David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and '50s (Library of America) (30 page)

The warehouse was a huge place. It was quite dark in the area across which Vanning moved. He had to move slowly because it was so dark. Men’s voices came from somewhere on the floor above. Vanning walked into a column of boxes, grabbed them as they started to topple over.

“
Charlie Chaplin again,” he murmured. “Come on, you. Cut out the comedy.”

But he was having trouble getting the boxes back in place, and they were large boxes and they almost knocked him over. He knew he was grinning. And as he kept on grinning he became a little afraid of it. To grin at a time like this was all wrong, unreasonable. And the wrongness of it harmonized with all the other wrong stunts he had pulled.

The absurd phone call to Denver. He couldn’t get his finger on the exact reason why he had called Denver. Maybe because he wanted to find out how much they knew. Maybe because he wanted to throw some bait their way in the hope of making a bargain. Just what kind of bargain he had figured on making he couldn’t remember. There had to be a trickle of logic in it somewhere, but now, at this special juncture, he saw the phone call as an extremely foolish thing.

And those other foolish things. Assuming that the car behind the cab had been a green sedan with John and Pete and Sam in it. So very sure that it had been a green sedan, failing to remember that he had taken the green sedan on a ride from the outskirts of Brooklyn. Now he remembered the ride but he couldn’t remember the geography of the ride, he couldn’t remember the location of the house where they had negotiated with him. Not even the approximate location of the house. And he couldn’t remember where he had parked the green sedan. Somewhere near the subway station on Canal Street, but that was no good. There were too many streets, too many alleys near the Canal Street subway. And all this harmony of error was harmonizing with that first tremendous error, that satchel business, and it didn’t get him anywhere to tell himself he was absent-minded. Lapse of memory might be good for a laugh in a courtroom, but bad otherwise.

All this was saddening, it was downhill. Vanning begged himself to get away from the negative side. Too much of it would lead to complete fear, and if he ever reached that point he might just as well take gas. Defeat was a whirlpool, and the only thing to do was swim away from it, keep swimming, no matter how strong the downward drag. He still had his life, he still had his health, his brain had stalled several times but it was still a brain, it still functioned.

And now it told him there was no such thing as a super-human being, and even Babe Ruth had suffered a batting slump every now and then, and even Hannibal had undergone military setbacks, even Einstein had flunked in mathematics on one amazing occasion. And then there was another way to look at it.

Gravity was a powerful thing, but someone had invented the parachute. Oceans had tremendous depths, and yet someone had invented a vessel that would go down and down and then come up again and reach the surface. Vanning told himself to invent an idea that would get him clear of the downhill path and bring him up. It was time for that. He had gone down far enough, too far. It was time to start climbing. It was time to stop the foolish grin and the relaxed submission to all the leering goblins.

He walked through the warehouse. There was a door leading out to air and sunlight. There were some men standing near the door. A few were in their shirt sleeves. Others wore overalls. A husky man wearing a cap and smoking a cigar was loudly enthusiastic over a new welterweight from Minneapolis. Vanning walked toward the group. They blocked his path to the door. They turned and looked at him. He stared at them as he approached. He stared past them, indicating that he intended leaving the warehouse. They continued to block the door. They all looked at him.

“Going out,” Vanning said.

The big man with the cigar was lowering the cigar from tobacco-stained lips. “You connected here?”

“City inspector,” Vanning said.

“Inspecting what?”

“Plumbing.”

“How we doing?”

“Water’s still running,” Vanning said. “That’s good enough.”

The big man stepped out of Vanning’s way. And Vanning walked through the doorway. Adding distance between himself and the warehouse, he moved on toward First Avenue. He walked fast on First Avenue, watching the street, looking for a cab. There was slightly less than five minutes of this, and then a cab, and then a slow ride downtown, a few cigarettes, and then a short stroll across part of Washington Square, and finally his apartment.

He took off his coat, seated himself near the window. He sat there doing nothing for quite a while. Heat came up from the Village pavements and threw itself against him. He picked himself up from the chair, walked to the kitchenette, opened the refrigerator. Busy with bottles and ice, he anticipated his drink and enjoyed the idea that he was doing something constructive. He mixed a third of scotch with two thirds of soda, used a good deal of ice, took the glass back to the window, sat down and took his time with the drink.

Three drinks later he was in a fairly comfortable frame of mind. He looked out and saw the sky taking on a blend of orange and purple, lighting up in the fierce, frantic glow that tries and fails to conquer dusk. When dusk arrived, Vanning told himself to go out and get something to eat.

There was a lot of satisfaction in that, knowing he could still go out. That part of the situation was the best part, the fact that they didn’t know where he lived. Or to put it another way, they didn’t know where he was hiding out. It was sensible to look a thing like this in the face, because there was a great deal of difference between a home and a hiding place.

I
N THE
Fraser apartment the phone rang. She raced to it. And the first thing he said was a big thank you, thanks for everything.

“You feel better?” she said.

“I’m with him again.”

“I knew that,” she said. “I knew it the moment I heard your voice.”

“I wanted to call earlier——”

“Of course——”

“But I couldn’t get away. I’ve been with him ever since he came home this morning.”

“You sound so excited.”

“I ought to be,” he said. “Something’s happened. It’s big. He’s home now and I have a chance to breathe. I just checked with Headquarters. They told me he called Denver. The call was traced and they put two and two together. I knew he was making a long call but I couldn’t do the tracing myself. Too many booths in the drugstore. A big place on Madison Avenue. He called Denver and pretended to be a newspaperman. He told them what they already knew. Denver can’t figure that one out. Neither can Headquarters. But I think I can.”

“You mean he’s working toward giving himself up?”

“Not yet. I figure he wanted to find out how much they knew.”

“Wouldn’t a smart criminal do that?”

“No,” Fraser said. “A smart criminal would know for sure they’d trace the call. Everything he’s done today backs up my ideas about this case. When he left the drugstore he got in a cab. I followed him. Somehow he knew he was being followed and he managed to lose me.”

“How did you find him again?”

“He went back to his apartment. He’s there now, across the street. I’m watching the front door.”

“He got away from you and then he went home?”

“Right.”

“He must be stupid.”

“
Not stupid,” Fraser said. “It’s just that he isn’t operating like a guilty party. That phone call to Denver. And then knowing he was being followed. And coming back to his apartment instead of leaving town. A guilty man wouldn’t do things like that.”

She sighed into the phone. “I guess I’m thick. I just don’t get it. You say he’s a killer and yet he isn’t guilty.”

“I know. It sounds all mixed up.”

“Why do you think he’s staying in town?”

“I’ve got an idea he wants us to find those other men.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Fraser said. “I’m trying to hit an answer.”

“What did Headquarters say?”

“They wanted me to bring him in. I begged for more time.”

“How much more?”

“Not long,” Fraser said. “Forty-eight hours.”

“Do you have a plan?”

“Vaguely.”

“Anything to work on?”

“Just Vanning. I better hang up now. I’m beginning to worry again. Vanning isn’t enough. I need something else. It’s like waiting for rain in the desert.”

“Maybe you can talk to him again.”

“If I could find a good excuse.”

“But there’s only forty-eight hours——”

“Don’t remind me,” he said. “Every time I look at my watch I get sick.”

“Does it make you feel better, talking to
me?”

“A lot.”

“Stay there and talk to me.”

“All right, dear.”

“Tell me things.”

“Things you don’t know already?”

“Anything you want to tell me.”

“Even if it’s unimportant?”

“Even if it’s silly,” she said.

“Headquarters told me something funny,” he said. “I shouldn’t even mention it. I haven’t any right to think about it. Not at this point, anyway. It all depends whether you’re in a mercenary mood.”

“I’m in any mood you’re in.”

“
I don’t know what mood I’m in, dear. I only know right now money’s a side issue. Now I wish I hadn’t said anything.”

She laughed. “You’ve already opened your big mouth.”

“How much do we have in the bank?”

“Seventeen hundred.”

“Headquarters got a wire from Seattle,” he said, and felt rather cheap saying it. But he was thinking of his wife and his children and the things he wanted to give them, and underneath that he was impelled by the desire to talk, to talk about anything except the big worry at hand, and he might as well talk about this; at least it was something practical, it was a basis for talk. And he said, “If I can get Vanning to tell where the money is, I’ll get a reward of fifteen thousand.”

“Fifteen thousand?”

“That’s a lot of cabbage.”

“Fifteen thousand.”

“Let’s both forget about it.”

“We might as well. Even if you bring him in, he’ll never own up.”

“I’m sorry I mentioned it.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she said.

“We’ll forget about it.”

“Sure.”

“How are the kids?”

“Fine.”

“And how are you?”

“Oh, I’m——”

“I’ve got to hang up,” Fraser said. “He’s out there, coming out of the house. Talk to you later——”

The receiver clicked. She lowered the phone. She started to light a cigarette, but suddenly there was a commotion in the next room and it sounded as though the children were beating each other over the head. She put down the cigarette and tightened her lips as she went in to break it up. As she entered the room the riot came to an immediate halt, and the three of them looked at her with innocent faces. She tried to appear severe, but she wasn’t much good at this, and all at once she laughed lightly and the children started to laugh and she ran at them, gathered them to her, hugged them and kissed them and said, “You little Indians——”

T
HE RESTAURANT
was a popular sea-food establishment, noted especially for its lobster. Vanning ordered a cup of clam broth and a large lobster. He ate slowly, getting pleasure from the rich pink-white meat dripping butter. It was luxury, this lobster. It was one of the things that made life worth living. There were considerable things that made life worth living. Luxurious things, rich, colorful things, tasty things, and then the quietly pleasant things, abstract things, certain contentments that couldn’t be analyzed in terms of statistics. He thought of those things for a while, but only a little while. The lobster brought him back to the other things, and he found himself thinking in terms of the luxurious, the joys in a materialistic category. Somewhere along that path a few colors entered. There was deep rose against a background of rich tan. There was shining gold. There was blue, a good, definite blue, not bright, not at all watery, but deeply blue. And then the tan again. Healthy tan. And all that added up, and it became Martha.

The thought became action, and Vanning’s hand shot back and away from the table, went sliding into his coat pocket. For a moment it wasn’t there, and he told himself if it wasn’t there it was no place. Then it came against his fingers, and he took it out of his pocket, the folded paper secure and actual and living against the flesh of his fingers. He unfolded it. He looked at the name. Just Martha. And then the address.

It was a fake address, of course. It had to be fake. If she was clever enough to fool him as she had done, she would certainly be clever enough to give him a fake address. He congratulated himself on the deduction. And yet that was all it amounted to right now. Nothing more than a deduction. In order to make it a fact, he had to check on that address.

All right. Granted that the deduction was faulty and she actually lived there. He wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Certainly he had nothing to gain from it. Or maybe he did have something to gain. Maybe if he played fox sufficiently well, he could have his cake and eat it too. The folded paper with
her address on it would give him a potential contact with John, without giving John a contact with John’s quarry.

It was an important consideration. Potential contact with John. It was important on the surface, much more important beneath the surface, but he didn’t feel like going into that now. There was something vital and glowing in the possibility that the address was on the level. It was an exceedingly vague possibility, but there it was, and Vanning told himself there would be a change of mood tonight. The hunted intended to do a little hunting.

He wasn’t in too much of a hurry. He treated himself to a dessert of cherry cream pie. Then black coffee. Then a brandy and another brandy and a cigarette. Walking out of the restaurant, he felt well nourished and the taste in his mouth was a good taste, and even though it was starting out as another hot, sticky night, he felt cool inside. And calm. And strangely self-assured.

The address was on Barrow Street. To get there he had to cross Christopher and Sheridan Square, and that took him past the bar where he had met her. As he passed the bar, a feeling of boldness came over him, there was the desire to gamble. He turned around. He smiled.

He entered the bar, and almost instantly he recognized the fat beer drinker of the preceding night. The fat fellow was right there at the bar, and again he was drinking beer.

Vanning walked up, gestured to the bartender. As the man in white apron approached to take the order, the fat fellow turned and looked at Vanning.

“Well, now, what do you know?”

“Hello,” Vanning said. He smiled at the bartender. “A brandy and water chaser for me. A beer for my friend.”

The bartender nodded and went away.

“Another hot night,” Vanning said.

“What brings you in here?”

“What brings anyone in here?”

“We’re speaking about you. In particular.”

“I’m looking for her,” Vanning said.

“I knew it.” This was said with tight-lipped emphasis. “I was willing to bet on it. One of those things that have to happen.”

“As sure as that?”

“
Like that,” the fat fellow said, and he snapped his fingers.

“You make it seem like arithmetic.”

“And that’s what it is. Two and two makes four and you can’t get away from it. Or maybe I should say one and one makes two. Now wait——” And the fat fellow frowned and ran a fat finger through a puddle of beer on the bar. “We have a problem here. Sometimes one and one doesn’t make two at all. One and one makes one. You see what I’m getting at?”

“Nup.”

“You’ll see. Just follow me. I promise you, I won’t go into a long production. I’ll make it simple. Like this. You and that girl, you’re a natural team.”

“You do this often?”

“Do what?”

“Play Cupid.”

“It’s the first time. I usually look out for myself. But that deal last night, it was different, it was one of those sensational things. A setup if I ever saw one. I said to myself when I walked out of here, I said, I’ll give ten to one he looks at her. Small odds, at that. And I said, I’ll give five to one he gets to talking with her. Then the odds went up again. Twenty to one he likes her. Fifty to one she likes him. A hundred to one they walk out of here together.”

“Keep it up. You’re making money.”

The fat fellow misinterpreted Vanning’s mild sarcasm. The fat fellow said, “All right, even if it didn’t happen last night, it’s bound to happen. You and that girl are a combination. In every way. Mark my word, it’s going to happen. Just as sure as I’m alive, I know it. And it makes me feel good. I don’t know if I’m getting this idea across, but I feel terrific, just thinking about you and that girl. You in a full-dress suit, and the girl in white satin. I get a picture of her in satin. Gorgeous, there’s no other word for it. And I go past that, I get a picture of the two of you, I see you on a train together, I see you on a boat, on the boardwalk in Atlantic City or someplace. I keep on going. I get such a kick out of it. I get a picture of what your kids will look like. Chubby kids, all of them blond, all of them healthy, rosy faces just like her face, and blue eyes, and——”

“All right, that’s all.”

“What’s wrong? What did I say?”

“
Nothing. That’s the point.” Vanning sighed and shook his head slowly. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not sore. You’re a nice guy. But I don’t want to listen to you any more. I don’t want to see you any more.”

“Don’t leave. I hardly ever get to talk to anybody. Let me buy you a drink. I promise to keep my big mouth shut.”

“Sorry,” Vanning said. “Thanks a lot, but you’re such a good pal that you give me the blues.”

He walked out. And it was all gone, that good feeling from the lobster and the brandy and the technical line of thought. It was replaced by a certain amount of confusion and some despair mixed in, and some loneliness and some bitterness, and topped off with a dash of desperation.

The house on Barrow Street was a four-story white brick affair, externally in good shape. On a panel at right angles to the front door there was a list of the tenants, with a button adjoining each name. Vanning struck a match and looked for a Martha. He went down past a Mr. and Mrs. Kostowski, a Mr. Olivet, a Mrs. Hammersmith, a Miss Silverman, and then there was only one more name and it wouldn’t be the name he wanted. It was absurd to think she had been fool enough to have given him a level address.

He looked at the name. He brought the match closer to the panel. And there it was, Martha Gardner.

A forefinger went thudding into the little black button. Then there was waiting. The finger hit the button again. More waiting. Then a buzzer, and Vanning opened the door and came into a small, neatly laid out foyer. Whoever took care of this place really believed in taking care of it. Vanning walked up a stairway carpeted in dark green broadloom. The walls were white, really white, blending with the quiet that flowed evenly through each straight and stolid hallway. There wasn’t much light, just enough of it. She lived in a place where people obviously lived quiet lives.

As he came to the third floor, a door opened for him. Light from the hall hit the doorway, merged with bright light coming from the room, and flowed down and framed her face.

She was wearing a bathrobe, quilted blue satin. He expected her to step back into the room and close the door. And if she didn’t do that, he expected her to stare, or gasp, or register some
other form of surprise. She didn’t do any of that. She even disregarded his damaged face. There was no particular response other than the ordinary process of standing there and looking at him.

“Remember?” he said. “You gave me your address.”

“What do you want?”

“I would like to straighten things out.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“There’s an explanation forthcoming.”

“Really, I’m not interested in hearing your explanation.”

Vanning frowned, taking that in and tossing it around for a few hollow moments. Then he offered her a dim smile and said, “You’ve got it backwards. What I meant was, there’s an explanation due from you.”

This time she did the frowning. She looked at him and yet she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at last night. He tried to gaze into her mind and gave it up after several crazy seconds.

Then she was saying, “All right, come in.”

It was a small apartment, but it was clean, it was attractive, it went right along with the rest of the house. A living room with a studio couch, a bathroom and kitchenette. Something about the colors and furnishings gave Vanning the idea that she had done her own decorating. The general scheme was blue and burnt orange, the blue demonstrating itself in various shades that climbed from the very pale to an almost black. A few passable water colors on the wall and one extremely interesting gouache.

He was looking at the gouache. He could hear her closing the door behind him. He told himself it was idiotic to have come here. There was a closet door not very far away, and he wasn’t being at all absurd in juggling the possibility that John might be hiding in the closet. And yet he wasn’t sorry he had come here. John or no John, he was here and he was satisfied to be here.

The gouache was simple and quiet and relaxed, showing a fishing boat in a lagoon, with sunset throwing dead blue and live orange onto the deck of the boat, the orange rising from the deck and flowing across green-gray water.

“Who did this painting?” Vanning asked.

“
Pull yourself together. The name is on the bottom.”

“Let’s start over again. Where did you get the painting?”

“A little art shop on Third Street.”

“It’s an interesting job.”

“I’m so glad you like it.”

“Cut that out,” he said, still looking at the gouache. “It doesn’t go with the rest of you.”

“Does that matter?”

“Yes,” he said. He turned around and faced her. She had her arms folded, as if she were sitting in a jury box. “Yes, it matters more than you think. I want to know how you got tied up with those men. I want to know how a girl like you goes and lets herself wide open for a wrong play. You didn’t belong in that picture last night and you know it as well as I do.”

“Are you telling me I didn’t belong?”

“I’m telling you.”

“That’s very funny,” she said. “All day I’ve been telling myself I didn’t belong in that picture.”

“Why did you do it? Money? Sure. What else could it be? It had to be money.”

“Do you always talk to yourself? Do you always answer your own questions?”

He didn’t like what she was saying, and he didn’t at all care for the way this was going, but he had to admire the way she was handling herself, the way her voice remained calm and level, the way she stood there, very straight, balanced nicely on her two feet without making too much of an effort at it.

“Why did you do it?” he said. “Why did you go to work for them?”

“I wasn’t working for them. But suppose I was? Would it make any difference? You did something wrong and you were running away and you were bound to be caught. That’s all I know. I don’t feel like knowing any
more.”

“Say, what are you doing? Are you fencing with me?”

“I wouldn’t attempt that. I’m not smart enough, Jim.”

“What?”

“Jim.”

“Thanks. It was nice of you to remember.”

“I couldn’t help remembering. Tell me, Jim. What did you do? How did you get yourself involved with the police?”

He stared at her. He studied her eyes as though they were rough diamonds and he was about to operate. And then he said, “You thought those men last night were police?”

“Weren’t they?”

Vanning let out a laugh, drew it in a tight knot of sound that kept on tightening until it became a grinding gasp. “I think I get it now,” he said. “You really thought they were police. That’s why you took off so fast. And they knew you had them figured as police. They put you in the role of stool pigeon, and that made you go away faster. As long as you thought they were police, as long as you had me down as some criminal being taken in, your only move would be to clear out of it and stay out. It was clever on their part. It was stupid on my part not to see through the whole thing. And yet I’m glad it worked out like that.”

“But all this doesn’t tell me anything. It goes around in a circle.”

“Nobody knows that better than I.”

“Jim.” She was coming toward him, came close enough to touch him and then stopped. “Who are they? What’s going on?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“I can’t answer that. You’ll have to answer it for yourself.”

He moved away from her, sat down on the studio couch. She came over and sat down beside him.

She said, “Can I fix you a drink?”

“No.”

“Smoke?”

“No.”

“Can I do anything?”

“You can sit there and listen.”

She sat there and listened. He talked for almost a half-hour. When it was all over, when there was nothing more to say, they looked at each other, breathed in and out in unison. He started a smile, worked at it, got it going, and she helped him out with it. Then she stood up.