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

by David Goodis

  Then the picture got hazy. They stood there at the bar, and the glasses were filled and emptied and filled again. It went on and on like that, and then they were walking out of Dugan’s Den. Or rather, she was trying to keep him on his feet while he staggered toward the door. Then she helped him into the car and said, “Now you’re really drunk.” His head was down and he tried to lift it to look at her. But he couldn’t. And he couldn’t say anything.

  The pictures were fading away but he managed to get a vague impression of the car coming to a stop, the weaving and stumbling as she helped him up some steps and through a doorway. He didn’t know what house it was, he didn’t know what room he was in now. For just the fraction of an instant he caught a flash of Loretta sitting on a sofa and watching him as he staggered across a room. Then everything was black and it stayed black. He buried his head deeper in the pillow and thought, The hell with it, in the morning you’ll find out where you are. But just then he felt the hand on his thigh.

  My God, he thought, she’s in the bed with me.

  He tried to pull way from the hand. An arm circled his middle and drew him closer to the warm softness of a woman.

  “Come on,” the woman said. Her voice was languid. “Come on,” she said sleepily.

  Again he tried to pull away. But now her grip was tighter.

  “You hear me?” Her voice was louder. “I said come on.”

  “No,” he mumbled. “Let go of me.”

  “What? What’s that?”

  “You hear me. Just keep away. Go back to sleep.”

  “You kidding?”

  “I’m telling you to let go. Stay on your side of the bed.”

  “Are you talking to me?” Her tone was incredulous. “What’s wrong with you? Why do you have your clothes on?”

  He frowned. Either her voice had changed or his drunkenness caused him to think it was someone else’s voice.

  Or maybe it really was someone else’s voice.

  His head moved on the pillow, and very slowly he turned over so that he could look at her face. While he turned, his eyes were wide open, and he saw the dark wall, the moonlit ceiling, then the window that showed the moon far out there. The moon was like a big spotlight that seemed to be focused on himself and his companion.

  He was staring at her.

  It was his stepmother.

  Their eyes were only inches apart and they were gaping at each other as though they couldn’t believe what they saw. Lola had her mouth opened as wide as she could get it. Her lungs made a dragging sound as she gasped for air.

  Kerrigan groaned without sound. He seriously pondered the problem of how to become invisible.

  For a long moment neither of them could move. They just went on gaping at each other. Then all at once Lola gave him a violent push that hurled him off the edge of the bed. He landed on the floor with a heavy thud. For purely practical reasons he decided to stay there for the time being. He stayed there and listened to the sound of the bedsprings as Lola’s ponderous weight came off the mattress, then rapid and frantic sounds as she moved around and tried to find something to cover her.

  The sounds went on as he sat there on the floor and groaned and sighed and pressed his hands to his head. He heard the noise of the closet door, the rustling of fabrics as clothes were pulled from hangers. He was half sobered now, and he began to consider the feasibility of a fast exit from the room.

  But before he could arrive at a decision, there was the click of a wall switch and the room was brightly lit. He blinked several times and then he looked up and saw the big woman who stood there wearing a nightgown. She had her hands on her hips, her eyes a pair of seething caldrons.

  “What is this?” she demanded. “What the hell goes on here?”

  He choked, gulped hard, choked again, then blurted, “It’s nothing, I just made a mistake.”

  As he said it, he realized how stupid and crazy it sounded. He blinked again, gazing blankly at the face of his stepmother. But she was looking at the empty bed, focusing on the pillow that should have shown her husband’s face but showed only a question mark.

  “Where is he?” she asked loudly. “Where’s your father?”

  Kerrigan lifted himself from the floor. He sat down on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. He made a vague guess as to where his father was. Chances were that Tom was in the house of Rita Montanez.

  Lola said, “He claimed he hadda go to the bathroom.” Her eyes narrowed. “I’m gonna have a look,” she muttered grimly, “and he’d better be in there.”

  She went out of the room. Kerrigan groped through the haze of his drunkenness and told himself to make a rapid trip to Rita’s house and drag Tom out of there. But as he lifted himself from the bed, the floor seemed to slant and he had trouble staying on his feet.

  And as he moved toward the door, the whisky in his veins made it several doors instead of one. He was still trying to find the right door when Lola re-entered the room.

  “He ain’t in the bathroom,” she announced through tightened lips. She glared at Kerrigan. She said accusingly, “What are you and him up to?”

  He sat down very slowly and carefully on a chair that wasn’t there. Again he was on the floor, wondering what had happened to the chair.

  Lola studied him for a long moment. “How many quarts did you drink?”

  He shrugged kind of sadly. “I didn’t have much. Guess I can’t hold it.”

  “The hell you can’t. From the looks of you, you’re holding a gallon.”

  She took hold of his wrists, pulled him up from the floor, and put him in the chair that he hadn’t been able to find. “Now then,” she said, “I want some information. Where is he?”

  Kerrigan stared dumbly at Tom’s wife and said, “Maybe he went for a walk.”

  “At this time of night? Where would he walk?”

  The whisky fog came drifting in. Kerrigan blinked several times and said, “Maybe he got lost.” He gazed longingly at the bed and thought how pleasant it would be to go back to sleep.

  Lola studied him once more and saw he was in no condition to give sensible answers. She gestured disgustedly and turned her back to him.

  Suddenly she snapped her fingers. Then her head turned from side to side as she made a hasty examination of the room.

  “Sure enough,” she said. “His clothes ain’t here.”

  She started to take deep breaths. Lola was about to lose her temper on a grand scale.

  Despite his drunkenness, he managed to say, “No use getting sore about it. After all, it’s a helluva hot night. Maybe he went out for a bottle of beer. To cool himself off.”

  “I’ll cool him off,” Lola said. “I’ll break his goddamn neck, that’s what I’ll do.”

  She started to move around the room, searching for a suitable weapon. Kerrigan winced as he saw her lifting a thick glass ash tray, hefting it in her hand to test the weight of it. Apparently it wasn’t heavy enough. She slammed it to the floor, then darted to the open closet and reached in and pulled out a long-handled scrubbing brush. The business end of the brush was an inch of bristles and a two-inch thickness of wood.

  Lola had a firm grip on the handle of the brush. She held it with both hands, aiming it at empty air and taking a few practice swipes. Then, wanting a better target, she looked around for something solid. Kerrigan heard footsteps in the hall and he thought, It’s gonna be crowded in here.

  The door opened and Tom walked in. An instant later there was a loud whacking noise and Tom yelled, “Ouch!” Then there was more whacking, more yelling, and considerable activity. Tom was trying to run in several directions at once. He collided with Kerrigan, bounced away, staggered sideways, and received a wallop from Lola that spun him around like a punching bag. He tried to crawl under the bed, but there wasn’t enough space between the springs and the floor. He was much too bulky to squeeze through. The flat side of the brush landed on him and in a frenzied effort to get away from the blows he gave a mighty heave with his should
ers, so that the bed was raised on two legs. He heaved again and the bed fell over on its side. Lola kept swinging the brush and Tom was asking her to wait just a minute so they could talk it over. Lola’s reply was another whack. The sound resembled a pistol shot. Tom looked at Kerrigan and shouted, “For God’s sake, make her stop.”

  Kerrigan shrugged, as though to say there was no way to stop Lola once she got started. He grinned stupidly, drunkenly, and then he started toward the door. But again it was several doors, and it seemed as if the ceiling were coming down. He couldn’t stay on his legs. The floor came up and he was flat on his face. The dazed grin remained on his lips as he heard the continued uproar. Somehow the noise of the violence was softened in his whisky-drenched brain. It was strangely soothing, almost like a lullaby. For a hazy instant he tried to understand it. But the feeling was so pleasant, so comforting, it told him to fall asleep, just fall asleep. And as the blackness enveloped him, he sensed there was nothing strange about it, after all. It was merely the sound of the house where he lived. It was as though he’d been away and he’d come back, and it was nice to be home again.

  13

  IN THE darkness of the alcoholic sleep, he drifted through a glass-lined canal that had the labels of whisky bottles on its walls. The labels were varicolored and there were too many colors floating past his eyes. He told himself to stop looking at the labels, he’d soon be getting a headache. But then the glass became wood and there was no canal at all, just a dark alley and some moonlight showing the sides of the wooden shacks. He followed the path of the moonlight as it flowed onto the rutted paving and he saw the dried bloodstains.

  “Goddamn it,” he said, waking up.

  He could feel a pillow under his head, and he heard someone breathing beside him. Before he looked to see who it was, he sat up, groaning and holding his head and wishing he had an ice bag. He blinked hard several times, and suddenly his eyes were wide as he realized this was Bella’s room.

  His head turned slowly. He looked at Bella. She was sound asleep, resting on her side. It was very hot and sticky in the room and she wasn’t wearing anything.

  The window showed the dark gray-pink of early morning. On the dresser the hands of the alarm clock pointed to four-forty-five. He told himself to get out of bed and go into his own room. Looking down at himself, he saw that he was wearing only a pair of shorts. He glanced across the floor, searching for his clothes, and saw shirt and jacket and trousers draped carelessly over a chair, Bella’s dress on top of the heap.

  Moving carefully, trying not to make any noise, he climbed out of bed and headed toward the chair. It seemed as if a ton of rocks was pressing down on him and crushing his skull. As he reached for his clothes, he stumbled forward, hit the chair, knocked it over, and went down with it.

  He cursed without sound, getting up very slowly. Then he had his shoes in one hand, his shirt in the other, the jacket and trousers dangling from his arm as he walked unsteadily toward the door.

  He was only a step away from the door when he heard Bella’s voice. “Just where d’ya think you’re going?”

  “I got my own bed.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” he said. He groped for the door handle. His hand closed on it.

  “Listen, louse,” Bella said. She was off the bed and coming toward him. She gave him a shove that sent him away from the door. She pointed to the bed and said, “Get back in there.”

  “You talkin’ to me?”

  She put her weight on one leg and clapped a hand to her hip. Then, shifting slightly, so that she blocked his path to the door, she said, “You might as well make yourself comfortable. We’re gonna have a discussion.”

  “Not now,” he said.

  “Right now.” Her eyes dared him to make a move toward the door. “We’re gonna have it out here and now.”

  “For God’s sake.” He pointed to the alarm clock. “Look what time it is. I gotta get some sleep. Gotta get rid of this hangover.”

  “That’s what I want to talk about,” she said. “How come you got drunk last night?”

  He didn’t reply. He dropped the shoes to the floor, flipped the clothes aside, and walked slowly to the bed. As he sat down on the edge of the mattress, his hands were pressed tightly to his temples, as though trying to squeeze the whisky fog from his brain.

  Bella came around the side of the bed and stood facing him. “I know you’re not a drinker,” she said. “You musta had a reason for getting drunk. Come on, let’s have it. What happened last night?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’ll bet.” She snorted. And then, her eyes narrowed, “I found you stretched out in the hall outside Lola’s room. You were stiff as a board.”

  “So what?”

  “So it made me curious. You wouldn’t get loaded like that unless you had something on your mind. Something you couldn’t handle.”

  He looked at her. “What gives you that idea?”

  “I just know, that’s all. I know you.”

  His eyes were dull, gazing past her. “You think you know me.”

  She stood there studying his face. She said, “I took the trouble to drag you in here and take your clothes off and put you in bed.”

  “Thanks,” he said sourly. “Thanks a lot.”

  “I didn’t do it for thanks. I did it so I’d be around when you come out of it. We got some things to talk about. I wanna know the score on this. I got a right to know.”

  He frowned at her. “You got one hell of a crust, that’s what you got. I didn’t ask you to put me in this room.”

  “It ain’t the first time you been here. You been in this room a lotta times. More times than I can count. And I never dragged you in, either. You always come in on your own two feet.”

  He took a deep breath. He started to get up from the bed and she pushed him back. She did it roughly and he bounced on the mattress. He made another attempt to get up and she pushed him again, harder this time. His head went back against the pillow. It felt like iron banging his skull. He told himself to close his eyes and go to sleep. His benumbed brain said, Forget about her, forget about everything, just go to sleep.

  But then she was leaning over him, shaking him. She said, “Come on, come out of it.”

  “Goddamnit, leave me alone.”

  He shut his eyes tightly and tried to roll over on his side but she pulled at his shoulder and wouldn’t let him do it. He mumbled an oath and reached out blindly to shove her away, and as his hand made contact with Bella, a current passed through him from her to him, from him to her, and he was aching to hold on, hold her tighter, pull her to him and find her lips and taste her mouth. But just then he heard the soundless voice that said, No.

  It was a blast of icy realization that sliced through the heat of his senses and the thick mist of the hangover. He moved spasmodically to the other side of the bed, then sat up stiffly, staring at her. Ice was in his eyes as he said, “Keep away from me.”

  She sat there on the other side of the bed. She didn’t say anything. She just looked at him.

  He said, “And put something on.”

  She smiled thinly. “Does it bother you?”

  He clamped his lips tightly. He turned his head so he wouldn’t see her.

  Her voice was a light jab, flicking at him. “It excites you, don’t it? You don’t want it to excite you.”

  “Listen, Bella—”

  “Yes?”

  But he couldn’t take it from there. He swallowed hard.

  She said, “Well, go on. I’m listening.”

  He told himself he’d have to say it sooner or later. He might as well say it now and get it over with. For a moment his eyes were closed and he was trying to find the words. And then, gazing straight ahead and seeing the wall on the other side of the room, he said, “It’s all finished. We gotta call it quits.”

  He waited for her to say something.

  Long moments passed. There was no sound in the room.

  He went on gazin
g at the opposite wall. Finally he said, “Last night I got married.”

  “You what?”

  “Got married.”

  “You joking?”

  “No.”

  There was another long pause. When she spoke again, her voice sounded queer, sort of strangled. “Where’d you pull this caper?”

  “At the Greek’s place,” he said. He spoke tonelessly. “Bought a license. She signed her name to it. I signed my name. I put a ring on her finger.”

  “The girl I seen you with? That floozie from uptown?”

  “Yeah.” He sighed heavily. He wondered if there was anything else to say.

  He heard Bella saying, “Tell me how it happened.”

  “It happened, that’s all. It just happened.”

  “You know what you’re saying?”

  He nodded again.

  Bella said, “Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I’m hearing things.” She stood up. She sat down. She stood up again. She began to walk back and forth along the length of the bed. Finally she stopped, and with both hands she gripped the bedpost, as though to steady herself. Then, biting her lip, her eyes shut tightly, she made a sound as though she were feeling intense physical pain.

  He rubbed his knuckles across his brow. He wondered what caused him to stay in this room when there was every reason to walk out.

  “Can’t believe it,” Bella said aloud to herself. “It just ain’t possible.” And then her tone changed, there was pleading in her voice. “Didja know what you were doing? You couldn’t have known. After all, you were drunk.”

  “No,” he said gruffly. “I got drunk later.”

  “With her?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “We were celebrating.”

  “Where?” Her hands tightened on the bedpost.

  “What difference does it make?”

  “I’m askin’ you something. Where’d you do the celebrating? Was it in a hotel room?”