David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and '50s (Library of America) (26 page)

That part of it was too much for him. He didn’t have the gun. He had the satchel. He had left the gun there and had picked up the satchel. He wondered what he wanted with the satchel. He wondered why he had taken it in the first place. For that one he had an answer. He had intended to give the satchel to the police. So that was all right. But he couldn’t figure out why he had taken the satchel from the dead man. Perhaps the answer was identical with the first answer. Perhaps he had still intended to visit the police. And yet that was sort of weak, because now he couldn’t remember holding that idea in his mind. The only thing he now completely realized was that he had killed a man and now in his possession he had a satchel containing three hundred thousand dollars and he was running away. And he was very much afraid of the satchel.

Gradually, as his physical endurance lessened, the mental side
became clearer, and he was putting pieces together and drawing conclusions. The thing that made it very bad was the way John had held the gun so close to him that people couldn’t notice the gun. Even the doctor in Leadville had not seen the gun. And the hotel clerk in Denver. And the people in the lobby. Nobody had seen the gun. All they had seen was John and Pete and himself, together in the blue convertible, together in the hotel, and that made the whole thing miserable. But it had to split somewhere along the line. It couldn’t keep up this way. Maybe in another ten or twenty minutes or so he would have a hold on himself and he would be ready to visit the police and tell them all about it.

The thought was in there, solid and compact, very pure and logical. But it lasted for only a few moments. After that it began to float away from him because he was telling the story to himself as he would tell it to the police, and it seemed like a foolish story. It seemed a little fantastic and more than a little ridiculous. The bathroom, for instance. They had put him in the bathroom but they had not locked the door. That was the start, and from there on it became downright comical. They had gone out of the room, leaving him in the bathroom with the door closed but unlocked. He had come out of the bathroom. And there on the bed, all ready for him, was a revolver. And there on the dresser, shining and plump, was the little black satchel with all that money in it. He could see the faces of policemen, he could see them looking at each other, he could see them leaning toward him with disbelief jumping out of their eyes. And yet, with all that, one big weapon remained on his side. He still had the satchel.

He told himself that. He still had it and he could go to them and hand it over and he still had the satchel. He begged himself to believe that he still had it as he raised his hands and looked at his hands, saw two white hands against the background of black woods. And no satchel.

There was a moment of nothing. No thought, no motion, nothing. Then an attempt to reason it out. Then the realization that he couldn’t reason it out, it was too far away from him. It was away back there an hour ago, or two hours ago, miles away back there. Maybe during the minutes when he was crossing the stream. Maybe ten minutes later in these vast woods.
Maybe an hour later. But there was no way of putting it on a definite basis, no way of remembering when he had let the satchel fall from his hand, or where he had let it fall.

Again Vanning saw the faces of policemen. Big pink faces that formed a circle around him, came moving in on him. And one of them was bigger than all the rest and the mouth was moving. He could hear the voice. The voice hit him, bounced back. He stumbled toward the voice and the voice hit him again.

The voice said, “You say you came out of that room and you were carrying the satchel. Is that right?”

“Yes,” Vanning said.

“What were you going to do with the satchel?”

“Hand it over to you.”

“All right. Then what?”

“He came in from behind me and put a gun in my back. We went out of the hotel. Then when we were on that narrow street he took the satchel away and told me it was too bad, but he was forced to do away with me.”

“Then what?”

“I took the gun out of my pocket and shot him.”

“Just like that?”

“Yes,” Vanning said.

“What about his gun?”

“He didn’t use it.”

“Why not?”

“I guess he was too surprised. I guess that was the last thing he expected, my having a gun.”

“Your own gun?”

“No,” Vanning said, “I told you how I got it.”

“Yes, you did tell us that, but I’m wondering if you expect us to believe it. Doesn’t matter. We’ll skip that section. We’ll put you on that street with him. He’s dead. You’re standing there, looking down at him. And now what do you do?”

“I start running.”

“Why?”

“I’m afraid.”

“What’s there to be afraid of? You haven’t done anything wrong. You’ve killed a man, but you’ve done it in self-defense. You’re in the clear. What bothers you?”

“
The satchel. I saw that I had it in my hand. I couldn’t remember picking it up. But there it was, in my
hand.”

“Well,” the policeman said, “that was all right too. You still had the satchel. Why didn’t you come into Denver and hand it over?”

“I was afraid. I didn’t think you’d believe my story. You know the way it sounds. It’s one of those stories that doesn’t check.”

“I’m glad you understand that,” the policeman said. “It makes things easier for both of us. So now we have you in those woods and you’re running and still have the satchel. And what happens?”

“I don’t have the satchel any more.”

“It takes a jump away from you and runs away, is that it?”

“I just don’t have that satchel any more,” Vanning said. “I can’t remember where I dropped it. I must have been in the woods for two or three hours and I couldn’t have been traveling in a straight line. And the woods were thick, there was so much brush, there was a swampy section, there were a million places where I could have dropped the satchel. Can’t you understand my condition? How confused I was? Try to understand. Give me any sort of a test. Please believe me.”

“Sure,” the policeman said. “I believe you. We all believe you. It’s as simple and clear as a glass of water. You took the satchel. You ran away with it. That’s what you say and that’s what we believe. And that brings us to the other thing. In order to get that satchel you had to kill a man. So we’ve circled around now and we’ve come back to it and honest to goodness, mister, you’re so far behind the eight ball that it looks like the head of a pin. It’s too bad you had to go and get yourself mixed up with the wrong people. We’re holding you on grand larceny and murder in the first degree.”

“But I gave myself up. I came to you. I didn’t have to do that.”

“You didn’t bring the satchel.”

“I don’t know where it is.”

“Oh, now, why don’t you cut that out?”

“I tell you I don’t know where it is. I dropped it someplace. I lost it. Look, I didn’t have to come here and tell you all this. I could have kept on running. But I came here.”

“It’s a point in your favor,” the policeman said. “As a matter of fact,
you have quite a few points on your side. No past record. The fact that the other man was holding a gun when you killed him. The fact that you had a legitimate occupation waiting for you in Chicago. So all that may get you some sort of a break. We may be able to work something out. Tell you what. You tell us where you’ve got that satchel hidden.”

“I can’t tell you that. I don’t know where it is.”

The policeman looked at the other faces and sighed. Then he looked at Vanning. His face loomed in front of Vanning as he said, “All right, you can still help yourself out a little, even if you want to be stubborn about that three hundred thousand. What you can do is plead guilty to grand larceny and murder in the second degree. That’s giving you a break, bringing it down to second-degree murder, and that ought to send you up for about ten years. If you behave yourself you ought to get out in five, maybe even two or three if you’re lucky.”

“I won’t do that,” Vanning said. “I won’t ruin myself. I’m an innocent man. I’m a young man and I’m not going to mess up my life.”

The policeman shrugged. All the policemen shrugged. The woods shrugged and the sky shrugged. None of them especially cared. It meant nothing to them. It meant nothing to the universe with the exception of this one tiny, moving, breathing thing called Vanning, and what it meant to him was fear and fleeing. And hiding. And fleeing again. And more hiding.

He stayed in the woods for another day and another night, went on through the woods until he found a clearance, and then railroad tracks. A freight came along and he hopped it. Later he hopped another freight and still another and finally arrived in New Orleans. He called himself Wilson and got a job on the water front. The pay was good, and with time and a half for overtime he soon had enough for more travel.

In Memphis he called himself Donahue and worked as a truck driver. Then up from Memphis, a short stay in Washington, and winding up in New York with three hundred dollars in his pocket. He called himself Rayburn and took the room in the Village. He went out and bought artist’s materials and for two weeks he went at it furiously, building up a portfolio.

Then he went around with the portfolio and after a week of that he received his first assignment. At the beginning he had a thick
mustache and wore dark glasses and combed his hair with a part in the middle. Later he discarded the glasses, and after that the mustache, and eventually he went back to the old way of combing his hair. He knew he was taking a big gamble, but it was something he had to do. He had to get rid of the hollow feeling, the grotesque knowledge that he was a hunted man.

He worked, he ate, he slept. He managed to keep going. But it was very difficult. It was almost unbearable at times, especially nights when he could see the moon from his window. He had a weakness for the moon. It gave him pain, but he wanted to see it up there. And beyond that want, so far beyond it, so futile, was the want for someone to be at his side, looking at the moon as he looked at it, sharing the moon with him. He was so lonely. And sometimes in this loneliness he became exceedingly conscious of his age, and he told himself he was missing out on the one thing he wanted above all else, a woman to love, a woman with whom he could make a home. A home. And children. He almost wept whenever he thought about it and realized how far away it was. He was crazy about kids. It was worth everything, all the struggle and heartache and worry, if only someday he could marry someone real and good, and have kids. Four kids, five kids, six kids, and grow up with them, show them how to handle a football, romp with them on the beach with their mother watching, smiling, so proudly, happily, and sitting at the table with her face across from him, and the faces of the kids, and waking up in the morning and going to work, knowing there was something to work for, and all that was as far away as the moon, and at times it seemed as though the moon was shaking its big pearly head and telling him it was no go, he might as well forget about it and stop eating his heart out.

The moon expanded after a while, and it became a brightly lit room that had two faces planted on the ceiling. One of the faces was big and wore glasses. The other face was gray and bony and topped by a balding skull. The faces flowed down from the ceiling and became stabilized, attached to torsos that stood on legs. And Vanning groaned.

Then he blinked a few times and put a hand to his mouth. The
hand came away bloody. He looked at the blood. He tasted blood in his mouth.

A door opened. Vanning turned and saw John entering the room. He grinned at John.

John had his hands in trousers pockets and was biting his lip and gazing at nothing special. Vanning stood up, stumbled and hit the bed and fell on it.

Pete moved toward Vanning and John said, “No.”

“Let me work on him alone,” Pete said. “Sam gets in my way.”

“You hit him too hard,” Sam said. “You knocked him out too fast. That ain’t the way.”

“I don’t need Sam, I can operate better alone,” Pete said. He was removing brass knuckles from his right hand. He rubbed his hands together and took a step toward the bed.

“Leave him alone,” John said. “Get away from him.”

“I’d like a drink of water,” Vanning said.

“Sure,” John said. “Sam, go get him a drink of water.”

Sam walked out of the room. Pete stood there, near the bed, rubbing his hands and smiling at Vanning. Quiet streamed through the room and became thick in the middle of the room. Finally John looked at Vanning.

“Hurt much?” John said.

“Inside of my mouth. Cut up.”

“Lose any teeth?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care.”

“Let me work on him alone,” Pete said.

John looked at Pete and said, “Get the hell out of here.”

Pete shrugged and walked out of the room and John took a revolver from his shoulder holster and played with it for a while. He sighed a few times, frowned a few times, twisted his face as if he was trying to get a fly off it, and then he stood up and went to the wall and leaned there, looking at Vanning.

The quiet came back and settled in the center of the room. Vanning collected some blood in his mouth, spat it onto the floor. He took out a handkerchief and dabbed it against his mouth and looked at the blood, bright against white linen. He looked at John, and John was there against the wall, looking back at him, and it went on that way for several minutes, and then the door opened and Sam came in with a glass of water.

Vanning took the glass, and without looking at it he lifted it to his mouth, sent the water into his mouth, choked on the water, pegged the glass at Sam’s face. The glass hit Sam on the side of his face, broke there, and some glass got through Sam’s flesh. Sam threw a hand inside his lapel.

“No,” John said.

“Yes. Let me.” Sam’s eyes were blank.

“What did you put in the water?” John said.

“Nothing,” Sam said.

“Salt,” Vanning said. “Try tasting salt water when your mouth is all cut up.”

John walked over to Sam, gestured with the revolver, and Sam walked out of the room. John turned and faced Vanning and said, “You see the way it is? They like this. They get a kick out of it. That’s what you’re up against. Every few minutes they’ll get a new idea and they’ll want to try it on you.”