David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and '50s (Library of America) (43 page)

“Nobody here by that name.” The old man started to move out from behind the desk, yawning again.

“Why don’t you call Miss Green and then you can go back to sleep.”

“Buster,” the old man said, “I’m going back to sleep right now and I ain’t calling Miss Green because we ain’t got no Miss Green.”

The old man was on his way to the side room when Harbin stepped into his path and showed him a couple of one-dollar bills.

“It’s awfully important that I see Miss Green.”

The old man looked at the money. “What was that name again?”

Harbin repeated it for him and spelled it for him.

“I think,” the old man said, “maybe we got a Miss Irma Green.” Now he had the bills and was stuffing them into a vest pocket. “But I’m ready to swear she checked out a couple days ago.”

“Let’s make sure about that.”

The old man started back toward the desk and then stopped and circled his throat with his thin hand. “She’s a small, skinny girl? Blonde hair?”

Harbin nodded.

The old man made a face that was meant to be a smile, but it looked as though he was in pain. “Miss Irma Green,” he said. “Yes, a very nice little lady. Very nice indeed.”

“Call her for me, will you?”

The old man yawned again. He twisted his head and stared up at the wall-clock above the desk. “You know,” he said, “this ain’t the best hour to go visiting people.”

“Call her.” Harbin indicated the phone. “Just pick up the phone and call her room.”

“We got certain house rules.”

“I know you have. You got rules providing a guest with the right to know when she has a visitor.”

“Say look, Buster,” the old man said. “You standing there and arguing with me?”

Sliding a hand into his trousers pocket, Harbin took out more money, selected a five-dollar bill and showed it to the old man.

“All I want you to do,” he said, “is put me on the phone as though it’s an outside call.”

The old man thought it over for a moment. “I guess there ain’t no harm in that.”

Harbin gave him the money, frowned slightly while waiting for the switchboard to make contact. The old man nodded toward the phone, and Harbin took it and heard Gladden’s voice.

He said, “I’m calling from a few blocks away. I’ll be there in five minutes. What’s your room number?”

“Three one two. What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

“We’ll talk about it when I see you.” He hung up and turned to the old man. “I only want to see the man who’s with her. You have my word there won’t be any trouble. I won’t even talk to him. I just want to see who he is.” He watched carefully to get the effect of his words on the old man. The effect was all right and it allowed him to add, “He won’t even get a look at me. I’ll be in that side room and keep the door open. He won’t even know I’m around.”

The old man was somewhat mixed up and worried. “Well, all
right,” he said, “but we can’t afford to have violence. A jealous husband comes to these places looking for his wife and he finds her with a boyfriend and right away we got a battle on our hands. Maybe you’ll see him and you’ll lose your temper.”

Harbin smiled. “I’m not the jealous husband. I’m only a friend looking out for her welfare.”

He walked into the side room. It was black in there and he opened the door just wide enough to get a reasonable view of the lobby. He was halfway behind the door and from there he could see the old man fidgeting nervously near the desk. A minute passed, then another minute and Harbin put a cigarette in his mouth and began to chew on it. He watched the movement of the big hand on the wall-clock above the desk. The sound of a descending elevator came against his hearing and he saw the face of the old man turned toward him, the aged eyes very worried, the brow severely wrinkled. He heard the sound of the elevator as it came to a stop, and then the footsteps, and then he saw the double-breasted gabardine suit, the healthy crop of blond hair, the handsome features and aquamarine eyes of the young cop moving past his range of vision beyond the partly opened door.

H
E WAITED
there in the side room, unable to handle it. After the initial moments of amazement he knew it wouldn’t do any good to think about it. It was something that went beyond thinking. He was scarcely conscious of the old man coming toward him, talking to him, telling him that he could come out now, the man had left the hotel and it was all right to come out now.

As he emerged from the side room into the lobby he heard the old man saying, “Was it someone you know?”

Harbin shook his head.

“Then I guess everything’s all right,” the old man said.

“Sure.” Harbin smiled, and stepped toward the elevator.

“Now hold on there.” The old man moved quickly between Harbin and the elevator.

“I promised there wouldn’t be any trouble,” Harbin said. “Besides, she’s expecting me.”

The old man searched for some kind of a rebuttal, couldn’t find any, made a gesture of surrender with his two hands and turned away from the elevator. Harbin entered the elevator, put a lit match to the cigarette in his mouth. He closed the elevator door and pushed the button.

As he entered Gladden’s room, as he saw her stepping back and away from the door, the first thing he noticed was the white of her face. It was paper white and her yellow eyes were dull with some weird kind of fatigue. He wasn’t smiling at her. He knew he ought to start this with a smile, but getting a smile started now would be like trying to walk on water.

“Start packing,” he said. “Snappy.”

She didn’t move. “Tell me.”

“We’re hot.” He knew there was no way of getting around it. Without looking at her, he said, “Dohmer’s dead.” He told her of what had happened on the road. He told her to hurry and start packing.

But she didn’t move. She stood there gazing past him, at the door.
He began taking her clothes from the narrow closet and throwing them on the bed. Then he had dresser drawers open and he was rapidly filling her suitcase.

He heard her saying, “I can’t go with you.”

That took him away from the suitcase. “What’s the rub?”

“I’ve met someone.”

“Oh.” He came back to the suitcase but didn’t continue to fill it. She had her back to him and he was curious to see the condition of her eyes. He took a step toward her, then decided to stay where he was, to let her build it in her own way.

A long string of silent moments ended as she said, “I want to get out, Nat. From now on I want to be out of it. I always wanted to be out of it but you kept me in.”

“How do you figure that?” he asked. “I never told you to stay in against your will.”

“My will was to stay,” she said. “Because of you.” Now she turned and faced him. “I wanted to be near you. I wanted you and I wanted you to want me. But you didn’t want me, you never wanted me, you never will. I’ve had a lousy time, I’ve gone through nights when I’ve torn pillows apart with my teeth, so hungry for you I wanted to smash down the wall and break into your room. You knew it, Nat. Don’t tell me you didn’t know it.”

He put his hands behind his back and cracked his knuckles.

Gladden said, “All right, so I’ve never been much with brains. But it didn’t need a lot of thinking. The point was, I went through something we all go through. I grew up. You didn’t see it taking place but it was taking place all the time. I was growing up, from a little girl into a woman, and I wanted to be your woman. But what the hell could I do? I couldn’t bang you over the head.”

“Maybe you should have tried that.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. “This comes at a wonderful time.”

She moved toward him, reached out to touch him, then pulled her hand back. “You’ve always been so good to me, you’ve taken care of me, you’ve been everything to me but what I was hoping you’d be. That isn’t your fault. It isn’t mine, either. It’s just a miserable state of affairs.”

He smiled dimly. “Miserable is one way of putting it.”

She detected the odd currents underneath his tone. She said, “I hope you won’t hold this against me.”

He looked up at her. “What’s his name?”

“Finley. Charles Finley.”

“What does he do? Tell me about him.”

“He sells automobiles. Salesman on a used car lot in Philly. I met him the second day I was here. On the boardwalk. We just got to talking and it happened sort of fast. I guess I was ripe for it, ready for it, he got me at just the right time, that night I went back to Philly and they told me you walked out and I came back here and called him up.”

“You really go for him?”

“He has a lot of charm.”

“I didn’t ask you that.”

“All right,” she said, “I think I go for him.”

Harbin stood up. “When did you last see him?”

“He was here tonight. He was here when I got your call. When you said you were coming I told him to leave and I’d see him for lunch.” She took a deep breath. “Don’t ask me to break the date. I really want to see him, I want to keep on seeing him. I don’t want to let him go.” She took hold of Harbin’s arms. “I won’t let him go and you can’t make me let him go.”

“Don’t get wild,” he spoke gently.

“He’s overboard for me,” she said, “and if I told you I wasn’t glad about that I’d be a no-good liar. I want to have some kind of a life for myself and you’ve got no right to keep me from having it.”

“Quit ripping my sleeves.” He frowned at her.

She was breathing very hard. Her fingernails cut through the fabric of his jacket. He twisted, got a grip on her wrists, forced her away. Going away, she staggered, bumped against a wall, stayed flattened against the wall, staring at him and taking deep, gasping breaths.

Harbin shook his head slowly. He gazed at the floor. “It’s a pity. It’s a damned pity.”

“Not for me.”

He looked at her. “Especially for you.” Then he waved her to quiet as she opened her mouth, and he said, “Listen, Gladden, just listen to me and try to take it relaxed. You’ve been sucked in. This man is manipulating.”

“
Don’t.”

“This man, I tell you, is working on a job.”

“Don’t. Please don’t.”

“This man Finley is a cop—”

“Nat, Nat,” she cut in pleadingly. “I told you I’m not a little girl anymore. I’ve grown up, I know the alphabet. Quit selling me short, will you?”

He was suddenly hit by too much weariness and he threw himself on his back on the bed, his arms flopping down, spread wide against the bedcover. “If you’ll try to listen,” he said, his eyes half-closed, “I’ll try to tell you. This Finley is one of the cops I talked to on the night we made the haul. A few minutes ago I was in a side room off the lobby as he came from the elevator and walked out. I recognized him.”

“Why are you doing this?” she cried. “What are you trying to arrange?”

“I’m not doing the arranging. Finley’s taking care of that.” Something like a sigh came from his lips. “The cop angle doesn’t mean anything. He holds on to that only for convenience. And from his position, you don’t mean anything, either. He doesn’t want you. He wants the emeralds.”

He saw her looking at him in a way she had never before looked at him. He heard her saying, “Why do you lie to me?”

“Have I ever lied to you?”

“No,” she said. “So why do you lie to me now?”

“I’m not lying. If you want all of it, I’ll give you all of it.”

She nodded slowly, and he started to tell her. It was easy to start, but when he came to the Della proposition, he had trouble handling it, making it clear, moving ahead with it. She stood there and watched him as he struggled with it, as he managed to take himself back to the house on the hill and then the maneuvering in Lancaster and the transit from the black woods to the road to the train to Philadelphia to the Black Horse Pike and to here and now.

He said, “I can see Finley planning the thing, making sure there’s no hitch. The day I took you to the train, he followed us. I can see him following us. He already had checked the Spot, and Della was watching the Spot. So there at the station when you got on the train, he got on, too. When you arrived here in Atlantic City, he was right behind you, watching you as you
checked in at this hotel, then beginning to work on you here in Atlantic City while Della was working on me back there.”

She moved toward the bed, sat down on the edge of it. Her breathing had quieted somewhat. She said, “Some people do things in a roundabout way.”

“Finley’s way is not roundabout. It’s quality from the word go. He has his eye on a hundred thousand dollars worth of emeralds. That’s all. But that’s plenty. He built this thing so it would work slowly, going upstairs a step at a time, first establishing the contact, bringing your guard down while Della brought mine down, figuring on a week or two weeks or three or maybe a couple of months. And even if it took six months and maybe even more than that, it was still a matter of a hundred thousand dollars and it would be worth all the trouble and all the waiting.”

She stared at the bedboard behind Harbin’s head. “Emeralds,” she said. “Chunks of green glass.”

Harbin sat up just a little. “Forget the emeralds,” he said. “The major item is three dead policemen. That’s something new with us.” He sat up completely, swung his legs over the side of the bed. “It’s why you’ve got to go with me. Stay with me. You’re implicated, Gladden. I wish you weren’t but you are. You and Baylock and myself. The three of us, we’re in a situation where we’ve got to run. We’ve got to keep on running.”

“Are we that hot?”

“I don’t know exactly how hot we are. I do know we can’t stay around just in order to find out. If we move now, we’ll be able to keep on moving.”

Gladden was quiet for a little while. Then she said, “I thought I was out of it. The feeling I had was wonderful, like getting rid of a terrible throbbing headache that I’d had all my life. Now I’m back in it again. I have the headache again.” She stood up, walked around the bed to the door, faced the door as though it was an iron wall. She turned again, coming toward him. “You’ve pulled me back into it.”

“Circumstances.”

“Not circumstances.” There was a lack of reasoning in her eyes and in her voice. “No, not circumstances. You. You, Nat. Keeping me in this time just like you’ve always kept me in. I tell you I don’t want to be in.” Her entire body quivered. “I don’t
want it, I don’t want it, I never wanted it, I want to be out of it.” She came close to him. “Out of it, out of it.”

“If you’ll think it over,” he said, “you’ll see the point.”

Gladden said, “There’s only one reason you keep me around your neck. It’s safer that way.”

He couldn’t speak. The thing that crushed down on him was the sum weight of all the years, and her voice was a lance cutting through it, breaking it all up and showing him it added up to nothing but a horrible joke he had played on himself.

But he knew something more was coming, and he waited for it like a man tied to railroad tracks waiting for the impact. He looked at her and saw the whiteness of her face, the strange blaze in the yellow of her eyes.

And then it came. “You bastard,” she said. “You made me think you were looking out for me. You were looking out for yourself. You dirty tricky bastard, I hate your guts—”

He moved his head, but her arm was quicker, her extended fingers jabbing at his face, her fingernails ripping and he felt the slash, the icy burn. He saw her stepping back and away, her face twisted, her teeth showing.

“Here’s your chance,” she said. “Why don’t you make it a real guarantee? Do what you’ve wanted to do all along. Get rid of me once and for all. Make sure I’ll never talk and you’ll always be safe.” She pointed at her throat. “Look how skinny, how easy it would be. Take you no time at all.”

The door seemed to be moving toward him. As he opened it, with Gladden behind him, he waited and didn’t know what he was waiting for. The room became quiet like a chamber with nobody in it. He opened the door wider, walked out, closed the door slowly as though Gladden was asleep in there and he didn’t want to wake her up. He walked down the hall toward the elevator.