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

by David Goodis

  He heard Della saying, “You’re controlled by a dead man.”

  “No.”

  “Gerald.”

  “No.”

  “Gerald,” she said. “This man who picked you up and kept you alive when no one else gave a good God damn. You were a kid there, standing in the road. You were dizzy and starving, you were sick, and the cars went past, one after another. They didn’t even look at you. But Gerald looked. Gerald picked you up. And that was it, that was your wonderful luck. It had to be Gerald who picked you up, Gerald who cared for you, fed you, put clothes on you, schooled you. Everything was Gerald. His ideas became your ideas. His life became your life. Now listen carefully while I tell you that when Gerald died his daughter became your daughter.”

  The room closed in on Harbin. The walls slanted and moved down on him. He could feel the nearness of the moving walls.

  He heard her saying, “All these years you’ve been ruled by it. Every move you make, guided by Gerald. Always, every minute, asleep or awake, Gerald telling you what to do, how to do it—”

  “Please, will you?” He shouted it. “Shut up.”

  “I want you to break loose. Be free of it once and for all.”

  Harbin heard something that sounded like, “Really, I can’t do that. It wouldn’t be honorable.” He wondered where the voice was coming from. He wondered whether it was coming from his own lips or whether it was some other voice that he could hear inside himself. He was looking at the door. He moved toward the door and the gun followed him. He knew it followed him and he knew it was a gun and what it could do. He went toward the door.

  “I’ll shoot you,” Della said. “I’ll shoot you dead.”

  He was past the edge of the bed and he heard Gerald telling him to take the haul. He walked past Della and picked up the unopened suitcase and went on toward the door. He heard Gerald telling him to hurry. The door was in front of him as he sensed the pointed gun behind him. He heard a sob coming from behind him. The door was opening. He continued to move, feeling the heaviness of the suitcase. Then from behind him he heard the sob again, and then a sound like a thud, and he knew it was the gun hitting the floor. Now the door was closed behind him. He was in the hall. For another moment he could hear the sobbing in the room behind him but something caused him to stop hearing it and the only thing behind him was Gerald, urging him down the hall, urging him toward Gladden.

  Chapter XVII

  ON THE boardwalk, he approached the hotel, he saw the sun hitting the silvery rail that separated the raised boards from the beach. There were a lot of people on the beach and most of them wore bathing suits. The beach was white-yellow under the sun. He looked at the ocean and it was flat and passive, with the heavy heat coming down on it, giving it the look of hot green metal. The waves were small and seemed to lack enthusiasm as they came up against the beach. In the water the bathers moved slowly, without much enjoyment, getting wet but not cool. He knew the water was warm and sticky and probably very dirty from the storm of Saturday night. Even so, he told himself, he would like to be in there in the ocean with the bathers, and maybe he and Gladden would have themselves a swim before leaving Atlantic City. The thought was an extreme sort of optimism but he repeated the thought and kept repeating it as he moved toward the entrance of the hotel.

  The old man was there behind the desk and Harbin came up to him and smiled and said, “When do you sleep?”

  “Snatches.” The old man was doing something to his thumbnail with the point of a pen.

  Harbin put down the suitcase. “I’d like to see Miss Green.”

  The old man pushed the pen-point against the cuticle. “It’s a scorcher. It’s a real scorcher today.” He looked at Harbin. “For this time of year it’s what I call flukey weather. I never seen such rotten heat. This town ain’t had a day like this in twenty years.”

  “Miss Irma Green.”

  “You look melted down,” the old man said. “We got a bath-house here. Want to get into a suit?”

  “I want to see Miss Green. Call her, will you please?”

  “She’s out.”

  “Checked out?”

  “No, just went out.”

  “Alone?”

  The old man showed a perfect set of teeth that spent part of each night in a glass of water. “You make me out to be an information desk.” He worked the pen-point against the side of his thumbnail, looked up sufficiently to see the bill in Harbin’s fingers. He took the bill from Harbin, crumbled it in his fist, then let it slide into the breast pocket of his grimy shirt. “She went out alone.”

  “When?”

  Turning his head slowly, his chin raised, the old man studied the wall-clock. It said four-forty. “Must have been a couple hours ago.”

  “Has the man been here since then?”

  “What man?”

  “You know who I mean.”

  “I don’t know anything unless I’m told about it.” The old man glanced calmly toward the little bulge in the breast pocket of his shirt, then his eyes traveled to the wall across the lobby and stayed there.

  “I mean the man who was here last night,” Harbin said. “The good-looking man with the blond hair. The man I watched from the little room while he walked out.”

  “Oh,” the old man said. “That man.” He waited a few moments, then he was too old and too weary to be ambitious for more money. “Yes, that man was here. Came in about twenty minutes ago. I told him she wasn’t in and he hung around long enough to light a smoke. You smoke?”

  Harbin gave the old man a cigarette, lit it for him. “Mind if I wait here?”

  “Make yourself comfortable.”

  There was a sofa and a few chairs. He let the suitcase remain where it was and sat in the sofa and after some minutes he checked the suitcase with the old man and strolled out of the lobby, walked across the boardwalk to the rail and stood there looking at the entrance of the hotel. He went through a few cigarettes, discovered that he was ready to eat something. The hotel was flanked by souvenir stores and sandwich stands that opened on the boardwalk. He bit into a ham-and-cheese sandwich, downing it with coffee while his eyes focused on the entrance of the hotel. He had another sandwich, some more coffee and then he bought a couple of newspapers and walked into the hotel and took the sofa again.

  Later, much later, it seemed to him that he had covered every word in both newspapers. He glanced at his wristwatch and it put the time at close to seven. The sun was still going strong outside and he was relieved to see the sunlight. Bringing his eyes back to the lobby he saw the old man behind the desk, working on another fingernail.

  He went back to the newspapers. It became seven-thirty. It became eight. Then eight-fifteen and eight-thirty. He was out of cigarettes and as he put the papers aside he sensed night coming in from the boardwalk. He looked toward the door and saw it was black out there.

  Near the door there was a cigarette machine and he was taking the pack from the slot when someone came into the lobby and pulled his eyes up and he saw it was Gladden. He said her name and she turned and stared at him.

  He moved toward her. She wore a hat that looked very new. It was a small hat, a pale and powdery orange, nothing on it but a long pin with a bright orange plastic head, like a big round glistening drop of juice.

  Getting in close, Harbin kept his voice low. “We skip. We got to do it now.”

  He wasn’t looking at her but he knew her eyes were on him. He heard her saying, “I told you I was out of it.”

  “Not yet.”

  She bit hard into each word. “I’m out of it.”

  “Your friend Charley doesn’t know that.” He took her arm.

  She pushed him away. “Go, will you? Just go. Get away from me.”

  “Let’s walk the boards.” He turned his head a little and saw curiosity on the face of the old man.

  Gladden said, “I want you to leave me alone. For the rest of my life I want to be left alone.”

  “The rest of your life is a mat
ter of minutes if you don’t let me help you.”

  Now he was looking at her and he saw it coming onto her face. It began with the eyes and after the eyes widened the lips parted and she could just about get the words out. “I won’t be bothered by Charley. So he is what he is. So what? There’s no reason why Charley should bother me. I’m not scared of Charley.”

  “You’re plenty scared,” he said. “You’re paralyzed. You’re so stiff you haven’t been able to budge. So much in a fog you didn’t have the brains to pack up and leave town. All you could do was float along the boardwalk and buy yourself a hat.” He turned, moved across the lobby, handed the old man some change and came back with the suitcase. Gladden looked at the suitcase. Harbin smiled and nodded and then he was talking her out of the lobby, onto the boardwalk. It was still very hot out, but now the beginning of a breeze came in from the ocean. The boardwalk lights made a curving parade of yellow spheres against the black, curving out to meet the majestic brilliance of the big pier, the entertainment bazaar, the white blaze of it far up ahead, Steel Pier.

  “My arm,” she said.

  He realized he was pressing it too hard. He let go. In front of him, a mile away, the lights of Steel Pier dazzled his eyes, and he blinked. He felt his walking motion on the boards, and Gladden walking beside him. He saw the other people on the boardwalk and it was a satisfying thing to see them there, all out there on the boardwalk to get the breeze.

  Gladden moved a step out in front of him to gaze up at his face. “Why did you come back?”

  He was lighting a cigarette. He got it lit, took in the taste of it, a harsh taste now after all the previous cigarettes. But still it tasted good, and the wood of the boardwalk felt good under his feet. He puffed at the cigarette, and then, his voice coming easily, he told her why he had come back. He made it as technical as he could, getting in all the details without elaborating on them. When he was finished they had covered half the distance to Steel Pier. He smiled dimly, contentedly at all the lights and all the people between his eyes and the Pier, and he waited for Gladden’s voice.

  She wasn’t saying anything. Her head was down and she was looking at the shiny wood of the boardwalk as it went flowing past her moving feet.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Thanks for coming back.”

  Her voice was grey and dismal, the heaviness of it came against him. He frowned. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I have a feeling. Maybe it would have been better the other way.” Before he could reply, she murmured, “Nat, I’m tired.”

  There was a pavilion close by, and he took her to it. The pavilion was a little more than half filled, mostly middle-aged people who sat there with nothing on their faces. There were some children moving restlessly among the benches, and a man wearing a white marine cap was selling bricks of ice cream.

  The bench Harbin selected was toward the middle of the pavilion where it went away from the boardwalk to hover over the beach. As he came against the bench he felt the secure comfort of it and he looked at Gladden and saw that she was leaning her head far back, her eyes closed, her mouth set in a tight line.

  He said, “That’s a nice hat you bought.”

  She didn’t respond. Her face stayed the way it was.

  “Really an elegant hat,” he said. “You got good taste.”

  Gladden opened her eyes and looked at him. “I wish you hadn’t come back.”

  “Quit talking foolish.” His lips curved upward in a scolding smile. “This isn’t the time to talk foolish. What we do now is plan. We have the opening and what we do is use it.”

  “For what good reason?”

  “To stay alive.”

  “I’m not too sure that I want to stay alive.”

  Harbin sent his eyes toward the boardwalk in front of him, where the parade of people was a stream of mixed pastels. He shook his head slowly and sighed heavily.

  “I can’t help it,” Gladden said. “That’s the way I feel.” She put a hand to her eyes. “I’m tired. I’m so tired of keeping it in, holding it back, the way I feel.” She began to breathe like a marathon runner finally giving up. “I can’t go on with it anymore. There’s nothing to gain.”

  “That’s right.” He looked at her. “Make it complicated. Make it miserable.”

  “I’ve always made it miserable for you.” She made a move to take his arm, then pulled her hand away. “All I’ve ever done was hold you back.”

  “Let’s do a smart thing. Let’s let it ride.”

  “Ride where?” she asked, then answered it. “Nowhere.” Now she took his arm, but only to make him pay close attention. “The way it lines up, it’s no good. Last night,” and now there was a choking in her voice, “I threw you out of my room. I called you names because I couldn’t tell you what I really felt. I’ve never been able to tell you what I feel. Until now. Because now it’s like when they say the time has come. Like in a story I read once where there’s a walrus and he says the time has come.”

  Her hold on his arm was very tight and he wondered for a moment if that was where the pain was. And then he knew it wasn’t in his arm.

  “So now,” she said, “the time has come. I love you, Nat. I love you so much I want to die. I really want to die, and whether it comes from Charley or no matter how it comes, I don’t care, I just want to die. You see,” and she turned her head away from him, not wanting him to see, “it’s no good when you’re sad all the time.”

  He tried to get rid of the big heavy thing in his throat. “Don’t say that.” He knew it only made things worse and wanted so much to make things better and didn’t know how. “I’ve given you one hell of a rotten trip.”

  “Not your fault. Not the least bit your fault.” She took her hand away from his arm. “I get the blame. I knew I wasn’t needed, so what did I do? I hung around. Like a leech.” Her eyes, condemning herself, were dreary yellow. “That’s all I’ve ever been. A leech.” And then, the lips barely moving, “The only time a leech comes in handy is when it dies.”

  For an instant he wasn’t able to move, to breathe, to think. It was the complete stillness that comes just before a cannonade. And as the thing hit the sky and split the black apart, he told himself it was love. He drilled it, with a hard and wild frantic drilling, telling himself it was love, drilling it into himself as his arms shot out to take Gladden, to pull her against himself and hold her there. With him.

  “You won’t get away,” he said. “I’ll never let you get away.”

  Staggered, dazed, her eyes reaching toward Harbin’s eyes, the softness of her voice covered the screaming inside. “You do care?” And then, her voice still soft, “You do care. You do, you do, I know you do.”

  “I do.” Just then the knowledge came and he understood what it all was, and who had sent the cannonade, and who had done the drilling, who had moved his arms for him and kept his arms where they were now. He knew it with complete knowing. He knew it was Gerald and it was Gerald causing him to say it as he said, “I love you, Gladden.”

  Chapter XVIII

  THE BREEZE coming in from the ocean was swifter now, and the news of the breeze must have reached the streets, because more people were coming onto the boardwalk and arriving there with pleasure on their faces. Lit brightly with the faces and the lights, the white lights of the boardwalk lampposts and the colored lights of the boardwalk shops and cafes and hotels, the boardwalk was a ribbon of movement and high glow, many colors and many sounds, sparkling there, its brightness slicing the black of sky and beach and ocean.

  From the boards there was a steady flow of people coming into the pavilion and it became filled. The man selling ice cream was doing good business, and a competitor saw what was happening and moved mechanically toward the pavilion. The people sat there and bought ice cream and took in the breeze, feeling the cool of it, breathing in the salt of it, content to sit there and take it. There was very little talking in the pavilion. They were there to get the breeze.

  Harbin wanted more talk
ing, more sound. It was time, he knew, to shape a plan and he couldn’t very well talk plans with Gladden against this quiet. He turned his head and looked toward the rear of the pavilion where it hung over the beach. There was one empty bench and it was on the last row, set close to the rail and somewhat isolated. The edge of it was near the stairs going down to the beach. He stood up with the suitcase and Gladden followed him to the rear of the pavilion and they took the bench. Ahead of them there was a slight scurry as some people raced toward the bench they had vacated. There was some pushing and shoving up there and the beginning of an argument. The voices climbed, an elderly woman called another woman a name and was called a name in return and that more or less settled it and the pavilion was quiet again.

  “Let’s figure it.” He lit a cigarette. Gladden leaned against his shoulder and the pale gold under his eyes was her hair flowing across his chest, gliding in the breeze.

  “Money,” Gladden said. “All my cash is in the room. We’ll have to go back.”

  “No.” His thoughts were moving out across a mixture of checkerboard and blueprint. “I’m carrying enough. Almost seven grand.”

  “Big bills?”

  “Mostly.”

  “That’s a problem.”

  “Not for awhile. There’s enough tens and fives to keep us moving.” He took a long pull at the cigarette. “What bothers me is transportation.”

  He looked up at the jet sky. It was sprinkled heavily with stars and there was a full moon. Between the stars and the moon he traced a pattern of travel, sending a map up there and seeing Gladden and himself moving across the map, going somewhere. He wondered where. He wondered how long it would take to get there, and whether they would ever get there. The map in the sky became a dismal map and he told himself to quit looking at it. The map wasn’t giving him any ideas. He needed ideas and they weren’t coming. He tried to force them but that was no good, he knew it was no good and he decided to let them flow in toward him of their own accord.