down, and then she dropped it again.

“I guess it doesn’t much matter, does it?”

I showed her my best don’t-you-fret-about-old-Uncle-Silas grin. “You feel all right?”

“You are Mr. Fannin?”

“Harry,” I told her.

“I thought—”She looked at Junior, then shook her head. “The bell rang and I thought it was you. About fifteen minutes ago. I looked down and I didn’t see anybody outside. I was just so darned scared by then that I–I went to the door and asked if it was you and he said yes. And then he put his gun against my stomach and I—” Her breath caught. “Oh, I’m so glad you came. I was—”

The butt end of Junior’s smoke was still burning. I crushed it out, then went and sat on the bed.

“Will there be… will the scars last long?”

“A few months,” I told her. A generous racketeer had let me smell a six-bit panatela along the cheekbone once. He had been going for the eye so I’d still consider myself the big winner if I was seeing a mark every time I shaved. But it had faded out.

“He put that gag on when I rang the bell?”

“Yes.”

“You tell him what he was trying to find out before that?”

“I couldn’t. I don’t know where she is, Mr. Fannin. Harry. I tried to tell him I haven’t seen her since the day before yesterday. But he wouldn’t believe me. He kept standing there and puffing on that cigarette until it would glow and then he’d put his hand over my mouth so I couldn’t scream and—”

I waited for her. She bit her lip, turning her head away. The flap of her blouse had fallen away again but she did not seem aware of it. Part of her had gotten a suntan someplace.

“I don t know where she is. That’s why I called you. She told me she was going away with him and Duke, the one she’s been seeing, and that was Tuesday and I—”

“You mean a friend of this one’s?”

“Duke something, yes. And then when Eddie came in he said something about them getting split up — something about some kind of job,’ I don’t know what he meant — and—”

I had gone across and put my hand on her shoulder. “Sally, listen, can we start with the cast of characters maybe? Eddie is this throw rug on the floor here?”

“I’m sorry. Yes. It’s Bogardus or something like that. And his friend’s name is Duke. Duke Sabatini. Duke’s the one Cathy was going out with. She brought them up here one night, it was about two weeks ago. I didn’t like them and I told her so then, Mr. Fan — Harry. Duke is older, maybe Cathy’s or my age, and he’s handsome, but he still looks like one of those horrible kids you see all over. I wanted to hide my pocketbook while they were here. I told her she’d get into trouble hanging around with them but Cathy just laughed. You know how she is, never taking anything seriously, always running around after somebody new and—”

She had been looking at me. She didn’t turn away. “I’m sorry.”

“Tell it the way you want to.”

“Have you — may I have a cigarette?”

I gave her one. Her hands trembled a little when she took the light. She took a long drag and then stared at the cigarette.

“I don’t know what it is,” she went on. “It’s as if — well, as if she’s sick in some ways. Lord knows, every girl who gets to be old enough starts sleeping around a little. But golly, you discriminate about it, you wait to see how it works out with someone, if it’s going to be a good thing. Oh, sure, sometimes you get a little tight and you crawl into bed the first night, that can happen too, but you don’t make a habit of it. You do it and then you hate yourself for it, and so you’re all the more careful the next time, or at least most girls are that way. Lord knows we talk about it enough. But Cathy always just laughs. It’s as if she has to have adventures all the time — new experiences, whatever you want to call them. She goes out to the places down here where the Village crowd hangs out, bars mostly, and — well, sometimes three or four nights a week she doesn’t come home at all except to change to go to work in the morning. And then sometimes she stops. Sometimes she won’t go out for two or three weeks, not once, just sitting here all evening and reading or something. Then it starts again. It isn’t anything that shocks me — I don’t mean it that way — but it seems like such a waste. I mean she’s so bright and she can be so good to be with, I always think it’s such a shame that she doesn’t get married—

“I keep forgetting,” she said then. “I suppose this is the same kind of thing that happened when she was married.”

She had looked away awkwardly, but when she went on with it she was still off on the same side road. I was going to have to tell her pretty soon that it was a dead end.

“Gee, I’ve, well… I asked her about you a dozen times, but she won’t ever say anything. She changes the subject every time, but I can see she’s still in love with you. It’s all over her face when she mentions your name. But if I ask her why you don’t try it again or something she—”

“Sally, you were telling me about Junior here. And somebody named Duke.”

“I’m sorry, Harry, I am. I guess it’s just seeing you this way after knowing about you for so long, and being worried about Cathy. I suppose I sort of wish you and she would get together again. Probably I’m butting in, but Cathy s so good, basically, that if there was only someone who could understand her and try to help—”

“Sally—”

I had wanted to get the story first, and maybe get her out of there, too. Once upon a time I had also wanted to be Johnny Ringo or Wild Bill Hickok and ride a big white mare. Life is rough.

“Cathy’s dead, Sally.”

She didn’t react, not for the first few seconds. She looked at me as if she hadn’t heard what I’d said. The corners of her mouth twitched. Then her face melted and she began to shake.

“Oh, no! No!”

She started to bawl. I walked across the room and held her by the shoulder. It took a couple of minutes.

“What happened? Oh, it can’t be true, it—”

I gave her the Reader’s Digest version. There were tears on her face and she kept shaking her head. And then she jumped up and ran to where the guy named Eddie was lying. She had soft ballet slippers on. She kicked him eight or ten times in the small of the back. I supposed the kicks would have cracked an egg if he’d had one with him. She kept saying, “I told her not to go with them, I told her, I told her!”

It didn’t last long. I was standing next to her when it finished and she turned and fell against me with her head on my chest. I held her until that finished also.

“Tell me now,” I said. “Just let me know what you can and then I’ll get you out of here for a day or two.”

“Yes,” she said raggedly. “All right.” She found the chair again. I gave her another cigarette and took one myself.

“Whatever you can think of. Don’t skip anything.”

“There isn’t much, I’m afraid.” She was staring at the burns and her voice was tiny and mechanical. “I think I said they came up here with her one evening about two weeks ago. Cathy was with Duke. She didn’t bring Eddie along as a date for me or anything, he was just with them. Anyhow I was going out. They were gone when I came back, but I told Cathy the next morning I didn’t like them. They were — well, you can see what this one looks like. Maybe they think it’s clever to talk that way, as if everybody owes them something. I couldn’t understand what Cathy was doing with them. All she’d say was that she thought they were amusing. Amusing! And now she’s…”

She dragged on her smoke. She was all right, however. “Anyhow I forgot about it after that, until the other night when she said she was going with them someplace for a day or two. She said she’d told the office that she had to leave town but that she’d be back yesterday. And then she said something about an experiment — that was the word she used — but she wouldn’t tell me what. She kept smiling about it all evening, so that I thought maybe she was a little drunk, but she wasn’t. I was upset about it, Harry. I tried to make her tell me, but the only other thing she’d say was something strange, about ethics. How she was going to prove to herself that nothing really mattered at all. I thought about it all the time she was gone. She’d gone away with boys other times, on weekends or things, but this time I kept imagining all sorts of things. And then when she wasn’t back when I got home from work tonight I got scared. I had a date but I called home a couple of times to see if she was in. I came back early, deliberately, and when I did I noticed Eddie across the street. I didn’t recognize him, not until he came up. The phone rang a few times too, and there was never anybody there. I guess he must have gone someplace and called. I thought about calling you right away but I didn’t know whether you’d — Oh, dear Lord, maybe if I’d called you earlier it wouldn’t have happened, maybe she’d still be—”

She came apart again. I left her alone with it this time, going into the John. There was a galvanized pail under the sink and I held it under a bathtub faucet until it was a third filled. There was a white blouse over a wire hanger on the shower nozzle. I’d known a girl once who was crazy about white blouses. I’d bought her this one.

Sally was watching me when I came out. Her eyes were raw.

“I’m going to wake up Lefty here,” I said. “I’ll wait until you put something on.”

She looked down at herself as if she had forgotten about the ripped blouse. I supposed she had. “It doesn’t hurt now,” she said vaguely.

‘I’d put some cotton over them, maybe. You won’t need a doctor.”

She had picked up the brassiere from the floor. She walked past me to a dresser and took out a laundered shirt the shade of freshly minted pennies. She held the blouse and the brassiere in her hand for a minute, staring at them with her back turned as if she wasn’t sure just what they were for, and then she set them both down. I started to move toward her when her hands came around to the back of her slacks and jerked out the tails of the torn blouse she was wearing. The blouse dropped into a heap on the floor before I made it across so I stopped again. Her hands were little fists opening and closing at her sides when she turned around naked from the waist and stared at me.

“It’s something, isn’t it?” she said. “All the things you do, the way sex is the most important part of half of them. Cathy showed me your picture once or twice and I used to think, Lord, she cheated on a man like that, and if I had him and he was half the man she said he was I’d never let myself get out of his sight. I even used to have fantasies about it once in a while, how with somebody like you it would be one of those first night things but it would be one that would last. And then something like this happens and I sit here half undressed in front of you for twenty minutes and it doesn’t mean anything at all, not one goddam thing because Cathy’s dead and—”

Her mouth was twisted and her breasts rose once as a sob racked her body. There was a rip in the paper of my cigarette. I stood there wondering just what the hell you could do about that while she ran with her shirt and brassiere into the bathroom and shut the door.