David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and '50s (Library of America) (75 page)

He slipped away from a roundhouse right hand trying for his head, ducked to avoid a short left hook, stepped back and them came inside another left hook and shot a short right to Gerardo’s belly. Gerardo was past feeling it and wouldn’t give ground and countered mechanically with another left hook that caught Whitey on the temple and staggered him. Gerardo moved in, completely mechanical now, measuring him very carefully with a right hand, then throwing the right, shooting it in a straight streaking path going from the shoulder. It hit Whitey’s chin and it was like falling a few hundred feet and landing on the chin, or something like that, or maybe like getting smashed on the chin with a crowbar. Well, he thought as he went down, it was a cute session while you were in it but you’re not in it now. He really made good with that one.

Whitey was down and flat on his back and his eyes were closed. He tried to open his eyes and they wouldn’t open. He could feel Gerardo coming toward him. He knew Gerardo was taking his own sweet time, there was no need to hurry things now. Damn it, he said to himself, you’re paralyzed, you’re really paralyzed, and all he’s gotta do is move in and finish the job. Maybe he’s finished it already and you’re ’way out there off the rim of the world. It sure feels that way, it feels like the world is someplace else and you’re nowhere. Or maybe you’re somewhere in between, I mean in between the dark and the light, not really out of it altogether, because you know you’re still breathing. And your brain’s working, so you know you’re still conscious. Well, that’s something, anyway. All right, what’s the good of that? It’s only for a short time. How short? Or how long? What’s he waiting for? What the hell is he waiting for?

Just then Whitey was able to open his eyes. He saw Gerardo standing
a few feet away and looking down at him. Or rather, Gerardo was looking at the arm stretched sideways with the hand in the milky water and resting on the handle of the knife.

Whitey’s fingers closed around the handle. He thought: The bastard wasn’t taking any chances, he thought you were trying to suck him in, pretending you were out cold. Pretending, hell. You had no idea the knife was there, right there under your palm. Well, it’s there, all right. You have it now and he knows you have it and he can’t decide what to do. If he decides to move in, it’s gonna be lousy for you, because you’re in no shape for more action. You won’t be doing much with the knife, you can hardly move your arm. I sure hope he don’t move in. Look at his face. He’s trying to make up his mind. Look at his eyes popping out, staring at the knife. Well, come on, Gerardo, hurry up and decide, it’s gotta be one thing or the other. But I wish you’d decide to take a walk. I’d really appreciate that.

Gerardo opened his mouth just a little and showed his teeth. He took a hesitant step toward Whitey.

Whitey tightened his grip on the knife handle. He was half sitting, braced on his elbows. He grinned at Gerardo and said, “Come on. Come on. Whatcha waiting for?”

It was a difficult problem for Gerardo. He was wondering if he had enough strength left to take the knife away from Whitey. He had serious doubts about that because there was a lot of pain in his groin and his head was throbbing and his arms were very tired. He felt sick and weak and he was terribly unhappy about his smashed nose. But he was anxious to get at that knife. He told himself to give it a try. He took another step forward.

Whitey sat up straighter, not knowing how he was able to do it. And then somehow he managed to get to his feet.

Gerardo turned and ran.

W
HITEY STOOD
there with the knife in his hand. He watched Gerardo running away from him, the ragged camel’s-hair coat flapping in the wind. He saw Gerardo crossing the cobblestoned street and aiming at the alley on the other side. There was something acutely purposeful in the way Gerardo headed toward the alley. Whitey saw him stumble and fall and get up and go lunging at the alley.

As Gerardo darted into the alley, it occurred to Whitey that he ought to cross the street and take a look. He was wondering why the Puerto Rican had selected that alley. It didn’t make sense for Gerardo to go in that direction; it was the opposite direction from where he ought to be going. It stood to reason that Gerardo should be running north, toward home, or east, toward the river, for an all-out getaway. And there he was, running south.

There he was, running down the alley. Whitey stood at the alley entrance and watched the camel’s-hair coat showing yellow down there in the darkness. In the thick black of half past three in the morning, the camel’s-hair coat was a distinct yellow, almost luminous. Whitey frowned and thought: That coat. And now this alley. I wonder if—

He wasn’t sure what he was wondering. Whatever it was, his brain lost track of it, like a hand groping vainly in thick fog, not knowing what it was groping for, but knowing there was something.

Whitey entered the alley. He walked slowly, staying close to the back-yard fences, telling himself that he didn’t want to be seen. He was focusing on the moving yellow of the camel’s-hair coat some forty yards away.

Then the distance was about fifty yards, but he could still see it clearly. He saw Gerardo coming to a stop, fumbling with a fence gate and not able to get it open, and then climbing over the fence.

Whitey walked faster now, but quietly, sort of Indian fashion, coming down on his toes, his body crouched. He saw the camel’s-hair
coat going across the back yard and then up on the kitchen doorstep.

And then Gerardo was banging on the door.

“Open it,” Gerardo yelled. “Hurry!”

Whitey came to a stop. He crouched very low, peering through the gaps between the fence posts. He watched Gerardo banging both fists against the back door.

“Is me,” the Puerto Rican yelled. “Is me—Gerardo.”

And his fists hit the door harder. He was looking down the alley to see if he was being followed.

Whitey moved forward very quietly and carefully. He knew Gerardo hadn’t seen him. He told himself to keep it this way, quiet and careful, slow and easy, don’t let anything happen to spoil it. And now, as he came closer to the house, he could feel a tightness inside himself. He was gripped with a sense of expectancy that pushed aside the throbbing in his jaw where Gerardo’s right hand had landed.

He heard Gerardo banging on the door and wailing, “For crissake, hurry! Let me in!”

And then, very near the house, he took another look through the fence posts. The kitchen light was on and he saw Gerardo waiting for the door to open.

The door opened and Gerardo went in very fast, barging past the man who stood in the doorway. In the instant before the door closed, Whitey got a clear frontal view of the man’s face.

It was the man who’d given away a very old and tattered camel’s-hair coat. There was nothing generous in the giving, because the coat had been worn out seven years ago, when Whitey had seen it in the railroad station, unbuttoned and falling loosely from the heavy shoulders of Sharkey.

All right, Whitey said to himself. So what’s the connection?

Or maybe it’s nothing, he thought. Maybe it’s just one of them situations where Gerardo does odd jobs around the house, like taking care of the furnace, hauling out the ashes. So it’s a very cold November and he ain’t got no overcoat and Sharkey gives him the camel’s-hair.

But no. You know there’s more to it than that. Your chum Gerardo hit that back door like he belonged in that house, not like a handy man who works there part time, more like a member
of the family, or let’s make it just a bit deeper than that. Let’s make it he’s maybe a member of the organization.

What organization? What are you building here with thinking about an organization? And another thing, what’s it matter to you what it is? It ain’t none of your affair.

It ain’t?

The hell it ain’t. You’re on the wanted list for killing a cop, you might as well remember that. You damn well better remember that. And while you’re at it, remember the Captain, and what he’ll be inclined to do when he lays his hands on you. Of course, the man he really wants is Gerardo, but he doesn’t know that. The thing is, you know it. You know how the cop died and what did it and who did it. You heard Gerardo tell it from his own mouth. So there’s your cop-killer and he’s in that house and you got plenty reason to be gandering that house.

But it’s sorta weird, you know? It’s weird because she’s in there and—

All right, forget that. Or at least try to think you can forget it. What you hafta do now is concentrate on Gerardo. You gotta figure some way to get him out of that house, to get him up the steps and through the front door of the Thirty-seventh District, to have him say to the Captain what he said to you.

Yeah, that’s gonna be easy to manage. Very easy. Like trying to tear down a brick wall with your bare hands. Or your front teeth. Or your head.

Your head. Start using it. Start adding up the numbers. Like our boy Gerardo says,
la matemática
, two and two is four and so forth, except in this case it’s more on the order of algebra, where you got some unknown quantities. All right, you never took much algebra, so it’s gotta be mostly guesswork, or maybe like the science guys who get their answers with the slow but sure procedure of try this and try that and keep on trying until it fits together. I think you got enough brains for that. Anyway, hope so. But it ain’t no cinch to use the brains right now. That wallop he fetched you on the jaw was no patty-cake handout, it’s got you sorta blocked upstairs, your skull feels like it’s all jammed up with putty. Well, anyway, let’s try. Let’s see if we can do some thinking here.

Well, begin with Gerardo. Or no, that’s doing it ass-backwards. It’s you that’s gotta talk to the Captain, and when you
tell him the deal you can’t begin with Gerardo, because sure as hell that ain’t where it begins. So where does it begin?

The race riots?

No, you can’t start with that. In regard to that, you know from nothing. Or wait a minute here. Wait just a minute. It’s the race riots that’s got the Captain all screwed up and blowing his top. If you could give him something on the riots, it would help your case, maybe. At least it would quiet him down so’s he’d give you a chance to get your point across.

All right, then, figure it. What is it with these race riots? What started the fuss? My God, now we’re exploring in the field of racial aggravations, some-kind-of-ology, and you ain’t geared for that, that just ain’t your department. But hold it right there. Don’t let it get away. Thing to do is take it from another angle. Like in case it ain’t only a matter of race, it’s more than gangs of riled-up local citizens fighting riled-up Puerto Ricans, it’s maybe a situation where the race hate is secondary, where something else is the important issue.

Something else. Like what? Like— Easy, now, don’t stretch it too far, you gotta know what you’re aiming at. Better take it on a short-range basis and— But no, goddamnit, it’s strictly from long range, it’s from ’way out there, ’way back. It’s from seven years ago.

It’s from that night you sat with her in the taproom and she was talking about Sharkey and she said, “He’s been mooching around and looking for an angle,” and went on to tell about certain projects that didn’t pay off, and then she said, “Maybe one of these days he’ll find that angle he’s looking for.”

All right, all right, I think you got something here. Stay with it now.

Keep remembering. That night, that taproom, and you sat there with her in that booth, you looked at her face and you thought—

Well, the hell with what you thought. The hell with what you felt. That ain’t what you’re remembering now. You gotta stay with this race-riot business, the big question you gotta answer to pull yourself out of this jam you’re in, this cop-killing rap. So don’t go off the track. Only things you gotta remember are the words that came out of her mouth, the statements she made about Sharkey. Like when she said that Sharkey was certain he’d someday
get the bright idea that would haul in the heavy cash. The way she’d put it, “He says it’s around somewhere, all he’s gotta do is find it.”

Find it where?

Find it here? In the Hellhole?

Look. Let’s understand something. I think you’re on the track and it figures to be the right track, but just about here is where it stops. I mean, it stops here because your brain just can’t take it any farther. Only way to keep it going is with the eyes, the ears. You get the point? You see what the next move is?

Wanna take the chance?

All right. But it’s a lead-pipe cinch you’re asking for grief. The way you gotta do it is the hard way, there just ain’t no other way. It’s gonna be getting information from Sharkey, with Sharkey not knowing he’s giving it out. So first it’s this fence, and then it’s the back yard, and finally it’s the house.

Well, let’s get started. What’s the delay? Why you standing here? And why you grinning? How come it all of a sudden hits you comical? It ain’t the least bit comical, unless you’re thinking of Chop and Bertha and when they had you in the woods, what they did to you, the way they made it plain, no two ways about it, really giving it to you to get you convinced.

But here we are again. And they didn’t convince you after all.

H
E CLIMBED
over the fence and moved slowly, very quietly, across the back yard. He was focusing on the cellar window that had no glass in it.

The opening was stingy and he had to worm his way through. He went in legs first, his feet probing for support as he arched his back, his hands clutching the upper side of the window, his torso squirming, pushing past the splintered frame. Then, as he went through and down, his feet found a narrow shelf. From there
it was just a short drop to the cellar floor.

There was no light in the cellar. He took a few steps and bumped into the side of a coal bin. A few more steps and his knees came up against the pile of coal. He groped in his pockets, searching for a match. There were no matches and he wondered how he could get past the coal without making noise. It was a lot of coal, and if he tried to crawl over it, the chunks would give way and there’d be considerable noise. The important thing now was quiet. It had to be handled with a maximum of quiet.

He backed away from the pile of coal, then moved parallel with it, got past the wooden wall of the bin, inched his way forward, and hit another obstruction. It felt like an ash can. He touched it and it was metal and he knew it was an ash can. And then another ash can. And still another. He decided the best way to get past the row of ash cans was to get down on all fours and do it by inches.

Crawling, using his forehead to feel what was in front of him, he kept bumping very lightly against the ash cans. He was moving sideways and then there were no more ash cans and again he went forward, still crawling. He kept on that way, going toward the middle of the cellar, gradually feeling the heat coming from the furnace, and then seeing the thin ribbon of bright orange glow that showed through a crack in the furnace door. He crawled toward it, thinking: Maybe we’ll find something to light up and use for a torch.

Coming closer to the furnace, he reached out, felt for the handle of the furnace door, found it, and worked it slowly and very carefully. With very little noise the furnace door came open. The orange glow flowed out and showed him the floor surrounding the furnace. He saw a used safety match and got his fingers on it, put it in the furnace to get it lit, and thought: Well, now we can find the stairs.

The flaming match showed something that postponed the stairs.

It was a neatly laid-out row of brand-new baseball bats. And knives, all sorts of knives. In the instant that he sighted it, he thought of the similar but sloppier collection he’d seen in the Puerto Rican meeting place. Then, frowning, staring at the bats and knives, he noticed something else. It was a stack of small wooden boxes, say a dozen of them. The ones on top displayed labels and he came closer, peering past the flare of the match, and saw the printed words: “Handle with care— .38 caliber.”

For another instant he looked at the cartridge boxes. And then he saw the glint of metal near the boxes, the glinting barrels and butts of several brand-new revolvers.

Well, now, he said without sound. Well, now.

The burning match was dying fast and he held it higher to find the stairway. The glow showed the stairway off to the right and he checked the distance and then blew out the match. Now he was on his feet and moving lightly toward the stairway, telling himself to do as it said on the cartridge boxes, to handle these stairs with care.

Sure enough, it was a very old flight of stairs, and when he hit the first step it creaked. He crouched low, using his hands on the higher steps, going up monkey style and distributing his weight between the steps to lessen the creaking.

He was halfway up the steps when the mouse came running down.

Or rather, it came falling down, it must have been blind or sick, or maybe one of them lunatic mice that just can’t do things in a sensible way. Its tiny furry shape hit him full in the face and instinctively it fought for a hold with its legs. He locked his lips to hold back the startled yell and heard the mouse giving its own outcry of shock. It squeaked as loud as it could,
decided this was not the place for it to be, and leaped off.

Whitey shook his head slowly and thought: That almost did it.

He rested there a few moments, trying to forget the feeling of the mouse dancing on his face. He said to himself: Let’s disregard these minor issues, you got more stairs to climb, keep climbing.

So then it was the next step going up. And the next. And as he climbed it was like the very slow and precise action of thread passing through the eye of a needle. His head was down and he was watching the barely visible edges of the steps, gray-black against the blackness. Then gradually the steps were tinged with a faint amber glow and he knew it was light coming from the first floor. He raised his head and saw the yellow seeping through the crack in the door at the top of the stairs. The door was maybe five steps ahead. He tightened his mouth just a little, and thought: Careful, now, don’t get excited, please don’t get excited.

A moment passed. It was a very long moment and he felt it pressing hard on him as he negotiated the next step. The feeling of anxiety was a set of clamps getting him in the belly and squeezing like some practical joker carrying the joke too far.

Or maybe he was the joker, and not a very good one, at that. A first-rate joker never took himself seriously and it was everything for laughs. For instance, that on-and-off comedian who worked from the Thirty-seventh District, that detective lieutenant, that Pertnoy. Now, if it was Pertnoy going up these stairs, it would be a breeze, nothing to it, the man would be grinning and having himself a grand time. On the other hand, if it was Lieutenant Whatsisname, the fashion plate, name starts with D or T—oh, yes, Taggert—well, if it was Taggert climbing up these cellar steps, he’d be strictly business, absolutely a machine, except maybe it would bother him that his clothes were getting dirty. He’s sure a sucker for the haberdashers and the tailors, that Taggert. And for barbershops, too. Guess it’s always the same routine when he sits himself in the chair. You can hear him saying, “The works, Dominic.” But why’s it gotta be Dominic? Not all barbers are Italians. Like with Poles, not all coal miners are Poles. You know, Phillips was a coal miner, and
Phillips is— As if it makes any difference what he is. As if race has anything to do with it. Yeah, go try and tell that to the Puerto Ricans. People call them Puerto Ricans and right away they’re branded like with an iron and given a low road to travel, the lousiest places to live, like that house where you saw them jam-packed sleeping on a cold floor. But you saw some damn fine quality in that house. That Chávez. He was really something, that Chávez. And Luis, too. Luis almost got himself slashed bloody going to bat for you.

Say, come to think of it, you have been having yourself a time tonight, you’ve come across some real personalities. Take, for example, that Jones Jarvis. If conditions were different it could be Admiral Jarvis, U.S.N. And you know he could do the job, you know damn well he could do it. So it figures it’s mostly a matter of conditions. Sure it is. Take Captain Kinnard and put him in charge of a nursery, he’d be like melted butter and them kids would run all over him. But how do you know that? Well, you just know it, that’s all. It’s that way with some people; you take one look at them and later when you think about it, it hits you and you know. Or sometimes you get hit right away. You ought to know about that, when it comes to that you’re an old campaigner. That first time you saw her, the way it hit you. And the way it’s been coming back tonight, hitting you, hitting you. All right, for Christ’s sake, cut it out. But I wonder if
Firpo is still alive and sometimes at night he wakes up and remembers the way Dempsey hit him.

He went up another step and it brought him to the top of the stairs. He stood against the door and his hand drifted to the knob. His fingers tested the give of the knob and at first it wouldn’t give, not soundlessly, anyway. He tried it again and felt it turning. A little more, and still more, and then there was the faint noise, more feathery than metallic, of the latch coming free. And now very carefully, working it by fractions of inches, he opened the door.

It showed him the lit-up kitchen. There was no one in the kitchen. But he could hear voices coming from the next room, and there was the clinking of glasses on a wooden table.

He had the door opened not quite two inches. There was the scraping of a chair and then someone was coming into the kitchen. He gave a slight pull on the door to
make it appear closed.
For some moments there was activity in the kitchen, the sound of a running faucet, glass tinkling against the sink. He heard Chop shouting from the next room, “Not from the sink! There’s cold water in the icebox.” And in the kitchen the icebox was being opened and he heard Bertha’s voice saying, “The bottle’s empty.” A pause, and then from the next room it was Sharkey’s voice: “We got any beer?” and Bertha replying, “It’s all gone,” and Chop again, “There’s some in the cellar.”

Whitey closed his eyes. Without sound he said:
Goddamn it.

He heard Chop yelling, “We got some quart bottles down there. Go down and bring up a few.”

Then Bertha’s footsteps were coming toward the door.

He thought: Some people have it nice, they can travel anywhere they wanna go. But you, you can’t travel anywhere, you can’t go down the steps, and when the door opens you can’t get behind it because it don’t open in, it opens out. You’re gonna be right here when it opens, right here at the top of the stairs where there ain’t no room to move around, so this looks to be the windup.

Then he realized the footsteps had stopped. He heard Bertha shouting, “Go get the beer yourself. I ain’t no waitress.”

Chop yelled, “What is it, a big deal?”

“Get it yourself. Run your own errands.”

“You goddamn lazy—”

“Aw, go break a leg.”

“Lazy elephant, she won’t even—”

“Make it both legs,” Bertha yapped at Chop. “I’m tired of you giving me orders. All day long I’m running up and down the steps. This morning you were—”

“I was sick this morning.”

“You’re gonna be sick tonight if you don’t lay off me.”

Whitey heard Bertha’s footsteps going out of the kitchen. In the next room the argument continued between Bertha and Chop and finally Sharkey cut in with “All right, the hell with the beer. We’ll drink what we got here.”

There was more tinkling of glasses. And then he heard them talking but now their voices were low and he couldn’t make out what they were saying. Again he worked on the door and got it open a few inches. Then a few more inches, and he was straining to hear, gradually getting it.

Sharkey was saying, “Go on, Gerardo. Have another drink.”

“I no need—”

“Sure you do.” Sharkey’s voice was soft and soothing. “We’ll make this the bracer.”

There was the sound of liquor splashing into a glass. Whatever it was, there was a lot of it going into the glass.

“Drink it down,” Sharkey said. “Go on, Gerardo, get it all down.”

“But I—”

And then loudly, from Bertha, “You hear what Sharkey says? You do what he says.”

“Is too much whisky,” Gerardo complained. “I no—”

“Yes, you will,” Bertha shouted. “You’ll drink it or I’ll hold your nose and force it down.”

“Why you do me like this?” Gerardo whined.

“Like what?” It was Chop and he was laughing dryly. “You’re lucky, Gerardo. You’re lucky Bertha ain’t giving you lumps.”

“I got lumps already,” Gerardo said. Then, drinking the whisky, he gasped, went on drinking it, gasped again. There was the sound of the glass coming down on the table, and Gerardo saying, “Enough lumps I get tonight. Look at lumps. Look at my nose.”

“It looks busted,” Sharkey said.

“All smashed up,” the Puerto Rican wailed. “Was perfect nose and now look at it.”

“Finish what’s in the glass,” Bertha said.

“But I can’t—”

“Drink it all up,” she said. “Drink it up, Gerardo.”

“Please—”

“You’ll drink it if I hold your nose,” Bertha said. “And then you’ll really have a nose to worry about.”

Then again there was the sound of the glass, the gurgling and gulping as Gerardo forced it down, and the bitter rasping, the gasping.

“Very good,” Bertha said. “Not a drop in the glass. But you got some on your chin. I’ll wipe it off.”

Whitey heard the sound of a backhand crack across the mouth, then louder with the open palm, then very loud with the backhand again. He heard a chair toppling, and a thud, and he knew that Gerardo was on the floor.

He heard Gerardo whimpering, sobbing, “I no understand.”

“It’s instruction,” Bertha said. “You’re getting instruction, Gerardo. You gotta learn to do what Sharkey says.”

“My mouth!”

Whitey visualized Gerardo’s mouth. He knew it was a sad-looking mouth right now. It had received the full force of Bertha’s tree-trunk arm, with over three hundred pounds of hard-packed beef behind Bertha’s oversized hand. Whitey said to himself: You know how it feels, you had a taste of it, a big taste, and—

He heard Bertha saying, “It’s like baseball, Gerardo. You catch on? It’s like baseball and Sharkey’s the manager and you gotta do what he says.”

And Chop said, “It ain’t sand-lot ball, Gerardo. It’s big-league action and you gotta watch the signals very careful. When you’re safe on third you don’t take any chances. You don’t try for home plate unless you get the signal.”

“I come here because—”

“Because you got scared,” Bertha said. “You’re not supposed to get scared.” And then, to Sharkey, “Should I give our boy more instruction?”

There was no reply from Sharkey.

Whitey heard the terribly loud sound of another open-handed wallop, then the thud as Gerardo went back against a wall, bounced away, fell forward toward the table to get it again from Bertha’s hand, and again, and then really getting it and starting to cry like a baby.

Poor bastard, Whitey thought. He heard the noise of Gerardo getting it and yowling now with the pain of it. He felt sort of sorry for Gerardo, and yet he was thinking: If Chávez could see it, if Luis could see it, they’d find it interesting, very interesting.