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

by David Goodis

  He didn’t say anything.

  “I want it now. I want an answer.”

  “It takes time.”

  “Don’t bore me,” she said. “Don’t stand there thinking it over.” A certain rigidity came into her voice. She behaved as though they were in the midst of a crisis. “I’ve waited for tonight. I’ve waited a long time. I sat there tonight and watched you at that table. I watched you eating your dinner. And I knew. Not the trace of a doubt.”

  He glanced at his wristwatch. “We’ve known each other exactly two hours and sixteen minutes.”

  She was up and away from the sofa and coming toward him. “You letting that wristwatch make your decisions? I’ve never been guided by time. I won’t let myself be guided by it. Jesus Christ in Heaven, I know, I know, I’m standing here and telling you I know. And you know, too. And if you deny that, if you doubt it, if you can’t make up your mind right now, I swear I’ll throw you out of here—”

  Closing in on her, he smothered her mouth.

  The liquid of her lips poured into his veins. There was a bursting in his brain as everything went out of his brain and Della came in, filling his brain so that his brain was crammed with Della. For a single vicious moment he tried to break away from her and come back to himself, and in that moment they were helping him, Dohmer and Baylock. They were helping him as he tried to pull away. But Gladden wasn’t helping. Gladden was nowhere around. Gladden ought to be here, helping. Gladden was letting him down. If Gladden hadn’t gone away, this wouldn’t be happening. It was all Gladden’s fault. He took it that far and he couldn’t take it any farther, because from there on it was all Della. It was very distant from the earth and there was nothing but Della.

  A little past six in the morning he stood under a shower and let the water run as cold as it cared to. He heard her voice beyond the bathroom door, asking him what he wanted for breakfast. He told her to go back to sleep, he would get something outside. She said he would eat breakfast here. When he came downstairs, the orange juice was already fixed and she was busy in the kitchen with eggs and bacon.

  They sipped orange juice. She said, “Soon we’ll do this in the country.”

  “You like the country?”

  “Far out,” she said. “I already have a place. Midway between here and Harrisburg. It’s a farm, but we won’t farm. We’ll just live there. It’s a marvelous place. My car’s being fixed but maybe it’ll be ready by noon. We’ll drive out today and I’ll show it to you.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have a couple of people to see.”

  “You mean you have to work?”

  “In a way.”

  “How long will you be away?”

  “I don’t know. Talk to me. Tell me more about this place in the country.”

  “It’s about thirty miles the other side of Lancaster. The famous rolling hills of Pennsylvania. This is a very high hill. We’re not at the top, but on the side of the hill where it has a gradual slant, then levels off for awhile before it goes down again. What you see from here is all the other hills going out, the greenest hills you ever saw in your life. Then away, far away, but somehow so close that it seems right next door, we have mountains. Lavender mountains. You see the river but before that you see the brook. It runs coming up toward you in a lot of soft easy jumps, curving up to the pond that’s where you can reach in and get your hand wet if you lean out the bedroom window. It’s deep enough, this pond, so in the morning if you feel in the mood, you can roll yourself out the window and go into the water.”

  “What do we do there?”

  “We just stay there. Up there together in that place on that hill. Not a soul anywhere near. We’ll be together there.”

  He nodded. Inside himself he repeated the nod.

  They finished breakfast, had an extra coffee and a few cigarettes and then she walked him to the door. He put his hands on her face.

  “You stay here,” he said. “Wait for my call. I’ll come back a little past noon and we’ll drive out to see our estate.”

  Her eyes were closed. “I know this is permanent. I know it—”

  As he left the house, it seemed to him that he had no weight at all.

  The cab let him out at Kensington and Allegheny and he decided to walk the seven blocks back to the Spot. He didn’t feel like returning to the Spot. He had no desire to see the Spot, wishing there was some other place he could go. What he really wanted to do was hail another cab and drive back to Della. He moved toward the Spot with a drag in his legs, a frown that became deeper as he came closer to the emeralds and Dohmer and Baylock.

  He walked into the Spot to hear Dohmer cursing the kitchen. “Mice,” Dohmer was shouting. “These damn mice.” Then Dohmer appeared from the kitchen and stared at him. “Where you been all night?”

  “With a woman. Baylock sleeping?”

  “Dead,” Dohmer said. “We played cards until four-thirty. I took him for near a hundred. We got a flock of mice in the kitchen.”

  “Go upstairs and wake him up.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Do I look wrong?”

  “You bet your life you do,” Dohmer said. “You look from the clouds. Someone stick a needle in you?”

  Harbin didn’t answer. He watched Dohmer climbing the stairs, and put a cigarette in his mouth and began to chew on it, then pulled it from between his teeth and shredded the tobacco onto the floor. From upstairs, Baylock protested whiningly that all he wanted from life was to be let alone, to be allowed to sleep and die.

  They came down and Baylock took one look at him and said, quickly, anxiously, with a bit of a hiss, “What happened? I bet something happened.”

  “Stop it,” Harbin started to light the cigarette but it was a mess. He took another one. “I’m out.”

  Dohmer looked at Baylock and Baylock gazed at a wall. Baylock’s head turned like the head of a puppet. His eyes came back to Harbin and he said, “I knew right away.” His head went on turning, aiming toward Dohmer. “I knew something happened.”

  “Nothing except that I’m walking out,” Harbin said. “Listen to it and take it or don’t take it. But I found myself a woman last night. I’m going away with her. Today.”

  “He’s away,” Dohmer gasped. “He’s all away.”

  Harbin nodded slowly. “That’s the only way, the only way to put it.”

  Baylock scratched the side of his face. He looked at Harbin, looked away. “I don’t see how you can do it.”

  “Easy,” Harbin said. “With the legs. Right foot, left foot and you’re walking out.”

  “No,” Baylock shook his head quickly. “No, you can’t do it.”

  “You can’t do it,” Dohmer told Harbin. “For God’s sake.”

  “The woman,” Baylock asked. “Who’s this woman?”

  “Just a woman,” Harbin said. “That’s all you get.”

  “You hear this?” Baylock posed Dohmer. “You hear it? He says that’s all we get. No rundown, no listing, no nothing. Just a woman, and he’s going away. Like that,” and Baylock snapped his fingers. And then turned to Harbin, “How well do you think you know me? How well do you think you know him?” and he pointed toward Dohmer. “You really believe we’ll stand here and watch you walk out?” Then he started to laugh, sliced it hard, peered at Harbin as though his eyes looked through slits in a wall. “You’re so wrong, Nat. You’re so wrong it’s almost comical. We can’t let you walk out.”

  Harbin felt the floor under his feet. It began to sag just a little. He waited for it to get firm again. He said, “Keep the thing technical.”

  Baylock held his arms wide. “It’s a hundred per cent technical. If you walk out, there’s a crack in the dam. The dam gets wider. The water starts coming in. Your own words, Nat. We’re an organization. We’re hot as a furnace in seven big cities and you know how many small towns. If they get Dohmer, it’s ten to twenty. Same with Gladden. If I get caught, goodbye everybody. Makes me a thr
ee-time loser and that’s twenty to forty at a minimum. Listen, Nat,” and Baylock crouched, his eyes almost closed. “When I die, I want to die in the sunshine.”

  Harbin waited a moment. Then he shook his head slowly. “You haven’t made your point.”

  “My point is,” Baylock’s voice held a slight tremor, “the minute you walk out of here, you’re on the debit side.”

  “You think,” Harbin said, “I’d play it filthy? You think I’d ever open my mouth?”

  “I don’t think so,” Dohmer spoke huskily. “I’d bet a million to one against it. But all the same it remains a bet.” He resumed shaking his head. “I don’t want to make this kind of a bet.”

  “Another thing,” Baylock said. “What about your split of the haul?”

  “I’ll want that.” Harbin was taking his mind ahead of them. He felt no interest in his split of the haul but now the thing was becoming stud poker and he saw the need for maneuvering himself out of the wedge they had created around him.

  Baylock moved in. “He wants his split of the haul. That’s real nice.”

  “What’s not nice about it?” Harbin made his voice a little louder. “When you say my split, you mean my split. Don’t I get it?”

  “No,” Baylock was testing him, weighing him. It wasn’t good testing. It wasn’t sufficiently hidden. Baylock’s face showed the testing and gave Harbin the formula for the next move.

  Harbin walked across the room and sat down on a chair that looked sick. He gazed thoughtfully at the floor. “You’re a dog, Joe. You know that? You realize what a dog you are?”

  “Look at me,” Baylock shouted. “You see me trying to walk out?” Baylock worked his way toward Harbin, seeming to be pulled along on tracks. “I’m willing to talk it over but you won’t talk.” Baylock waited for talk and Harbin offered nothing, and eventually Baylock said, “All we want is the reason. Something we can believe.” Then Baylock was away from the poker table. “Give it to us, will you? If you give it to us, maybe we’ll understand. We can’t believe this thing with the woman, we want to know what it really is.”

  Harbin had it now, seeing the closed card Baylock had displayed, and knowing fully that he sat alone at the table with all the winnings, because actually they weren’t in a class with him, they couldn’t begin to compete with him when it came to manipulating a situation. It was definite. Yet, underneath his expressionless face he was angry with them. They were forcing him into an area of deceit, actually urging him to lie. And he hated to lie. Even in the line of business with outsiders he felt unsanitary when he was lying. And now they had so arranged it that he had to give them a lie.

  He said, “If you really want it, I’ll give it to you. I’d hoped you wouldn’t make me say it, but the way it is, I guess I’ll just have to tell you.” He figured it was time for a sigh, and then, while they stared and didn’t breathe, “There’s big jobs I want to do, and you just don’t fit in. You don’t have what I need. You don’t have it, that’s all.”

  The quiet that came then was a quiet with their shock in it, their dismay, their agony. Dohmer had a hand to the side of his face, and he was shaking his head and making odd little noises deep in his throat. Baylock began walking aimlessly around the room, trying to say something and unable to pull a sound from his mouth.

  “I didn’t want to say it,” Harbin said. “You made me say it.”

  Baylock leaned against a wall and gazed at empty air. “We don’t have what you need? We ain’t first-rate?”

  “That’s the thing. It’s the nerves, mostly. I saw it coming and I didn’t want to believe it. You’ve been getting shaky, the two of you. And Gladden doesn’t have the health. I saw it the other night. I was bothered by it. Bothered too much.”

  Baylock turned to Dohmer, “He means we ain’t in his league.”

  “I want to hit very big jobs,” Harbin told them. “Triple the risk. Jobs where every move is high-class dancing, where even your toenails have to be in place. I need the best people I can get.”

  “You got them already?” Baylock asked.

  Harbin shook his head. “I’m going out to look for them.”

  The quiet came again, and finally Dohmer stood up and sounded an immense sigh with a grunt in it. “If it’s got to be this way, it’s got to be this way.”

  “One thing.” Harbin was moving toward the door. “Be good to Gladden. Be real good to her.”

  Now he had his back to them. The door came closer. He heard Dohmer’s heavy breathing. He thought he heard Dohmer gasping, “Nat, for God’s sake—” and a final pleading whimper from Baylock, and then another voice, and a shudder went through him as he sensed it was Gladden’s voice. All their voices were with him as he opened the door, then floated away behind him as he walked out.

  Chapter VII

  DELLA’S CAr was a pale green Pontiac, a new convertible, and they had the top down as they ran past Lancaster, going west on Route 30, holding it at fifty miles an hour with the sun over their heads and honeysuckle coming into their faces. The road dipped evenly, the hills rising smoothly, softly on both sides of the road. Then the road followed the lines of the hills and they were climbing.

  “I notice,” Della said, “you didn’t bring your things.” She indicated his attire. “Those all the clothes you have?”

  “They’re all I need.”

  “I don’t like the suit.”

  “You’ll get me another one.”

  “I’ll get you everything.” She smiled. “What do you want?”

  “Nothing.”

  The Pontiac curved and climbed and reached the top of a hill from where they looked out ahead, saw more hills, higher than this one, green hills a quiet glimmer under the heavy sun. A snake made of silver curled its way around one of the hills and as it came closer he knew it was the hill she had talked of, and the house was on that hill. He could see it now, a house of white stone and a yellow gabled roof, set on the slight plateau that interrupted the rise of the hill, and the silver snake was the brook, and now the pond, another thing of silver, and the river down and away to the north, and the lavender mountains.

  She drove the car down, went up and down a few more hills, turned it onto a narrow unpaved road and again the car began to climb. They were going up the hill. Alongside, maybe fifty yards away, the brook going down from the pond to the river seemed to be climbing with them. He had a feeling they were going away from all the people of the world. There was another road, narrower than this one, and tall grass and trees came up and crowded them for awhile, and then the house was there. She parked the car beside the house, and they got out of the car and stood there looking at the house.

  “I bought it four months ago,” she told him. “I’ve been coming up here week-ends, staying here alone, wanting someone to be here with me. In this place. Here, completely here, and never to go away.”

  They entered the house. She had done it in mostly tan, the color of her hair, with yellow here and there, and a tan broadloom rug that stopped only when it reached the yellow kitchen. From the kitchen they could see the barn, the same oyster-white as the house. Then the rest of the small plateau that was a green table-top beyond the barn.

  She seated herself at the piano and played something from Schumann. He stood near the piano. For awhile he heard the music, but gradually it became nothing. He felt the frown cutting into his brow. Then he heard the abrupt quiet that meant her fingers were off the keys.

  “Now,” she said. “Now start telling me.”

  He put a cigarette in his mouth, took a bite at it, took it out of his mouth and placed it carefully in a large glass ashtray. “I’m a crook.”

  After awhile she said, “What kind?”

  “Burglar.”

  “Work alone?”

  “I had three people with me.”

  “What about them?”

  “This morning I said goodbye.”

  “They argue?”

  “A little. I had to make it fancy. I said I had big plans and
they didn’t rate high enough to be included.”

  She crossed the room and settled herself in a tan chair. “What’s your specialty?”

  “We went in for stones. Now they got themselves a haul in emeralds and they’ll have to wait a long time before making it into money. But all that’s away from where I am now. It’s strictly yesterday.”

  “But it still bothers you.”

  “One part of it.”

  “I want to know about that. We’ve got to clear up anything that bothers you. We’re starting now, and I don’t want a single thing to bother you.”

  “One of us,” he said, “was a girl.” Then he told her about Gladden, and Gladden’s father, and all the years of it. “She always wanted to get out, but drilled it into herself she would never get out unless I did. Now I’m out. And where is she?”

  “That’s a question.”

  “Help me with this,” he was walking up and down. “Driving out here, I kept thinking about her. I felt rotten about it and I still feel rotten. I wish I knew what to do.”

  Della smiled dimly. “You have a feeling for this girl—”