Epitaph For A Tramp

  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.

  CHAPTER 6

  The punk named Eddie Bogardus groaned almost sadly when I dumped the bucket on his head. Probably I’d busted in on the middle of his favorite Bach cantata. His greasy black curls fell into his eyes when he shook himself.

  He came out of it but his co-ordination was all loused up. He started to reach for the back of his skull with his right hand, then fell forward again and clutched the break. He lay there with his teeth grinding. Finally he looked up at me.

  “All right, Bogardus, let’s have it.”

  “Bananas, Jack, I gotta get a doctor. You gotta get me to a doctor.”

  I sauntered over to Sally’s chair and sat down. I got comfortable. I grinned at him.

  “Look, now, look, it’s all out o’ shape. If I don’t get to a—”

  “We’ll do it make-believe, Bogardus, how about that? You must be the ailing prince and I must be the royal physician. Won’t that be fun?”

  He didn’t dig games much. He sucked in his breath with his lips drawn back and he didn’t answer.

  “Talk. All of it.”

  “Can I sit up?”

  I nodded. He built himself up against the bed, working with the weight on his good arm, and then leaned there with his head back. Sweat had broken out on his boyish face with the effort. He breathed deeply three or four times, then let his head fall against his chest. He did not look at me.

  “What did you want here, punk? Let’s start there.”

  “The broad,” he muttered grudgingly. “I dint mean to rough up the other one, the redhead. Honest, Jack. All I want is my split. I got a right to my split.”

  “What split? All right, you and Duke pulled something. What?”

  He wet his lips. “You a cop?”

  “I got the milk route here. Talk, punk.”

  He was studying me blankly. The next expression would be the one that was supposed to tell me he knew his rights. I leaned forward.

  “Look, punk, you might have some luck. You might even last long enough to get your full growth.”

  “Okay, okay, I don’t want no more.”

  “Your split of what?”

  “We pulled a job yesterday. Big stuff. We—”

  Sally came out and he let it hang there while he looked at her. She wasn’t the same girl he’d had on that raw edge a while back. They never are when they can get five minutes in front of a mirror. She hadn’t done much with the tired lines around her eyes, however. She looked at me as if she wanted to say something and then she changed her mind. I waited until she went to a chair.

  “Whenever you feel up to it, Bogardus,” I said then. “What kind of big stuff? What about the girl? You keep making me ask questions, I’ll ask some hard ones.”

  “Okay, I tole ya. This shirt factory up in Troy. The payroll. They deliver from an armored car, half a month’s loot on the first and the fifteenth. The broad was Duke’s brainstorm, not mine. I knew she’d mess it up, but the minute Duke gets hot on a broad you cant make him see nothin’. She drove. I kept tellin’ Duke she’d—”

  “Bogardus, I’m slow. Even when my old man helps me with the homework it ain’t right. Are you trying to tell me that Cathy Hawes drove the car while you and Sabatini pulled a heist on an armored truck?”

  “Not on the tin truck, no. Not them bananas. You think we’re nuts? Hell, we had it figured. They dump the loot at one-thirty on the button. There’s only one guard from the factory, see? He comes out and gets it, and then the tin truck goes off again. The guard’s got to bring it back upstairs in this freight elevator. Sometimes the elevator goes back up while he’s picking up the bag, see? There’s always a minute, maybe two, but me an Duke had it lined up even better. Duke’s cousin works in the joint. He’s the one who lined it up. He fixes it so he’s on the second floor when the guard goes down, and then he pushes the button for the elevator to come back up. When he gets it on the second he presses for it to keep on going up and stop on all the floors. It’s one of them self-service things and it’s slow. By the time it goes up to six and the guard can get it back down, we got three, four extra minutes. We wait until after the truck pulls out and then we hit. Bananas, you think we’d mess with a tommy gun behind all that tin plate?”

  “Come on, come on, the girl. What about Catherine Hawes?”

  “She’s in the car. We pull in about twenty-nine minutes after one, see? Duke’s cousin has it down sharp. Duke’s drivin’ with the broad next to him and I’m in the back. Duke
leaves the motor running and gets out and switches places with the broad. The truck comes by while we’re makin’ the switch. Hell, it don’t look like nothin’. Anyhow they been deliverin’ the same way for years, nothin’s ever happened. We sit there for the minute and the guard comes out. He’s an old guy. The guards on the truck don’t even get out, just open up and hand it to him. He stands there gabbin’, maybe another minute, and then the truck pulls out. That’s when the broad drives up. The truck turns the corner a block away, so it’s already gone when we hit the freight door. Duke an’ me is out and runnin’ while the old guy is still waitin’ for the elevator. But then the fruity old jerk starts to give us trouble. There’s this wooden loading platform that we got to jump on, and he hears us. He turned around the first damn thing, he’s goin’ for his gun. But there’s no shootin’. We’re right on him, see? Duke clobbers him and grabs the dough. It’s supposed to be forty, forty-one grand, accordin’ to what Duke’s cousin tole us. And then the damned broad don’t wait for me. Duke jumps down and makes the car and I fall. I tripped on a damned plank and went on my kisser, and when I look up the damned bananas are sprayin’ gravel in my face and goin’ off with the loot faster ‘n hell.”

  He stopped. When he did I heard an alarm clock ticking. It was the first time I’d heard it. Observant Fannin, the astute private eye. I, eye. Ask me what the bedroom looked like and I’ll tell you it had some walls.

  I was trying to see her driving the car. For the experience. I looked at Sally Kline. She was staring at the Castro they’d squeezed in against a far wall. They could squeeze it out again.

  “Tell me the rest,” I said.

  “There ain’t no more. The bananas leave me to take the rap. But I get a break. Some dame in a Caddy is pulling up just as I start to run. She’s still got her keys in her hand and I grab ‘em and shove her the hell out of the way and take the Cad. Me an’ Duke had this other car stashed, see? That was the thing, we’d switch cars and beat it out of town easy. But I donno the town so good and when I get to the place where the other heap is, Duke and the broad is already there an gone. I kept the Caddy as far as Albany and then dumped it and swiped an Imperial.

  “What time did you get back here?”

  “Five, maybe. I couldn’t see pushin’ it, not in a stolen heap.”

  “Then what?”

  “What the hell you think? I start lookin’ for the rat.”

  “Where?”

  “Where he lives. The joints he hangs out. Here.”

  “Where?”

  He gave me addresses. Nice addresses, if you were a pander or a two-bit hustler. You’d be sure to tuck a picture of your mother in your locket when you went down there.

  “Where’s he live?”

  “This hotel on lower Bleecker. The Watling. But he ain’t gonna show up there again. All right, I tole ya. How about a smoke now, Jack?”

  I threw him one. He picked it up with his left hand and put it where you use those things and looked at me.

  “You’ll get a match when I get the rest of it.”

  “What else? Damn, I tole ya the whole thing.”

  “How did you get her into it? What did Duke have on her?”

  “Have on her? Bananas. Don’t make me laugh, will ya? He dint have nothin’ on her, not on that one. The minute she got wise that we were onto somethin’ she started squealin’ she wanted in. Hell, you couldn’t keep her out of it.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Tell ya what?”

  “You want to Indian wrestle, Bogardus? I’ll give you the edge, my left hand against your right.”

  “Okay, okay, just tell me what you wanna—”

  “ Where’d Duke meet her? How’d she get into it?”

  I was leaning forward. I wasn’t sure whether I was going to hit him on principle or just throw up. I could feel Sally watching.

  “Harry?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you really want to hear it? Does it make any difference now?”

  “Sure,” Bogardus said, “why all the interest anyhow? What is she, your ex-piece or somethin’?”

  If s nice when other people make your decisions for you. The back of my hand took him across the jaw and the cigarette shot out of his mouth like something researched by Wernher von Braun. He let out a yelp like an unpaid madam.

  I was standing there. Maybe Sally was right, maybe there was no point in finding out how she’d gotten into it. Maybe there was no point in breathing. Sometimes you wonder. I went back to my chair.

  Bogardus was being a stretcher case again. He was huddled over the wrist like a monkey trying to make time with a football.

  “You keep grinding your teeth like that, I’ll sharpen a file in there.”

  “Okay, okay. But ifs just like I tole you. She’s just nuts, is all.” He took a deep breath and sat up. I showed him another Camel.

  “We met her in this bar,” he said wearily, “maybe three weeks ago. Yeah, that’s all, maybe three weeks. Duke was half bagged and he shot off his mouth some. He’s always talkin’ anyhow. He starts braggin’ about jobs we pulled. The broad’s eyes all lit up, for hell’s sake. Duke took her to the hotel and he saw her a lot o’ times after that. He said she wanted to go along on it. We was gonna do it alone, just leavin’ the motor on while we was inside, but he said she could push the wheel until we switched cars. I tole him she’d probably chicken out but he said she wouldn’t. Duke drove up from here in the morning. We had the second car goin up, the one we stashed to switch to later. That one was stole, too, but it was fixed up, you know? We got there about noontime, maybe, an’ we met Duke’s cousin on his lunch hour. We put the car in the place we were supposed to an then he helped us swipe another one for the job. He had it all lined up. The broad was scared while we were waitin’. She was all white, like. We killed an hour in this lunchroom and she dint eat nothin’. I tole Duke he shouldn’t ought to let her drive but he said she’d be okay when it got movin. I guess maybe she was, I donno. She pulled in by the freight door okay, and she waited okay, even when the old geezer saw us comin’. I donno whether it was her idea to pull out without waitin’ for me or whether Duke tole her to. I donno nothin’ else. Damn, Jack, what else do you want me to tell you? She’s just a broad, is all. Just a broad wants some kicks.”

  I gave him the cigarette and lit it. “What was the setup for last night? For when you got back to New York?”

  “Nothin’. We were gonna come down here, to this joint. We figured we’d get here before this other broad—dame—got home. We were gonna split the take, me and Duke and a corner for his cousin. Then I was gonna blow. I dint have no special plans.”

  “Not split for the girl?”

  “Let Duke worry. He brung her in on it, not me. But she dint want none anyhow. Like I’m tellin’ ya, she comes in on it for laughs. Different, she says. Just to see what it feels like. How you gonna figure broads anyhow?”

  “She supposed to go somewhere with Duke?”

  “Who knows? Duke was tryin’ to talk her into it but she wouldn’t say. But anyhow, we figured we didn’t have to leave

  New York. Hell, Troy’s a hundred-sixty, a hundred-seventy miles up. Once we got clear this was as good a place as any.”

  “What kind of heap is the doctored one?”

  “Chevy sedan. Fifty-six. Dark green.”

  “You know the plates?”

  He shrugged.

  “You call here before you came up?”

  “Two, three times, yeah. I wanna see who’s answerin.”

  I looked at Sally. “Three calls?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “You ever hear of Harry Fannin?”

  “Just when this here broad said the name. That you?”

  “Ain’t it been a pleasure?”

  Bogardus grunted. I sucked on a knuckle, wondering who’d phoned me that way. There’d been that one anonymous call just before Sally’s. Cathy herself maybe, checking to see if I was there before she came over? Or Duke? Du
ke would know more about her background than this clown did. If they’d gotten split up he might have called, decided she hadn’t gotten there yet, then parked himself along the street to wait. It would have been a fair bet for him if he hadn’t been able to find her anywhere else.

  I sat there staring at Bogardus. He still looked like exactly what he was, a poolhall rumdum whose head would shrink in a light rain, and the trouble with his story was that you could believe it. You could see her doing it, see her getting just fed up enough with her Keats-spouting Village boyfriends to think that Duke might be exciting. Exciting. And what will we do after we give syphilis to all the natives, Mr. Columbus?

  “Duke Sabatini,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I suppose he’s another rugged ninety-seven-pound terror just like you. What’s he look like?”

  “Taller ‘n me.”

  “I suppose he’s got the same greasy hair you pretty bastards put up in curlers every night, too. I suppose he’s—”