Роберт Беллем - Pulp Frictions

There was a great deal of talk, but of course she got off. Who killed Rabener was never discovered. After all, he was an enemy of society, and the State didn’t want to spend too much money tracking his killer down.

I’ve thought a lot about this since. It did strike me that if Fanquist had a lover who wanted, for some reason or other, to kill Rabener, this method was an exceedingly good one. Suppose this, lover had suggested to Rabener to stage the crazy thriller night? Rabener never had those kind of ideas himself. Suppose this lover and Fanquist arranged that she should pretend to kill Rabener, whilst the lover, hidden somewhere, actually did the shooting, using a much heavier type of gun. While she was waiting the two months for her trial, the lover could have plenty of time to leave the country and set up somewhere, so that when it was over she could join him. It was obvious to me from the expression on Rabener’s face that he certainly had not arranged for Fanquist to join in the fun. He knew all right when she shot him that he was going to die.

Of course, this is just my theory. I’m probably wrong; but you know how newspaper guys get when there’s a story around. But I did hear that she had sailed for South America, and that spot is as good as the next if you’re hiding from the cops. What do you think?

Cops who have gone wrong or been fired from the police force are a favourite theme in hardboiled novels. Many of these ex-officers are then forced to earn their living as private eyes or else throw in their lot with the gangsters and villains they once set out to catch. This theme particularly fascinated David Goodis, who was a prolific contributor to the pulps during the Thirties and Forties and now, after years of neglect, has been rediscovered: many of his novels are being republished on both sides of the Atlantic. Al Reid, who features in ‘It’s a Wise Cadaver’ which Goodis wrote for New Detective in July 1946, is typical of this breed. Kicked out of the New York force for an unspecified offence, he has formed his own small agency and even taken into partnership a fellow ex-cop named Renner who has also been thrown out, for punching a sergeant. In this story the pair are hired by a mobster named Calotta to find a con-man who has defrauded him of $10,000. Several other stories featuring the pair appeared in New Detective, as well as in the novel Behold This Woman. Reid in particular is an astute, wisecracking man with an eye for the main chance — whichever side of the law it may happen to be — and has a simple motto, ‘Trust no one’.

David Goodis (1917–1967) was born in New York and struggled to make a living in a variety of jobs. He was obsessed with writing and wrote his first novel when he was 21, entitling it The Ignited. According to his own account he was dissatisfied with the result and ‘threw it in the furnace’, thereafter directing his attention to cracking the crime pulp magazines. These stories, many of which focused on criminals and low life, eventually got him work writing for the radio in New York and later producing scripts in Hollywood. In 1947 his novel Dark Passage was bought for the movies and, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, became a box office hit. Four years later, another novel, Nightfall, was featured on television, and in 1960 his novella False Identity, about two private eyes in New Orleans, was adapted for the popular ABC weekly series Bourbon Street Beat, starring Richard Long and Andrew Duggan. Four years before his death, Goodis received the accolade of having his work used by Alfred Hitchcock, as well as scripting an outstanding version of fellow hardboiled novelist Henry Kane’s best-selling work, An Out for Oscar, for the Alfred Hitchcock Hour.

‘It’s a Wise Cadaver ’ is a typical David Goodis story of the kind which would surely have helped earn him an even bigger reputation, had not his career been cut short by his early death. By being reprinted here for the first time it will help to cement his fame, along with the new editions of his novels, including the classic Dark Passage, Nightfall and Down There, which were Reprinted in 1993.

It was on the desk, waiting for him. Renner cursed. He liked this habit that the boss had of going out on a case and leaving him nothing except one of these notes with a brief — too brief — description of the deal plus a few careless directions. Renner picked up the note, scowled at it.

On that Village kill — big dough involved. Believe it or not, I’m working for Calotta.

And then an address — Renner swore and walked heavily out of the little office, chewing imaginary gum.

Driving downtown he worried, as usual, about himself. There was no getting away from the fact that he had been a fool to punch a certain house sergeant in the mouth. The unfortunate incident had occurred little more than a year ago and it had resulted in his being toed off the force and into the lap of Al Reid. Reid, a wise guy, had been kicked out a year or so before that and had started his own little agency. Upon hearing of Renner’s trouble, he had offered to take his ex-colleague in, on the premise that two could starve to death as cheaply as one.

He brought his sour speculations back to the present. If Calotta is mixed up with us and if Reid is working for Calotta, then the pay-off has been reached.

Calotta, in legal, technical parlance, had no visible means of support — but the technicality was only in force because the police from Miami to Manhattan assiduously kept their eyes shut. Five years earlier Reid had engaged one of Calotta’s boys in a gun duel and had killed him. A week later Al Reid had narrowly missed a trip to the morgue when somebody put a time bomb in his apartment — and if the two had become bosom pals and co-workers since, Renner hadn’t heard about it.

However, time heals all wounds.

Renner’s destination was a typical Greenwich Village tenement. A lot of kids on the street and a lot of noise and thick air. He saw a few loiterers in the doorway and muttered, ‘Calotta,’ figuring it would work as a password.

It did and he found himself taken inside, up a dark flight of steps, through a dark hallway, and into a room. Al was there, along with three frightened women, a frightened old man, a heavy-set man who looked sore and mean — and a corpse.

The corpse was stretched out on the floor and it was almost swimming in its own blood. The blood came from a big hole in the head and an axe leaning against a dirty bed told the rest of the story.

Al grinned at Renner and said, ‘The guy on the floor is Dominic Varella. He is a very intelligent kid of twenty who got the idea that he could get rich quick. Imagine, in times like these!’

‘Then what?’

‘He was not very original, even alive. He told a lot of nice people that a boat loaded down with gold is sunk off the Asbury Park beach, and he is organising a diving expedition, and do they care to share in the box office receipts?’

‘That is an old one,’ Renner agreed.

‘Quite true,’ Al smiled, ‘but Dominic had a new angle. He went to a printer and had a fake newspaper story made up. Then he had other literature prepared, including accounts of his success as a deep-sea diver on the Pacific Coast, together with photographs. Pretty smart and thorough, don’t you think?’

‘It wouldn’t take me over,’ Renner said.

‘It took me,’ Calotta snarled.

Renner looked him over. He and Calotta were about of a size — which was big. The other was forty if he was a day, and he had a low forehead, a heavy blue beard, a broken nose and thick lips. With a face like that, Renner thought, a man couldn’t stay honest.