Great Noir Fiction

by Ed Gorman (ed)

  “All right. So it was mine.”

  “Sandy, it’s not a good idea.”

  Sandy inhaled too deep and felt it burn way down. “You can relax,” he said. “After this one, you can relax.”

  “You could send another man down and I’ll give him a hand. I got an idea how to get to this girl, to this Betty, and the other man can do it as fast.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” said Sandy.

  It made a great deal of sense to Jordan, how he would handle that kind of arrangement, and what he would save. Jordan felt weak, suddenly, when he thought about all he would save . . .

  “Sandy. I’m asking you,” he said.

  Sandy did not like the tone, since it confused him. He said, “All this over a lay?” and thought it would change the mood. It changed nothing.

  “Please,” said Jordan. “Please, Sandy. I’m asking you this.”

  The silence was too thick after that and the face Jordan showed—Sandy squinted, blew smoke, threw his cigarette into the dry sink. Mushy! If his goddamn face doesn’t look soft and gone.

  Sandy got mad. He had one thing in mind, had one picture about this, and there had never been cause before to change what he thought and for sure this wasn’t the time for any changes on his part. Soft and hard was the scale here. You go soft; how to fix it? Go hard. He talked fast and spitty with his excitement and with no time to watch how Jordan reacted.

  “Soft and hard,” he said. “That’s what I’m talking about. You go soft, you fix that one way, fellow; you fix that and go hard. You been mushing apart at the seams piece by piece, Jordan; piece by piece, the way I’ve been seeing it. Over not getting your break when you came back from the last trip, over going out on a job with a little switch in the routine, over getting a lay which was maybe the nuts, just compared to the last one, and so help me, Jordan, if I ever seen a punier set of bad reasons, a more laughable, crappier little bunch of bad reasons, so help me I don’t know when that might have been. Jordan!”

  “Yes.”

  “You follow me, Jordan?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t follow through on this thing, I don’t know what’s going to be with you. I don’t know how you’re going to make it and I don’t know if you’re going to make it at all. But I know one thing, you son of a bitch, and so do you! Once I don’t know any more how you’re panning out, that’s that, feller! That’s that!” His throat hurt and he took a deep breath. He talked low now, and relaxed after the shouting. “That would be that, Sam Jordan, and you’d never make it again.”

  He sat down. He wiped his mouth, feeling wetness, and added what this was all about. “What happens to your type when they’re through, we don’t have to discuss that.”

  “Of course,” said Jordan.

  What Sandy had listened for had finally happened. “Of course,” Jordan had said with his voice and the shortness like always. He’s come around, finally, thought Sandy. It was so much what Sandy expected, he missed out on the way it had happened.

  Jordan, at some point, had stopped listening to Sandy. He was done listening.

  Then they left the trailer. “Why in hell doesn’t it rain,” said Sandy when they walked over the lot.

  Chapter 17

  They saw each other once more that day, when Jordan was packing in his room and Sandy dropped in. He stood around and watched Jordan pack and was satisfied how he did it.

  “You’re taking three guns?”

  “Sure.”

  “I didn’t know you always took three guns.”

  “I take one when everything’s certain. I take two when there’s a choice but it isn’t all clear. The third one is nothing. It’s just a twenty-two automatic.”

  “So why . . .”

  “Cats have nine lives. I have three guns.”

  Sandy grunted something but did not say any more. He wants three guns? Let him have them. Or nine lives, if he felt that was an advantage. “I got your four gees for the Penderburg job,” he said. “You want it now?”

  “Drop it in the suitcase.”

  Sandy dropped it in the suitcase and watched Jordan take things out of drawers. “Where do you keep your dough, in a bank?”

  “No. I got a place.”

  “Oh. Smart.”

  “Oh yes.”

  Then Sandy sat on the bed a while longer and watched how Jordan packed his suitcase so neatly.

  “You’re taking the plane, aren’t you?”

  “Eight-ten, National, flight two-seven-one.”

  “I know that one. I never liked it because it gets you there in the middle of the night.”

  “I like that.”

  “Yes. I see where it makes sense. You starting in on this right tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “So maybe I’ll hear from you tomorrow.”

  “That’s right. Wednesday.”

  Sandy felt relief hearing all the concrete parts of the planning and seeing the right, sensible way in which Jordan packed. He felt there was no more for him to do, which was true enough, and he left. Jordan closed the door after him and went back to his suitcase.

  He took garters out and snapped them around his calves. He took the twenty-two back out of the suitcase and hooked it under one of the garters where the elastic had a gimmick sewed on for the purpose. In the beginning, some time back, Jordan had worn the small gun this way, because he had felt like a beginner. It had served no other purpose and in a while he had stopped. Quite a while back.

  He took the roll of hundreds and fifties and opened the bills up. Then he climbed on a chair and took the end cap off a curtain rod and pulled out a very tight roll of bills which he had kept there. He combined all the bills and tucked them into a place inside his suitcase.

  When he left his room there were some shirts left in one drawer, new shirts and not his size. There were also unused razors in a sealed cellophane wrapper and a full can of shaving lather. He himself always used cream.

  At nine that evening Jordan left the plane at the Washington airport. Washington, D.C., was even hotter than New York and it was not raining there either.

  Benny liked the job and he even came to work early. He walked into Monico’s ten after four when he knew that rehearsals were over, and the first thing he did was to go to his cubicle where he changed into the black pants, dress shirt, and cummerbund. He liked what the cummerbund did to his shape and for that reason always left the tux jacket off. He left it on the hook until later and walked out into the corridor.

  It went one way to the stage and the other way to an exit door with a red light. That was required by law. The door led to a walled yard and the wall had an alley on the other side. Like the weekly ice, this door was for protection, though the weekly ice went regularly and was enough. Nobody used that door. Benny passed numbers five, six and seven. The next door went to the dressing room. It was open and all the girls were inside. They sat at their tables with the lit-up mirrors and some were farther back where the shower room was. When Benny stopped at the door he smelled the creams and the lotions.

  Like a court eunuch, Benny had a number of privileges. He had the run of the corridor and the rooms all along there, and after rehearsals he liked to walk into the dressing room.

  He took a cigar out of his shirt pocket, walked through the door, and watched himself coming in on one of the mirrors. “Hi, girls, hi, girls,” he said.

  They answered or didn’t answer, depending on where he was looking.

  “You’re getting fat,” he said to one of them.

  And she said, “You keep looking at it while I’m sitting down, so naturally.”

  Lois came in from the shower room and had a big towel over her shoulder.

  She wore that and the shorts and had washed her hair. Her head was down and her hair hanging over her face. “What a whoozy masculine odor,” she said. “I bet Benny has brought his cigar.”

  Some laughed and Benny laughed and he had in mind to say something clever. Lois said, “Ho
ld the dryer for me, Benny?” and sat down at her table.

  He pulled up a chair, close to hers, and plugged in the dryer. “Cut it shorter,” he said. “It’ll dry faster and show more.” He looked at her bent head and her hands fluffing her hair. When she made the right movement he could see her bare front.

  “She can’t,” someone said two tables down. “It’s got to, after all, be longer than Evelyn’s.”

  She pronounced it Evelyn, with a long e, and they all laughed about the dancing instructor.

  “What a name for a guy,” said Benny. “I can’t get over it.”

  “It’s British. Over there they got this same name for the men and women.”

  “A lisp don’t make him British.”

  “But his father’s a lord.”

  “Evelyn’s no lord, he’s a lady,” and they laughed again.

  Benny watched Lois fluttering her hair and he watched her elbows. He had an idea elbows showed true age when nothing else might in a woman, especially with the ones here. He bent down a little, trying to see the girl’s forehead. That was another revealing part. Forehead, and sometimes the eyes.

  “Benny?”

  He straightened up and said, “Yes.”

  “I feel a draft,” said Lois.

  “Naturally. I got this dryer trained straight at you.”

  She threw her hair back and kept her face turned to the ceiling. Benny turned off the dryer and the room was quiet.

  “On my legs, Benny. I mean a draft on my legs.”

  “Maybe it’s the hall door being open.”

  Lois picked up a brush and went through her hair. She dragged it and whipped it through and Benny watched.

  She had put the towel down on the table. “You want me to blush, Benny?”

  “Blush? I’m just looking.”

  “I don’t like eyeballs touching me, Benny. Be a sweet and close that door?”

  “Sure,” he said, and got up. He went to the door and looked out in the hall. He saw no doors open there and felt no draft. “I don’t feel nothing,” he said.

  “I don’t feel it any more either,” said Lois, but when Benny came back, she thought of something else. “Get me my robe, be a dear, on the bathroom door?”

  He looked behind the door and told her it wasn’t there.

  “I left it in back last night,” she said. “I think I left it in number three.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

  He walked down the corridor which had dim little sconces along the two walls. They made a gray, spotty light in the passage, meant as thoughtful-ness for the customers. Benny had to go almost as far as the exit door because three was in the rear.

  Inside he switched on a light because the curtains were always drawn, and then he switched on the light in the small bathroom where he found Lois’s blue robe. Like a telephone booth, he thought, and looked at the tiled cubicle. When he switched off the light there he heard the door in the hallway open.

  “You want to catch a cold?” he said and watched Lois come in.

  “My compact,” she said. “Did you see it in there?”

  She had the towel around her shoulders again but took it off when she came toward him. She turned and held her arms back and Benny helped her on with the robe.

  “It’s in this pocket,” she said. “Never mind.”

  “Oh good,” he said. “Then I don’t have to leave right off.”

  “Never mind, Benny.”

  But he stayed where he was and left his hands on her. He slipped them around her, to the front.

  “Benny, please,” she said and tied the cord at her waist.

  “Huh?” he said next to her ear. “What do you say, Losy, huh?”

  “Benny, let go. I feel like something in a window, in a store window, I mean.”

  “You don’t feel like it to me.”

  “For heaven’s sake, let go, Benny. You’re like a baby.”

  “Listen, if you think I’m like . . .”

  “No.”

  “How about it, Lois?”

  “I can’t. You know he’s coming any minute.”

  “That’s all I need. A minute.”

  “Ask Sue. You know he’s coming any minute.”

  “To hell with Sue and to hell with him. You know what I think of him.”

  He let go of her and she fixed her robe. “What did he ever do to you?”

  “Nothing. And he never will. There’s just some I like and some I don’t like is all. How about it, Lois?” and he stepped up again.

  “Please, Benny. Not now.”

  “Later?”

  “All right. Later.”

  “Before showtime.”

  “All right. Then.”

  They were done with the topic and thought of other things.

  “You going to use number three?” Benny asked.

  “Might as well. Turn the radio on, will you, Benny? I’m going back for a minute to get my mules.”

  She left number three and Benny stayed in it. The next thing Lois ran into Sandy, he coming one way in the hall and she going the other.

  “Hi, sweets,” she said. “Go on back. I’ll be just a moment.”

  “Number three?”

  “Sure. Three,” which was the part Jordan heard.

  Sure, three, he thought, and I don’t see a one of them. One across the way in the room where everything happens, one down the hall, and one just a ways beyond that one. Jinx job. Here he comes. What a shadowless corridor with those nasty, dim lights. Here he . . . Now. Poor, shadowless Sandy and wouldn’t he jump with fright if I reached out now and touched him . . . Touched him? Nobody touches that one. Poor Sandy. The cigar though, I could drill that cigar straight out of his face or straight into his face and he’d know that, of course, he’d know that and would worry about it. Jeesis Christ, what happened to my cigar, that kind of thing . . . Turn. Nice, big back going into that door. Number three, where I got it, number three, where the . . . Now? But the girl might still be down the hall and the noise she’d make would be too much to bear. They scream so with that ten-mouse scream piercing straight out of their gullet . . .. Good. That’s a good light in that number three workroom over there. Christ. They got the radio going. Jinx job. Easy, Jordan. You’re the provider, Jordan, and how else keep Smith alive? What else but this, Jordan, what else did he teach you and what else is there now but to do the best thing you know how, Jordan, to keep Smith alive? Can’t have Jordan walking around trailing a corpse behind him, some dead Smith corpse hanging down and getting tangled with what Jordan might call a clean job of providing . . . Goddamn that radio mumbling. Door closed. Now. Corridor empty. Now. Now! Ohmygod how—what is it? How whatever it is hurts. But it’s going to be clean. Very clean when it’s over. Smith there, Jordan here, dead jinx, clean all over . . . Now, provider . . .

  As soon as he pushed the door open to number three, Jordan, clean, was the professional. He didn’t even hate anybody or want anybody. He was fast and barely visible and never lost his head once though he saw the jinx job setup with the first glance through the door. Two of them and the radio going and a drip faucet sound from farther back.

  But he did not have to touch a thing, just look, do it, be done, end of jinx job. There was Benny’s big back, there was Sandy by the opposite wall, there he was pouring liquor into the glass on the table and the radio behind, that mumbling mood music over everything.

  Sandy straightened up, looked up, and smiled. He’s never smiled at me this way, and the last thing he’ll do is smile at me just that way. Now. And he fired.

  He felt clear and good as soon as he had done it and before Benny could turn Jordan was no longer there. Jordan had had his glimpse, which was all the touching he needed, the smile looking at him, the smile gone absolutely, then Sandy leaning, and the mess on the wall behind Sandy’s head.

  Clean job, good provider, dead jinx, Smith breathing a sigh. Jordan closed the exit door without slamming it and ran.

  Chapter 18

 
He ran because he was in a rational hurry. There was this much time and this much to do and to make all of it fit it meant fast now. No haste, but fast. Fast was clean and haste was messy and now, of course, everything was finally clean. And this for the final touch, a present for Smith.

  Jordan stopped walking when the Forty-second Street library was exactly opposite. He stopped to give himself time to calm down.

  Not a present for Smith, but like a present for Betty. It would be: I give you this absolute Smith, this absolutely real Smith, Betty; look at me in black and white, Betty, so absolutely clear cut and right; hell, we could even get married. Jordan laughed and walked into the library.

  He sat down in the newspaper room and held a paper. At seven, as always happened, Caughlin walked in. Jordan let the old man sit down and then waited another few minutes.

  Caughlin, like his habits, was always the same. He had a brown overcoat on, long and large, which had one button high up in front. The button was closed so that the shirt would not show. The shirt was an undershirt. Caughlin took his glasses out, brushed white hairs back over his skull, started reading. He never looked right or left when he read, which made him seem stiff-necked or stolid.

  “Evening, Caughlin,” said Jordan.

  Caughlin waited till the other was sitting. Then he looked sideways and back at his paper again.

  “Good evening, Jordan,” he said. “Why me?” and his Adam’s apple starting bobbing. There was no sound when Caughlin laughed, just the Adam’s apple bobbing. “Am I a job or do you want one?”

  “I need one.”

  “Murder in the Reading Room,” said Caughlin, and seemed to be laughing again. “Corny, isn’t it?”

  “Stop the crap, Caughlin.”

  “And start the music.”

  Jordan said nothing because everybody knew the old man was crazy, though this was to say nothing about his work. His work was expensive and could not be touched.

  “I need everything from the bottom up,” said Jordan, “and I need some of it right away.”

  “What name?”

  “Smith.”

  This time Caughlin laughed with a sound. A man at the next seat looked up from his paper but Caughlin, who rarely turned his head, kept on laughing and paid no attention. When he was done he looked down at his paper and talked again.