The Postman Always Rings Twice

by James M. Cain

  The screech kept bringing me out of it, and I looked around, and saw the Greek. He was on the other bunk.

  “Yay Nick.”

  Nobody said anything. I looked around some more, but I couldn’t see anything of Cora.

  After a while they stopped, and lifted out the Greek. I waited for them to lift me out, but they didn’t. I knew he was really dead, then, and there wouldn’t be any cock-eyed stuff this time, selling him a story about a cat. If they had taken us both out, it would be a hospital. But when they just took him out, it was a mortuary.

  We went on, then, and when they stopped they lifted me out. They carried me in, and set the stretcher on a wheel table, and rolled me in a white room. Then they got ready to set my arm. They wheeled up a machine to give me gas for that, but then they had an argument. There was another doctor there by that time that said he was the jail physician, and the hospital doctors got pretty sore. I knew what it was about. It was those tests for being drunk. If they gave me the gas first, that would ball up the breath test, the most important one. The jail doctor went out, and made me blow through a glass pipe into some stuff that looked like water but turned yellow when I blew in it. Then he took some blood, and some other samples that he poured in bottles through a funnel. Then they gave me the gas.

  When I began to come out of it I was in a room, in bed, and my head was all covered with bandages, and so was my arm, with a sling besides, and my back was all strapped up with adhesive tape so I could hardly move. A state cop was there, reading the morning paper. My head ached like hell, and so did my back, and my arm had shooting pains in it. After a while a nurse came in and gave me a pill, and I went to sleep.

  When I woke up it was about noon, and they gave me something to eat. Then two more cops came in, and they put me on a stretcher again, and took me down and put me in another ambulance.

  “Where we going?”

  “Inquest.”

  “Inquest. That’s what they have when somebody’s dead, ain’t it.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I was afraid they’d got it.”

  “Only one.”

  “Which?”

  “The man.”

  “Oh. Was the woman bad hurt?”

  “Not bad.”

  “Looks pretty bad for me, don’t it?”

  “Watch out there, buddy. It’s O.K. with us if you want to talk, but anything you say may fall back in your lap when you get to court.”

  “That’s right. Thanks.”

  When we stopped it was in front of a undertaker shop in Hollywood, and they carried me in. Cora was there, pretty battered up. She had on a blouse that the police matron had lent her, and it puffed out around her belly like it was stuffed with hay. Her suit and her shoes were dusty, and her eye was all swelled up where I had hit it. She had the police matron with her. The coroner was back of a table, with some kind of a secretary guy beside him. Off to one side were a half dozen guys that acted pretty sore, with cops standing guard over them. They were the jury. There was a bunch of other people, with cops pushing them around to the place where they ought to stand. The undertaker was tip-toeing around, and every now and then he would shove a chair under somebody. He brought a couple for Cora and the matron. Off to one side, on a table, was something under a sheet.

  Soon as they had me parked the way they wanted me, on a table, the coroner rapped with his pencil and they started. First thing, was a legal identification. She began to cry when they lifted the sheet off, and I didn’t like it much myself. After she looked, and I looked, and the jury looked, they dropped the sheet again.

  “Do you know this man?”

  “He was my husband.”

  “His name?”

  “Nick Papadakis.”

  Next came the witnesses. The sergeant told how he got the call and went up there with two officers after he phoned for an ambulance, and how he sent Cora in by a car he took charge of, and me and the Greek in by ambulance, and how the Greek died on the way in, and was dropped off at the mortuary. Next, a hick by the name of Wright told how he was coming around the bend, and heard a woman scream, and heard a crash, and saw the car going over and over, the lights still on, down the gully. He saw Cora in the road, waving at him for help, and went down to the car with her and tried to get me and the Greek out. He couldn’t do it, because the car was on top of us, so he sent his brother, that was in the car with him, for help. After a while more people came, and the cops, and when the cops took charge they got the car off us and put us in the ambulance. Then Wright’s brother told about the same thing, only he went back for the cops.

  Then the jail doctor told how I was drunk, and how examination of the stomach showed the Greek was drunk, but Cora wasn’t drunk. Then he told which cracked bone it was that the Greek died of. Then the coroner turned to me and asked me if I wanted to testify.

  “Yes sir, I guess so.”

  “I warn you that any statement you make may be used against you, and that you are under no compulsion to testify unless you so wish.”

  “I got nothing to hold back.”

  “All right, then. What do you know about this?”

  “All I know is that first I was going along. Then I felt the car sink under me, and something hit me, and that’s all I can remember until I come to in the hospital.”

  “You were going along?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You mean you were driving the car?”

  “Yes sir, I was driving it.”

  That was just a cock-eyed story I was going to take back later on, when we got in a place where it really meant something, which this inquest didn’t. I figured if I told a bum story first, and then turned around and told another story, it would sound like the second story was really true, where if I had a pat story right from the beginning, it would sound like what it was, pat. I was doing this one different from the first time. I meant to look bad, right from the start. But if I wasn’t driving the car, it didn’t make any difference how bad I looked, they couldn’t do anything to me. What I was afraid of was that perfect murder stuff that we cracked up on last time. Just one little thing, and we were sunk. But here, if I looked bad, there could be quite a few things and still I wouldn’t look much worse. The worse I looked on account of being drunk, the less the whole thing would look like a murder.

  The cops looked at each other, and the coroner studied me like he thought I was crazy. They had already heard it all, how I was pulled out from under the back seat.

  “You’re sure of that? That you were driving?”

  “Absolutely sure.”

  “You had been drinking?”

  “No sir.”

  “You heard the results of the tests that were given you?”

  “I don’t know nothing about the tests. All I know is I didn’t have no drink.”

  He turned to Cora. She said she would tell what she could.

  “Who was driving this car?”

  “I was.”

  “Where was this man?”

  “On the back seat.”

  “Had he been drinking?”

  She kind of looked away, and swallowed, and cried a little bit. “Do I have to answer that?”

  “You don’t have to answer any question unless you so wish.”

  “I don’t want to answer.”

  “Very well, then. Tell in your own words what happened.”

  “I was driving along. There was a long up-grade, and the car got hot. My husband said I had better stop to let it cool off.”

  “How hot?”

  “Over 200.”

  “Go on.”

  “So after we started the down-grade, I cut the motor, and when we got to the bottom it was still hot, and before we started up again we stopped. We were there maybe ten minutes. Then I started up again. And I don’t know what happened. I went into high, and didn’t get enough power, and I went into second, right quick, and the men were talking, or maybe it was on account of making the quick shift, but anyhow, I felt one si
de of the car go down. I yelled to them to jump, but it was too late. I felt the car going over and over, and the next thing I knew I was trying to get out, and then I was out, and then I was up on the road.”

  The coroner turned to me again. “What are you trying to do, shield this woman?”

  “I don’t notice her shielding me any.”

  The jury went out, and then came in and gave a verdict that the said Nick Papadakis came to his death as the result of an automobile accident on the Malibu Lake Road, caused in whole or in part by criminal conduct on the part of me and Cora, and recommended that we be held for the action of the grand jury.

  There was another cop with me that night, in the hospital, and next morning he told me that Mr. Sackett was coming over to see me, and I better get ready. I could hardly move yet, but I had the hospital barber shave me up and make me look as good as he could. I knew who Sackett was. He was the District Attorney. About half past ten he showed up, and the cop went out, and there was nobody there but him and me. He was a big guy with a bald head and a breezy manner.

  “Well, well, well. How do you feel?”

  “I feel O.K., judge. Kind of shook me up a little, but I’ll be all right.”

  “As the fellow said when he fell out of the airplane, it was a swell ride but we lit kind of hard.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Now. Chambers, you don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to, but I’ve come over here, partly to see what you look like, and partly because it’s been my experience that a frank talk saves a lot of breath afterwards, and sometimes paves the way to the disposition of a whole case with a proper plea, and anyway, as the fellow says, after it’s over we understand each other.”

  “Why sure, judge. What was it you wanted to know?”

  I made it sound pretty shifty, and he sat there looking me over. “Suppose we start at the beginning.”

  “About this trip?”

  “That’s it. I want to hear all about it.”

  He got up and began to walk around. The door was right by my bed, and I jerked it open. The cop was halfway down the hall, chinning a nurse. Sackett burst out laughing. “No, no dictaphones in this. They don’t use them anyway, except in movies.”

  I let a sheepish grin come over my face. I had him like I wanted him. I had pulled a dumb trick on him, and he had got the better of me. “O.K., judge. I guess it was pretty silly, at that. All right, I’ll begin at the beginning and tell it all. I’m in dutch all right, but I guess lying about it won’t do any good.”

  “That’s the right attitude, Chambers.”

  I told him how I walked out on the Greek, and how I bumped into him on the street one day, and he wanted me back, and then asked me to go on this Santa Barbara trip with them to talk it over. I told about how we put down the wine, and how we started out, with me at the wheel. He stopped me then.

  “So you were driving the car?”

  “Judge, suppose you tell me that.”

  “What do you mean, Chambers?”

  “I mean I heard what she said, at the inquest. I heard what those cops said. I know where they found me. So I know who was driving, all right. She was. But if I tell it like I remember it, I got to say I was driving it. I didn’t tell that coroner any lie, judge. It still seems to me I was driving it.”

  “You lied about being drunk.”

  “That’s right. I was all full of booze, and ether, and dope that they give you, and I lied all right. But I’m all right now, and I got sense enough to know the truth is all that can get me out of this, if anything can. Sure, I was drunk. I was stinko. And all I could think of was, I mustn’t let them know I was drunk, because I was driving the car, and if they find out I was drunk, I’m sunk.”

  “Is that what you’d tell a jury?”

  “I’d have to, judge. But what I can’t understand is how she came to be driving it. I started out with it. I know that. I can even remember a guy standing there laughing at me. Then how come she was driving when it went over?”

  “You drove it about two feet.”

  “You mean two miles.”

  “I mean two feet. Then she took the wheel away from you.”

  “Gee, I must have been stewed.”

  “Well, it’s one of those things that a jury might believe. It’s just got that cockeyed look to it that generally goes with the truth. Yes, they might believe it.”

  He sat there looking at his nails, and I had a hard time to keep the grin from creeping over my face. I was glad when he started asking me more questions, so I could get my mind on something else, besides how easy I had fooled him.

  “When did you go to work for Papadakis, Chambers?”

  “Last winter.”

  “How long did you stay with him?”

  “Till a month ago. Maybe six weeks.”

  “You worked for him six months, then?”

  “About that.”

  “What did you do before that?”

  “Oh, knocked around.”

  “Hitch-hiked? Rode freights? Bummed your meals wherever you could?”

  “Yes sir.”

  He unstrapped a briefcase, put a pile of papers on the table, and began looking through them. “Ever been in Frisco?”

  “Born there.”

  “Kansas City? New York? New Orleans? Chicago?”

  “I’ve seen them all.”

  “Ever been in jail?”

  “I have, judge. You knock around, you get in trouble with the cops now and then. Yes sir, I’ve been in jail.”

  “Ever been in jail in Tuscson?”

  “Yes sir. I think it was ten days I got there. It was for trespassing on railroad property.”

  “Salt Lake City? San Diego? Wichita?”

  “Yes sir. All those places.”

  “Oakland?”

  “I got three months there, judge. I got in a fight with a railroad detective.”

  “You beat him up pretty bad, didn’t you?”

  “Well, as the fellow says, he was beat up pretty bad, but you ought to seen the other one. I was beat up pretty bad, myself.”

  “Los Angeles?”

  “Once. But that was only three days.”

  “Chambers, how did you come to go to work for Papadakis, anyhow?”

  “Just a kind of an accident. I was broke, and he needed somebody. I blew in there to get something to eat, and he offered me a job, and I took it.”

  “Chambers, does that strike you as funny?”

  “I don’t know how you mean, judge?”

  “That after knocking around all these years, and never doing any work, or even trying to do any, so far as I can see, you suddenly settled down, and went to work, and held a job steady?”

  “I didn’t like it much, I’ll own up to that.”

  “But you stuck.”

  “Nick, he was one of the nicest guys I ever knew. After I got a stake, I tried to tell him I was through, but I just didn’t have the heart, much trouble as he had had with his help. Then when he had the accident, and wasn’t there, I blew. I just blew, that’s all. I guess I ought to treated him better, but I got rambling feet, judge. When they say go, I got to go with them. I just took a quiet way out.”

  “And then, the day after you came back, he got killed.”

  “You kind of make me feel bad now, judge. Because maybe I tell the jury different, but I’m telling you now I feel that was a hell of a lot my fault. If I hadn’t been there, and begun promoting him for something to drink that afternoon, maybe he’d be here now. Understand, maybe that didn’t have anything to do with it at all. I don’t know. I was stinko, and I don’t know what happened. Just the same, if she hadn’t had two drunks in the car, maybe she could have drove better, couldn’t she? Anyway, that’s how I feel about it.”

  I looked at him, to see how he was taking it. He wasn’t even looking at me. All of a sudden he jumped up and came over to the bed and took me by the shoulder. “Out with it, Chambers. Why did you stick with Papadakis for six months?”r />
  “Judge, I don’t get you.”

  “Yes you do. I’ve seen her, Chambers, and I can guess why you did it. She was in my office yesterday, and she had a black eye, and was pretty well banged up, but even with that she looked pretty good. For something like that, plenty of guys have said goodbye to the road, rambling feet or not.”

  “Anyhow they rambled. No, judge, you’re wrong.”

  “They didn’t ramble long. It’s too good, Chambers. Here’s an automobile accident that yesterday was a dead open-and-shut case of manslaughter, and today it’s just evaporated into nothing at all. Every place I touch it, up pops a witness to tell me something, and when I fit all they have to say together, I haven’t got any case. Come on, Chambers. You and that woman murdered this Greek, and the sooner you own up to it the better it’ll be for you.”

  There wasn’t any grin creeping over my face then, I’m here to tell you. I could feel my lips getting numb, and I tried to speak, but nothing would come out of my mouth.

  “Well, why don’t you say something?”

  “You’re coming at me. You’re coming at me for something pretty bad. I don’t know anything to say, judge.”

  “You were gabby enough a few minutes ago, when you were handing me that stuff about the truth being all that would get you out of this. Why can’t you talk now?”

  “You got me all mixed up.”

  “All right, we’ll take it one thing at a time, so you won’t be mixed up. In the first place, you’ve been sleeping with that woman, haven’t you?”

  “Nothing like it.”

  “How about the week Papadakis was in the hospital? Where did you sleep then?”

  “In my own room.”

  “And she slept in hers? Come on, I’ve seen her, I tell you. I’d have been in there if I had to kick the door down and hang for rape. So would you. So were you.”

  “I never even thought of it.”

  “How about all those trips you took with her to Hasselman’s Market in Glendale? What did you do with her on the way back?”

  “Nick told me to go on those trips himself.”

  “I didn’t ask you who told you to go. I asked you what you did.”

  I was so groggy I had to do something about it quick. All I could think of was to get sore. “All right, suppose we did. We didn’t, but you say we did, and we’ll let it go at that. Well, if it was all that easy, what would we be knocking him off for? Holy smoke, judge, I hear tell of guys that would commit murder for what you say I was getting, when they weren’t getting it, but I never hear tell of a guy that would commit murder for it when he already had it.”