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

by David Goodis

  “It isn’t that. She depends on me. I’ve been her father. I’ve been her older brother. There were times I went away but she knew I’d come back. Now she’s in Atlantic City, and tonight at seven she’ll call a phone number and there won’t be any answer. That eats away at me. I don’t think she’ll be able to take it. I think she’ll go to pieces. It’s getting worse inside me and I feel real bad about it, I wish I knew what to do.”

  She put the palms of her hands together, took them away, put them together again. “We’ll have something to eat and then we’ll start driving back to Philadelphia. You’ll take that call at seven. Then I’ll come back here. And I’ll come alone.”

  “No.”

  “Mean it when you say it. Say it again.”

  “No.” He made the decision out loud. “The hell with her, let her call, let the phone ring a thousand times. I’m clear of all that, I’m away from it. I’m here with you, and that’s all.”

  Yet deep in the night he came halfway out of sleep and on the black of the ceiling he saw Gladden. He saw her walking alone on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, the black of the beach and ocean and sky all a black curtain, her yellow hair a vague yellow, her skinny body vague and seeming to float.

  Blindly, to get away from Gladden, he reached for Della. His body twisted, almost lunging as his arms swept across the wide bed. But there was nothing under the blanket. Della wasn’t there.

  He sat up in the bed. She wasn’t there. He was coming awake very quickly now, and his brain went into gear and told him to be quiet and accurate.

  Enough moonlight came into the room to let him know where he was going. Invisible ropes pulled him across the room to the door. A new and unreasonable feeling came into his spine and his stomach and his brain. He had no idea what it was, only that it pumped away at him and caused him to stand motionless for a moment, facing the dark door, visualizing the hall beyond in terms of something bleak and grim.

  He decided to use a method he had used many times in the past when there was an abundance of jeopardy. The method was simple. It was a matter of swerving his mind from night to day, forcing himself to see sunlight rather than darkness. He imagined it was broad daylight, and he was going out in the hall to call Della.

  Opening the door, he stepped out in the hall. The bathroom door was wide open and the bathroom was dark. She wasn’t upstairs. He wondered what she was doing downstairs. He knew now what the pumping was, this thing he was feeling for the first time in his life. It was the beginning of regret.

  He returned to the bedroom, and groped for his clothes. He didn’t realize the pumping was beginning to fade. It didn’t occur to him he was riding away from himself, that the thing was becoming a project and now his moves were all arithmetic as they were when he was on a job. The moves were slow, precise, each move, even the tying of his shoelaces, a separate step in a series of steps carefully arranged.

  He was in the hall again, moving down the hall toward the stairway. Downstairs it was dark. Midway down the stairs he waited, listened for a sound, any sound at all. There was no sound. There was no light down there. Instead of thinking now, he was calculating. The sum of it came easily. She was not in the house. He headed for the kitchen.

  In the kitchen, his hand worked the doorknob as though it were an instrument that had to be worked with pure silence or not at all. There was no sound as he opened the door, and no sound as he stepped outside. The smell of the night was a smell of field and hill and tree, thick with springtime and flowers in the night. He moved across grass, toward the white shape of the barn, then out away from the barn, coming back toward the house but staying wide of it to see what else there was to see. He saw the Pontiac parked beside the house. Then he saw something else, two things that moved. They moved just a little, near the trees that bordered the far side of the pond. He made them out as human figures, and one of them was feminine, and he knew it was Della.

  Instead of focusing on Della, he centered his attention on the other figure, the man. The man was in silhouette and stood close to Della and it grew evident that they were in deep and urgent discussion. Then, as Harbin watched, the man and Della became a single silhouette, and they were in each other’s arms.

  They retained the embrace for several moments. When they broke it, the conversation was resumed. Harbin decided on the trees. He saw that he could circle around behind the barn to bring himself in on the far side of the trees on that side of the pond. Once in among the trees, he could wriggle in toward them and get close enough to hear what they were saying.

  He did it that way, and began getting words, then phrases, then all of it.

  “—in a couple of days.”

  “It ought to be sooner than that,” the man said.

  “Let’s not be in too much of a hurry.”

  The man said, “Why don’t we do this my way?”

  “Because your way is wrong; now look, let’s cut it out.”

  “I don’t want to cut it out. I want to talk about it. God damn it, a thing like this we should talk about. It’s a big thing. You know what a big thing it is. I want to be sure it’s handled right.”

  Della said, “It will be.”

  “When should we make it?”

  “Saturday,” Della said. “At three in the afternoon.”

  The man’s voice became a bit louder. “By Saturday night we ought to have it all wrapped up. Even then maybe it’ll be too late. I still claim we’re doing it too slow. If we did it my way, we’d be done by now.”

  “You want to do it your way? You do it alone. I think that’s a good idea. You better do it alone.”

  “Did anyone ever tell you you’re a nasty proposition?”

  “I’m not at all nasty. I’m just certain. I’m certain of everything I do. If you haven’t learned that by now, you better hurry and get wise to it.”

  There was a long wait, and it ended with the man saying something so quietly that Harbin couldn’t hear. Della answered in the same low tone. Harbin edged his face out from behind the tree and saw them embracing again. There was only one thing on his mind, and it was estimating. He estimated that they would keep on embracing long enough to allow him to get back into the house and undress and climb into the bed.

  It took less than a minute. When he entered the bedroom he already had his coat and shirt off. He waited until he was in bed before sliding into his pajamas. He worked his head into the pillow and closed his eyes. He felt the full feeling of having been lured, completely deceived.

  It was like the in and out movement of a bellows that had been inserted in his flesh. He waited there in the bed with the pumping banging away at his insides, his brain trying to sit still but pulled around and around by the pumping. A few moments later the door opened and he heard her entering the room.

  He listened as she moved around the room, felt her weight coming into the wide bed. But the weight didn’t hit the bed fully. He sensed she was sitting there in the bed, looking at him. Then, at the very instant when he wished he had the impetus to reach up and put his hands around her throat and choke the life out of her body, he felt her lips on his forehead. Not wanting to open his eyes, he opened his eyes. He murmured sleepily, and saw the shine of her lips and her eyes. Then her lips crashed into his mouth, and something lifted him high and hurled him out into space, his body speeding toward an unreal world.

  Chapter VIII

  IN THE morning, while she prepared breakfast, Harbin came back to himself, and began to figure his moves. The big thing he had to do was find out who the man was. But that would have to wait until Saturday. On Saturday, at three, she would meet the man and it would be in the afternoon, he would see the man in daylight and know what the man looked like. That would gradually reduce the element of question and bring it toward an answer.

  Until Saturday, he realized, there was nothing for him to do but wait. In terms of clock time, it wasn’t very long, but he knew this waiting would be an extremely difficult thing for him. He could already feel it,
the impatience, the anxiety. Glancing at Della during breakfast, he saw her watching him. He told his face not to give him away. He knew it was these little things that could give him away. Like a sudden change of facial expression. Or a word in the wrong place.

  In the afternoon they decided to take a long walk. She said it would be marvelous, walking through the hills. Maybe, she said, they would see some flowers they could collect. She was crazy about flowers, she told him, especially wild flowers. She put on a sporty skirt and blouse and low-heeled shoes. They started on their walk. They moved past the barn, followed a path that took them toward the top of the hill.

  They went for a walk the next day, too, and Harbin kept on waiting for Saturday.

  Saturday morning they slept late, didn’t get to eat until around eleven. Della prepared a combination of breakfast and lunch. Afterwards, Harbin walked outside and strolled around, wondering what sort of pretext Della would use to get rid of him in the afternoon, and where and how she’d keep her appointment with the man.

  A half hour later he found out. “I have to run down to Lancaster,” she said. “I want to do some shopping.”

  Harbin knew that the next thing he said had to be said just right. “When will you be back?” he asked.

  “Past five, anyway. Tons of things I’ve got to buy.”

  He shook his head emphatically, showing a dim smile.

  “I can’t wait that long.”

  It did what he wanted it to do. There was no way for her to answer. All she could do was copy his smile.

  Then she said, “You want to go with me?”

  “Anywhere you go, I want to go with you.”

  “Then you’ll go with me. Except during the shopping. That’s something a woman’s got to do alone. I’ll put you in a barber shop. You can stand a haircut.”

  He said, “You put me in a barber shop, you’ll never get me out. Once I get in, I get the whole works. I stay there for hours.”

  “Good,” she said. “Because I’ve a lot of marketing to do.”

  “I’ll bet you do,” he said, without saying it aloud.

  Later they climbed into the Pontiac and started toward Lancaster. Approaching the town, he said he could use a little money and she gave him close to a hundred dollars. She gave it to him without comment. He took it without comment. For the first time since leaving the Spot, he remembered that he had seven thousand dollars in small bills stashed away at the Spot. It didn’t bother him. A few days ago, seven thousand dollars had been very important because it was all the money he had in actual cash. Now it was a minor detail.

  They arrived in Lancaster at twenty after two. He said he could stand a few sport shirts, and waited for her to suggest that he choose his own store and pick them out himself. He waited for a trace of uneasiness in her voice, because she had less than forty minutes until her appointment with the man. Yet when she said she’d go with him to get the shirts, he wasn’t at all surprised. It was already at the point where nothing she did surprised him.

  It took a good half hour to buy the shirts. She did the selecting and the buying. When the package was wrapped and they were headed toward the door, she had less than ten minutes before her appointment with the man. She behaved as though she had all day. They passed a counter of neckties and Della stopped and looked at the ties.

  She said, “Like regimental stripes?”

  “I go for polka dots.”

  The salesman closed in and began to discuss the new styles. Della looked at the salesman as though he was peddling shoelaces. She said, “I can’t pick out these ties while you’re talking.”

  “Beg your pardon, Madam.” The salesman acted as though he had been given a good clout on the side of the head.

  Harbin looked down at his wristwatch. Six minutes. He looked at Della. She was completely immersed in the subject of neckties.

  “I’m not enthused about any of these,” she said. “What else do you have?”

  The salesman excused himself and went into a side room.

  Della spent a good ten minutes selecting three neckties. Harbin could see the man at the meeting-place, maybe smoking one cigarette after another, or cracking the knuckles or biting the lips, waiting there for Della while Della was here, buying neckties.

  Harbin said, “I better get to the barber shop.”

  “What’s the hurry?”

  The calm, easy way she said it threw a flag of warning against his eyes. He had displayed a touch of impatience, and with this woman, with this manipulator, he couldn’t afford to display anything along that line.

  He said, “Saturday afternoon. They get busy around three. I hate to sit around waiting.”

  “Thank me for the neckties.”

  “Thank you for the neckties.”

  They were out of the store and she looked up and down the street, told him if they tried the next block they’d probably see a barber shop. They tried the next block and there was a barber shop near the far corner, but when they arrived there, Della said she didn’t like the looks of it. Harbin studied his wristwatch. It was now twenty-two minutes past three.

  “What’s wrong with this place?” he asked. “It looks clean.”

  “The barbers look stupid.”

  “Let’s spend the day hunting for intelligent-looking barbers.”

  It was another five minutes before they found the barber shop on Orange Street. Harbin smiled at Della and then he threw another look at his wristwatch. This time he let her know he was looking at it. He said, “Where do we want to meet? What time?”

  She peered through the big window of the barber shop, a big clean shop with many chairs. “There’s four ahead of you. You’re good for an hour and a half, at least. Wait here for me.”

  He entered the shop, turning in time to see her headed in the direction from which they had come. It would take her twenty seconds at the minimum to reach the corner at the end of the block. He had to get outside to see whether she would turn the corner. He counted up to eight and then moved out of the shop and saw her turning the corner, going right. He crossed the street, walked fast to the corner, arrived there in time to see her turning another corner.

  There was a crowd farther ahead, and still another coming out of a department store across the wide street that Della had just crossed. Della was entering the department store. Harbin bumped into a trio of old women and almost knocked them down. They wanted to discuss it with him but he was already in the middle of the street, traveling against the light, racing the people who were aiming at the revolving doors of the big store. He beat them to the door, but going through it he could see the maze of people in the store and he knew he had lost her. He started to chew on the cigarette. An aisle said lingerie and another aisle said luggage and a third said toiletries. He selected luggage and halfway down the aisle he saw her among a flock of women waiting at the elevators.

  Wondering how many floors this place had, telling himself he should have thought of that before, he stopped and turned his back on the elevators, and kept on chewing at the cigarette as he realized it was now necessary to gamble on what floor she would call.

  It was difficult to let the seconds go by. He let fifteen of them pass before turning to face the elevators. She had already gone up. He took his time walking to the elevators. One of them arrived and opened for him, and he went in with a crowd of women and children. The colored girl took the elevator to the second floor and called out furniture, rugs, radios, household essentials. At the third floor the colored girl called sporting goods and men’s wear, and Harbin got out. He told himself it was a fairly good bet, a basic thing. A reasonable place for the man to wait would be in the men’s wear department.

  It was rather crowded, and they were mostly boys and young men in this section that had the baseball bats and gloves, the tennis racquets and swimming trunks. He moved slowly, and a salesman walked toward him and he smiled easily, shook his head, murmured something about just looking around. He was in there with the suits and slacks now, h
is head turning slowly this way, that way, and going toward windows as he maneuvered to always stay behind a row of hanging suits but sufficiently away from the suits so he could get a reasonable view of that part of the room near the windows.

  He went up and down past two long rows of suits. Then he saw Della. He saw the man. They stood a little away from one of the windows. The salesmen were leaving them alone. The man had his back to Harbin, but not all the way. The man was about five-ten and had a heavy build, and was young and had thick blond hair, blonder than Harbin’s, a wealth of blond hair combed straight but sort of loose.

  Harbin lifted a sport jacket from its hanger and held it up in front of his face, going through the motions of taking it toward a window where he could see it in the light. He maneuvered the jacket to keep it in front of his face as he went sliding in toward Della and the blond man. He was coming toward them from an angle.

  He pulled the jacket slowly away from his face, as though the jacket was a curtain. A fuzzy sleeve went past his eyes. A sizzling fuse began eating itself away as Harbin told himself he had seen the face before, had seen it very recently, had seen that nose and mouth. And the eyes. The eyes were an unusual color. Very pale blue with a bit of green. Aquamarine eyes. A couple of nights ago, two cops had questioned him about the car parked near the mansion. This was the young cop.

  Chapter IX

  AS HARBIN entered the barber shop, a man got up from one of the wire-backed chairs in response to the barber’s beckoning finger. Harbin lowered himself into the wire-backed chair. He leaned back, closed his eyes, saw the mansion in the night and the car parked on the wide clean street north of the mansion, the police car, the aquamarine eyes of the young cop.

  Now he had to take it from there. He began to take it, very slowly, considering each item before buying it. He had to check his own moves in ratio with the moves of the young cop, the things they were doing at the same time, the things in the mind behind the aquamarine eyes. That mind had decided to come back alone and have another look at the parked car. Maybe the aquamarine eyes had seen the flashlight signals going across the lawn minutes before Harbin had appeared. Maybe it was something else. Whatever it was, the young cop had decided the older cop was a hindrance, and it was best to come back alone.