David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and '50s (Library of America) (24 page)

“A
LL RIGHT,
” John said. “Let him see where he is.”

The blindfold was removed. Vanning blinked a few times and then he looked at John. It was the same John. The same hunched shoulders, rather wide, the same creased leathery face and large, flat nose and thick lips that didn’t have very much blood in them. The same stringy necktie. Everything the same, even the way John wore his hair, a salt-and-pepper brush that covered his head like a mat of steel wool.

John put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. He seated himself on the edge of a studio couch. Sam and Pete were up against the wall, standing there like statues. That left Vanning in the center of the room, with light from the ceiling doing a slow fall onto the top of his head. There was some pain in his face from the brass knuckles, and there was a quantity of dizziness, but not so much that he couldn’t stand there balancing himself on two feet. He turned his back on the two men who stood against the wall. He looked at John.

“Well?” John said.

“Your move,” Vanning said.

They were gazing at each other as if they were alone in the room. John leaned back on an elbow, crossed one leg over the other and took a long, contemplative haul at the cigarette. He blew out the smoke in a single quick exhalation and said, “All I want is the cash.”

“I don’t know where it is.”

“Now say that again,” John said. “Just say it to yourself and hear how foolish it sounds.”

“I know it sounds foolish, but that’s the way it is and I can’t help it.”

John looked at the black-and-white shoes, the suit and shirt and blue-and-black tie and he said, “Nice clothes you have on.”

“I like them.”

“They cost money.”

“They’re not bad clothes,” Vanning admitted. “But they’re not the real high quality. Not the kind of quality I’d be wearing if I had that cash you’re talking about.”

“
It’s a point,” John said. “But not much of a point. What are you doing these days?”

Vanning liked that question. It was more of an answer than a question. It told him something he was hungry to know, and it offered a foundation for some strategy.

He said, “Nothing much.” He tossed a few ideas around in his head, selected one of them and added, “I have a photo studio uptown, West Side. I manage to make a living, and there’s a studio couch and a bathroom, and that way I save on rent.”

John looked at the floor and blew some smoke toward a faded violet rug. Vanning studied John’s face and told himself it had been a clever play. At least he understood now they didn’t know where he was living. He put it together rapidly. They had spotted him in the Village. Followed him. Made a fast contact with the girl and told her to work on him, to get him out of the bar and out of that street and into the restaurant on the dark and empty street. It was reasonable. It checked. It was a typical John manipulation. Because John had just so much brains and no more. John wasn’t exactly a fool, but he was harder than he was clever, and probably he knew that about himself, because he had a habit of laboring to be clever.

“Look,” John said. “You’ve got a fair amount of intelligence. You’re on one side and I’m on the other. That’s clear enough. So we’ll take it from there. It’s got to be managed along those lines. In order for you to stay alive and have a long, happy life ahead of you, what you have to do is tell me where you put that cash, then we keep you here until I have the cash, and then we let you go. Does that make sense?”

“It would make wonderful sense,” Vanning said, “except that I don’t know where that cash is located and that’s why I can’t tell you. Now does that make sense?”

“No, it doesn’t. I can see a man misplacing a ten-dollar bill. Maybe even a hundred-dollar bill. But it doesn’t figure that a man will let three hundred thousand dollars
slip out of his fingers just like that. And that brings us to another angle. If you really lost the money, you lost it in Colorado. And that means you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have the money. You’d still be in Colorado, looking for it.”

“Colorado is a big place.”

“
Three hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money. Most people I know would use a magnifying glass and search every inch of the state.”

“Maybe you and I don’t know the same kind of people.”

John threw the cigarette onto the floor, waited until it burned the rug, then stepped on it. He looked at the mashed stub. He said, “We’re not getting anywhere.” Then he looked up at Vanning without raising his head. “Are we?”

Vanning sighed. “We can’t get any further than this. I don’t know where it is. I tell you I don’t know where it is.”

“Don’t get excited,” John said. “We have plenty of time.”

“I don’t look at it that way. If I did, I’d try to stall. I’d try to bargain. I’d ask for some assurance that you’d leave me alone after you had the money, and I’d give you assurance that I’d leave you alone.”

“You wouldn’t have to do that,” John said. “We know you’d leave us alone. We know you wouldn’t go to the law. How could you go to the law when the law is looking for you?”

Vanning frowned. “What do you mean, looking for me?”

“You’re wanted for murder,” John said. “Didn’t you know that?”

“You’re way ahead of me,” Vanning said. “I don’t remember murdering anybody.”

John smiled with understanding and patience and allowed it to coast for a while. Then he beckoned with his fingers and said, “Come on, come on.”

Vanning, without moving his head, could see part of the window at his side, and he wondered if he could make it in one leap. He wondered how far it was to the ground. With a big effort he got his mind away from the window and he said, “How much do you know?”

“We know you killed him,” John said. “We know the law has you tagged. People saw you with him that night. So the law found out what you looked like. And the car license. That was another thing. Your description tallied with the description of the car owner. And still another thing, the big thing. You bought the car in Los Angeles and you got a license there. That gave them a record of your fingerprints, and the prints checked with prints on the gun.”

“How do you know all this?”

“
It’s the kind of news that gets around,” John said. “Newspapers and people talking and so forth. We hung around in Denver for a while, and then we picked up on you from a tip that came from New Orleans. Later we got another tip from Memphis. And then a third tip from New York. We figured you’d stay in New York for quite a time. It’s a nice place to hide. What happened was you were spotted in a Village bar. The man who made the contact had to go and lose you in a traffic jam, but we figured we’d tag you again, sooner or later. And that’s the way it adds, so now maybe we can come to terms.”

“I wish we could,” Vanning said. “I wish I had something to offer.”

“Put yourself in my place,” John said. “I’m very hungry for that cash. I’m so hungry that I’m willing to give you a slice. Say fifty thousand. How does it sound?”

“It sounds great. That’s what makes this picture so miserable. I just don’t know where that money is.”

John stood up. He said, “Final?”

“Final,” Vanning said.

“No,” John said. “I don’t think so.” He looked at the two men who stood motionless against the wall.

“Well?” Pete said.

“All right.” John was walking toward the door. “You can have him now.”

Beyond the pain, beyond the spinning and all the gleaming red, and beyond the falling rocks that crashed and clanged, and beyond the black flood shot with more red, with some livid purple in there, beyond all that, there was a stillness and it was the stillness of memory, and he groped his way toward it. And he came out in the bright gold of a springtime afternoon in Colorado, and in the pale blue convertible coupé he had bought in Los Angeles after receiving his discharge, he was driving toward Denver with the idea that he would stay in Denver for a while and then take his time going up to Chicago.

The convertible purred its way along the mountain road, and the radio purred along with it,
Noro Morales handing out a suave rhumba. The top was down and the sky was very clear and
it was good to know that the war was over and that agency in Chicago was the kind that kept its promises, a big firm with stability and energy, and they had liked his work and in reply to his letter they had told him to come on back and go to work. They asked him if seventy-five hundred a year was all right. He was thinking, before the war they had paid him five thousand a year. That was the kind of outfit it was. He felt good about going back. He felt good about everything. Chicago was an all-right place, and someday in the not too far distant future he ought to be meeting a nice girl and getting married and starting a home. It was a fine thing to be thirty-two and alive and healthy. It was a marvelous thing to be starting fresh.

He whistled along with Noro Morales and the convertible floated along the road.

Suddenly, away up there ahead of him, where the road went curving its way up along the mountain, there was a violent noise, and it sounded as if an automobile had crashed into something. Vanning pressed hard on the accelerator and the convertible leaped, and it took a few turns, made a whizzing straightaway run as the road sliced into a tunnel, came out to make another turn, then he saw a branching road, very narrow, almost at right angles to this road, and saw a wreckage.

It was a station wagon, and it was turned over on its side against a rock. Two men were stretched out on a patch of bright green near the rock, and a third man in his shirt sleeves was leaning against the rock.

Vanning turned the convertible onto the narrow road and raced it toward the scene of accident. As he brought the convertible to a stop, the man who was still upright came walking toward him. The man had a leathery face and hair that looked like a mat of steel wool. There was a leather contrivance under the man’s left shoulder and it was held there by straps, and now the man reached toward it, took something out of it, came up to Vanning and pointed the revolver in Vanning’s face.

“Get out of the car,” the man said. “Give me a hand.”

“Why the gun?”

“I said get out of the car.”

Vanning climbed out of the convertible and the man walked along with him. The two men on the ground were moving about and groaning. One of them, a big man with glasses hanging from
one of his ears, was slowly forcing himself to a sitting position, adjusting the glasses and staring around stupidly. The other man, small and wiry and getting bald, was out cold.

The man with the gun was saying, “How is it, Pete?”

“I think I’m all right,” the big man said. “Had the wind knocked out of me.” He looked at Vanning. “Where did you pick this up?”

“He just came along.”

The big man inclined his head to get a look at Vanning’s automobile.

“It’s a lucky break,” the big man said.

“Yeah, we’re overloaded with luck today,” said the man with the gun. He looked at the smashed station wagon. “Overloaded. Take the gun and keep it on this guy. I’ll have a look at Sam.”

“Maybe we ought to hurry,” Pete said.

“That’s why we smashed up. We were in too much of a hurry. Press the gun on him. He looks nervous.”

“Why should I be nervous?” Vanning said.

“You shut up,” Pete said. He prodded the gun against Vanning’s spine, held it there. A few moments later he said, “How does it look, John?”

“I think he’s done for,” said the man with steel-wool hair. “I think he busted his head. But he’s still breathing.”

“You think he’ll last long?”

“I can’t say.”

“I always told you Sam was a lousy driver. I told you he was no good in a squeeze.”

“Close your head. I’m trying to think what we should do.”

“Should we leave him here?”

“That’s why I asked you to close your head. Because every time you open your mouth you prove you were born without brains. How can we leave him here? Look at him. He’s still alive.”

“I know that, John, but you just claimed he won’t last long. What’s the use of letting him suffer? We’ll be doing him a favor if we put a bullet in him. All I got to do is——”

“Keep that gun where it is,” John said. “And keep your head closed while I figure this out.”

Just then the man on the ground let out a loud groan and opened his eyes.

“I don’t know, John. We ain’t got much time,” Pete said.

John looked down at the man on the ground. He said, “Sam, you drive like a monkey.”

Sam let out another groan and closed his eyes.

“You,” John said, and he pointed at Vanning, “you come over here and lend a hand.”

“Wait a minute,” Pete said. “What do you figure on doing?”

“What does it look like?”

“We can’t take Sam with us,” Pete said. “He’ll slow us down.”

“Sure, that’s right,” John said. “And if we leave him here and they find him and he’s still alive, the first thing he’ll think of is that we left him. I don’t think he’ll appreciate that. You never know. He might even open his mouth.”

“But if he’s dead he won’t be able to open his mouth.”

“What’s the matter, Pete? Don’t you like Sam?”

“I get along with Sam. You know that. But why take chances?”

“We won’t shoot him,” John said. “And we won’t talk about it any more. We’re taking him with us and if we can find a doctor somewhere we’ll see if he has a chance.” He glanced up at Vanning. “All right, you. Let’s go to work.”

Vanning and John carried the injured man to the convertible, placed him in the back seat. Then John ran back to the wrecked station wagon, got inside and came out, carrying a black satchel. He brought it back to the convertible, threw it on the floor near the front seat and said to Vanning, “Get in there and put the top down.”

“What do you want with me?” Vanning said. “Why don’t you take the car? Leave me here.”

“And have you describe the car to the law?” John smiled in appreciation of his own strategy. He shook his head. “Nothing doing. You come with us. And you drive. Pete, you stay in the back seat and look after Sam.”

“I still think,” Pete said, “it would be better if I put a bullet in Sam.”