Epitaph For A Tramp by David Markson Read Free Book Online Page B

hall door finally buzzed.
    I went in. There was a wide stairway that was well carpeted and softly lighted and I climbed the two flights. The place was as quiet as a prairie in the moonlight. I saw Five ahead of me at the front end of the top corridor and I went down and tapped on the door.
    Nothing happened. I waited six or eight seconds, tapped again, then tried the handle.
    It turned. I eased the door inward several inches, seeing only darkness. I had just decided to unsheath the Luger when someone else’s gun nosed through the crack and parked itself cordially against my navel.

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