You Can't Catch Me Page 16

  In a paroxysm of rage he closed his fist in the page and threw it crumpled to the floor. And rushed out of the tavern without having paid for his third drink.

  He saw it now, in its jeering crystal-clarity: how “Angus Markham” had been approached by the devious young wife, and seduced into killing her husband for her. For her and her lover. When the plot went awry, as a consequence of “Markham’s” sudden cowardice, the lover himself, evidently waiting in the wings, had stepped in to complete it. Perhaps at first “Angus Markham” was to have been the dupe whom police would arrest and charge with the murder; then, having reconsidered, for what reason Tristram would never know, Hans tampered with the evidence, substituting one hat for another, one incriminating “clue” for another.… How cleverly the scheme had been contrived, yet how naturally it had seemed to unfold, so that Tristram Heade, or “Angus Markham,” manipulated at every turn, had imagined he was guiding the scheme himself.

  “And shall I ever revenge myself upon them? Shall I ever redress the balance?—No: there have been too many killings already.”

  And he seemed to know too that he would never again be in a position to so much as approach the lovers; in their youth, their beauty, their newly acquired wealth, their very guilt,—which surely bonded them as deeply as others are bonded by mere innocence—they had ascended to another dimension of being to which, in his state, he had no access.

  Neither he, nor “Angus Markham.”

  For hours that night Tristram walked, walked … hoping to lose himself in the outward world, as, it seemed, he had so hopelessly lost himself in the inner. What has propelled me to this moment, this seemingly so vagrant point in time? Is it fate, or mere chance? But is chance “mere”? Is chance fate? His trajectory, blind as it was, and fueled by passion and despair, nonetheless led him in what must have been a large looping circle; so that, near dawn, he found himself inhaling the ashy garbagey odor of a familiar place … the Chancellor Street mews in which Lux’s Rare Books & Coins was located. A sudden impulse, buoyed by a sensation very like happiness (which Tristram had not felt for some time), led him to the shop; and he began knocking on the door before he realized it was perhaps too early for such a visit … and before his senses quite took in the fact that Lux’s antiquarian establishment had been taken over by a taxidermist. He had been thinking that he might simply turn back the clock; begin again, as if it were the second day of his Philadelphia visit; making, in a sort of Adam-like innocence, the purchase of that suspect quarto edition of Macbeth Lux had been urging upon him, and Tristram had spurned as a fake.… But of course this was not to be: in the cramped shop window were, now, not books, but stuffed creatures, each affixed to its pedestal or perch, yet sadly crowded together, like a menagerie in some tight-encompassed airless space (like Hell); a squirrel with an erect, bushy tail; a hare whose widened eyes were the very mirrors of terror; an owl whose flattened face, tawny eyes, and smooth-brushed feathers quite pierced Tristram’s heart, reminding him of … he knew not what; a spider monkey halted in the act of climbing a chunk of tree, small intelligent wizened face cramped over its shoulder, slender tail turned upward in a question mark.… “Poor things! Who has done this horror to you!”

  Tristram was about to turn away in despair when the door was noisily unbolted and opened by a white-haired little man who glared up at him angrily. “Yes? What? Who is it? At this hour of the morning?” The man wore rubber gloves, and a harsh chemical odor lifted from them, stinging Tristram’s eyes.

  After a few minutes’ exchange it developed that Virgil Lux had died suddenly, and his stock had been sold at auction. Tristram expressed shock, for he had not heard. He had badly wanted, he said, to buy a book … a certain priceless book Lux had been holding for him. “Too late,” the little man said, screwing up an eye at Tristram, “—too late, son, they did him in. In this very shop, at the rear. As they are doing us all in, one by one.” “‘They’—? Who do you mean?” Tristram asked. “Or maybe it was only one of ’em, a burglar, or a robber,” the little man said with a careless shrug, “—or one of these young kids all hopped up with drugs. In any case they got him, and he’s gone. And I’m here. And I mean to stay.” This last was uttered with an air of belligerence; Tristram, by instinct, took a step back. He was still so very surprised, rather stunned … poor Virgil Lux! … Dead, buried, gone, his life’s work erased as if it had never been, and his meticulously acquired stock scattered to the four winds! In that instant, in contemplation of the tragedy that yet seemed, like all our private tragedies, merely an event, a ripple or shudder of a sort in the fluid flow of the quotidian, Tristram quite forgot his suspicion of the man, and his grudge against him. “How did Mr. Lux die? How, I mean, did they kill him?” Tristram asked. “‘Multiple stab wounds,’ is what I heard, and the murder never solved,” the old man said, again screwing up an eye at Tristram, “—and the police prob’ly not giving a good God damn, you know, but just let it ride, and turnin’ ’em loose on the street if they do catch ’em, all I know is what I read in the paper, myself, ’cause nobody around here much wants to talk about it, like there’s a kind of dread in the air, some sickness you can almost smell, y’know, if one of us’s struck down and we maybe don’t see it maybe it won’t happen to us too, like, you might know, the mentality of the deer,—you ever go deer hunting, son?—one of ’em shot down and falls, and the others sometimes don’t take no notice, just keep on browsing, keep their heads down, that’s the mentality of certain deer and that’s the mentality of a lot of people these days, but, yes, son, all I know is my predecessor did die, they stabbed the poor old son-of-a-gun to death, and left a bloodstain on the floor nobody could ever scour out, and I got covered with some linoleum, and that’s, y’know, that.” And he broke off his long brisk speech and shut the door and left Tristram standing in the alley, staring thoughtfully into mere space.

  3

  “What is it? Who? Is someone there …?”

  Frequently, he woke in the night with the sudden conviction that someone or something was watching as he slept; his teeth chattering with fear, and a sickly cold perspiration coating his body. For long minutes he lay paralyzed; his life passing rapidly before his eyes, like a landscape seen from a speeding train; he seemed to sense that his life—his life as he had known it—was coming to a close, and what was to be done? He was a murderer, and lacked the courage to confess to his crimes.

  (How ashamed his father and mother would be, if they knew! But Tristram could barely remember them by now. There were times, to be quite frank, when he could not remember them at all. Did they die before I was born? he wondered.)

  It was Otto Grunwald’s artificial eye that watched him, thus there was nothing for Tristram to do, to quell his fright, but to switch on the light, and check … the utterly lifeless, synthetic object … mere plastic lying in a cheap ashtray atop the dresser … possessed nonetheless of a malevolent interior radiance, and the ability to see. Tristram stared at the thing, and the thing seemed to stare back. Assuming that the artificial eye was a perfect mate of Grunwald’s real eye, this was also, in a sense, Grunwald’s “real” eye too … the iris a pale, anemic brown, flecked with hazel; the “white” a stained-ivory hue, so subtly permeated with tiny blood capillaries that Tristram had to put on his glasses, and peer very closely, before he could make them out. Though the eye appeared just perceptibly to have grown larger there were no other changes in it, so far as Tristram could make out; it never moved from its place in the ashtray; and of course it was dead, it was blind … wasn’t it?

  Tristram wondered if Grunwald had been buried with one eyeless socket, or whether the cosmetician who had prepared the corpse had supplied it with a substitute. Or, since the dead man’s eyes would be closed in any case, perhaps it would not matter? Tristram had located nothing in any of the newspapers about Grunwald’s missing eye; another bit of information shrewdly withheld by police, he supposed. For only the killer would have the eye. The proof of the killer being that he had the
eye.

  And here in Tristram Heade’s room (on the third floor, rear, of the Camelot Hotel) was the eye; the incriminating eye; but no one knew, and no one seemed to care.

  Precisely how Tristram spent his days, apart from sporadic visits to betting parlors in the city, and long intense yet inconclusive afternoons at the public library (he was compiling a list of “Womankind’s Offenses Against Man”), and desultory meals in bar-restaurants, and episodes of drinking which left him amnesiac, it would be difficult to say; as our days, passing, in a bright yeasty stream of individual moments, like pulse beats, seem always on the verge of defining themselves, yet never do. How many months had it been since the shock of reading of Otto Grunwald’s death in the newspaper?—since the yet more profound shock of her betrayal? The refrain sounded obsessively in Tristram’s head, An eye without a confining socket is a terrible thing to behold.

  The Camelot Hotel, where chance had brought Tristram, was an aged building close by the railway station, of no architectural distinction; permeated by the odors of decades, and, at all hours of the day or night, promiscuous noises, which sometimes set Tristram’s sensitive nerves on edge but more often provided a strange sort of comfort, for this was a veritable haven of anonymity, in which Tristram’s noises, should he wish to make any, would not be heard. Indeed, when he was wakened from bad dreams by his own screaming and thrashing about, his neighbors to each side, and above and below, rarely responded with angry thumps and screams of their own; nor did the hotel manager chide him. “The privacy of the grave,” Tristram observed wryly, “—or nearly.”

  And, though housekeeping services were said to be provided, no one ever entered Tristram’s room, so far as he knew.

  So it was a considerable shock, when, returning to the hotel from his visit to Chancellor Street, Tristram discovered that the door to his room was unlocked; and had been left discreetly ajar by an inch or so, to inform him, as he approached, that it was unlocked, and that someone was probably inside.

  Swallowing hard, giving himself no time to speculate, Tristram pushed the door boldly open, and there stood, broadly smiling, hands on his hips, patently waiting for him,—ah, what was his name: the detective Tristram had hired months ago, and to whom he had paid a healthy retainer, to track down the whereabouts of Angus Markham.

  This wiry little fellow looked precisely as Tristram remembered, except that he wore a boxy green-gray tweed suit, a dark green shirt open at the collar, and his thinning hair was slicked down more neatly atop his skull. The violet-amber glasses were pushed primly against the bridge of his nose; his cuff links glittered; he had heard Tristram’s footsteps, and, in virtually the same instant Tristram opened the door, his hand shot out with such ebullient swiftness that Tristram was momentarily taken aback, not understanding it was merely a handshake the detective offered. “Ah, Mr. Heade! At last! Hel-lo! I found your door unlocked, or,” and here he smiled more winningly, and winked, “—or nearly. So I hope you won’t mind my inviting myself in, to wait for your return? (And it has been a considerable wait, indeed, Mr. Heade: you seem to have been gone the entire night.) There is no lobby downstairs, and this is so public a place, I’m afraid I would be recognized. And, of course, it has been many weeks since we’ve last laid eyes on—”

  Tristram took in none of this. “Handelman,” he said, staring. “Your name is—”

  “Bud Handelman, of course,” the detective said, squinting at Tristram as if he thought he might be joking. “In your employ!”

  “Ajax Investigative—”

  “Achilles Investigative Service,” Handelman said quickly, with a quick look of pain, “—my brother worked for Ajax. No, I am your man, Mr. Heade, I am in your confidential employ. Invincible and unbribable—our firm’s motto!”

  “Your—brother?” Tristram said, staring.

  “Who is not our concern here, Mr. Heade,” Handelman said, blinking, and frowning, for an instant seemingly on the verge of tears, “—for I am your man, and I think you will be interested in my report, which I have completed at last; completed, that is, so far as I have been able.” His smile, for an instant tremulous, now became quite dazzling. “You yourself were a tricky figure to ‘track down’!” he said, wagging a forefinger. “I hope you had not given up on our little project? I hope you had not forgotten—?”

  “Forgotten—?”

  “That you empowered me to investigate the background and the whereabouts of an ‘Angus Markham,’ and to prepare a confidential report to you?”

  Tristram murmured, “Oh, no, of course I have not forgotten. It’s just that—the surprise of—”

  “I know! I know! I apologize, Mr. Heade!” Handelman said cheerfully. In a brisk darting movement he slipped past Tristram’s elbow to shut the door, and bolt it. “Now, we can waste no more time, and get down to business. As I said, I think you will be interested in—”

  Handelman had taken up a large portfolio lying atop Tristram’s bed, and, inviting Tristram to sit, as if this were his room, and Tristram a guest, began to read, “Confidential report submitted to T. Heade, client, by B. Handelman, licensed investigative agent, in the matter of—” The little man’s bright chatter splashed over Tristram like a stream over a large inert rock in its path; yet, by degrees, Tristram regained enough presence of mind to assure himself that he was in no immediate danger; the intruder was not a police officer, but a man in his own employ; and all that passed between them was confidential. Even if Handelman had spied the artificial eye atop the dresser … even if he had had the audacity to do a search of Tristram’s things, and had discovered the faintly bloodstained dagger between the mattress and the box springs of the bed …

  Handelman seemed to be concluding a sort of prefatory section, to the effect that, though the exact whereabouts of Angus Markham were not known at the present time, and no actual sighting of the subject had occurred, a good deal of information had been gathered, to be placed at the disposal of the client. He glanced up at Tristram, squinting. “Mr. Heade? Shall I proceed? Or is this an inconvenient time?—Or am I reading too quickly?”

  Tristram said quietly, as if his fate were now to be revealed, “Please proceed, Mr. Handelman. The time will never be more convenient.”

  4

  By degrees there emerged a sordid but fascinating account, related in Handelman’s boyish voice, of a warped, diabolically clever, doubtless psychopathic personality, only one of whose numerous aliases was “Angus T. Markham”; a man of between thirty-five and forty years of age, possibly a native of Florida, but known to speak with several regional accents (including Virginian); who seemed to have fashioned a career for himself of professional gambling, real estate speculation, “confidence games” of various shades of audacity, and,—and here Handelman paused for dramatic effect, casting a squinty glance at Tristram—the exploitation of wealthy women, usually widows.

  “Which is to say, so far as police in five states have reason to suspect,” Handelman said, “—murder.”

  “Murder—!” Tristram’s lips moved of their own accord.

  Handelman shuffled his papers, one side of his babyish face crinkled in grudging admiration. “I must say I was impressed!” he chuckled. “Your ‘Markham,’ in whichever of his guises, has quite a record!—though not officially, I should make clear, since police have never actually arrested him, and, so far as I could discover, he has never stood trial in any state. I began my search in Tampa, following your lead, and showed the photograph around, and very soon had some luck, since there, it seems, under a pseudonym—a sort of anagrammatization: ‘Mark A. Andrus’—he is wanted for questioning in the death of a widow by the name of—” and here Handelman shuffled his papers further, and pulled out a sheet to bring close to his eyes, “—‘Martha Klingerman,’ formerly ‘Mrs. Harold S. Klingerman,’ fifty-two years old at the time of her death. A beautiful woman, I was informed, married to a much older man, a wealthy Tampa businessman, who died in a fall from the eighteenth floor of one of his own buildings i
n downtown Tampa, in July 1983 … following which, after two months, Mrs. Klingerman married a man named ‘Mark A. Andrus’ of whom little was known except that he seemed to make a living at the racetrack and was, according to friends of Mrs. Klingerman’s, ‘fantastically charming.’ In marrying Andrus Mrs. Klingerman made the fatal error of totally revising her will in his favor, and signing over to him most of her assets, even granting him, for no reason anyone could discover, power of attorney; with the consequence that, after six months of marriage, the poor woman herself perished in an automobile accident believed ‘suspicious’ by the insurance company … though no evidence was ever brought forward of foul play, and the police investigation went nowhere, and no charges were brought against Andrus, who shortly disappeared from the area. Thus, Tampa! The trail led next to Sarasota, where, a year later, in early 1985, our elusive friend emerges, under the name ‘Andrew S. Hammark,’ involved this time in a real estate scheme of such ingenuity and complexity I don’t believe I ever quite understood it; except, again, the wife of a wealthy businessman—this, one ‘Eloise S. Farquhar,’ thirty-eight-year-old wife of ‘Ulysses Farquhar’—was befriended, wooed, and won; following which her husband died in a boating accident on the Gulf, and within two months she married Hammark, and, like the unhappy Mrs. Andrus in Tampa, revised her will in favor of her new husband, and signed over to him her assets, and granted him power of attorney; with results that should not surprise us. In September 1985 the former Mrs. Farquhar died, according to the coroner’s report,”—Handelman rather dramatically brought a darkly photostated paper close to his eyes, “—of an overdose of a painkilling drug prescribed by her doctor. The coroner’s jury ruled the death ‘misadventure,’ a polite term for suicide, and—and this, Mr. Heade, is a tribute to our friend’s ‘fantastical charm’!—not a single member of the deceased’s family tried to bring charges against Hammark; who, like Andrus, shortly disappeared from the area. Isn’t it remarkable? And next we arrive at—”