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

by David Goodis

  It was an important consideration. Potential contact with John. It was important on the surface, much more important beneath the surface, but he didn’t feel like going into that now. There was something vital and glowing in the possibility that the address was on the level. It was an exceedingly vague possibility, but there it was, and Vanning told himself there would be a change of mood tonight. The hunted intended to do a little hunting.

  He wasn’t in too much of a hurry. He treated himself to a dessert of cherry cream pie. Then black coffee. Then a brandy and another brandy and a cigarette. Walking out of the restaurant, he felt well nourished and the taste in his mouth was a good taste, and even though it was starting out as another hot, sticky night, he felt cool inside. And calm. And strangely self-assured.

  The address was on Barrow Street. To get there he had to cross Christopher and Sheridan Square, and that took him past the bar where he had met her. As he passed the bar, a feeling of boldness came over him, there was the desire to gamble. He turned around. He smiled.

  He entered the bar, and almost instantly he recognized the fat beer drinker of the preceding night. The fat fellow was right there at the bar, and again he was drinking beer.

  Vanning walked up, gestured to the bartender. As the man in white apron approached to take the order, the fat fellow turned and looked at Vanning.

  “Well, now, what do you know?”

  “Hello,” Vanning said. He smiled at the bartender. “A brandy and water chaser for me. A beer for my friend.”

  The bartender nodded and went away.

  “Another hot night,” Vanning said.

  “What brings you in here?”

  “What brings anyone in here?”

  “We’re speaking about you. In particular.”

  “I’m looking for her,” Vanning said.

  “I knew it.” This was said with tight-lipped emphasis. “I was willing to bet on it. One of those things that have to happen.”

  “As sure as that?”

  “Like that,” the fat fellow said, and he snapped his fingers.

  “You make it seem like arithmetic.”

  “And that’s what it is. Two and two makes four and you can’t get away from it. Or maybe I should say one and one makes two. Now wait——” And the fat fellow frowned and ran a fat finger through a puddle of beer on the bar. “We have a problem here. Sometimes one and one doesn’t make two at all. One and one makes one. You see what I’m getting at?”

  “Nup.”

  “You’ll see. Just follow me. I promise you, I won’t go into a long production. I’ll make it simple. Like this. You and that girl, you’re a natural team.”

  “You do this often?”

  “Do what?”

  “Play Cupid.”

  “It’s the first time. I usually look out for myself. But that deal last night, it was different, it was one of those sensational things. A setup if I ever saw one. I said to myself when I walked out of here, I said, I’ll give ten to one he looks at her. Small odds, at that. And I said, I’ll give five to one he gets to talking with her. Then the odds went up again. Twenty to one he likes her. Fifty to one she likes him. A hundred to one they walk out of here together.”

  “Keep it up. You’re making money.”

  The fat fellow misinterpreted Vanning’s mild sarcasm. The fat fellow said, “All right, even if it didn’t happen last night, it’s bound to happen. You and that girl are a combination. In every way. Mark my word, it’s going to happen. Just as sure as I’m alive, I know it. And it makes me feel good. I don’t know if I’m getting this idea across, but I feel terrific, just thinking about you and that girl. You in a full-dress suit, and the girl in white satin. I get a picture of her in satin. Gorgeous, there’s no other word for it. And I go past that, I get a picture of the two of you, I see you on a train together, I see you on a boat, on the boardwalk in Atlantic City or someplace. I keep on going. I get such a kick out of it. I get a picture of what your kids will look like. Chubby kids, all of them blond, all of them healthy, rosy faces just like her face, and blue eyes, and——”

  “All right, that’s all.”

  “What’s wrong? What did I say?”

  “Nothing. That’s the point.” Vanning sighed and shook his head slowly. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not sore. You’re a nice guy. But I don’t want to listen to you any more. I don’t want to see you any more.”

  “Don’t leave. I hardly ever get to talk to anybody. Let me buy you a drink. I promise to keep my big mouth shut.”

  “Sorry,” Vanning said. “Thanks a lot, but you’re such a good pal that you give me the blues.”

  He walked out. And it was all gone, that good feeling from the lobster and the brandy and the technical line of thought. It was replaced by a certain amount of confusion and some despair mixed in, and some loneliness and some bitterness, and topped off with a dash of desperation.

  The house on Barrow Street was a four-story white brick affair, externally in good shape. On a panel at right angles to the front door there was a list of the tenants, with a button adjoining each name. Vanning struck a match and looked for a Martha. He went down past a Mr. and Mrs. Kostowski, a Mr. Olivet, a Mrs. Hammersmith, a Miss Silverman, and then there was only one more name and it wouldn’t be the name he wanted. It was absurd to think she had been fool enough to have given him a level address.

  He looked at the name. He brought the match closer to the panel. And there it was, Martha Gardner.

  A forefinger went thudding into the little black button. Then there was waiting. The finger hit the button again. More waiting. Then a buzzer, and Vanning opened the door and came into a small, neatly laid out foyer. Whoever took care of this place really believed in taking care of it. Vanning walked up a stairway carpeted in dark green broadloom. The walls were white, really white, blending with the quiet that flowed evenly through each straight and stolid hallway. There wasn’t much light, just enough of it. She lived in a place where people obviously lived quiet lives.

  As he came to the third floor, a door opened for him. Light from the hall hit the doorway, merged with bright light coming from the room, and flowed down and framed her face.

  She was wearing a bathrobe, quilted blue satin. He expected her to step back into the room and close the door. And if she didn’t do that, he expected her to stare, or gasp, or register some other form of surprise. She didn’t do any of that. She even disregarded his damaged face. There was no particular response other than the ordinary process of standing there and looking at him.

  “Remember?” he said. “You gave me your address.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I would like to straighten things out.”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “There’s an explanation forthcoming.”

  “Really, I’m not interested in hearing your explanation.”

  Vanning frowned, taking that in and tossing it around for a few hollow moments. Then he offered her a dim smile and said, “You’ve got it backwards. What I meant was, there’s an explanation due from you.”

  This time she did the frowning. She looked at him and yet she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at last night. He tried to gaze into her mind and gave it up after several crazy seconds.

  Then she was saying, “All right, come in.”

  It was a small apartment, but it was clean, it was attractive, it went right along with the rest of the house. A living room with a studio couch, a bathroom and kitchenette. Something about the colors and furnishings gave Vanning the idea that she had done her own decorating. The general scheme was blue and burnt orange, the blue demonstrating itself in various shades that climbed from the very pale to an almost black. A few passable water colors on the wall and one extremely interesting gouache.

  He was looking at the gouache. He could hear her closing the door behind him. He told himself it was idiotic to have come here. There was a closet door not very far away, and he wasn’t being at all absur
d in juggling the possibility that John might be hiding in the closet. And yet he wasn’t sorry he had come here. John or no John, he was here and he was satisfied to be here.

  The gouache was simple and quiet and relaxed, showing a fishing boat in a lagoon, with sunset throwing dead blue and live orange onto the deck of the boat, the orange rising from the deck and flowing across green-gray water.

  “Who did this painting?” Vanning asked.

  “Pull yourself together. The name is on the bottom.”

  “Let’s start over again. Where did you get the painting?”

  “A little art shop on Third Street.”

  “It’s an interesting job.”

  “I’m so glad you like it.”

  “Cut that out,” he said, still looking at the gouache. “It doesn’t go with the rest of you.”

  “Does that matter?”

  “Yes,” he said. He turned around and faced her. She had her arms folded, as if she were sitting in a jury box. “Yes, it matters more than you think. I want to know how you got tied up with those men. I want to know how a girl like you goes and lets herself wide open for a wrong play. You didn’t belong in that picture last night and you know it as well as I do.”

  “Are you telling me I didn’t belong?”

  “I’m telling you.”

  “That’s very funny,” she said. “All day I’ve been telling myself I didn’t belong in that picture.”

  “Why did you do it? Money? Sure. What else could it be? It had to be money.”

  “Do you always talk to yourself? Do you always answer your own questions?”

  He didn’t like what she was saying, and he didn’t at all care for the way this was going, but he had to admire the way she was handling herself, the way her voice remained calm and level, the way she stood there, very straight, balanced nicely on her two feet without making too much of an effort at it.

  “Why did you do it?” he said. “Why did you go to work for them?”

  “I wasn’t working for them. But suppose I was? Would it make any difference? You did something wrong and you were running away and you were bound to be caught. That’s all I know. I don’t feel like knowing any more.”

  “Say, what are you doing? Are you fencing with me?”

  “I wouldn’t attempt that. I’m not smart enough, Jim.”

  “What?”

  “Jim.”

  “Thanks. It was nice of you to remember.”

  “I couldn’t help remembering. Tell me, Jim. What did you do? How did you get yourself involved with the police?”

  He stared at her. He studied her eyes as though they were rough diamonds and he was about to operate. And then he said, “You thought those men last night were police?”

  “Weren’t they?”

  Vanning let out a laugh, drew it in a tight knot of sound that kept on tightening until it became a grinding gasp. “I think I get it now,” he said. “You really thought they were police. That’s why you took off so fast. And they knew you had them figured as police. They put you in the role of stool pigeon, and that made you go away faster. As long as you thought they were police, as long as you had me down as some criminal being taken in, your only move would be to clear out of it and stay out. It was clever on their part. It was stupid on my part not to see through the whole thing. And yet I’m glad it worked out like that.”

  “But all this doesn’t tell me anything. It goes around in a circle.”

  “Nobody knows that better than I.”

  “Jim.” She was coming toward him, came close enough to touch him and then stopped. “Who are they? What’s going on?”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “I can’t answer that. You’ll have to answer it for yourself.”

  He moved away from her, sat down on the studio couch. She came over and sat down beside him.

  She said, “Can I fix you a drink?”

  “No.”

  “Smoke?”

  “No.”

  “Can I do anything?”

  “You can sit there and listen.”

  She sat there and listened. He talked for almost a half-hour. When it was all over, when there was nothing more to say, they looked at each other, breathed in and out in unison. He started a smile, worked at it, got it going, and she helped him out with it. Then she stood up.

  “Sit there,” she said. “Let’s see if we can cool off with some lemonade.”

  He watched her as she walked away, moving toward the kitchenette, a little alcove all by itself. From where he was sitting, he couldn’t see her in the kitchenette. Now he began to get all sorts of thoughts, and the thoughts jabbed at one another, and he told himself it didn’t make any difference now. No matter what the thoughts were made of, no matter what their sum, he couldn’t do anything with it. That was all right. He was even a little glad. All he wanted to do was sit here and wait for Martha to come back.

  She came back with a tray. A pitcher of lemonade, a bowl of ice. And glasses. Lemonade filled a glass, and she offered it to him.

  “Drink this,” she said.

  “You make it sound as if I’m sick and you’re taking care of me.”

  “Drink it.”

  For a while all they did was sip lemonade. Then Vanning put down an empty glass and he looked at her and said, “Do you believe what I’ve told you?”

  “Yes, Jim. Do you believe me when I say yes?”

  He nodded.

  She put her hand against the back of his head, patted him as if he were her little son. “Go home now. Go to your drawing board and finish that work you were telling me about. Get it all finished. Then go to sleep. And please treat me to dinner tomorrow night?”

  “Seven.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll meet you here. Good night, Martha.”

  He walked out without looking back at her. Going back to his room, he walked rapidly. He was in a hurry to get at the drawing board.

  Chapter Ten

  FRASER TOLD himself it was a matter of selection. He stood outside the white dwelling and watched Vanning going away. He had placed a little more than twenty yards between himself and Vanning during the walk from the bar to here, and he had remained across the street as Vanning entered the place, and he’d been hoping a light would show in one of the front windows. When it failed to show, he wondered on the feasibility of going up and visiting the back rooms. Somehow it hadn’t seemed like a good idea. He’d had the feeling it wouldn’t give him anything solid.

  And now he stood here and watched Vanning going away. He had the choice of following Vanning now or going up and trying the back rooms. He had his own system of questioning people so that they gave answers they didn’t think were usable but which Fraser was able to use. He would probably get something from one of those back rooms and yet he still had the feeling it wouldn’t be enough.

  He decided to stay with Vanning. He lit a cigarette and followed his man to the place where his man lived. He saw his man entering the place, and then he crossed the street, went up to the room he had rented, seated himself behind the dark window, and waited.

  And he saw the light arriving in Vanning’s room. He saw Vanning moving around in a preparatory sort of way. The binoculars picked up the bright spots and the shadows, and Vanning’s eyes were distinct, they were the eyes of a man in confusion, a confusion that had some strange happiness mixed in. Tonight there was something different in Vanning. The binoculars took it all in and clarified it, but it was clear only on the visual side, and not in the analysis. For some reason Vanning was hopeful and perhaps just a bit cheery, and Fraser began to use his imagination and kept it up until he disciplined himself, told himself imagination was no part of science. It was all right in art, but this wasn’t an art. This was on the order of mathematics.

  The binoculars saw Vanning seating himself at the drawing board. There were manipulations with a soft pencil. Vanning would never be a Matisse. He was much too precise. He went at it more like an engineer. He used a T-
square and a slide rule. He leaned close to the work and studied it carefully after each small movement of the pencil.

  It was interesting to watch him at his work. He had a cigarette going and the smoke of it shot a straight, rigid column of blue past his head, the column quite permanent because once the cigarette was lit he left it in the ash tray and paid no attention to it. When it was burned out he lit another and treated it the same way.

  The pencil work completed, Vanning commenced mixing gouache pigments. This took a long time. Fraser sat there with eyes burning into the binoculars, telling himself three hundred thousand dollars was a fortune. A man with three hundred thousand dollars didn’t have to sit up all night with T-squares and gouache and shoulders bent over a board. It was something he had told himself many times, and this time it was in the nature of a conclusion.

  And yet there was another consideration, and it was evolved from the way Vanning addressed himself to his work. The thorough, accurate method, the painstaking manner in which he mixed the paint, the slow, careful application of paint to rough paper. Again Fraser said it to himself. An engineer, he said, a patient calculator. Perhaps a fanatic for doing things in a precise way. Doing this sort of thing, anyway. And the possibility of his doing other things in the same way could not be completely disregarded.

  Fraser sat there and watched. And the longer he sat there, the longer he watched, the more subjective he became. The more subjective he became, the more he began to doubt himself. There was so much he didn’t know. About zoology, even though he had read many books. About crystallography, even though at one time he had taken a course at the museum. About judo, despite having been taught by one of the true experts. About Vanning, even though he’d been telling himself he knew Vanning.

  And about psychology, and neurology, and man’s way of thinking, doing things, reacting. The books were all good books and represented a great deal of study and experimentation and summaries based on years of formularizing. But the field was still in its infancy. There was so much as yet unlearned, even by the top people. And the top people were Fraser’s tutors, and Fraser told himself he was a novice. If he’d been someone else examining Fraser, he would have called Fraser a naturally humble man. But he was Fraser. And he was calling Fraser a fool for having considered Fraser a walking textbook on Vanning.