David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and '50s (Library of America) (6 page)

He lit two cigarettes, went into the kitchen, saw her putting on an apron. She was tying the apron strings. She gestured with her lips and he put the cigarette in her mouth and walked out of the kitchen.

“Let’s have some music,” she said.

“Radio?”

“Yes, put the radio on.”

He got the radio working. A small studio orchestra was trying to do something with
Holiday for Strings
but there weren’t enough strings. Toward the middle most of the orchestra seemed to be taking a holiday. Parry went over to a circular mirror at the other side of the room and looked at himself and admired the grey suit. He fingered the necktie and then he touched the smoothness of the suede wrist-watch strap. Looking at the wrist watch he told himself it was fast. It couldn’t be eight already. He turned toward the window. The San Francisco sky was greying.

Irene came in and said dinner was ready. She really knew how to fry a chicken. She opened a bottle of Sauterne and he knew before he took the first taste it was high-priced wine. He told her she was a good cook. She smiled and didn’t say anything. For dessert they had butterscotch pudding. She told him she had a weakness for butterscotch pudding and made it three times a week. He asked her if she ate out much and she said no, she liked her own cooking and besides restaurants these days were an ordeal.

They had black coffee and then they sat there smoking cigarettes. He offered to help her with the dishes and she said no, she could do them in a jiffy. He went into the parlor and she did the dishes in a jiffy. Parry took another look at the sky and it was getting dark. He was watching it get darker as Irene came into the parlor. She followed his gaze out the window. She followed his gaze to the wrist watch.

She said, “Don’t go. Stay here tonight. You can sleep on the davenport.”

“
That’s out. We’ve got maybe thirty minutes and then I’m on my way. And now I want to ask you something. Where is your brother?”

“Dead. He was in a terrible automobile accident six years ago. What you really want to know is how I got my money. And that’s how. My father willed it to Burton, and then in the hospital, just before he died, Burton willed it to me. It amounts to a couple hundred thousand dollars.”

“That’s a lot of cash.”

“It’s good to have. It’s the only thing I have.”

“What about your husband?”

“I received the final decree a few months ago. I don’t know where he is. Do you want the name?”

“Why should I want the name?”

“Why should you want to know where I got my money?”

“Curious. You didn’t get it with water colors. I knew that. And you didn’t get it through sociology. I knew that. So I went back to the clipping and I wanted to check on it and I wanted to know why you had it and not your brother. Was this where you lived with your husband?”

“No.”

“What kind of guy was your husband?”

“A louse.”

“When did you find it out?”

“The first week.”

“Why didn’t you leave?”

She said, “I had the money and I had me and I had him. I wasn’t much interested in the money. That left me and him. He liked to drink, but that was all right, so did I. And he liked to gamble and that wasn’t so good, because he had an idea he knew poker and he didn’t know the first thing about poker. Even nights when we stayed home together he wanted to play poker and one night I took him for every cent he made that month. I think that was the only thing he liked about me—the fact that I could make him look sick when it came to poker.”

“What was his line?”

“All right, Vincent, I’ll tell you about him. His name is George Hagedorn and I met him three years ago. We knew each other four months and then we got married. We were a couple of lonely people and I guess that was the only reason we
married. He didn’t know I had money. I told him a few days after the wedding and it didn’t seem to make much difference. I guess that was one of the very few things that was good about him. He had a lot of pride. Maybe too much. I think that was why he gambled. I think that was the only way he reasoned he could get money with his own hands. He hadn’t tried many other ways because he was very lazy. One of the laziest men I’ve ever seen. When we married he was thirty-two and a complete failure. A statistician making forty-five a week in an investment security house.”

“What house?”

“Kinney.”

“I know that firm,” Parry said. “They’re big. Offices in Santa Barbara and Philly. I can’t figure Santa Barbara.”

“He tried to get transferred down to Santa Barbara but they didn’t need him there. He wouldn’t have lasted at the office here but he had asthma and it kept him out of the Army and I guess they figured they might as well keep him for the duration. Besides, they had him broken in. But he was late and absent a lot and I guess they finally got fed up with him. About a year ago I tried to get in touch with him and I called Kinney and they said he didn’t work there any more. They didn’t know where he was.”

“Why did you want to get in touch with him?”

“I was lonely. I wanted a date.”

“What about Bob?”

“I had an idea you’d remember that. You remember things, don’t you.”

“Certain things stick in my mind. What about Bob?”

“That was during a time when I wasn’t seeing Bob. Every now and then it happens that way.”

“What way?”

“Well, I get afraid. Or maybe it’s my conscience, because he’s married. Not really married. He’s separated, but his wife won’t give him a divorce. She doesn’t want him and at the same time she won’t let anyone else have him. She gets a kick out of it. But I don’t have to tell you, Vincent. You know what she is. You know who she is.”

P
ARRY LOOKED
at the window. Now it was dark grey out there and getting darker. He said, “I better be going.”

“She worked against you at the trial, Vincent. She works against everybody. She has a way about her. She won’t leave people alone. And the way she pesters me——”

“The way she pesters you has nothing to do with me,” Parry said. He got up and moved toward the door. “All I know is she couldn’t see me through the door and she didn’t see me through the window. That’s all I want to know. You’ve been good to me. I won’t forget it but I want you to forget it. Being good to people sounds nice but it’s hard work. From here on there’s only one person you’ll need to be good to. That’s yourself. Good-by, Irene.”

“Good-by, Vincent. Wait, you’ve got things here. I’ll put them in a grip——”

He opened the door and walked out. He looked up and down the corridor and then he stepped quickly to the elevator. When he reached the street he saw it was even darker than it had looked from the window. He walked quickly, walked south, searching for a drugstore. Three blocks and then he saw a drugstore and instinctively his hand went into the right side-pocket of the grey worsted trousers, groping for change. His fingers touched paper and he was taking bills from the pocket. All new bills, crisp and bright. It amounted to a thousand dollars. Eight one-hundred dollar bills. Two fifties. The rest in tens and fives. He wondered how she knew he kept his money in the right side-pocket of his trousers. He started toward the drugstore, then told himself a telephone call was out. A taxi made a turn and started slowly up the street. Parry stepped to the curb and raised his arm.

The taxi came to a reluctant stop. The driver was a thick-faced man close to forty. The driver said, “How far? I’m on my way to a fare.”

“It’s not far.”

The driver examined the grey worsted suit. “North?”

“Yes.
A couple miles. Just keep going north and I’ll tell you how to get there.”

“All right, hop in. Mind a little speed?”

“I like speed.”

The taxi went into a sprint, made a lot of wracking noise as it turned a corner to get on a wider street. Parry sat low, trying to get his face away from the rear-view mirror because he sensed the driver was studying the mirror. He wondered why the driver was studying the mirror.

“That’s a nice suit you’re wearing,” the driver said.

“I’m glad you like it. What are we doing?”

“Forty. Another turn and we’ll do fifty. On this kind of a deal I usually take her up to sixty.”

“What do you mean this kind of a deal?” He could see the driver grinning at him in the rear-view mirror. He wondered why the driver was grinning.

“A double job,” the driver said. “Two fares on one trip.
Is your trip really necessary?”

“Sort of,” Parry said.

“It’s crazy the way they get these slogans out,” the driver said. “What they do with words. Take
necessary
, for instance. It means different things to different people. Like me. What’s necessary to me?”

“Passengers,” Parry said. “And I’ll tell you what’s necessary to passengers—getting where they want to go without a lot of talk.”

He thought that would make the driver shut up. The driver took the taxi up to fifty and said, “I don’t know. Some passengers don’t mind talk.”

“I do.”

“Always?”

“Yes, always,” Parry said. “That’s why I don’t have many friends.”

“You know,” the driver said, “it’s funny about friends——”

“It’s funny the way you can’t take a hint,” Parry said.

The driver laughed. He said, “Brother, you never drove a cab. You got no idea how lonely it gets.”

“What’s lonely about it? You see people.”

“That’s just it, brother. I see so many people, I take them to so many places. I see them getting out and going in to places. I
pick up other people and I hear them talking in the back seat. I’m up here all alone and I get lonely.”

“That’s tough,” Parry said.

“You don’t believe me.”

“Sure,” Parry said. “I believe you. My heart goes out to you. All right, turn here, to the left. Stay on this street.”

“Where we going?”

“If I give you that you’ll ask me why I’m going there and what I’m going to do there. After all, a guy gets lonely driving a taxi.”

“That’s right, lonely,” the driver said. “Lonely and smart.”

Parry noticed that the driver was no longer watching the rear-view mirror. Parry said, “Smart in what way?”

“People.”

“Talking to people?”

“And looking at people. Looking at their faces.”

Parry started to shake. He glanced at his shaking hand. He measured the distance from his hand to the door handle. He said, “What about faces?”

“Well, it’s funny,” the driver said. “From faces I can tell what people think. I can tell what they do. Sometimes I can even tell who they are.”

And now the driver again watched the rear-view mirror.

Parry reached over and put his hand on the door handle. He told himself he had to do it and do it now and do it fast. And not sit here and hope he was wrong, because he couldn’t be wrong, because it was an equation again and it checked. The evening papers were out long ago and the taxi driver had to read one of those papers, had to see the picture that had to be on the front page. The taxi driver had time to read the write-up. Front-page stories were made to order for taxi drivers who didn’t have time to read the back pages.

“You, for instance,” the driver said.

“All right, me. What about me?”

“You’re a guy with troubles.”

“I don’t have a trouble in the world,” Parry said.

“Don’t tell me, brother,” the driver said. “I know. I know people. I’ll tell you something else. Your trouble is women.”

Parry took his hand from the door handle. It was all right. He
had to stop this business of worrying about things before they happened.

He said, “Strike one. I’m happily married.”

“Call it a two-base hit. You’re not married. But you used to be, and it wasn’t happy.”

“Oh, I get it. You were there. You were hiding in the closet all the time.”

The driver said, “I’ll tell you about her. She wasn’t easy to get along with. She wanted things. The more she got, the more she wanted. And she always got what she wanted. That’s the picture.”

“That’s strike two.”

“That’s the picture,” the driver said. “She never made much noise and she was always a couple steps ahead of you. Sometimes she wasn’t even there at all. That gave her the upper hand, because she could keep an eye on you and you didn’t know it.”

“Strike three.”

“Strike three my eye. You were a rubber band on her little finger.”

“All right, make a left-hand turn. Go right at the next light.”

“So finally—” The taxi made a wide, fast turn. “So finally it was up to your neck and you couldn’t take it any more. You were tired of boxing with her—so you slugged her.”

Parry was shaking again. He had his hand going toward the door handle. He said, “You know, you ought to do something with that. You could make money at carnivals.”

“It’s a thought.”

Parry put his hand on the door handle.

The taxi made a right turn. Two neon signs flashed past, one yellow, the other violet. It was a market section. It was busy. There were people, too many people. But he didn’t care. He started to work the handle.

“Yep,” the driver said. “She gave you plenty of trouble. I don’t blame you. I don’t blame you one bit.”

The handle was halfway down. Perspiration dripped onto grey worsted. The handle was almost all the way down.

“Not now,” the driver said. “And not here. There’s too many cops around.”

P
ARRY LET
go of the handle. He sagged. He started to breathe as if he had just finished a two-mile run and the officials said it didn’t count and wanted to get another race going immediately.

The driver said, “Is it far from here?”

“I’ll give you five hundred dollars,” Parry blurted. “I’ll give you——”

“Don’t give me anything,” the driver said. “Just let me know where it is and I’ll pick out a dark street that’s empty and you can walk the rest of the way. And don’t try hitting me on the head or I’ll run us up on the pavement and into a wall.”

Parry had his head almost to his knees. He made fists and pressed them against his forehead. He said, “The hell with it, the hell with it. Take me to a police station.”

“Don’t be that way. You’re doing all right. You’re doing fine.”

“No,” Parry groaned. “It’s no go. It was easy for you to see. It’ll be easy for others to see.”

“Now that’s where you’re wrong,” the driver said. He twisted the taxi into a sharp turn and sent it sliding down a narrow street that was empty and very dark. Halfway down the street he brought the taxi to a smooth stop. He rested his arm on the back of the seat and turned and faced Parry. He said, “And here’s why. I’m out of the ordinary. Not my eyes, but the way I stick things on my brain and keep them there. And the way I put things together. I get five or six little things and I put them together and I get one big thing.”

“What’s the difference?” Parry said. He wasn’t talking to the driver. “The worst I can get is a week in solitary. And no privileges. And no chance of a parole. But there wasn’t a chance anyway. They told me I was lucky I didn’t get the chair. That’s something I’ve got to remember—I’m lucky. I’ll always be lucky because I didn’t get the chair.” He looked up and saw the driver watching him. He said, “Go on—take me to a police station.”

“I
don’t see no sense in that,” the driver said. “Unless you think you’ll be happier in Quentin.”

“Sure,” Parry said. “I’ll be happier there. That’s why they send us there. To keep us happy.”

The driver brought up a forearm, put most of his weight on the elbow, leaning his face against a big hand. “I got a better idea for you. Let me take you over to the Bridge. You can jump off and it’ll be over in no time.”

“The Bridge?”

“Sure. All you gotta do is step off and you faint on the way down. It’s like going to a painless dentist.”

“I’m young,” Parry said, again talking aloud to himself. “There’s a lot of years ahead of me.”

“Why spend them in Quentin?”

“What else can I do?” Parry asked.

“I want to know something,” the driver said. “Did you really bump her off ?”

“No.”

“That’s not the way I figure it,” the driver said. “I figure she made life miserable for you and finally you lost your head and you picked up that ash tray and slugged her. I know how it is. I live with my sister and my brother-in-law. They get along fine. They get along so fine that once he threw a bread knife at her. She ducked. And that’s the way it goes. Maybe if your wife ducked there wouldn’t be any trial, there wouldn’t be any Quentin. But that’s the way it goes. You want a smoke?”

“All right,” Parry said. He accepted a cigarette and a light.

The driver filled his lungs with smoke, sent the smoke out through the side of his mouth. He said, “Let me find out something, just to see if I got it right. What was she like?”

“She was all right,” Parry said. “She wasn’t a bad soul. She just hated my guts. For a long time I tried to find out why. Then it got to a point where I didn’t care any more. I started going out. I knew she was going out so it didn’t make any difference. We hardly ever talked to each other. It was a very happy home.”

“What made you marry her in the first place?”

“The old story.”

“I almost got roped in a couple times,” the driver said.

“If you find the right person it’s okay,” Parry said.

Then they were quiet for a while. They sat there blowing smoke. After a time the driver said, “Where we going?”

“I don’t know,” Parry said. “What should I do?”

“You won’t listen.”

“I’ll listen,” Parry said. “I want ideas. That’s what I need more than anything else. Ideas. Look, I didn’t kill her. Why should I go back to San Quentin and stay there the rest of my life if I didn’t kill her?”

The driver shifted his position so that he faced Parry directly. He beckoned to Parry. He said, “Come up a few inches. Let’s see if he can do anything with your face.”

“Who?”

“A friend of mine.” The driver was studying Parry’s face. The driver said, “This guy’s good. He knows his stuff.”

“What would he want?”

“What do you have?”

“A thousand.”

“To spend?”

“No,” Parry said. “A thousand’s all I have.”

“He’d take a couple hundred.”

“What would he want afterward?”

“Not a cent. He’s a friend of mine.”

“What do you want?”

“Nothing.” The driver got paper and a stub of pencil from an inside pocket and he was writing something.

“How long will it take?” Parry asked.

“Maybe a week if he doesn’t touch your nose. I’ve seen him work. He’s good. I don’t think he’ll touch your nose. I think he’ll fix you up around the eyes. But you can’t stay there. You got a place to stay?”

“I think so,” Parry said.

The driver handed Parry a slip of paper. Parry folded it and put it in his coat pocket.

“I’ll call him tonight,” the driver said. “Maybe he can do it tonight. Maybe I better call him right now. You got the cash with you?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure about tonight. Let’s work it this way—you call him and say there’s a good chance I’ll be there at two in the morning. Or better make it three. Are you sure this guy’s okay?”

“
He’s okay as long as he knows you’re okay. That good enough?”

“I’ll gamble,” Parry said. “How do I get in?”

“It’s an old building on Post. One of them dried-up places filled with two-by-four offices. He’s got his office on the third floor. There’s an alley on the left side of the building. There’s a back door and he’ll have it open for you. He works fast and you’ll be out of there before it gets light.”

“What do I do after I get out? I can’t walk the streets all bandaged up.”

“Don’t worry about it,” the driver said. “I’ll be there. I know the section and I got the whole thing mapped out already. The alley cuts through to a second alley. I’ll have the taxi parked there at the end of the second alley.”

“Suppose he can’t make it tonight.”

“We’ll take the chance. I think we better shove now. I don’t want any cops to see me parked here. Where do we go?”

“Make a right hand turn at the end of the block,” Parry said.

The taxi went down the street, made a right turn, made another right turn, then a third, then down four blocks and a left-hand turn.

“Stop alongside that apartment house,” Parry said.

The taxi went halfway down the street and came to a stop.

“What’ll it be?” Parry said.

“An even two bucks.”

Parry handed the driver a five-dollar bill. He said, “Keep it.”

The driver handed Parry a dollar bill and a dollar in silver. “You need some silver,” he said. “
Besides, you don’t want to go throwing your money around like that. Now what’s it going to be?”

“Three on the dot.”

“All right. I’ll call him. And you be there. And listen, keep telling yourself it’ll work out okay. Keep telling yourself you don’t have a thing to lose.”

“But you,” Parry said. “You’ve got plenty to lose. You and your friend.”

“Don’t worry about me and my friend,” the driver said. “You just be there at three. That’s all you got to worry about.”

Parry opened the door and stepped out of the taxi. He walked toward the entrance of a third-rate apartment house. He
heard the taxi going away and he turned and saw the tail light getting smaller in the blackness down the street.

The lobby of the apartment house was dreary. People who stayed in this place were in the forty-a-week bracket. The carpet was ready to give up and the wallpaper should have given up long ago. There were three plain chairs and a sofa sinking in the middle. There was a small table, too small for the big antique lamp that was probably taken at auction without too much bidding. Parry had been here before and every time he came here he wondered why George Fellsinger put up with it. He looked at it through the window of the door that kept him in the vestibule. He sighed and wanted to go away. There was no other place to go. He gazed down the list of tenants, came to Fellsinger and pressed the button. There wasn’t any voice arrangement. There wasn’t any response to the first press. Parry pressed again. There wasn’t any response. Maybe the Bridge was better after all. It didn’t pay to keep up with this, all this vacuum in the stomach, going around, going up to his brain and going back to his stomach and coming up again and eating away at his heart. He pressed the button again, and this time he got a buzz and he opened the door, quickly crossed the lobby, saw that the elevator was right there waiting for him. Maybe the police were waiting upstairs. Maybe they weren’t.

The elevator took him to the fourth floor. He hurried down the corridor, knocked on the door of Fellsinger’s apartment.

The door opened. Parry stepped into the apartment. The door closed. George Fellsinger folded his arms and leaned against the door and said, “Jesus Christ.”

George Fellsinger was thirty-six and losing his blonde hair. He was five nine and he had the kind of build they show in the muscle development ads, the kind of build a man has before he sends the coupon away and gets the miracle machine. Fellsinger had blue eyes that were more water than blue and the frayed collar of his starched white shirt was open at the throat.

The apartment was just like Fellsinger. It consisted of a room and a bath and a kitchenette. The davenport was set with pillow and sheets and there were six ash trays stocked with stubs, a magazine on the floor, an empty ginger-ale bottle resting on the magazine. Parry knew Fellsinger had fallen asleep on the davenport after having finished the magazine and the ginger ale
and the cigarettes. There was a trumpet on one of two chairs.

“Jesus Christ,” Fellsinger said again.

“How’ve you been, George?”

“I’ve been all right. Jesus, Vincent, I never expected anything like this—” Fellsinger ran to a small table, opened a drawer, took out a carton of cigarettes. With a thumbnail he slit the carton, extracted a pack, and with the same thumbnail he opened the pack, with the same thumbnail got a match lit. He ignited Parry’s cigarette, ignited his own and then went back to the door and leaned against it.

“You saw the papers?”

“Sure,” Fellsinger said. “And I couldn’t believe it. And I can’t believe this.”

“There’s no getting away from it, George. I’m here. This is really me.”

“In that brand-new suit?”

Parry explained the suit. From the suit he went back to the road, told Fellsinger how she had picked him up, told Fellsinger everything.

“You can’t work it that way,” Fellsinger said. “What you’ve got to do is take yourself out of town. Out of the state. Out of the country.”

“That’s for later. What I need now is a new face.”

“He’ll ruin you. I tell you, Vince, you’re working it wrong. Every minute you waste in town is——”

“Look, George, you said I was innocent. You always kept saying that. Do you still believe it?”

“Of course. It was an accident. Nobody killed her.”

“All right, then. Do you want to help me?”

“Of course I want to help you. Anything, Vince. Anything I can do. For Christ’s sake——”

“Look, George, have there been any big changes in your life since they put me away?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, you never used to have any visitors. You were always alone up here. Is it still that way?”

“Yes. I lead a miserable life, Vince. You know that. You know I have nobody. You were my only friend.” A suggestion of tears appeared in Fellsinger’s eyes.

Parry didn’t notice the tears. He said, “I’m mighty glad nobody comes up here. That’ll make it easy. And it won’t be more than a week. Do it for me, George. That’s all I’m asking. Just let me stay here for a week.”

“Vince, you can stay here for a year, for ten years. But that’s not the point. You said she gave you money. That’s half the battle already. With money you can travel. Here you’ll only run into the police. Maybe even now——”

“I can’t travel with this face. It needs to be changed. I’m going there tonight. Maybe the police will be here when I get back. Maybe not. It’s fifty-fifty.”

Fellsinger took a key case from the back pocket of his trousers. He unringed a key and handed it to Parry. “It’s good for both doors,” he said. “I still think you’re working it wrong, Vince.”

“Got anything to drink?”

“Some rum. It’s awful stuff, but that’s all I can get these days.”

“Rum. Anything.”

Fellsinger went into the kitchen, came out with a bottle of rum and two water glasses. He half filled both glasses.

They stood facing each other, gulping the rum.

“I still can’t believe it,” Fellsinger said.

“I was lucky,” Parry said. “I got breaks. If I had planned it for a year it couldn’t have worked out any better. The truck was right where I wanted it to be. The guards were nowhere around. It was all luck.”

“And that girl,” Fellsinger said.

Parry started to say something, then found his lips were closed, found the words were crumbling up and becoming nothing. He didn’t want to talk about her. He was sorry he had told Fellsinger about her. He couldn’t understand why he had told Fellsinger everything, even her name and her address and even the number of her apartment. He was very sorry he had done that but he didn’t know why he was sorry. He knew only that now and from now on he didn’t want to talk about her, he didn’t want to think about her.

Fellsinger made himself horizontal on the davenport. He finished the rum in his glass, got the glass half filled again. Parry brought a chair toward the davenport and sat down.