Epitaph For A Tramp by David Markson Page B

him.
    “Don’t you know a mean cop you could practice on with that thing?”
    “Drop dead twice,” he told me indifferently.
    The place I wanted was a rundown apartment building of six or seven stories, several doors up from the Drive. Moss’s registration listed him for 3-G but there were no names on any of the bells and no letters either, merely numbers. The vestibule door was open and hooked back. Behind it a couple of unshaded 25-watt bulbs were trying unsuccessfully to make the long narrow lobby look like something other than the esophagus of a submerged whale.
    Moss would not have a full apartment of his own. It was one of those buildings in which the original railroad flats had been broken up into separate singles, where they sold you one room for yourself and you got to use the John and the kitchen if the other half-dozen people along the corridor happened to oversleep that morning. The landlords got away with the deal because of all the tight-budgeted Columbia University kids from around the corner.
    The hall marked 3 was around to the right in the rear on the main floor. It was exactly seven o’clock when I rang the bell near the outside door. I had to wait a fall minute and then I drew a beautiful young Chinese girl with an armfal of potted plant who wasn’t interested in me at all except to let me hold the door.
    “Moss?” I said after her.
    “Last room on the right,” she called over her shoulder. I stood there a moment, watching to see if she had on one of those slit skirts that Chinese girls always wear. I wondered why they always do that. Not that I had any complaints. This one had good legs and I watched them until she turned into the lobby.
    The doors along the corridor were marked with peeling gilt letters. I found G and rapped twice. The door behind me opened while I was standing there and a face poked itself out. It was a woman’s face, about forty years older and not too much longer than Seabiscuit s. The face stared at me, probably wondering if I’d brought the hay. I stared back. Finally the woman grunted and went away.
    I rapped on Moss’s door again, harder this time.
    I heard bedsprings, then footsteps and what I judged to be unpleasant muttering. The bolt snapped from inside. “For crying out loud, what time is—?”
    I looked at Adam Moss. He was a kid, eighteen or nineteen at most. He was husky and good-looking, with a mop of curly brown hair. He was wearing white boxer shorts and a pair of shoulders that the young Max Baer might have envied. He was patently annoyed.
    “Moss?”
    “Yeah. Who’re you? I don’t know you—”
    I had my wallet in my hand and I flashed it. “You want to step back inside?”
    He glanced at the card and then back at me, puzzled. “Police?”
    And then his face brightened. Adam Moss grinned at me as if I’d just told him he’d earned his first varsity letter.
    “Hey, that’s great. That’s sure what I call fast action!” He glanced at his watch. “Gee, not even five hours since I reported it. Where is it? You bring it back, officer? It wasn’t wrecked, was it? Come in, come in!”
    He was beaming. My one lead. My only lead. I sat down on the kid’s rumpled bed and took a cigarette. I would have been · happier with a cyanide inhaler but I’d left it in my other suit.
    “You leave the keys in it, Moss?”
    “Yeah. Like I told them when I called. I parked it around midnight, up on Broadway near 111th, and then I had a couple of beers with some of the guys from school in the West End bar. I guess it was around 2:15 or so when I realized I’d forgotten them. We ran down, but you could see it was gone even before we got to the place. Boy, I was pretty worried for a while. What a dumb stunt. My old man would have booted me one. He just bought it for me last month. Can I get dressed and get it now? Is it here or do I have to pick it up someplace?”
    “You never ran into a girl named Catherine Hawes?”
    “What? Who?”
    “Hawes?”
    “No,