Epitaph For A Tramp by David Markson Read Free Book Online

I took the modified sportsman’s Luger out of the bottom dresser drawer, removed it from its pocket holster, checked it, put it back in the sheath, clipped the whole thing over my belt and into my right rear pocket. I called Dan Abraham.
    It rang three times. His wife took it.
    “Sorry,” I said. “Wake him for me, will you, Helen?”
    “Harry?”
    “Yes.”
    “Must I?”
    “Yes.”
    There was a minute and then I could hear him groaning. He was an old Army friend and the only P.I. in town I trusted enough to ring in on it. We worked with each other from time to time when one or the other of us had a job too big to handle alone. He was still making unhappy noises when he found the mouthpiece.
    “It isn’t bad enough that I’m in the racket myself,” he said. “I’ve got to have friends in it, too. Why don’t we take up something where they let you sleep, Harry? Maybe I’ll try out for concert violinist someplace. You know anybody needs a good concert violinist who can move to his left? How about Kansas City? Sure. Hell, they got holes all over the infield—”
    “Dan, I’ve got a dead one.”
    He took his head out of the quilt then. “Yeah? You getting trigger-happy in your old age or did somebody dump it on your doorstep?”
    “Doorstep is close enough. It’s Cathy, Dan.”
    “Oh, no, Harry—”
    I could hear him telling Helen. We had spent ten or a dozen evenings together the year before. I heard Helen cry out.
    “Listen, Dan—”
    “Right here. Where are you?”
    “Home. Look, I’m going out on it. The girl she’d been living with just called me, worried about her. That’s all I’ve got.”
    “You want me to take it from over there?”
    “Right. Everything ’ ll be just the way it happened. Roughly 3:30, give or take five. Somebody knifed her on the street but she made it up. Give me an hour or so and then try to get Nate Brannigan at Homicide. Rouse him up if he’s off, his home number’s in the book on my desk. He’ll ride with me longer than most. I’ll call you when I get a chance. Up till then you don’t know where I am.”
    “You haven’t told me anyhow.”
    “And, Dan, if you see anything that doesn’t look kosher, you might square it away before they start pulling up the floor boards.”
    “Harry, you haven’t been seeing her lately?”
    I didn’t answer him. He knew better than that.
    “Delete that,” he said then. “Be on my way in six minutes. You going to leave it open?”
    “I’ll stick an extra set of keys under the mat in the outside hall.”
    “Right. And Harry—”
    “Yeah?”
    “I’m sorry, fella. If there’s anything else you want me to do? Or Helen maybe—”
    “Thanks, Dan. Nothing. I’ll leave the lights on. You’ll trip over her if you’re not looking.”
    I cradled it, went back into the living room, glanced at everything except Cathy. The two bourbons I’d poured were still sitting on the stand next to the chair. It would be a dumb sort of thing to have to explain, pouring one of them for an unidentified female sot who took five or seven minutes getting up the stairs and then turned out dead. I carried them into the kitchen, dumped them, washed the glasses. The bottle was still out but the cops would find that quick enough anyhow.
    I took the extra set of keys out of the desk. It had been Cathy’s set. I looked at her then, thinking it was probably for the last time. It was all there again. I bit down hard on it and went out.
    It followed me down. She’d be stiff before Dan got there. I was thinking about that and I was outside before I remembered I was holding the extra keys. I told myself to quit it. I turned back, opened the outside door and edged the two keys under the rubber.
    It was twenty-five minutes since I’d spoken to Sally Kline. It would probably take the night man ten more to unshuffle my Chevy from the loft in the garage around the corner, and I did not see a cab. I had promised the girl I’d be there in forty. I