Great Noir Fiction

by Ed Gorman (ed)

  I went into the bedroom and lay down. I finally dozed a little. Once I heard Bess come in, very softly, and stand there looking at me. I didn’t open my eyes. She went away.

  I woke up and it was dark. I could hear Bess breathing quietly. I rolled off the bed carefully, so as not to disturb her and stood there in the dark. It was after midnight by the clock ticking away on the dresser. I had conked off for sure. I hadn’t even eaten and Bess had let me sleep. The poor kid was plenty worried about everything.

  I started to undress, then looked at her again. She was really knocking it, breathing deep and heavy.

  I left the room. In the office, I looked out through the window. The sign was still lit up and I sat down at the desk for a while, trying to think of something. I got nowhere.

  It was real quiet, inside and outside. And it got real lonely.

  I finally got up and went and looked into the bedroom again. She was sleeping quietly. There was a dim shaft of light down across her face, from where one of the slats in the Venetian blinds was tilted open. She looked worried, even in sleep. I knew she was catching on to things, to something anyway, and it troubled her plenty, even if she didn’t know what it was. She knew me too well, and she trusted in me too much, and God, I loved her and I wanted her to be happy.

  I left the room and slipped out of the back door and around between the apartments. It was quiet over at number six, but there was a light inside. I went up onto the porch and kept checking out there on the lawn. I opened the door and stepped inside, and closed the door.

  ‘Yeah,’ Noel Teece said. ‘Yeah. Here he is now.’

  They were sitting there. She was on a chair, with her hands clenched in her lap, holding her thumbs, staring up at me, round-eyed and hopeless-looking.

  Teece was humped on the studio couch. He was all bandaged up, the way I’d seen him. His hat was on, jutting above the bandages on his face.

  Chapter 10

  Teece had an evil-looking eye.

  That eye watched me, blinking under the hat brim, and you kind of wished you could see the other eye, too. But the bandage covered that. The eye that watched me was bloodshot and tired, yet kind of frantic and steady, even behind the blinking. His cheek was mottled and his lips were pale and thin and he needed a shave. He just sat there, blinking that damned eye at me.

  ‘Noel just came in. He sneaked in the back way,’ Vivian said. ‘Noel, honey—we thought you were dead. You know we thought that.’

  He kind of laughed. It sounded a little like he was crying inside.

  ‘You two been happy?’

  Neither of us said anything. I didn’t like the looks of him at all. Like I say, there was something frantic about the way he looked. As if he was out of hand and knew it and didn’t care. He was breathing pretty fast.

  ‘All afternoon I’ve been trying to get in here, you two. Now, I’m here.’

  His eye was watering. Vivian just sat there, holding onto her thumbs.

  ‘Thought I was dead, did you? Well, I’m not dead.’

  Still we didn’t speak.

  ‘You know why I’m here?’

  Vivian began nodding slowly.

  Teece stood up. Now I could see what it was. The man was scared. He was so scared he didn’t know what to do next. It was knocking the hell out of him, the way he was.

  ‘I talked with them on the phone,’ he told us. ‘I can’t go see them. They’ll kill me. Oh, yes. But if I get that money back to them, maybe I can swing it. Maybe they’ll understand.’

  He said it like that, but you could tell he didn’t really believe himself. He knew they wouldn’t understand. That’s what you could read in the half of his face that showed, and in the way he began prowling up and down the room.

  ‘All right. Where’s the money, Viv?’

  She looked across at me.

  ‘We haven’t got it,’ I told him. I heard myself say it and went along with it. ‘They beat you here, Teece. You worked too slow.’ He was like an animal. His mouth came open and the way I’d said that had hurt him. He stood there, blinking, with the light gleaming in that bloodshot eye.

  ‘We gave the money to some guy called Radan.’

  ‘Wirt Radan?’ He turned on her and she bobbed her head fast. ‘That’s right, Noel. He came and we gave the money to him. We had to.’

  ‘But, he’s—’

  ‘Radan said they were going to get you, Teece.’

  ‘You lie! Both of you lie! You and Viv, you think I can’t see through this? You’re planning it together. But you’re not getting away with this. Now, where’s that money?’ He reached into his coat and came up with a gun. It wasn’t very large, but it wouldn’t have to be. Only he wasn’t sure of himself. He wasn’t certain that we were lying.

  ‘That’s not going to do a damned bit of good. I told you, this fellow Radan came here today. This afternoon. He drives a big black Caddy. He knew all about everything—you, the accident, the works. We gave him the money, and that’s it.’

  He moved his head slightly from side to side.

  ‘It’s the truth, Noel.’ She came up out of the chair, with an imploring look on her face. It was a real art, the way she did it. ‘It’s true, Noel.’ She stood there, looking straight into his eye. ‘He told us what they were going to do. There wasn’t any other way. You know Radan. Sure, I was going to try and get away with the money. Wouldn’t you have done the same thing? What else was there to do?’

  He kept on moving his head from side to side.

  ‘Noel, honey. We thought you were dead. I did the only thing I could do. I’ve been trying to get Nichols to help me, see? So I was going to pay him to help me get out of the country. He needs the money for his motel, here. Can’t you understand that?’

  The gun began to droop a little and the head-shaking slowed down almost to a stop.

  ‘So, then Radan came here this afternoon. He burst right in here, Noel. He saw the brief case we had the money in—remember? I gave it to him. There was nothing else to do.’

  A crafty look came into the eye. ‘Radan just took the money? Didn’t he do anything else?’

  I said, ‘He threatened a lot of things. Maybe it’s all still up in the air. He hasn’t been back. That’s why I came over here now, to ask her what we should do.’

  He wheeled on me with the gun, and it scared me. I made a pass at the gun with one hand. It connected. The gun clattered on the floor.

  ‘Don’t!’

  He came at me with that one arm, his head back, cursing. It was comical. Him with his arm in a sling and his head all bandaged up and that scared look in his one bloodshot eye. But he swung, just the same.

  I tried to hold him off. Then I took a poke at him, shying away from his face. I hit him in the chest. He staggered back toward the door and the door opened and Bess stood there, blinking sleepily and hitching at her housecoat over her pajamas.

  ‘I heard a noise,’ she said.

  He fell against her. She shoved him off and looked at us. He turned and saw her and his face reddened.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘It’s nothing, Bess. It’s all a mistake.’

  Teece eyed me and swallowed and looked at Bess.

  There was the gun on the floor, but Bess hadn’t seen it. Vivian saw the gun and she stepped over and stood just beyond it, so Bess wouldn’t be able to see it even if she looked down there.

  ‘But, Roy—’ Bess said.

  ‘Yes,’ Vivian said. ‘Sure. Look, this man—’ she motioned toward Teece—‘is a friend of mine. Mister Nichols must have heard something and made a mistake.’

  ‘That’s right, Bess. I couldn’t sleep after I woke up. I went out to get some air and I saw this guy snooping. I thought he was a prowler. Actually, I guess all he was doing was looking for Miss Latimer’s apartment. I’m sorry I was so bull-headed.’

  Teece’s eyebrow shot up.

  ‘He’d planned on coming down,’ Vivian said. ‘He was supposed to meet me here. He met with an accident
on the way. Maybe you’ve noticed how worried I’ve been? Well, this is why. Mister Nichols thought he was doing the right thing. He came to help me.’

  Bess stood there and took it all in. Then she turned and stepped out onto the porch. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said through the screen door. ‘You coming, Roy?’

  ‘Sure. Just a minute.’

  She went away and we looked at each other.

  ‘The money,’ Teece said.

  ‘We told you. Radan’s got it.’

  Teece went over and picked up the gun and looked at it. He put it away.

  ‘Radan, huh?’ he said, and there was this funny new look in that eye of his. He stared at Vivian for a second and she looked right back at him, nodding slightly. Then he turned away and went outside. He disappeared along the side of the apartment, back toward the garages. I started for the door.

  ‘Don’t leave me alone!’

  ‘I’ve got to get out of here.’

  I opened the door and stepped out on the porch. She came up to the door and stood there, scratching her fingernails on the screen.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ she said. ‘I can’t leave now. I can’t leave!’

  I went down off the porch and around toward the garage. I heard a car start up out in the alley. It drove away fast, showering gravel. I listened to it until I couldn’t hear it any more, then I went back to our place . . .

  ‘Roy, I’d like you to ask Miss Latimer to leave. I’d appreciate it if you’d go over there now and ask her to pack her things.’

  ‘Bess, don’t be silly. I know how it looked. It bothered me, too. But everything’s all right now.’

  ‘I’m sorry. But I’m asking you to do this for me. I don’t like it, the way things are over there. Are you going to do it for me?’

  ‘Look. Let her stay till morning.’ I reached out and drew her close, and kissed her, but she was kind of cold about it.

  ‘Morning?’

  ‘All right. In the morning, you go over there the first thing, Roy.’

  Chapter 11

  In the morning I figured she forgot about what she’d said. Either that, or maybe thought better of it. I didn’t get much sleep. I lay there thinking it through, but trying to stay away from the real part—how it was working out. I kept trying to figure how I could have got my hands on some of that money, or all of it, without this mess. There was no use telling myself I didn’t want that money. There were too many reasons why I needed it.

  The big thing I kept figuring was that it was crooked money to begin with. Somehow that made me feel better. I kept coming back to that, trying to figure some way. And then I remembered that was how Vivian had talked in the hotel room. It wasn’t money that really belonged to anybody, she’d said. Or to that effect. And she was right.

  But, there was no way. Not unless I went over there and took it and got out of here. I thought about that. How I could grab the money and run. Then I could mail Bess enough to pay off the motel, and . . . only it wasn’t any good. It didn’t have that part I wanted—the peace of mind part.

  Because without the peace, you had nothing. And you couldn’t buy that, either.

  Anyway, all I wanted out of this world was Bess and the motel. The motel. That was a laugh, and I lay there with Bess asleep beside me, thinking of her, and how I could make some decent kind of life for us together . . .

  I figured I’d done enough to belong to a part of that brief case, anyway. Not a big part. Just enough to take care of immediacies. Where did that come from?

  And then I saw that Radan’s face, like it was hanging up there on the ceiling of my mind. And I knew what kind of a guy he was. I didn’t want to mix with him.

  It was all real crazy. Albert, and the Lincoln and Vivian and Noel Teece, and now Radan, like a parade through the bloody twilight. And the brief case with that red scarf tied around it. Only she’d dropped the scarf. Talisman.

  ‘Go to sleep, Roy.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  What in hell was I going to do? The emptiness got filled with a kind of frantic rushing and my heart got to going it, lying there. I wanted to yell and crack my knuckles, or sock somebody.

  Because it was all closing in. I could tell.

  You recognize the landmarks, because you’ve seen them before, if you’ve been around enough. You go along trying to hold it all gutted up and hard and ignoring it all, then one fine day it busts wide open. And there you are. You got to do something, and there’s nothing to do. You can’t think even.

  Southern Comfort Motel—crawling with fright.

  That Vivian was a dilly, sure enough. Getting herself messed up like she had. Shooting the works to Teece, and so scared now with what she’d done, she could hardly stand up.

  It was like I didn’t quite know them and I didn’t want to. Just that brief case. A piece of that . . .

  So I finished breakfast and she didn’t say a word about anything. My second coffee, I said, ‘Maybe mow the lawn today.’

  She clinked the plates and coffee cups to the sink. She ran the water. She shut it off. She had on a kind of blue-flowered housecoat and she looked nice, only worried.

  ‘Roy?’

  ‘Yeah?’ Here it was.

  ‘Have you forgotten what I said last night?’

  I kind of ran my hand across my face, trying to remember what she meant, letting her think that was it.

  ‘You know what I mean. About Miss Latimer. I want you to go over there and ask her to leave.’

  ‘I figured that was just a pipe dream.’

  ‘It’s no dream. You want me to do it? If you won’t, I will.’ She sure had me there. Now what was I going to do? Tell Vivian that, and she’d freeze over there in number six, and you couldn’t get her out with a derrick.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘You’d have to give her back her rent money.’

  ‘A pleasure.’

  She left the kitchen. ‘We can’t have people like her running around, Roy. She’ll hurt the name of the place. Imagine, that wreck of a man coming in the middle of the night. Maybe she picked him up off the street, how do you know?’

  I tagged along and she went into the office, to the desk, and counted the money out of the cigar box and looked over at me. ‘I’d appreciate it if you’d do it, Roy.’

  I took the money. ‘Can’t we give her a little more time?’

  ‘You want her staying here? That it? With her nice tight shorts and everything?’

  I looked at her.

  ‘I’m sorry I said that, Roy. Honest. I didn’t mean it.’ She stared down at the desk, then up at me again. ‘It’s just she worries me, being here. She isn’t right, and you know it.’

  ‘Okay.’

  I left the office and let the screen door slam.

  I came along by number six and looked it over. It was quiet. What was I going to do? I had to tell her what Bess said, but there was no saying how she’d take it. I knew how she’d take it. It had to be Bess’s way.

  Well, she sure had that red scarf tied around her neck. Vivian was right there on the floor in the doorway between the living room and the bedroom hall. She was all crumpled up in a twisted knot, the blue skirt up to her belly, and her face was a hell of a color. Her eyes bugged and her mouth was open, her tongue all swelled up like a fat pork chop.

  I turned around, wanting to run, then stopped. The scarf was tied around her neck so tight the flesh bulged around it. I got over there, still holding her refund money in my hand, and I touched her.

  She was cold.

  Chapter 12

  Well, Vivian was gone, all right. Only it wasn’t exactly the way Bess had wanted her to go.

  I knelt there for a long time, dizzy and half sick. Her shirt was torn at one shoulder and there were bruises on her arms. She was crumpled on the floor like paper gets crumpled.

  That red scarf. Vivian’s good luck. Her talisman.

  Then I remembered the brief case. I got out of there, still carrying the rent refund wadded in my hand. I shoved it into
my pocket and cut over next door. I kept thinking. What now—What now—? I went next door, let myself in and headed for the bathroom.

  I got the lid off the tank and there was the brief case. All I could think was, maybe she told whoever did this where the money was. I got it out of there, and the money was inside. I put the lid back on the tank, turned the water on and headed for the rear of the apartment.

  I had to hide it again. But where?

  I got out in the garage and stood there, wondering what to do with the brief case. So finally I climbed up on the hood of the Chevy and grabbed a beam and snaked myself up there where I had some lumber piled. I crawled back into the corner under the eave and shoved the brief case under some of the boards. You wouldn’t find it unless you knew it was there. They’d tear the whole motel apart first.

  They? They—who? And it kept hitting me that the law would be in on this now. There wasn’t anything I could do about that. I climbed down onto the car again, and hit the dirt. There was no sign of anybody. I made a run for it, down between the garages and to the back door of number six. It was open. I walked through the kitchen, and she was still lying there on the floor.

  ‘Roy?’

  It was Bess. She called again from out front. I stepped past the body and walked through the living room fast, and out the door. I stood on the porch.

  Bess came across the lawn. She’d been talking with Mrs. Donne who was settled in her beach chair, a half-filled drink in her hand.

  ‘Well, did you tell her?’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘All right. I’ll tell her!’ She tried to push past me. I got hold of her and held her still. She had on a white dress and she looked fresh and lovely, but I couldn’t remember ever seeing her look so worried. Her eyes had that kind of not-quite-looking-at-you way they get.

  ‘Don’t go in there, Bess. Bess—’ I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

  ‘I certainly am going in there! I’m going to tell her. Didn’t you say anything to her at all? What’d you do, just stand there?’ She pulled away from me and started for the door of number six. I turned and went after her. ‘Is he still inside?’