The Noir Novel

by Thomas B. Dewey

  “You gonna make me?” she said belligerently.

  He took a step forward and she grabbed her purse from the bed, opened it, grumbling, and dug into it. She got out some bills and laid them on the table.

  He went over and counted them and said, “Another buck and a half.”

  “Oh Jesus!” she said. “How did I ever get mixed up with you?”

  She slapped down another dollar and a half and thumbed her nose at him. He held the fur coat for her while she got into it, which wasn’t easy, because the lining was ragged and got in the way.

  “Got everything?” he said.

  “Yeah, I got everything. Let’s blow this crummy mausoleum.”

  He didn’t care for her choice of words and said nothing as they went downstairs, Irene clinging tightly to the banister. They got past Mrs. Blake’s door without incident and out onto the windy street. Irene yanked her collar up around her face and swore softly.

  “Denver!” she growled in disgust.

  Mickey put the suitcase in the back seat of the little car and Irene stared at it, aghast.

  “In that?” she said. “All the way to Denver?”

  “It’s not far,” he said. “Get in.”

  She bumped her head getting in and swore some more. He got the door shut and went around to the other side. He started the car and pulled away.

  I hope he’s still there, he was thinking. Let him be there!

  CHAPTER 7

  They were approaching Denver late the next afternoon, when she tossed him the big question. It was cold, but the sun had been out all day and there was no wind. There was snow on the mountains to the west, but the fields and roads were clear and dry. They had eaten a hearty lunch and by four o’clock, Irene had fortified herself at the whisky bottle and was in a talkative mood.

  “What’ve you got with Lou Roberts?” she said.

  “I just want to find him. I’ve got a deal for him, a business deal.”

  She snorted.

  “With Lou? He only knows one kind of business—mine.”

  He didn’t say anything and she looked at him with moody suspicion.

  “I don’t know if I like this,” she said. “You going to operate something with Lou Roberts? Like call girls or something?”

  “Nothing like that.”

  “You better watch your step,” she said. “You already took me across two state lines. There’s a law against that.”

  “I know,” he said. “You going to turn me in?”

  “Well, you just watch it.”

  “Irene,” he said patiently, “I brought you with me because I thought you could help me find Roberts. You don’t have to stay. If you want, we’ll find the airport and I’ll buy you a ticket back to Kansas City.”

  “How can I go back there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How about a ticket to Las Vegas?”

  “All right.”

  On the southern fringe of the city, he stopped for gas and in her hearing, asked the attendant how to get to the airport. He wrote out the directions meticulously, and when he left the station he took the charted course. Irene said nothing until they had traveled several miles and were passing airport markers frequently. Then she shifted on the seat and moved close to him, slipping her hand under his arm.

  “Listen, Joe,” she said, “let’s not go to the airport right away, huh? It’s just—well, you’re so damn quiet-like, and I don’t know anything about you and, I mean—why wouldn’t I worry a little?”

  She laid her head against his shoulder and he could smell the whisky on her breath.

  “You be good to me, Joe,” she said, “and I’ll be good to you. Okay?”

  He turned then and began working his way downtown. By seven o’clock, he had checked them into a commercial hotel where the rooms were clean and the rate reasonable.

  When they were alone, Irene kicked off her shoes, stretched out on one of the twin beds and left it to Mickey to open the suitcase and put its contents away. He had planned to take her downstairs for dinner, but when he saw the condition of her wardrobe he decided to have it sent up. As a matter of practical necessity, she would have to have some new clothes. It appeared to be up to him to buy them.

  During the meal, largely silent because Irene had wanted to go out and was pouting, he cast up his resources mentally. On reserve in his money belt he had about fifteen hundred dollars. There was no need for Irene to know anything about that. He would start looking for work the next day, but he couldn’t count on anything immediately. He could invest in Irene to some extent and it was likely she would have to be strung along with a series of modest bribes. The hungrier he could keep her, within limits, the more likely she would be to hustle around on his behalf. He could dangle Las Vegas like a promised toy before a child.

  After dinner she decided to take a bath. When she had left the room, he took off the money belt, emptied it and put it on a shelf in the closet. He took a hundred out of his pool and added it to what was in his wallet. The remainder he put in one of the hotel envelopes, sealed it, wrote his name and room number on it and took it down to the desk for safekeeping. While he was down there, he bought a newspaper.

  When he got back to the room, she was still in the bath. He could hear her splashing and singing in her high, thin, off-key voice. He got on the bed with the newspaper and started through it item by item, line by line, as had become his custom. He had reached the want ads when Irene came in. She was, as usual, naked, and when he glanced at her over the paper, she was inspecting herself in the full-length mirror attached to the bathroom door, turning this way and that, pinching herself here and there, muttering.

  By the time he finished the paper, she was getting into her negligee. He looked at it with distaste. In the rooming house it had seemed to fit, but now it looked sleazy and cheap.

  “You need some new clothes,” he said. “We’ll get some tomorrow.”

  Her face brightened.

  “I sure do,” she said.

  She looked into the closet, then turned to him slyly. “Especially,” she said, “I need a new coat.”

  “I can’t buy you a coat,” he said. “Maybe a cloth coat if we can find a good buy.”

  “A cloth coat! Listen, if you expect me to make it with high-class guys, where the money is—”

  “A cloth coat,” he said firmly. “If you have to have a fur coat, too, we can get this one cleaned and repaired. It will have to do.”

  She flounced on the bed, pouting.

  “You’re cheap,” she said, “like the rest of them. Like Patsy. If a guy has ten dollars—take it.”

  “I’m not expecting you to make it,” he said, “with high-class guys or any other kind.”

  “What am I gonna do, sit around all day?”

  “What I want you to do,” he said, “is to get acquainted with some of the local girls and get a lead on Lou Roberts. That’s all you have to do.”

  “Man,” she said bitterly, “if I could get to Las Vegas—”

  “We’ll talk about Las Vegas later.”

  She sat up on the bed, reached for a bottle of nail polish and began giving herself a pedicure. There was a telephone directory on the stand between the beds and he went through it idly, for lack of anything else to do. There were a lot of people named Roberts, but no Lou Roberts.

  Irene moved over to his bed and sat on the edge of it. She put her hand on his knee lightly.

  “Honey,” she said, “I’m sorry I was bitchy. I didn’t mean it. I appreciate what you’re doing for me, I really do.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “You’ll be helping me, too.”

  “What kind of a deal do you want to make with Lou Roberts?”

  “I’ll tell you sometime. I don’t like to talk about it in advance. Bad luck.”

  She put her hand on her abdomen. There was a far-off look in her eyes.

  “He wasn’t such a bad guy,” she said, “in some ways.”

  Mickey put his hands
under his head and looked at the ceiling. Irene went back to her own bed. After a while, he got up and went to the bathroom to get ready for bed. When he came in, wearing pajama trousers but no top, she was lying on her bed, watching him. He sat down, facing her, and stretched, yawning.

  “Hey, you’re really built, Joe,” she said. “Some big physique.”

  He reached for the light switch.

  “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to his chest. “That little scar there.”

  “This? Nothing much. I fell on a stick.”

  “Fell on a stick?”

  “That’s right.”

  He turned off the light and got in bed.

  After a couple of minutes, Irene said, “Fell on a stick. What a way to get hurt!”

  He ran his hand over his chest, probed at the small, drawn scar under his ribs.

  Which one of them did that, I wonder? Roberts, or the other one—the one in the funny hat?

  I’ll know pretty soon now. Let it be soon!

  * * * *

  He woke early in the morning and dressed quietly so as not to wake Irene. He left a five-dollar bill and a note reading, “I’ll be back by noon. Here’s money for breakfast and lunch in case I’m late. We’ll go shopping this afternoon.”

  He reached the headquarters of the local union at nine o’clock. It took him about an hour to get lined up and eligible for local work. There were no jobs that the union knew of that morning.

  He stopped at a downtown employment agency. They were dubious because of his limited experience, but they let him file an application.

  Next he went to the local office of the barbers’ association and asked if they had an up-to-date list of employed barbers. A woman at an outer desk looked him over carefully.

  “Well—yes,” she said, “we have such a list.”

  “I’m trying to locate—a friend.”

  The word stuck in his throat, but he managed to get it out. The woman shook her head firmly.

  “We can’t release that information,” she said.

  He didn’t stay to argue. Time was a crawling thing on his back. It was like shooting at the moving targets in a gallery. You hit what you could and went on to the next.

  He did some preliminary window-shopping, trying to figure out what it ought to cost to outfit Irene adequately, without too many frills and within his budget. He arrived at a rough estimate for everything, including a cloth coat, of around three hundred dollars.

  * * * *

  The hotel room was cluttered and stuffy. He could hear Irene singing in the bathroom. He opened a window. On a service cart were the remains of a large, half-finished meal. There was an open quart bottle of whisky on the bedside stand. The level was down by perhaps two ounces.

  He recapped the bottle and pushed the service cart out into the hall. He was sitting on his bed, gazing moodily at the bottle, when Irene came from the bathroom, rosy-skinned and jiggling.

  “Hi, honey!” she said. “Did you find a job?”

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “Well, that’s all right. You will. You can always get a job around Christmas.”

  She moved around the room in casual nudity, chattering. He caught sight of the L-shaped scar on her belly and it gave him a bad feeling in his stomach.

  “Put some clothes on, huh?” he said.

  “In a minute.”

  She had got into a tight, somewhat padded brassiere and a garter belt and was drawing on her hose when she said with commercial coyness, “What’s the matter, honey? Does it bother you?”

  “Where did you get the bottle?” he asked.

  “I had it sent up,” she said defiantly.

  “Signed for it?”

  “Sure. They let you do that—”

  “Don’t do it anymore.”

  She snapped into her immediate pouting fury.

  “Now listen, you—”

  He raised his hand to stop her.

  “It’s not that I want to change your habits,” he said patiently, “but it costs too much that way. Buy it in a store and bring it up—all right. But go easy on the room service.”

  Grumbling, she pulled a dress over her head, let it ride her hips while she adjusted it above.

  “Some big shot,” she muttered.

  “I’m not a big shot,” Mickey said, “but I’m the big shot in your life at this time.”

  “I can do better!”

  “You just let me know when you’ve made the connection,” he said.

  She glared at him a moment, then turned her back and went to the dressing room to comb her hair.

  This shopping tour, he thought, is going to be rugged.

  He looked at the bottle for a minute, then reached for it and twisted the cap off. He lifted it and drank from it. It burned his throat and mouth, a good counterirritant in his mood, but it felt bad when it hit his stomach.

  * * * *

  The shopping was less rugged than he had anticipated. She was amenable to suggestion and accepted his approval or veto with fairly good grace. Only once did she turn on him, whispering desperately, “Do you have to look at the price tag on everything?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

  When they came to the coat that he had found and priced earlier, and Irene took off her sleazy, worn fur, the saleslady barely managed to refrain from wrinkling her nose. Irene noticed, and Mickey thought for a moment they were going to do battle.

  “Listen, honey,” Irene said, glaring at the woman, “if you got any smart cracks to make—”

  Then Mickey stepped in and smoothed it over, and Irene calmed down. While she tried on the new coat, Mickey asked the saleslady where they could find a good place to have the old fur reconditioned. She stroked it reluctantly and asked, “What fur is it?”

  Irene swung around.

  “It’s genuwine Missouri jack rabbit,” she snapped, “and it keeps me real warm, honey.”

  The saleslady gave them the name of a fur-cleaning establishment.

  “It’s a very nice coat,” she said, swallowing with difficulty.

  “You’re damn right,” Irene said.

  Mickey got her out of the store and they walked to the fur shop. He had ordered everything sent to the hotel and Irene was anxious to get back there. He was relieved that she didn’t want to spend the rest of the day in a booze joint.

  As they crossed the hotel lobby, a paunchy man in a wrinkled suit angled to intercept them at the elevator. He had a lady’s glove in his hand.

  “Mr. Marine?” he said pleasantly.

  “That’s right,” Mickey said.

  The man looked at Irene, smiling, and dangled the glove.

  “Found this on your floor,” he said. “I wondered if it might belong to you—uh—Mrs. Marine.”

  Irene stared at him a moment, took the glove and looked it over.

  “Just one you found?” she said.

  “Yes,” the guy said.

  She handed it back reluctantly.

  “No,” she said. “It’s not mine.”

  “Well, thought I’d ask. I’ll put it in the lost-and-found department.”

  Mickey pushed the elevator button.

  “Enjoying your stay with us, Mr. Marine?” the guy said.

  “Sure,” Mickey said. “It’s a nice hotel.”

  “Good. Well, I’ll see you around.”

  He wandered off into the lobby and they got into the elevator. Mickey pushed the button for their floor.

  “Hey, that was pretty nice of him, huh?” Irene said.

  “He’s the hotel detective,” Mickey said. “He was just sizing us up.”

  “Oh? How do you know?”

  “I’ve seen it before. It’s an old dodge.”

  “You mean, like he wonders if we’re really married?”

  “Not exactly,” he said.

  The room had been made up in their absence. The bedspreads were neat and smooth; the rug had been swept and the ashtrays, formerly filled with lipstick-stained butts, ha
d been emptied. Irene took off the new coat and tossed it on a chair and started at once to open a package of lingerie and hose. Mickey hung up the coat. When he returned, she was holding up a pair of black, bikini-type panties.

  “Pretty cute, huh?” she said. “Want me to model them for you?”

  When he said he had to go out again, she pouted and threw herself on the bed.

  “What shall I do,” she said, “just lay around the damn room all day, all night—?”

  “Just try to relax,” he said. “Try on your new clothes and I’ll take you some nice place for dinner.”

  “It’s about time,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “It is.”

  As he left the room, she was lighting a cigarette. He hoped she wouldn’t burn down the hotel.

  * * * *

  With the nearest corner to the hotel as a checkpoint, he started a tour of barber shops in the downtown area. In the first, he got a haircut. There were only four chairs and none was operated by Roberts. The next three he visited were busy, with customers waiting, and he sat down and waited long enough to make sure Roberts wasn’t there, then left, saying he couldn’t wait any longer. In the next shop, he went for a shave. Noting the fresh haircut, the barber looked at him oddly, but made no comment. A couple of places farther along he found a shoeshine stand and let the boy do a job on his shoes while he looked the place over. By closing time, after dark, he had hit fifteen shops with no result except that his tonsorial condition was good.

  After buying the clothes for Irene, he had only a few dollars left in his wallet and he stopped at the hotel desk for his envelope, took another hundred out of it and returned it to the clerk. His reserve was diminishing. He hoped a job would turn up soon.

  He had his key out and was about to open his door when someone called him softly. He looked down the hall and it was the house detective, beckoning from the back stairway. He went down there. The detective led him out to the landing and pushed the heavy door to. He had the bland, pleasant look on his face.

  “I hate to bring this up,” he said, “but I thought I better tell you first; you’ll know how to handle it.”

  “Handle what?” Mickey said.

  “Well, the fact is, we had a little problem with your—uh—wife this afternoon.”

  “What kind of a problem?”

  “Well, she evidently became somewhat—intoxicated. She was a little noisy.”