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

by David Goodis

  She read what he had written. She said, “You’ll sleep in the bedroom. I’ll sleep here on the sofa.”

  He shook his head.

  “I said you’ll sleep in the bedroom. Please don’t argue with me. I’m your nurse now. You mustn’t argue with the nurse.”

  She led him into the bedroom. She stayed out while he undressed. When he was under the covers he knocked on the side of the bed and she came in. She used handkerchiefs to tie his wrists to the sides of the bed.

  “Is that too tight?”

  He shook his head.

  “Are you comfortable?”

  He nodded.

  “Anything more I can do?”

  He shook his head.

  “Good night, Vincent.”

  She switched off the light and went out of the room.

  In a few minutes Parry was asleep. He was up a few times during the night, coming out of sleep when he tried to turn over and his tied wrists held him back. Aside from that he slept the full sleep of fatigue, the heavy sleep that got him away from shock and pain. He slept until late in the afternoon, and when he awoke she was in the room, waiting for him with a breakfast tray. There was a tall glass of orange juice. There was a bowl of white cereal, very soft and mostly cream, so that it could be taken through a glass straw. There was a pot of coffee and a glass of water. There were three glass straws, new and glinting, and he knew she had gone out in the morning to buy them. He thanked her with his eyes. She smiled at him. She reached for something on the bureau and when she held it up he saw a long cigarette holder, new and glinting. It was yellow enamel and it had a small, delicately shaped mouthpiece.

  She said, “Did you sleep well?”

  He nodded. She untied the handkerchiefs and he started to get out of the bed and then he looked at her. She walked out of the room. He went into the bathroom. When he was finished in the bathroom he took his breakfast through the glass straws. Basie music came from the phonograph in the other room, then she came in from the other room and lighted a cigarette and watched him sip his meal through the straws. She looked at the empty glasses, the empty bowl and the empty cup.

  She smiled and said, “That’s a good boy. And now would you like a cigarette?”

  He nodded.

  She placed a cigarette in the holder and lighted it for him.

  She said, “Does your face feel better today?”

  He nodded.

  “Much better?”

  He nodded.

  “What would you like to do?”

  He shrugged.

  “Would you like to read?”

  He nodded.

  “What would you like to read?”

  He shrugged.

  “A magazine?”

  He shook his head.

  “The paper?”

  He looked at her. She wasn’t smiling. He tried to get something from her eyes. He couldn’t get anything. He started a nod and then he stopped it and he shrugged.

  She went out of the room and came back with an afternoon edition. She gave it to him and he held it close to his eyes and saw that in San Francisco a man named Fellsinger had been murdered in the early hours of the morning and police said it was the work of the escaped lifer from San Quentin. Police said Parry’s fingerprints were all over the place, on the furniture, on the cellophane wrapping around a pack of cigarettes, on a glass, on practically everything except the murder weapon, which was a trumpet. Police put it this way—they said Vincent Parry had gone to his friend George Fellsinger and had demanded aid in his effort to get away. Fellsinger no doubt refused. Then Fellsinger tried to call the police or told Parry he would eventually call the police. In rage or calm decision Parry took hold of the trumpet forgetting his other fingerprints throughout the room and knowing only that he mustn’t get his fingerprints on the trumpet. And so he must have used a handkerchief around his hand as he wielded the trumpet and brought it down on Fellsinger’s head. Again and again and again. The only fingerprints in the place were those of Fellsinger and those of Parry. There was positively no doubt about it. Parry did it.

  Parry looked up. She was watching him. He pointed to the story.

  She nodded. She said, “Yes, Vincent. I saw it.”

  He made a gesture to indicate that she should offer a further reaction.

  She said, “I don’t know what to say. Did you do it?”

  He shook his head.

  “But who could have done it?”

  He shook his head.

  “You were there last night?”

  He nodded. Then he made the pad and pencil gesture. She brought him the pad and the pencil and he wrote it out for her, as it had happened. She read it slowly. It was as if she was studying from a textbook.

  When she finally put the pad down she said, “In that statement you wrote this morning you said nothing about Fellsinger. Why?”

  He shrugged.

  “Is there anything else you didn’t tell me?”

  He shook his head. He thought of the Studebaker. He thought of Max. And the Studebaker. And he shook his head again.

  She said, “I know there’s something else. I wish you’d tell me. The more you tell me the more help I can give you. But I can’t force you to tell me. I only ask if it’s important.”

  He shook his head.

  She went to the door and there she turned and faced him. She said, “I have work to do this afternoon. Settlement work. I devote a few hours every day to it. I’ll be back at six and we’ll have dinner. Promise me you’ll stay here. Promise me you won’t answer the buzzer and no matter what takes place and no matter what thoughts get into your head you’ll stay here.”

  He nodded.

  She said, “There are cigarettes in the other room and if you get thirsty you’ll find oranges in the refrigerator and you can make juice.”

  He nodded.

  She walked out. He leaned over the newspaper and a few times more he read the Fellsinger story. He heard her going out of the apartment. He went through the newspaper. He tried to get interested in the financial section and gradually he succeeded and he was going through the stock quotations, the Dow-Jones averages, the prices on wheat and cotton, the situation in railroads and steel. He saw a small and severely neat advertisement from the firm where he had worked as a clerk, where Fellsinger had worked. He began to remember the days of work, the day he had started there, how difficult it was at first, how hard he had tried, how he had taken a correspondence course in statistics shortly after his marriage, hoping he could get a grasp on statistics and ultimately step up to forty-five a week as a statistician. But the correspondence course gave him more questions than answers and finally he had to give it up. He remembered the night he wrote the letter telling them to stop sending the mimeographed sheets. He showed the letter to Gert and she told him he would never get anywhere. She went out that night. He remembered he hoped she would never come back and he was afraid she would never come back because there was something about her that got him at times and he wished there was something about him that got her. He knew there was nothing about him that got her and he wondered why she didn’t pick herself up and walk out once and for all. She was always talking in terms of tall bony men with high cheekbones and hollow cheeks and very tall. He was bony and very thin and he had high cheekbones and hollow cheeks but he wasn’t tall. He was really a miniature of what she really wanted. And because she couldn’t get a permanent hold on the genuine she figured she might as well stay with the miniature. That was about as close as he could come to it. She was very thin herself and that was the way he liked them, thin. Very thin. She had practically no front development and nothing in back but that was the way he liked them and the first time he saw her he concentrated on the way she was constructed like a reed and he was interested. He disregarded the eyes that were more colorless than light brown, the hair that was more colorless than pale-brown flannel, the nose that was thin and the mouth that was very thin and the blade-line of her jaw. He disregarded the fact that she wa
s twenty-nine when she married him and the only reason she married him was because he was a miniature of what she really wanted and she hadn’t been able to get what she really wanted. She married him because he came along at a time when she was beginning to worry about it, to worry that she wouldn’t be able to get anything. There were times when she told him the only reason he married her was because he was beginning to worry, because he couldn’t get what he really wanted and he supposed he might as well take this colorless reed while the taking was good, and before years caught up with him and he wouldn’t be able to get anything at all. He said that wasn’t true. He wanted to marry her because she was something he really wanted and if she would only work along with him they would be able to get along and they would find ways to be happy. He tried to make her happy. He thought a child would make her happy. He tried to give her a child and once he got one started but she went to a doctor and took pills. She said she hated the thought of having a child.

  Parry turned the pages of the newspaper and came to the sports section. Basketball was scheduled for tonight. He remembered he had always liked basketball. He remembered he had played basketball while he was in the reformatory in Arizona, and later he had played on a Y.M.C.A. team when he was living alone in San Francisco and working in a stock room for sixteen a week. He remembered he went to the games every now and then and one week end he went up to Eugene in Oregon to see a great Oregon State team play a great Oregon team. He remembered how he wanted to see that game, and how happy he was when finally he was in there with the crowd and the teams were on the floor and the game was getting under way. He remembered once he took Gert to a game on a Saturday night and it was after they were married four months. She kept saying she wasn’t interested in basketball and she would rather see a floor show somewhere. He kept saying she ought to give basketball a chance because it was really something exciting to see and after all it was a change from floor shows. She said it was because seats for the basketball game were only a buck and a half or somewhere around that and he just didn’t want to put out nine or ten or eleven in a night club. He said that wasn’t a fair thing to say, because he was always taking her wherever she wanted to go on Saturday night, and she always wanted to go to night clubs, and it wasn’t nine or ten or eleven anyway, it was more on the order of sixteen and seventeen and nineteen, because they both did considerable drinking. He didn’t say the other things he was thinking then, that when she was in the night clubs she kept looking at tall, bony men, always kept looking at them, never looking at him, never listening to him, always kept turning her head to look at tall, bony men with high cheekbones and hollow cheeks. How he would finally stop talking and she wouldn’t even realize he had stopped talking. Yet that night she had finally condescended to go to the basketball game with him. And it was an exciting game, it was very close, getting hotter all the time, and he was all pepped up and he was happy to be here. She was sitting there beside him, he remembered, not saying anything, not asking him about the game, not curious about the way it was played, but interested nonetheless. Interested in the tall bony boys who ran up and down the floor. Interested in their tall bony bodies, their long arms, their long legs glimmering in the bright light of the basketball court as they ran and stopped and ran again. And when she had seen all of them that she could see, she said she was fed up looking at all that nonsense down there, a bunch of young fools trying to cripple each other so they could throw a ball through a hoop. She said she wanted to leave. He asked her to stay with him until the game was over. She said she wanted to leave. She said if he didn’t leave with her she would go alone. She was talking loud. He begged her to lower her voice. She talked louder. People around them were telling them to keep quiet and watch the game. She talked louder. Finally he said all right, they would leave. As they got up and started to leave he could hear other men laughing at him.

  Parry turned the pages and arrived at the woman’s section. Somebody was telling the women how to cook something. He remembered she hated to cook. They ate out most of the time. There were nights when he came home very tired and he cringed at the thought of going out and standing in line at the popular and expensive restaurants she liked, and how he wished she would learn to cook, because even on the few nights when they ate at home she gave him uncooked food, cold cuts or canned fish and the only thing hot was the coffee. Once he tried to talk to her about it and she started to yell. She took the percolator and poured the coffee all over the floor.

  He remembered she took two thirds, more than two thirds of the thirty-five a week he made. He remembered she hardly ever smiled at him. When she did smile it wasn’t really a smile, it was because she was amused at something. She never told him what amused her. And things that amused her didn’t amuse him. He remembered once they were walking down the street and there was a traffic jam and one car bumped into another and they locked bumpers. She said, “Good.” She started to laugh. He tried to see something funny in it. He tried to laugh. He couldn’t laugh.

  Once they were walking toward the apartment house and a delivery boy passed them on a bicycle, with the wire tray heaped with packages on the handle bars. The bicycle hit a bump and turned over. The boy fell on his face and the packages went flying all over the street. The boy had a cut on his face and he was sitting there in the street and putting a handkerchief to the blood on his face. She started to laugh. He asked her what she was laughing at. She didn’t answer. She kept on laughing.

  He was beginning to feel tired again. The pain in his face was dull now, and he was getting accustomed to it. But as he sat there measuring the pain he gradually realized there was something else besides the pain. Like little feathers under the bandage. That was the itch Coley had talked about. The healing process, the mending was under way. He welcomed the itch. He told it to get worse. He turned the pages of the newspaper and saw nothing to catch his interest, and besides he was very tired. He pushed the newspaper aside and let his head go back against the pillow. He closed his eyes, knowing he wouldn’t sleep, knowing he would just stay there, resting. Feeling the pain, feeling the itch under the bandage, flowing into the pain, then crawling under the pain. Once he opened his eyes and looked toward the window. There was going to be rain in San Francisco. The sky was a heavy, muttering grey, getting ready to let loose. He closed his eyes again. He didn’t care if it rained. He was here, he was in here, he was all right in here. And in less than five days he would be out of here and he would be going away with his new face and everything would be all right. And the buzzer was sounding and everything would be all right. And the buzzer was sounding.

  He sat up.

  The buzzer was sounding again. Then it stopped. He sat there waiting. It sounded again. It was a needle going into him. And then it stopped.

  He waited. He wondered who it was down there. He took himself off the bed and walked to the window and waited there. Then he saw someone going away from the apartment house and walking across the street, walking toward the Studebaker that was parked on the other side of the street. And it was the man who had given him the lift. It was Studebaker.

  It was really Studebaker, with different clothes, new clothes and no hat, and really Studebaker. And Studebaker was looking for him. Studebaker alone. No police. Parry couldn’t get that, couldn’t get anywhere near it.

  The sky gave way. Rain came down.

  Parry stood there at the window and watched Studebaker getting into the car. The car crawled, jolted, went forward, went on down to the corner and made a turn. Parry began to quiver. Studebaker was going to the police. But why now? Why not before? Why now? If Studebaker hadn’t talked to the police until now, why was he going to see them now?

  The rain came down hard and steadily. Parry went away from the window, went toward the bed, then stopped and went toward the dresser and stood before the dresser, looking in the mirror. He decided to take off the bandage and get out of the apartment before Studebaker came back with the police. He brought his hands to his face and his finger
s came against the adhesive. He tugged at the adhesive. A tremendous burst of pain shot across his face and went leaping through his head. His fingers came away from the adhesive. He told himself that he mustn’t be afraid of the pain. He must try again. He must get out of here, and he couldn’t afford to be wearing the bandage when he went out. He got his fingers on the adhesive and once more he tugged at it and once more the pain slashed away at him. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stand any more of it. He decided to stay here and let them come and get him. He went into the living room and seated himself on the sofa and looked at the floor. He sat there for a while, and then he got up and went into the bedroom and got the cigarette holder. He returned to the living room and picked up a pack of cigarettes.

  He sat there looking at the floor and smoking cigarettes. He smoked nine cigarettes in succession. He looked at the stubs in the ash tray. He counted them, saw them dead there in the heaped ashes. Then he wondered how long it would take until the police arrived. He wondered how long it would be until he was dead, because this time he wouldn’t be going back to a cell. This time they had him on a charge that would mean the death sentence. He looked at the window and saw the thick rain coming out of the thick grey sky, the broken sky. He decided to take a run at the window and go through the glass and finish the whole thing. He took a step toward the window and then stopped and turned his back to the window and looked at the wall. He stood there without moving for almost a full hour. He was going back and taking chunks out of his life and holding them up to examine them. The young and bright yellow days in the hot sun of Maricopa, always bright yellow in every season. The wide and white roads going north from Arizona. The grey and violet of San Francisco. The grey and the heat of the stock room, and the days and nights of nothing, the years of nothing. And the cage in the investment security house, and the stiff white collars of the executives, stiff and newly white every day, and their faces every day, and their voices every day. And the paper, the plain white paper, the pink paper, the pale-green paper, the paper ruled violet and green and black in small ledgers and larger ledgers and immense ledgers. And the faces. The faces of statisticians who made forty-five a week, and customers’ men who sometimes made a hundred and a half and sometimes made nothing. And the executives who made fifteen and twenty and thirty thousand a year, and the customers who sat there or stood there and watched the board. The customers, and some of them could walk out of that place and get on their yachts and go out across thousands of miles of water, getting up in the morning when they felt like getting up, fishing or swimming around their grand white yachts, alone out there on the water. And in the evening they would be wearing emerald studs in their shirtfronts with white formal jackets and black tropical worsted trousers with satin black and gleaming down the sides, down to their gleaming black patent-leather shoes as they danced in the small ballrooms of their yachts with tall thin women with bared shoulders, dripping organdie from their tall thin bodies as they danced or held delicate glasses of champagne in their thin, delicate fingers. And when these customers came back to the investment security house they came in their gleaming black limousines and they came in very much tanned and smiling and he would be there in his cage, looking at them, thinking it was a pity such fortunate people had to eventually die, because it was really worthwhile for them to live on and on, they had so much to live for, they had so many things to enjoy. He liked to see them coming in wearing their expensive clothes, smoking their expensive cigars, talking with their expensive voices. He was so very glad when they came in, when they stood where he could see them, because he got a lift just looking at them. There were times when he wished he could talk to them, when he wished he had the nerve to start a conversation with one of them. If he could only have a talk with one of them so he could hear all about the wonderful things, the wonderful houses they lived in, the wonderful trips they made, the wonderful wonderful things they did. As he looked at them, as he thought of the lives they led, the luxuries they enjoyed, he decided that if he used his head and had some luck he might be able to climb up toward where they were. That was all it really was, a matter of using his head and having a little luck, and he decided to get started. And that was about the time when he decided to take the correspondence course in statistics.