The Moon in the Gutter

by David Goodis

  But taproom noises interfered. Two dimes clinked on the table as Dugan poured a drink for Frank. At the table Nick Andros poured gin for Dora. “Say when,” Nick said. But Dora said nothing, for gin had no connection with time. As the gin splashed over the edge of the glass, Kerrigan looked toward the table. He saw Frieda getting up from the floor. Mooney was doing the same, and they almost bumped heads as they came to their feet. Then Frieda staggered backward and bumped the humpbacked wino off his chair. Channing caught hold of Frieda and tried to steady her and she said, “Let go, goddamnit, I can stand on my own two legs.” There was a shout of approval from Dora. It inspired Frieda to a further statement of policy. She said to Channing, “Don’t put yer hands on me unless I tell you to.”

  Channing shrugged, preferring to let it go at that. But Nick Andros frowned and expressed the male point of view, saying, “You’re wearing his engagement ring, he’s your fiance.” Frieda blinked, looked down at the ring on her finger, and then with some energetic twisting she pulled it off. For some moments she seemed reluctant to part with the green stone. She held the ring tightly, frowning at it. Then suddenly she placed the ring on the table in front of Channing. Her voice was quiet as she said, “Take it back to where you got it. This pussycat’s a self-supporting individual.”

  For a moment Channing just sat there with nothing in his eyes as he thought it over. Then, with another shrug, he lowered the ring into his jacket pocket. So that took care of that, and then he was smiling at Frieda and saying, “Have a drink?”

  Frieda nodded emphatically. She sat down beside him and watched him pour the gin. She lifted the glass and said loudly, “This juice is all I need from any man. Even if he wears clean shirts.” But then, as though using her right hand to make up for a left-handed swipe, she patted the side of Channing’s head and spoke in a softer tone. “Don’t take it to heart, sweetie. You’re really cute. It’s nice to sit here and drink with you. But that’s as far as we can take it. After all, it’s every cat to his own alley.”

  So true, Kerrigan thought. He looked at Loretta, who stood there waiting for him to say something. His eyes aimed down to what she had on her finger, the hinged ring from the Greek’s loose-leaf notebook. His brain said, No dice. She’ll hafta take it off. And his heart ached as he gazed at her face. Her face told him that she knew what he was thinking and her own heart was aching.

  He said, “I’ll have a talk with the Greek. He’ll get rid of the license. All he has to do is light a match.”

  She didn’t say anything. She looked at the ring on her finger. She started to take it off and it wanted to stay there, as though it were a part of her that pleaded not to be torn away.

  He said, “It’ll come off. Just loosen the hinge.”

  Her eyes were wet. “If we could only—”

  “But we can’t,” he said. “Don’t you see the way it is? We don’t ride the same track. I can’t live your kind of life and you can’t live mine. It ain’t anyone’s fault. It’s just the way the cards are stacked.”

  She nodded slowly. And just then the ring came off. It dropped from her limp hand and rolled across the floor and went under the bar to vanish in the darkness of all lost dreams. He heard the final tinkling sound it made, a plaintive little sound that accompanied her voice saying good-by. Then there was the sound of his own footsteps walking out of Dugan’s Den.

  As he came off the pavement to cross the Vernon cobblestones, his tread was heavy, coming down solidly on solid ground. He moved along with a deliberate stride that told each stone it was there to be stepped on, and he damn well knew how to walk this street, how to handle every bump and rut and hole in the gutter. He went past them all, and went up on the doorstep of the house where he lived. As he pushed open the door, it suddenly occurred to him that he was damned hungry.

  In the parlor, Bella was lying face down on the sofa. He gave her a slap on her rump. “Get up,” he said. “Make me some supper.”

  Chronology

  1917

  Born David Loeb Goodis in Philadelphia on March 2, the oldest child of William Goodis, co-owner of a news dealership on the southeast corner of 2nd and Chestnut Streets, and Mollie (Halpern) Goodis. (William Goodis was born in Russia in 1882, emigrating with his mother, Rebecca, around 1890. He will later become a cotton yarn salesman, working for Globe Dye Works and the William Goodis Co. Mollie was born in Pennsylvania in 1895 of Russian émigré parents.) At time of Goodis’s birth, family resides with William’s mother at 870 North 6th Street, but will live for most of his childhood and adolescence at 4758 North 10th Street, in the middle-class Logan neighborhood.

  1920

  Brother Jerome Goodis born (exact date of birth unknown). He will die from meningitis around age three.

  1923

  Brother Herbert Goodis born.

  1923–29

  Attends General David Bell Birney Elementary School.

  1929–31

  Attends Jay Cooke Jr. Middle School, where he meets Paul Garabedian, who will remain a lifelong friend.

  1935

  Graduates from Simon Gratz High School in Philadelphia, where he edits the student newspaper, Spotlight, joins the track and swimming teams, and serves as President of Gratz Student Association. Gives valedictorian speech, “Youth Looks at Peace.”

  1938

  Graduates from Temple University with degree in Journalism, and works briefly for a Philadelphia advertising agency. At Temple, Goodis writes for student paper, News, and contributes cartoons to student magazine, The Owl. (Will later claim he worked during this period on an unpublished, lost novel, The Ignited, though existence of this book may be one of the deadpan fabrications in which Goodis occasionally indulged in interviews or author notes: “The title was prophetic. Eventually I threw it in the furnace.”)

  1939

  First novel Retreat from Oblivion is published by Dutton. Goodis moves to New York City, where he lives in Greenwich Village and the Upper West Side. Starts to write for pulp magazines, including Wings, Battle Birds, Fighting Aces, The Lone Eagle, Gangland Detective Stories, True Gangster Stories, Detective Fiction Weekly, 10 Story Western, Air War, New Detective Magazine, Double-Action Detective, Popular Sports Magazine, Sinister Stories, Thrilling Western, Dime Western, Captain Combat, G-Men Detective, and Dime Detective, among others. His stories appear under his own name (or rarely as Dave Goodis) and probably also under various pseudonyms, including Lance Kermit, Logan C. Claybourne, Ray. P. Shotwell, and David Crewe. (In keeping with standard pulp publishing practices, these pseudonyms likely served additionally as recurrent “house pseudonyms” for other writers in the magazines where Goodis’s stories frequently appeared, the pseudonyms in some cases pre-dating his own initial appearances, making a thorough accounting of his magazine writing impossible. Goodis will continue to publish in pulp magazines at least into 1947, and perhaps through the early-to-mid-1950s. Goodis maintained that he published writing under seven names, and estimated that in the early 1940s he wrote over five million words in five years.)

  1940–45

  In New York Goodis also writes for radio programs including “House of Mystery,” “Superman,” and “Hop Harrigan,” for the latter of which he is ultimately Script Editor and an associate producer. When in Philadelphia, Goodis maintains an association with the Neighborhood Players, where he works alongside actress Grayson Hall (Shirley Grossman), who will remain his close friend for many years. Philadelphia and New Jersey friends include Paul Garabedian, Frank Ford (also known as Ed Felbin), Jane Melgin (later Jane Fried), Irving “Bud” Fried, Joe Schor, Monroe Schwartz, Leonard Cobrin, Dick Levy, Stanton Cooper, Ruth Burnat (later Ruth Norkin and Ruth Wendkos), Dick Levy, Phyllis Schulman, Marvin and Omi Yollin, and Herb Gross.

  1942

  During a short stay in Los Angeles, Goodis works on treatment, “Destination Unknown,” for Universal. Visits Mexico, and is particularly enamored by the bullfights in Tijuana.

  1943

  On October 17, Goodis
marries Elaine Astor (1917–1986), formerly of Philadelphia, at the Ohev Shalom Congregation, in Los Angeles.

  1945

  In December Warner Brothers acquires film rights to his novel Dark Passage for $25,000. Elaine Astor Goodis files for divorce in Philadelphia.

  1946

  Following serialization in The Saturday Evening Post, Dark Passage is published by Julian Messner. Warner Brothers signs Goodis to a term contract for an initial year plus five options for renewal. His starting salary is $750.00 a week, with 5 step-increases that ultimately would raise his salary to $2,000 a week. Contract specifies a six-month annual working period at Warner Brothers, with six months off to write fiction, and Goodis will spend part of each year in Los Angeles and Philadelphia. Publishes story, “Caravan to Tarim,” in Colliers (October 26). Goodis and wife divorce.

  1947

  Release of Warner Brothers film of Dark Passage, directed and written by Delmer Daves, and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Publication of novels Nightfall (Julian Messner) and Behold This Woman (Appleton). With James Gunn, writes screenplay for Warner Brothers film The Unfaithful, based on W. Somerset Maugham story “The Letter,” directed by Vincent Sherman. At Warner Brothers Goodis also works on story treatments and scripts, “Within These Gates,” “Somewhere in the City,” “The Fall of Valor,” “The Persian Cat,” and “Up Till Now.” Comments on “Black Dahlia” murder case for Los Angeles Evening Herald Express (February 6). In early April, visits Boston with Delmer Daves, producer Jerry Wald, and art director Leo Kuter, scouting locations at historic sites for “Up Till Now,” supposedly completing the film treatment on the train from Hollywood to Boston. (“Up Till Now,” Daves remarks, “is aimed at giving people a look at themselves and their heritage. We want to show people what the Founding Fathers gave us to live up to and we want to analyze the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in terms of personal problems today.” The film will not be made, but Goodis will recast elements of the work for his 1954 novel, The Blonde on the Street Corner.) Goodis directs “amateur theatricals” in Los Angeles for the Vermont Players of the Sinai Young Peoples’ League, including productions of Noel Coward’s Fumed Oak and Walter MacQuade’s Exclusive Model at the Sinai Temple at West 4th Street and New Hampshire. During his periods in Hollywood, Goodis variously sleeps on the sofas of friends (including lawyer Allan Norkin, to whom he pays $4.00 a week), resides at the rundown Oban Hotel, or rents an apartment at the elegant Hollywood Tower Apartments. Norkin recalled Goodis receiving phone calls from Ann Sheridan, Lizabeth Scott, and Lauren Bacall. Goodis becomes friendly with screenwriter Samuel Fuller, who many years later will adapt and direct a film based on his 1954 novel Street of No Return. When in Philadelphia, Goodis lives with his parents and brother. In Hollywood, Goodis develops a reputation for personal eccentricity and practical jokes.

  1948

  Works on story treatment “Of Missing Persons” for Warner Brothers, which grants him rights to publish the work as a novel. His Warner Brothers activities conclude in June.

  1949–50

  Goodis is hired by producer Monte Proser to adapt Jon Edgar Webb’s prison novel, Four Steps to the Wall, for a film, and in writing the screenplay he apparently retains only the original names of characters, creating his own story. While working on the script, Goodis lives at the Crown Hill Hotel, a Los Angeles flophouse, although he apparently is earning $1,000 a week from Proser. Disappointed by Goodis’s reshaping of his novel, Webb takes over adaptation of Four Steps to the Wall. Goodis stops dividing his year between Los Angeles and Philadelphia, and returns to Philadelphia to reside with his parents and brother, now living (since the early 1940s) at 6305 North 11th Street in the East Oak Lane neighborhood. Gallimard publishes first French translation of Goodis, Cauchemar (Dark Passage), in the Série Blême. (His writing will attract growing interest among European aficionados of crime fiction.) Philadelphia haunts over the coming years will include Club Harlem, the Blue Note, the Blue Horizon (for boxing matches), and Superior Billiards. Because of Dark Passage and his stint in Hollywood, Goodis would remain something of a Philadelphia semi-celebrity, and the occasional subject of newspaper gossip columns (“David Goodis, author of “Dark Passage,” out funning Club Harlem-way, squiring fine-framed and ‘tractive sepia misses.”)

  1950

  Publishes novel Of Missing Persons. Broadcast of Sure As Fate (CBS), television production of Nightfall, directed by Yul Brynner.

  1951

  Gold Medal publishes novel Cassidy’s Girl; it is a paperback original, like all of his subsequent novels. Broadcast of Studio One (CBS) television production of Nightfall, directed by John Peyser. Around this time Goodis starts relationship with artist Selma Hortense Burke, which will last until 1956.

  1952

  Publishes novels Street of the Lost (Gold Medal) and Of Tender Sin (Gold Medal). Broadcast of Lux Video Theater (CBS) episode, “Ceylon Treasure,” based on forthcoming Goodis story “The Blue Sweetheart,” directed by Buzz Kulik, with Ronald Long, Audrey Meadows, and Edmond O’Brien.

  1953

  Publishes novels The Moon in the Gutter (Gold Medal) and The Burglar (Lion). Publishes stories in Manhunt, “The Blue Sweetheart” (April), “Professional Man” (October), and “Black Pudding” (December).

  1954

  Publishes novels The Blonde on the Street Corner (Lion), Black Friday (Lion), and Street of No Return (Gold Medal).

  1955

  Publishes novel The Wounded and the Slain (Gold Medal), the Jamaican setting reflecting Goodis’s trip there. Writes screenplay for film version of The Burglar, directed by Paul Wendkos and featuring Dan Duryea, Jayne Mansfield, Martha Vickers, Stewart Bradley, Peter Capell, and Mickey Shaughnessy; the film is shot on location in Philadelphia during the summer, but release is delayed. Release of Seccion Desparecidos or Section des disparus, Argentinian/French film based on Of Missing Persons, directed by Pierre Chenal.

  1956

  Publishes novel Down There (Gold Medal). Broadcast of Lux Video Theater episode, “The Unfaithful,” based on 1947 Warner Brothers film written by Goodis and James Gunn, directed by Earl Eby, with Jan Sterling.

  1957

  Publishes novel Fire in the Flesh (Gold Medal). Release of Nightfall, film directed by Jacques Tourneur, with Aldo Ray, Brian Keith, Anne Bancroft, Jocelyn Brando, Frank Albertson, and Rudy Bond; and of The Burglar, following Jayne Mansfield’s success in The Girl Can’t Help It and The Wayward Bus.

  1958

  Publishes story “The Plunge” in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine (October).

  1960

  Release of Tirez sur le pianist (Shoot the Piano Player), film directed by François Truffaut based on Down There, with Charles Aznavour, Marie Dubois, and Nicole Berger. Goodis meets Truffaut in New York. Grove Press reissues the novel under the title Shoot the Piano Player, with an enthusiastic blurb by Henry Miller: “Truffaut’s film was so good I had doubts the book could equal it. I have just read the novel and I think it is even better than the film.” Broadcast of episode of Bourbon Street Beat (ABC), “False Identity,” based on Of Missing Persons, directed by William J. Hole, Jr. Dick Carroll, Goodis’s editor at Gold Medal, dies, and Carroll’s successor, Knox Burger, is less hospitable to his fiction.

  1961

  Publishes novel Night Squad (Gold Medal), the last book to be published during Goodis’s lifetime.

  1963

  Writes teleplay, “An Out for Oscar,” based on a novel by Henry Kane, for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Goodis’s father dies. Herbert Goodis is confined to Norristown State Hospital for severe psychiatric problems.

  1965

  Publishes story, “The Sweet Taste,” in Manhunt (January). Goodis initiates lawsuit against United Artists Television, Inc. and ABC claiming that the television show “The Fugitive” (1963–1967) infringed on copyright of his novel Dark Passage.

  1966

  Goodis’s mother dies, and he is briefly hospitalized at the Philadelphia Ps
ychiatric Center (later known as the Belmont Center for Comprehensive Treatment). According to his friend Monroe Schwartz, Goodis is mugged leaving Linton’s Restaurant on North Broad Street, and hit on the head when he refuses to surrender his wallet, the episode leaving him weak, frail, and with a chronically bloodshot right eye. Goodis also informs members of his family that he has a “coronary condition.” Between illnesses he gives two depositions in New York for lawsuit involving “The Fugitive” and Dark Passage. (In 1970 Federal District Court will dismiss complaint about “The Fugitive” against United Artists Television, Inc. on grounds that since Goodis had published installments of Dark Passage in The Saturday Evening Post without a copyright notice appearing in the magazine, the work was in the public domain. Goodis Estate appeals, and Court of Appeals reverses lower court decision, remanding case for trial. In 1972 Goodis Estate accepts $12,000 in full settlement of lawsuit against United Artists Television.) Jean-Luc Godard includes character named David Goodis (played by Yves Afonso) in Made in U.S.A.

  1967

  David Goodis dies at the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia on January 7. Death certificate lists “cerebral vascular accident” as cause of death. Funeral on January 10, at Rosenberg’s Raphael-Sacks Funeral Home, and burial in Roosevelt Memorial Park. Goodis wills his personal effects and the bulk of his $220,000 estate in trust for his brother Herbert, along with $30,000 to “our faithful family employee” Camelia Edmonds. Novel Somebody’s Done For published posthumously by Banner.

  Note on the Text

  Gold Medal, a paperback imprint of Fawcett, published The Moon in the Gutter in November 1953, the fourth Goodis novel to appear from the house under the editorship of Richard Carroll. The text published here is that of the 1953 Gold Medal edition.

  This volume presents the text of the original printing and typescript chosen for inclusion here, but it does not attempt to reproduce nontextual features of its typographic design. The text is presented without change, except for the correction of typographical errors. Spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are often expressive features and are not altered, even when inconsistent or irregular. The following is a list of typographical errors corrected, cited by page and line number: 485.4, solemly.; 489.27, tonight?”; 497.21, Ukranians; 499.11, safe,; 503.4, poor; 510.13, door step; 515.29, internationally minded; 516.1, asked; 516.10, this his; 540.11, said “I; 543.15, newpaper.; 543.29, same from; 550.8, was “Of; 560.20, “what; 569.10, said.; 570.37, told me; 571.25, tall bony; 574.20, Street the; 575.3, Channing the; 588.6, it.”; 590.2, matter of fact; 596.22, anwer; 608.19, he heard; 612.17, it.; 615.22, watcha.