The Noir Novel

by Thomas B. Dewey

  It was a nondescript area of light industry, old residences, chiefly rooming houses, and brick apartment buildings and cheap stores and shops. Scattered among them were taverns with faded, garish fronts. He went into a barbershop, and in the course of a haircut and shave he learned that Lou Roberts had worked in a shop around the corner and in the recent indefinite past had disappeared.

  On the street again, he tramped four blocks in four directions, finally asked a storekeeper about Costello’s barbershop.

  “Out of business,” the man said. “Closed up six, seven months ago. Got a Slenderella place there.”

  “I was looking for a guy named Lou Roberts.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I never went in there.”

  Mickey drove back to the rooming house, went upstairs and got into bed. His back still ached fiercely; he would be up that night and he had to have sleep.

  * * * *

  He woke at six o’clock. The window was black against the air shaft, but there was a light in the room across the way. A young woman with platinum-blond hair was rousing slowly from a rumpled bed. She was nude and the bright light treated her harshly. She pushed herself up with one hand till she was sitting on the edge of the bed. She folded her arms across her midsection, squeezing upward a pair of skimpy breasts. Then she leaned far forward, so that her long blond hair fell across her thighs, and slowly rocked herself as if in pain. After a minute she straightened, stood up, shrugged into a bathrobe and disappeared. A moment later he heard her in the bathroom. Mickey dozed off, and when he woke again she was dressing slowly, laboriously. He watched her briefly, without interest, then turned away from the light and went back to sleep.

  The next time he woke it was much later and there were voices across the way. The shade had been drawn and he could hear the woman’s high-pitched giggle and occasionally the lower, guttural tones of the man she was entertaining. It was after ten now, and Mickey got up, washed at the stand, dressed in the dark and went out.

  It was raw cold and the streets were empty. He had mapped a tentative route in his mind, fanning out from the rooming house in three directions, and he turned into the first tavern he came to. It was doing a good business, but he found a seat at the end of the bar where it curved to the outside wall. He ordered a bottle of beer and sat with it, drinking it slowly in minute sips, watching, listening.

  The crowd was a neighborhood mixture of working people and shopkeepers. It was an unlikely gathering at which to find the shadow of the man he hunted, but he didn’t expect a gift from heaven. He nursed his beer and eavesdropped, studying the faces of the eager talkers, listening for a tip, a suggestion, a lead, however slim. He didn’t ask questions. Strangers who asked questions were nosy, maybe stoolies, private eyes, even cops. Question time would come later.

  Between ten-thirty and the midmorning closing hour he hit twelve joints and learned nothing that would aid his search, but he got acquainted with a couple of apparently friendly and talkative bartenders.

  When he returned to his room, as he was putting the key in the lock, the platinum-haired girl came down the hall, singing to herself, a high, off-key, mournful sound. She walked unsteadily, clutching a small paper sack in both hands. As she started past him she swerved, careening into him. He caught her with one hand to steady her. She looked up at him, breathless.

  “Oops,” she said. “Dark in here.”

  She burped, looking at him, then smiled with small, not very good teeth.

  “Parm me, honey,” she said. She held up the sack, still smiling, weaving a little from side to side. Except for the teeth, she wasn’t unattractive. “Come on in, honey, have a drink—on me.” She giggled. “I mean the drink on me, I mean—Huh?”

  “Sorry, not tonight,” he said.

  She pouted, backing off.

  “What’s a matter—you some kind of a social worker, or something?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m just tired.”

  “Oh. Well, okay. I’m tired too. Very tired. G’night, honey.”

  Inside, after he had got ready for bed, he sat on the edge of it for a while, staring at the drawn, yellowly lighted shade of her window. Part of the description of the wanted man had read, “Known to consort with prostitutes.” Likely a pimp among other things. If this girl hadn’t known Roberts personally, she might very possibly have known about him. She might be a lead.

  But cultivating prostitutes, or any sort of woman in the world, was a project for which he had no stomach. There were dark memories still too near the surface—devilish, lurking memories of a brief radiance swallowed up in ugly blackness. As the sight of her nakedness earlier had failed to stir him, the thought of trying to make friends with her, of touching her, repelled him almost to the point of nausea. Not because she was a whore; because she wasn’t Kathy; because Kathy couldn’t be…

  Lying in bed, waiting for sleep, he let himself remember Kathy, alive and whole; all of Kathy, her vibrant, urgent flesh against his…

  He remembered crying at the memory of her and was surprised that he now could remember without crying.

  * * * *

  After several days of making the rounds of the taverns, moving in a widening arc around the neighborhood, he realized it was too random a process. Also it was expensive. He would have to find a way to make some money, and the time to start was before his reserve ran out. A man who didn’t need work was more likely to find it than one who did.

  He found what he was looking for under the heading, “Schools, instruction, trade schools.”

  “Bartenders!” the ad read. “Make steady pay with big tips. Our intensive training course union-approved. Apply now.”

  Every bar was a listening post. When a man went to work behind a bar he automatically became a confidant to the general and specialized public. Depending on the location, he might pick up a lot of information. Besides, having a trade and a union card would keep him in pocket over an indefinite period.

  He went to the school to apply for the course. It would take three weeks, six hours a day, and would cost a hundred and fifty dollars in installments, or a hundred twenty-five in advance. When he paid the whole thing in advance, the head instructor said he could probably complete the course in two weeks if he had any aptitude.

  He had the aptitude and he was in a hurry. The principal instructor and his wife, who assisted him, were conscientious and thorough. The classes were small. He learned what was involved in operating on a percentage. He learned the state liquor control laws by heart. He learned how to take care of a bar, how to wash and clean glasses, how to prepare garnishes and setups. And he learned how to mix a vast number of basic highballs and cocktails and something about their variations. He passed his “final exam”—a grueling, two-hour practice stint under simulated working conditions—with flying colors.

  The instructor’s wife signed his certificate and congratulated him on his achievement. If she could make one suggestion, she said, it would be that he might try to smile a little more often. Mickey said he would take it under advisement.

  It was snowing lightly by the time he got back to the rooming house that day. He had brushed his feet on the mat and started up the stairs when the door of the manager’s apartment opened and Mrs. Blake looked out. She came to the banister and gazed up at him with her big, lonely eyes.

  “You doing anything special tomorrow, Thanksgiving?” she asked.

  “I guess not,” he said.

  “Nobody ought to be alone on Thanksgiving,” she said. “Why don’t you come down and have dinner with me? I’m having a few people in—just from around the house. Turkey and all the trimmings.”

  “Well—sure, all right, thanks,” he said.

  “Come early,” she said. “We’ll have some cheers before dinner.”

  “All right.”

  He was surprised at himself when he got to his room. The manager’s apartment was the last place he wanted to spend any time. But he decided he might as well go. It would be a free meal and there might be
some people there who could help him.

  * * * *

  Early on Thanksgiving, he went out and bought a bottle of whisky, so he could make a contribution to the party. When he knocked at her door, Mrs. Blake opened it herself and he saw at a glance he had made a mistake in accepting the invitation.

  She was all dressed up in a strapless party dress that had probably been quite a number in its day. But now it was too short and a little too small for her and she had to keep hiking it up to keep her breasts covered. They jiggled and floated precariously at the top of her bodice, like filling leaking out of a couple of cream puffs. He could tell by the fragrance of her breath and the look in her big eyes that she had had several drinks already and there was a glass in her hand as she let him in.

  “Hurry up, honey, and get yourself a drink,” she said. “You’ve got to catch up.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Mickey said, “I’m not much of a drinker.”

  “Oh come on,” she said, slipping her arm under his. “It’s a holiday!”

  In the kitchen he could smell the turkey and there were things in pots and pans on the small stove. There were gin and whisky on a shelf and he made himself a drink while she bustled about unsteadily. He saw that a table in the dining alcove was set for two.

  “What about the others?” he asked.

  “Others?” She blinked. “Oh, they couldn’t come. So I decided we’d just have it—tête-à-tête.” She giggled into her glass.

  She nearly lost her balance, seating herself on the living-room sofa and he had to catch her arm.

  “Come on, honey,” she said, “let’s start living it up—before we get any older.”

  He raised his glass halfheartedly. He was embarrassed for both of them. He wished he hadn’t come and he couldn’t think of anything to say to her. Not that it was necessary to say much.

  There was a row of photographs on an old-fashioned sideboard across the room. They formed an irregular rank, ill assorted and variously set forth, some in easels, some mounted on cardboard. There were several small children among them, a typical family array.

  “Lots of pictures,” he said, pointing.

  She blinked slowly, clearing her vision.

  “Oh, family stuff,” she said. Her face brightened. “I got two girls, both married now. One married at seventeen, the other at eighteen. Good-looking girls. We had the first one a couple of years before the war and he got me pregnant again just before he left.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “I never saw him again,” she said. “I mean after he went away.”

  He tried to feel with her the remembered pain, but couldn’t make it touch him. Getting killed in a war—you could expect to get killed. It wasn’t anything like the monstrous murder of Kathy. Besides, it was old, long ago.

  She dragged him into the kitchen again for another drink. He made himself a very light highball and tried to lighten up on hers, too, but she happened to be watching at the moment, so he went ahead and made a normal-size drink. She picked it up, leaned over to look into the oven and almost fell in. He caught her at the waist and she leaned against him with excessive gratitude.

  “You’re strong,” she said. “You just saved me from a fiery death.”

  She linked arms with him again, and when they got out of the kitchen he steered her to the sideboard where the pictures were lined up. There were more of them than he had seen from across the room, some half hidden behind others. Some were unmounted snapshots.

  “Tell me about the family,” he said. “Which are the married daughters?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, pouting. “You’ll find out I’m a grandmother.”

  “You’re the youngest grandmother I ever saw.”

  That mollified her and she pointed out the members of the family one by one, with a few earthy side comments. When she turned from the shelf, she lost her balance and fell back against it. Some of her drink slopped out of the glass.

  “Whoo!” she said, fanning herself with her hand. “I’m a little tighty-tight, huh?”

  She brushed at her hair and hiked her dress up. He looked away from her, gazing idly at the pictures. There was a snapshot of a young man, stuck behind one of the easels. He could see only enough of it to see it was a man. He reached across the shelf and pulled it into view. His throat squeezed shut convulsively. He forced air through it, then took a quick sip of his drink and glanced at her. She didn’t seem to have noticed. He held the picture around where she could see it. It was a picture of Lou “The Barber” Roberts.

  “Who’s this?” he asked.

  She looked vaguely at the snapshot, then got it in focus and her face twisted savagely.

  “That,” she said between her teeth, “is a certain son of a bitch I once knew.”

  She glared at the picture, her big breasts lifting and falling spasmodically.

  “Take it away,” she growled. “I don’t want to look at it.”

  She turned away and Mickey slid the picture into his pocket.

  “He give you a bad time or something?” he asked.

  She looked at him with the fierce concentration of the foundering drunk.

  “What would you know about a bad time?”

  “Try me,” he said.

  “You are looking at the number one sucker of the neighborhood,” she said. “This guy—can you believe it—took money from me! Money I gave him.”

  She swayed, clutched at the sideboard for support.

  “You know what he did with it?” Her eyes groped and found him. “The son of a bitch took it upstairs and gave it to that little twist up there, that Irene. You must know Irene by now, don’t you? She must have been around to see you by this time.”

  Her glass slipped from her hand and fell to the floor. She kicked at it, sending a spray of watered whisky into the room. Then she turned to him, her hands out, reaching, and when she started to fall, he caught her. She swayed against him, clinging to his shoulders, crying in earnest now.

  “Oh, baby, honey!” she sobbed, “I wouldn’t have to give you money, would I?”

  He could feel her flesh damp under the tight dress. The tears had streaked her make-up.

  “Well,” he said, “what happened to him? He just walk out, or what?”

  “I don’t know what the hell happened to him,” she sobbed. “I know what I hope. The hell with him. Listen, honey, take me over there and set me down, will you? I got to sit down and I don’t think I can make it by myself.”

  He slipped his arm inside hers and started across to the sofa. She made it for three or four steps, then collapsed and fell heavily to the floor. He knelt, got one of her arms around his neck and lifted her. She wasn’t as heavy as he had expected. He put her down on the sofa and smoothed her dress over her knees. He looked at her for a moment, then pulled off her shoes and set them on the floor. There was a folded patchwork quilt at the end of the sofa and he covered her with it and went out to the kitchen. He turned off the oven and the top burners on the stove, then tiptoed out of the apartment, making sure the door was locked from the inside. He turned up his collar, went outside and walked till he found a small restaurant, a bar and grill. He had dinner and a couple of bottles of beer. When he got back to his room, it was dark.

  He put the snapshot of Lou Roberts in his money belt. He didn’t spend much time looking at it. He didn’t like to look at it. The room was stuffy and he opened the door and sat on his bed in the dark. He was sitting there when the light went up in Irene’s room across the air shaft. After a minute he heard her door open and the faint slap of her slippers in the hall. There was a pause and he heard the slippers again, padding closer. She came to his door, peered inside, took a step into the doorway, then saw him and jumped, startled.

  “Hello, Irene,” he said.

  “Hi.”

  She settled back against the doorjamb, looking toward him. She was wearing a sheer negligee and the light from the hall filtered through it, outlining the casual contour of her still-young, still-marketable body
. She yawned widely, covered her mouth with the back of her hand as an afterthought. The gesture had a pathetic elegance.

  “No place to go?” she said. “I just got up.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said.

  “Me neither,” she said. She shifted to the opposite side of the door, exchanging one jutting hip for the other. “You had dinner or anything yet, honey?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I just got back.”

  “Oh. I was just going out. I’m starved.”

  “There’s not much open tonight.”

  “It’s always like that, Thanksgiving and Christmas.”

  “Everywhere the same,” he said.

  She yawned again. She shifted her position three or four times in the lighted doorway.

  “I hate to eat alone,” she said finally.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  She lingered another half minute, then sighed, ran her hands upward through her hair, lifting her breasts in profile against the light.

  “Well, if I’m going, I’d better get started,” she said.

  “I guess so.”

  “So long, honey.”

  She started away, then turned back in a burst of quick irritation.

  “You bug me!” she said petulantly. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you ever get lonely?”

  “Sometimes,” he said.

  She glared at him, then turned, swishing the robe about her ankles, and stalked away to the bathroom. After a while he got up and closed the door. He stretched out on the bed, locked his hands under his head and looked at the ceiling. He didn’t feel lonely. He felt tentative. He felt like a man waiting.

  CHAPTER 6

  He did some waiting for a job to turn up, dividing his time between the union hall and a couple of downtown employment agencies. The union sent him out on two temporary jobs, one an afternoon shift in a large commercial hotel, where he spent most of the time washing glasses and preparing setups. The other was a private party at a country club. He worked from five in the afternoon till around three in the morning, but it wasn’t too bad because all he had to do was to serve drinks and not bother with tabs or handling cash and making change.