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

by David Goodis

  He kept one eye past the limit of the window. He didn’t know whether or not she could see that half of his face. But even if she could see that one half of face she wouldn’t be able to recognize it. Now she came walking down the other side of the street and stopped when she was directly across from the apartment house. She stood there and looked at the window. Her head went low and that meant she was looking at the grey Pontiac. Then the window again. Then the Pontiac. Then the window. Then she started on down the street. Then she stopped and took another look at the window. She took a few steps in the direction of the apartment house. She hesitated, then came on.

  “For God’s sake—” Parry murmured.

  She stopped again. This time she made a definite about-face and walked on and kept on walking.

  Parry looked at the door and he was about to make a go for it when he remembered that his attire consisted of a yellow towel and nothing more. He sucked at the cigarette and walked without meaning in a small circle and then he went back to the window. No Madge Rapf. But something else. This time it was a policeman on the other side of the street. The policeman didn’t look at the apartment house. Parry crossed to the davenport and sat on the edge, the cigarette burning furiously as he gave it the works.

  Something pulled him up from the davenport and he went into the kitchen. It was small and white and spotless. He put his hand on a solid bar of glass, the handle of the refrigerator. He opened the door and looked at the food without knowing why he was looking at it. He looked at a neat row of oranges and then he closed the door. He looked at the kitchen cabinet, the sink, the floor—the incinerator. He opened the metal cap of the incinerator and gazed into the black hole. He closed the incinerator, went out of the kitchen and into the bathroom. When he came out of the bathroom he went into the one room that was left, the bedroom.

  The bedroom was all yellow. Pale yellow broadloom rug and furniture and dark yellow walls. Four water-color landscapes that weren’t bad. They were signed “Irene Janney.” He recognized the pale-green meadow and the hills. And again he saw the dark-green woods and the road. He wanted another cigarette and he went into the parlor.

  When he came back to the bedroom he stood in front of the bureau and ran his fingers across the shining yellow wood. He puffed hard at the cigarette and then he opened the top drawer. It was divided in two sections. There was a big bottle of violet cologne that would follow the half-filled bottle on top of the bureau. There was a carton of Luckies, two jars of skin cream, a pile of handkerchiefs wrapped in a sachet-scented fold of grey-violet satin. There was a box filled with various sorts of buttons. That was about all for the top drawer.

  The second drawer had underthings and more handkerchiefs and three handbags. They were expensive. Everything was expensive. Everything was neat and clean. The third drawer was about the same. The fourth drawer was heaped with papers and note-books and text-books. Parry examined the papers and books. He found out that Irene Janney had attended the University of Oregon, had majored in sociology, had graduated in 1939. There were considerable examination papers and theses and most of them were marked B. There was a record book from the Class of ’39 and he followed the alphabetical order until he came to her picture and write-up. Her picture was nothing special. She was even thinner then than now, and she was plenty thin now. She looked uncertain and worried, as if she was afraid of what would happen to her after graduation.

  There was something at the bottom of the drawer peeping out from the edge of a textbook. It was from a newspaper. It became a clipping as Parry took it out. He saw the picture of a man who looked something like Irene. The picture was captioned “Dies in Prison.” Underneath the picture was the name Calvin Janney. Alongside the picture was an article headed “Road Ends for Janney.”

  Calvin Janney, sentenced four years ago to life imprisonment for the murder of his wife, died last night in San Quentin prison. He had been ill for the past several months. Officials said Janney made a death-bed statement claiming his innocence, the same claim he made during the sensational trial in San Francisco.

  Janney, a wealthy real-estate broker, was accused of killing his bride of a second marriage, less than a week after they had celebrated their first wedding anniversary. Death was attributed to a skull fracture caused by a heavy blow with an ornamental brass jar. The body had been found at the foot of a staircase in the Janney home. Janney stated that his wife had fallen down the stairs, had knocked the brass jar from the base of the banister in her descent, then had struck her head on the jar. This statement was disproved by the prosecution. It was established that Janney had charged his wife with infidelity and had threatened on several occasions to kill her. Janney’s fingerprints on the brass jar was a primary factor in the guilty verdict.

  Efforts to obtain a new trial proved fruitless. In recent months Janney’s attorneys made another plea founded on new developments, the result of continued investigation during the past four years. The plea made no headway due to lack of witnesses.

  Janney was 54. He is survived by a son, Burton, a chemical engineer in Portland. Also a daughter, Irene, a grade-school student in the same city.

  There was a date at the top of the clipping. It said February 9, 1928. Parry kept looking at the date. On the basis of the date and the record-book date, she was nine when her father died and she was five when the trial took place. He read the clipping again. Then again. He decided she ought to be coming back soon and maybe he ought to get the clipping and the papers and books back in the drawer. He started to handle the clipping and he was getting it back in the textbook when he heard the door opening into the parlor and footsteps coming into the apartment, going through the parlor, coming into the bedroom.

  She looked at him. She looked at the clipping half in his hand and half in the textbook. Her arms were filled with paper boxes and she put these on the bed and kept on looking at Parry, looking at the clipping, then back to Parry.

  “Did you get rid of the clothes?” she said.

  “Yes. I made two bundles and threw them down the incinerator.”

  “How was the razor?”

  “Fine.”

  “That shower and shave did you a world of good. How do you feel?”

  “Fine,” Parry said.

  She pointed to the open drawer. “What’s the big idea?”

  “I didn’t have anything to do.”

  “All right, let’s close the drawer, shall we?”

  Parry got the clipping into the textbook, got the textbook back in the drawer along with the other books and papers. He closed the drawer.

  She pointed to the closed drawer. “Anything happen while I was away—outside of that?”

  “You had a caller.” He wondered why he was telling her.

  Irene frowned. “I hope you didn’t answer the buzzer.”

  “No, I didn’t answer the buzzer. But she came up and she knocked on the door.”

  “A she?”

  “Yes. She talked to you through the door. I stayed there and let her talk. It would have been all right except I had the phonograph going and she could hear it. She kept asking you to open the door. Finally I told her to go away.”

  The frown went deeper. “That wasn’t such a bright idea.”

  “I know. It got out before I could stop it.”

  “Did she argue with you?”

  “No. She went away. Does that close it?”

  “I hope so.”

  “What do you mean you hope so?” Parry asked.

  “Well, my friends know I don’t go in for that sort of thing. Now they’ll think——”

  “All right, let me get into those clothes and scram out of here.”

  “Wait,” Irene said. “I didn’t mean that. I don’t care what they think. I’m only trying to be technical. And very careful.”

  “Let’s see the clothes.”

  She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at him. Then she blinked a few times and lowered her head. She put a forefinger to the space between her
eyes and pressed there and took it around in little circles.

  Parry leaned back against the bureau. He said, “You’re tired, aren’t you?”

  “Headache.”

  “Got any aspirins?”

  “In the bathroom cabinet.”

  He went into the bathroom, came back with two aspirins and a glass half-filled with water. She smiled at him. She took the aspirins and drank all the water. He took the glass back to the bathroom. When he came back to the bedroom she was opening the paper boxes.

  It amounted to almost a wardrobe. Four shirts, three white and one grey. Five neckties, three grey and two on a grey-violet theme. Five sets of underwear and a stack of handkerchiefs. Six pairs of grey socks. A grey worsted suit with a vertical suggestion of violet. A pair of tan straight-tipped blucher shoes. And grey suspenders.

  There were other things. A military brush and a comb. A toothbrush and a jar of shaving cream and a safety razor.

  She arranged the things neatly on the bed and then she went out of the room. Parry got started with the clothes. Everything fitted perfectly. His hair was still damp from the shower and it moved nicely under the brush and comb. He had on one of the white shirts and a grey-violet tie and he put a white handkerchief in the breast pocket of the grey worsted suit. He felt very new and shining.

  He walked into the parlor.

  Irene was sitting on the davenport and when she saw him she smiled and said, “Well—hello.”

  “Okay?”

  “Very okay.”

  “I bet you paid plenty.”

  “I like to spend money for clothes.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I said I had a boy friend just discharged from the Army and I wanted to surprise him with a complete new outfit. They’re a small, exclusive store and they don’t like to be hurried. But it was a big order and they didn’t want to lose it, and anyway there wasn’t much work to be done on the suit.”

  “How’s the headache?”

  “Better.”

  “That’s good. Thanks for the clothes.”

  “You’re welcome, Vincent. You’re really very welcome. And I’ve got something else for you.” She opened a handbag, took the wrapping from a flat white case. She handed it to him.

  It contained a round waterproof-type wrist watch, chromium plated with a grey suede strap.

  Parry looked at the wrist watch. He said, “Why this?”

  “You’ll need a watch. That’s one of the things you’ll really need.”

  He put the watch on his wrist. He said, “You’re laying out a lot of money. Can you afford it?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’ve got an idea you can afford it.”

  “You’ve got the right idea,” she said. “Now tell me where you got it.”

  “From the clipping.”

  Her eyes were soft. Her lips weren’t curved but it was a smile anyway. She said, “Vincent, will you always be that way with me?”

  “What way?”

  “Honest.”

  “Yes. I’ll be that way with you until we say good-by. It’s getting dark now. It’s almost time to say good-by.”

  She stood up. She said, “Let’s have dinner. I’m not a bad cook. Do you like fried chicken?”

  “Better than anything.”

  “Same here,” she said, and then they were looking at each other. She started a smile, started to lose it, got it again when he smiled at her. They stood there smiling at each other. He reached toward the cigarette box and she said, “Light one for me,” and then she went into the kitchen.

  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?”
r />   “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.”

  6

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