Epitaph For A Tramp

CHAPTER 7

Duke hadn’t done it because he was here, and there could only be one reason why he’d come. He had to be looking for Cathy. So he didn’t even know she was dead.

“In,” he told me. He didn’t say it precisely the way Eddie Bogardus had said it. Bogardus I’d tagged as an Edward G. Robinson fan, and this one was a trifle more suave — say the early Cagney sort. The gun was Cagney’s kind also, a foot-long Army Colt which might have looked less likely to drag him to the floor if it had been mounted on a caisson. He was standing several feet back from the door, calmly pressing the thing into Estelle’s ribs.

It was Duke all right. New York wouldn’t be that lousy with random armed punks waiting behind entrances. Actually he was prettier than Cagney. Taller too, although the Vitalis alone gave him a three-inch edge. He had eyes the color of broomstraw.

We were standing there. “Remember that scene when he squashes the grapefruit in Mae Clarke’s face?” I said. “Always got a boot out of old Jimmy. Or was it Jean Harlow’s face?”

“Let’s save the chatter, huh?”

“Well now, sure, if you didn’t see the picture I guess we can’t discuss it. Truth is I can’t stay anyhow. I just dropped by to deliver some bananas.”

He caught the reference and he scowled at me, so I scowled back. I was being rather silly. He knew I wasn’t going anywhere.

“You want to step out of the way,” I asked him finally, “or am I supposed to crawl through your legs?”

“Hard,” he said. “First he’s comic and now he’s hard. Just ease in the door. There’s room for six of your kind, Oliver.”

Oliver, Jack. Different cast, same writers. Same old story-line too. Boys lose girl, so one of them checks out the roommate and the other one checks out the mother and sister. Two wrong endings on the same double feature. A girl like Cathy would go to a man when she got into trouble.

Sure. So what man?

I went in. I’d seen too many females messed up already that morning to want to make him really impatient. Estelle was trembling, next to him. She couldn’t have looked much worse if vandals had trampled the chrysanthemums.

“That wall will do swell,” he told me. “Let’s turn around and get your hands up on it.”

I did that too, standing next to a highboy. I could see a little of the other furniture and it was what I remembered, all very antiseptic and uncomfortable looking. Estelle’s taste. There was a TV set in the corner. Just a little while and the three of us could catch Sunrise Semester.

Duke had closed the door. “On the couch,” he told Estelle. “And get glued there.”

I heard her going, then felt the.45 hook into the small of my back. I’d already made up my mind not to horse around with this one. Years ago I’d made up my mind. It’s a cinch to be psychological, Fannin’s one mental block, but any muzzle you can lose a fountain pen in is just too big.

But he really didn’t make me that nervous. He’d be looking for information, not a murder rap.

He was frisking me, running me down with his left hand. “The gun’s on my right hip,” I told him. “If you’re looking for the forty grand, I already blew that on chewing gum and soda.”

“We’ll get to that news later, Oliver.” He jerked out the Luger and then my wallet. Then he found the barrel and trigger-assembly of Eddie’s zip-gun.

That seemed to amuse him a little. He wheezed contemptuously through his nose and I heard the pieces fall against the seat of an upholstered chair. The.45 crowded my spine some more, so he was probably busy with my wallet. After a while that dropped to the floor.

“Big of you,” I told him. I could see that he’d left the money in it. He wasn’t interested in my paltry fifty or sixty bucks.

“Fannin,” he said. “Cop, huh? Okay, cop, it’s too early for you to be on it for any bonding company. So Bogardus spilled about the heist. What else do you know that’s interesting? Let’s have it.”

He didn’t know me from Little Black Sambo, which meant that Cathy had kept us private after all. I didn’t feel so high-spirited anymore, knowing that. Under the circumstances I suddenly felt considerably like a slob.

“Spill, cop.”

“Shove that rod against me one more time and you’ll get one goddam lot of answers,” I told him. “Back off and let me stop climbing this wall. What the hell do you need besides that howitzer to keep me in line? You want a tin whistle maybe?”

“A wit,” he said. “A real genuine wit.”

“Yeah, I know, the man who wrote Snowbound was wittier.”

A little time passed. He grunted. He could turn colors before I’d explain it to him.

He decided to be accommodating. “Drop ‘em,” he said.

“Keep your feet right where they are when you come around. Anything fishy and this thing goes off.”

I turned. He had backed out into the middle of the room. His gray sharkskin suit had shoulders as outsize as the cannon in his hand and the knot in his purple tie was big enough to moor something of Cunard’s. Cathy’s latest beau. So he hadn’t killed her. So I still wasn’t rushing off to ask permission to bunk with him next semester.

The.45 was centered on my intestines. “Okay,” he said then. “All nice and relaxed, huh? Now where is she?”

I ignored him. He could throw that one at me all night and not get anything, not while Estelle was sitting there that way. She was wearing a drab blue robe and house slippers. Her hands were locked in her lap and her lips had no blood behind them. She was staring at me helplessly and I realized it was the first time I had ever seen her without glasses. Oddly enough it made her look better than I remembered.

“Where, cop?”

“Cathy hasn’t got the money,” I told him evenly. “You don’t have to look for Cathy.”

Estelle winced when I mentioned the name. Obviously I hadn’t changed the subject by butting in on them. I changed it now.

“Where’s your mother, Estelle?”

She looked across at me vaguely and her voice was strained. “She’s in the hospital, Harry. She had an operation last weekend.”

“Oh, my busted back,” Duke said, “if that ain’t touching. How was it? I sure hope everything came out okay?”

“She’s all right,” Estelle said distractedly.

“That’s great. I’m real glad to hear that. You be sure and tell her how glad I am.” He had not taken his eyes off me. “How many times I got to ask you, cop? What’s your pitch in this?”

Estelle’s breath was audible. She was staring at me now, probably wondering the same thing. I did not want her to be putting too much of it together.

“Damn it, where is she? Where’s the broad?”

“What broad? You mean the girl Eddie says you’re nuts about? The one you’re supposed to marry?”

“Yeah, marry. That cheap double-crossing no-good skirt, I’d like to—”

I was pleased to hear how he felt about all that. I wanted a little information myself and that could be just the needle to get it for me. “I told you,” I said. “Your girl hasn’t got the money, Angelo.”

“Can that. My old lady calls me Angelo. Her and the priest. Not you, Oliver.”

I grinned at him. “What does Cathy call you?”

“Spit,” he said.

“Always happens, doesn’t it? Trust a dame and then turn your back for half an hour and she’s—”

“Half an hour, hell. Ten damned minutes. Her and all that chatter about how she’d stick it out. And then all I do is go down for a deck of butts. Not even ten minutes, because the clock in the lobby says two-sharp when I go down and it ain’t even two-ten when I come back. Faking like she’s asleep and then—”

I kept grinning at him. I couldn’t help myself. Another minute and he’d be letting me read his diary.

His face had changed. He wasn’t sure what he’d told me but he realized he’d made a boo-boo. It wasn’t much, actually, but it was all I had and I already loved it dearly. IWo o’clock. And she’d gotten to my place around three-thirty. Time for one or two stops. Adam Moss? Who else?

Duke’s lips had pulled back over his gums in a grimace of disgust. The Colt jerked up an inch or two in his hand. “Turn back to the wall, cop.”

“What’s the matter, Angelo? I thought you wanted me to answer some questions.”

“Turn around, you phony bastard. Who you trying to con anyhow? Spit, Oliver, you ain’t got anymore idea where she is than me. You come up here on what Bogardus told you and you find me so you figure it means she’s got the dough. Bright boy, trying to con me into spilling something else. Well, you been told all you’re getting, bright boy. You phony cops, for crying out loud. Eddie lets out about the loot and you come sniffing around for it like any two-bit chiseler smelling a free beer. Turn around, phony, right now, or I’ll blast that fat smirk right off your kisser.”

I took a last look at the gun. I was sure I could knock him off his feet after one shot. One. And Max Schmeling could have taken Joe Louis if he’d been awake after the first round. I knew I’d hate myself for it in the morning, but I turned around and memorized the wallpaper again.

I suppose it didn’t matter much. He still wasn’t going to do any shooting unless somebody drove him to it. All he wanted was time. Let him go looking for Cathy. The law would pick him up sooner or later on that Troy thing. Me, I wanted someone else.

“Higher, cop,” he told me. He had moved up close. I knew well enough what was coming and I tried to set myself for it.

I heard Estelle suck in her breath and begin to whimper. I hoped he would be dumb enough to switch his grip to the business end of the gun first, but he was finished with being dumb for today. And then I said the hell with it anyhow. I waited until the last second, when the shadow of his arm was lifting along the wall.

I jerked my head aside and went for him.