David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and '50s (Library of America) (11 page)

I
T WAS
the same Studebaker. It was the very same, the same Studebaker from way back. The same hunk of junk that had picked him up on the road. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be. And yet it was. There it was, parked across the street. There it was. Waiting there. The same Studebaker.

Parry came toward the apartment house, not knowing he was going toward the apartment house, knowing only that he was going toward the Studebaker, wanting to make sure that it was the same car and knowing it was the same car and not believing it was the same car and knowing it anyway. There was nobody in the car. It couldn’t be the same car.

It was the same car.

He didn’t want to start asking himself why. And how. And why and how and when and how and why and how and why. He asked and he couldn’t answer. If there was any answer at all it was coincidence. But there was a limit to coincidence and this was way past the limit. This neighborhood aimed toward upper middle class, anywhere from fifteen thousand a year on up. Or give Studebaker a break and make it ten thousand. Even seventy-five hundred and still Studebaker didn’t belong around here. Studebaker was way down in the sharecropper category. And the car was parked in front of an apartment house that wouldn’t rent closet space for less than one ten a month. It couldn’t be the same car.

It was the same car.

All right, Studebaker worked there as a janitor. No. All right, Studebaker had a wealthy brother living there. No. All right, Studebaker was driving down the street and he ran out of gas and had to park there. No. No and no and no.

It wasn’t the same car. It couldn’t be the same car.

It was the same car.

The morning light came down and tried to glimmer on the Studebaker. There was no polish on the Studebaker and very little paint, therefore very little glimmer. There was only the old
Studebaker coupé, dull and quiet there on the other side of the street, waiting for him.

Parry turned and went toward the apartment house. He was staggering now. On the steps he stumbled and fell. In the vestibule his finger went toward the wrong button and he veered it away just in time and got it going toward the right button and pressed the button.

He got a buzz. He went through the lobby and entered the elevator. He pressed the 3 button. The elevator started up and Parry felt himself going down. As the elevator went up he kept going down and his eyes were closed now. He saw the black wall of his shut eyelids and then he saw the bright orange and the trapeze again and he saw the gold inlays in the laughing mouth and then he saw the black again just before everything became bright orange and after that it was all black and he was going in there in the black and he was in there. He was in the black.

Gradually the black gave way and its place was taken by grey-violet and yellow. He was on the sofa. He looked up and he saw her. She was standing beside the sofa, watching him. She smiled.

She said, “I didn’t think you’d come back.”

She was wearing a yellow robe. Her yellow hair came down and sprayed her shoulders.

She said, “When I heard the buzzer I was frightened. When nobody came up I was terribly frightened. Then after a while I went out in the hall and I saw the light from the elevator. I went down there and I opened the elevator and I saw you in there. I was so very frightened when I saw the bandages but I recognized the suit and so I understood the bandages. I’m lucky you’re not heavy, because otherwise I couldn’t have managed it. Tell me what happened to you.”

Parry shook his head.

“Why not?”

He shook his head.

“Why can’t you tell me?”

He pointed to his mouth. He shook his head.

“Can you talk?”

He shook his head.

“
Can I do anything for you?”

He shook his head. Then he nodded. With an imaginary pencil he scribbled on a palm. She hurried out of the room. She came back with a pad and a pencil.

Parry wrote——

A taxi driver recognized me. He offered to help me. He took me to a plastic specialist who operated on my face. Then he brought me back and left me off a few blocks from here. The bandages must stay on for five days. I can eat only liquids and I’ve got to take them through a glass straw. I can smoke cigarettes if you have a holder. I’ve got to sleep on my back and to keep from turning over on my face I’ve got to have my wrists tied to the sides of the bed. My face hurts terribly and so do my arms where he had to cut to get new skin for my face. I’m very tired and I want to sleep.

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 was 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.