David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and '50s (Library of America) (38 page)

“
You already got them.”

Then Harbin’s voice was down to almost a whisper, “You be careful.”

Baylock’s manner went into an abrupt change. “What the hell’s wrong?” he whined. “Can’t I even disagree? If you make a point and I don’t see it your way, I have the right to come out with it, don’t I?”

“It’s always something,” Harbin said. “No matter what I say, with you it’s no. Everything is no.”

“I can’t agree when I don’t agree.”

“All right, Joe.”

“I can’t help it,” Baylock said. “That’s the way it is.”

“All right.”

“I don’t want to keep harping away, but I keep worrying about that girl. She has a real wrong effect on you and it’s got to the point where I always know when it’s up to your neck.” He moved in close to Harbin, “Let her go.” He moved in closer, his voice low. “Why don’t you let her go?”

Harbin turned away. He took in some stale air and swallowed it with an effort and a certain pain. “We’re an organization. One thing I won’t allow is a split in the organization.”

“It wouldn’t be a split. If you told her to go, she’d go.”

“Where would she go?” Harbin’s voice was loud again. “What would she run into?”

“She’d be all right,” Baylock said. “And I can tell you one thing. She’d be a lot better off than she is now.”

Harbin turned away again. He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, wished he was sound asleep and away from everything.

Baylock was close again. “You know the way it is with you? As though you’ve been in some courtroom and got yourself a life sentence to take care of her.”

“God damn it,” Harbin said, “leave me alone.” He walked out of the bathroom. He came into the room where Dohmer was still sitting on the cot with his big head covered by big hands. Baylock came in a few moments later. The two of them stood there, watching Dohmer.

Dohmer slowly lifted his head. He looked at them, he sighed heavily and began shaking his head. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, Joe.”

“
It’s all right,” Baylock let a hand rest for a moment on Dohmer’s shoulder. And then his eyes moved and came to a stop on Harbin, and he added, “I wish everything was all right.”

Harbin bit hard at his lip. He felt his head jerking to one side. He couldn’t look at either of them.

I
N AN
after-hour club that gave out membership cards for five dollars a year, the light from pale green bulbs tossed a watery glow on Gladden’s hair. The glow was on the top of her head, floating there. Her head was bent toward the tall glass with the rum and ice in it, and Harbin watched her as she sipped the drink, smiled at her as she lifted her head and looked at him. They sat at a very small table away from the center of activity, an absurdly small dance floor faced on the other side by three Negro musicians who constantly played with all their might. The place was on the second floor of a Kensington Avenue restaurant, and it kept its lights low, its customers happy, its blue-uniformed visitors paid off promptly each week. It was a pretty good place.

“They give us a nice drink,” Gladden said.

“Like the music?”

“Too jumpy.”

“What kind of music do you like?”

“
Guy Lombardo.”

“I used to play the violin,” Harbin said.

“No.”

“But I did,” Harbin said. “I took lessons for five years. There was a conservatory in our neighborhood. They’d take in twenty kids at a time. We’d all be in a little room with the old guy up front, and he’d scream at the top of his lungs as if we were all a mile away and he was trying to make himself heard. He was a maniac, the old guy. I wonder if he’s still there.”

“Tell me,” Gladden said. “Tell me about the neighborhood.”

“I’ve told you a thousand times.”

“Tell me again.”

He picked up the short glass and swallowed some whiskey. He beckoned to a colored girl who was walking in and out through the tables with a big tray above her head. “Why?”

“I get dreamy.”

The colored girl was at the table and Harbin ordered a few jiggers of whiskey for himself and another rum collins for Gladden. He leaned back in his chair, his head to one side a little as he
studied the pale green glow on the top of Gladden’s head. “Always,” he said, “after we do a job you get dreamy like this. The haul doesn’t seem to interest you.”

Gladden said nothing. She smiled at something far away.

“The haul,” he said, “becomes a secondary thing with you. What comes first?”

“The dreamy feeling,” Gladden slumped languidly. “Like going back. Like resting back on a soft pillow that you can’t see. Way back there.”

“Where?”

“Where we were when we were young.”

“We’re young now,” he said.

“Are we?” Her tall glass was lifted, her chin magnified through the rum and soda and glass. “We’re half in the grave.”

“You’re bored,” Harbin said.

“I’ve been bored since I was born.”

“You looking for kicks?”

“Who needs kicks?” She gestured toward the dancers crowding the tiny floor. “They’re all crazy.” She shrugged again. “Who am I to talk? I’m crazy, too. So are you.”

Harbin saw the pale green glow coming down a little and making a wide pale green ribbon across her forehead. Now her yellow hair was a zig-zag of yellow and black, her eyes under the ribbon a distinct and bright yellow, her face dark but getting lighter as the ribbon lowered, and Harbin saw the whiteness of her teeth as she smiled again. He returned the smile, not knowing why. And then, not knowing why, he said, “You want to dance?”

She pointed to the slow chaos on the dance floor. “Is that dancing?”

He looked at it and it wasn’t dancing. He listened to the music and it gave him nothing. He threw a drink into his stomach and there was no tingle. He looked at Gladden and she was watching him and he knew she was studying him and he said, “Let’s leave.”

She didn’t move. “You tired?”

“No.”

“Then where will we go?”

“I don’t know, but let’s get out of here.” He started to rise.

“Wait,” she said. “Sit down, Nat.”

He sat. He had no idea of what she intended to say. He waited for it with a nervousness that bothered him greatly because there really was no reason for it. Finally he said, “You’re terrific when it comes to times like this.”

“Nat.” She leaned her elbows on the table. “Tell me. Why do you go out with me? Why do you take me places?”

“I like company.”

“Why not Dohmer? Why not Baylock?”

“You’re better to look at than they are.”

“You go for scenery?”

“You’re not bad.”

“Don’t be sweet to me, Nat. Don’t give me compliments.”

“It isn’t a compliment. It’s a statement.” He didn’t care for the direction this talk was taking. He shifted a bit in his chair. “I’ll tell you what I would like. I’d like to see you enjoy yourself once in a while. Times I look at you and you look like hell.” He leaned toward her, his arms flat on the table. “What I want you to do is go away for a while.”

“Go where?”

“Anywhere. Baltimore. Pittsburgh. Atlantic City.”

“Atlantic City,” she mused. “That would be all right.”

“Sure it would. You really need a rest. You’ll get out on the boardwalk and sit there in the sun and breathe some salt air. Do you a world of good. Get to bed early and put some decent food in your stomach. Put some color in your face.”

Her face was coming closer to him. “You want to see some color in my face?”

“You’ll take in some shows,” he said, “and go for rolling chair rides on the boardwalk. You can lie down on the beach and get that sun—”

“Nat,” she said.

“And you can go for boat rides. They have boat rides out on the ocean and at night you can walk on the boardwalk and they have some smart shops where you can buy those dignified dresses you’re always talking about.”

“Nat,” she said. “Nat, listen—”

“They have these smart shops on the boardwalk and you’ll have yourself a fine time.”

“Nat,” she said. “Go with me.”

“No.”

“
Please go with me.”

“Stop being stupid, will you?”

She waited awhile, and then she said, “All right, Nat, I’ll stop being stupid. I’ll do what you want me to do. What you expect of me. I’ll turn it off, just like that,” and she imitated the turning off of a faucet. “I’m good at that. I’ve practiced and practiced and now I know how.” Once more she turned the invisible faucet.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “you’ll grab a train.”

“Fine.”

“Atlantic City.”

“Marvelous.”

He put a cigarette in his mouth and began to chew on it. He took it out and bent it and broke it and let it fall in the tray. “Look, Gladden,” he started, and didn’t know how to continue. The line of his thinking refused to stay on one path, and split up like a wire coming apart and branched off wildly in countless directions. He saw the colored girl passing the table and he touched her arm and said he wanted the check.

T
HERE WAS
no phone at the Spot, and the next afternoon, at three, while they waited at the station for the Atlantic City train, they decided that she should make calls to a certain drugstore booth at stipulated intervals. Then the train arrived, and he stood back as she entered the train. Suddenly she put down her bags and faced him and said his name.

He grinned. “Don’t fill up on salt water taffy.”

“We haven’t said goodbye.”

“When you go to China we’ll say goodbye.”

She gave him a look he couldn’t classify. Then other passengers were crowding him in, and there was no more time. He turned, walked down along the platform. Descending the steps leading to the waiting room, he heard the train going away. It occurred to him that this was the first time he had seen Gladden going away, and for some odd reason it was disturbing. He told himself Atlantic City was only sixty miles away. It was the place where Philadelphians went to get the sun and the salt air. It wasn’t China. It was practically right next door, and he would be in constant touch with Gladden. There was no cause for him to be disturbed.

He stood outside the terminal and wondered where he should go. It was always a problem, where to go and what to do. Sometimes he came close to envying the people whose lives were based on compulsory directives, who lived by definite need and command, so that every morning they had to get up at six or seven, and be at a specific place by eight-thirty or nine, and stay there and do specific things until five or six. They never wondered what to do next. They knew what they had to do. He had nothing to do and no place to go. He had plenty of money to spend, around seven thousand dollars remaining from his share of the two previous hauls, but he couldn’t think of a way to start spending it. There was nothing special that he wanted. He tried to think of something that he wanted, but a wall came up in his mind and blocked off everything tangible.

So he went back to the Spot because there was no other place
to go. The Spot was reassurance. The Spot was security. In its own strange way, the Spot was home.

Entering, he heard Baylock’s voice from the kitchen. He walked into the kitchen. Baylock and Dohmer were at the table, playing their original variation of two-handed poker. Dohmer showed a hole card, an ace that matched another and gave him the hand. Dohmer collected a dollar and seventy cents, and then they put aside the cards and looked at Harbin.

Baylock said, “She go?”

“Took the
three-forty.” Harbin looked out the window.

They were quiet for a few moments. Dohmer let out a big yawn. Then he pointed to the window and said, “Look at that sun. Look at that sun out there.”

“Let’s go romp in the park,” Baylock said. He scowled at the cards. He picked them up and shuffled them, riffled them, stacked them and shuffled them again and put them down.

Harbin stood at the kitchen window and looked at the sunlit sky above the alley and the
grey dwellings. He was thinking of Atlantic City, picturing the boardwalk and the beach and the beach-front hotels.

Dohmer said, “I think I’ll have something to eat.”

“You ate an hour ago,” Baylock said.

“So now I’ll eat again.”

Dohmer and Baylock went on arguing, and Harbin stood at the window, gazing out at nothing. He thought about Gladden and her father, and about himself. He thought of when he was a little boy in a little town in Iowa, an only child, his father a merchant of dry goods, his mother a timid, soft-voiced, sweet-souled woman who tried hard to like everybody. When her husband died she took over the business and did what she could with it and finally lost it. There came a day when she had to borrow money, a day when she had to borrow more, a day when the son heard her weeping in a dark room, and a day when a chest cold became pneumonia and she didn’t have the strength to fight it. She lasted only a few days. He was in high school at the time. He didn’t know what to do. The world was an avalanche, taking him down, and he found himself on a road going away from the little town. He was sixteen years old and during that year he wandered and groped and resented and feared. It was the year when a good many people were hungry,
and it was known generally to be very bad times. He almost starved to death that year. He would have starved to death if it hadn’t been for a man named Gerald Gladden.

The thing took place in Nebraska and Gerald Gladden was driving south from Omaha, accompanied by his six-year-old daughter. Gerald was approaching middle age and he was a paroled convict who now felt sure he had learned enough to continue the science of burglary without getting caught. It was late in the day when he saw the boy with lifted thumb begging for a ride. His car whizzed past the boy and then in the rear-view mirror he saw the boy sagging to the ground. He put the car in reverse and picked up the boy.

That was the way it started. The way it exploded was raw and unexpected. Harbin had just passed his nineteenth birthday and he and Gerald were on a second-story job in the suburbs of Detroit. A shrewdly concealed burglar alarm went off and some ten minutes later police bullets hit Gerald in the spine and then a slug smashed through his brain and that was the end of him. Harbin had better luck. Harbin worked his way back to the rooming house where the little girl was asleep and for the first time in his three-year association with Gerald he took a good look at Gerald’s daughter. This was a tiny, sad little girl whose mother had died while giving birth to her. This was Gerald Gladden’s daughter. It occurred to Harbin he had an obligation. When he edged his way out of Detroit a few weeks later, he took the little girl with him. A month after, in Cleveland, he had a birth certificate and some other papers drawn up by an individual who specialized in this sort of thing, and the little girl was officially designated as his kid sister. He couldn’t think of a good first name for her, so he decided on Gladden. The last name was unimportant. It was the name he was using then, and unimportant because he was changing his name every time he entered a new town. He enrolled Gladden in an inexpensive private school and went out and found a job selling kitchen utensils on a door-to-door basis. For five years he stayed away from burglary. He sold the kitchenware, door-to-door, and averaged about thirty-five dollars a week, and it was just about enough for Gladden and himself. Then one day he met Baylock, and Baylock introduced him to Dohmer, and a few nights later they were out on a job.

The amazing thing was the war. They had ways and means to get out of all sorts of situations, but they couldn’t evade the war. It was fast and blunt, the way the Army snapped them up. Only Baylock could sidestep the Army, because Baylock had a record and also a bad set of kidneys. Baylock offered to take care of Gladden while Harbin was away. Baylock had a sister in Kansas City, and Gladden went to live with the sister and Harbin went away to war.

Then five years passed and the war was ended and Harbin came back. Dohmer was already back and doing jobs with Baylock. That was something Harbin expected. What he hadn’t expected was to see Gladden being used on the jobs. They were using Gladden for jobs that required inside work. Gladden was now nineteen, and she was still tiny and still sad and she seemed unhappy with what she was doing, and Harbin had no idea of what to say. He had a feeling she was waiting for him to say something, and after awhile he knew what it was she wanted. She wanted him to say this was no good, they must get out of it now, he would go back to selling kitchenware door-to-door, and she would get herself a job washing dishes or something. But he couldn’t say it.

They made rather large hauls but they couldn’t accumulate much money. They began having trouble with the fences. Baylock couldn’t get along with the fences. Then Baylock got into the habit of involving other individuals in the projects and this developed until there were a great many people who for various reasons had to be paid off. Finally Baylock managed to complicate things to the point where they were in actual jeopardy, not from the law, but from these other people, and it was Harbin who took over then and smoothed things out. That made Harbin the leader. Baylock began screaming his head off, and he made so much noise that Harbin finally told him he could have the leadership back again. But Dohmer and Gladden refused to accept this, and Baylock eventually admitted that Harbin was best fitted to run the projects. But now Baylock was beginning to complain about Gladden. And another thing, Baylock said, Harbin’s operations were too slow.

Harbin was really very slow. It took him weeks to plan a job and then more weeks before the job was activated. Then it took months before the fence was contacted. Then it took more months
until the deal with the fence was consummated. But this was the way Gerald had taught him to operate, and most of what he knew he had learned from Gerald. With Gerald it was a science and a business and Gerald had learned it from a wizard who had finally gone to Central America with close to a million dollars in ice-cold money and had died there an old man. Gerald had always dreamed of accomplishing the same feat, had always claimed it could be done and it would be done provided one could learn the science of taking one’s time and knowing all the grooves and potentials before making a move. With Gerald that was the big thing, the patience, the waiting, and yet even Gerald had succumbed to the poison of impulsiveness. That night in Detroit the death of Gerald could have been avoided if Gerald had only waited another fifteen or twenty minutes, if he had taken the time to look for additional wires that meant auxiliary burglar alarms. Gerald had thirty-odd dollars in his pocket when he died, but as he hit the ground with his bullet-slashed skull he was pointing his body toward Central America, his hands reached out, clutching for the million dollars in ice-cold money.