The Best American Noir of the Century

there by now, shouldn’t she?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It does seem strange. Just a moment.” I rang the bell on the table and my housekeeper came to the door. “Have you seen the Vaughns, Martha?” I asked her.

She nodded sagely. “Oh, yes, sir. They left very early this morning to go back to the city.”

Walter turned to me. “Hell!”

“Well, she’ll be back,” I assured him.

“Damn it, Dune, that isn’t the point!” He stood up and threw his napkin on the seat. “Can’t you realize that I’m in love with the girl? I can’t wait for her to get back!”

His face flushed with frustration. There was no anger, only the crazy hunger for the woman. I held back my smile. It happened. It happened the way I planned for it to happen. Walter Harrison had fallen so deeply in love, so truly in love, that he couldn’t control himself. I might have felt sorry for him at that moment if I hadn’t asked him, “Walter, as I told you, I know very little about her. Supposing she is already married.”

He answered my question with a nasty grimace. “Then she’ll get a divorce if I have to break the guy in pieces. I’ll break anything that stands in my way, Duncan. I’m going to have her if it’s the last thing I do!”

He stalked off to his room. Later I heard the car roar down the road. I let myself laugh then.

I went back to New York and was there a week when my contacts told me of Walter’s fruitless search. He used every means at his disposal, but he couldn’t locate the girl. I gave him seven days, exactly seven days. You see, that seventh day was the anniversary of the date I introduced him to Adrianne. I’ll never forget it. Wherever Walter is now, neither will he.

When I called him, I was amazed at the change in his voice. He sounded weak and lost. We exchanged the usual formalities; then I said, “Walter, have you found Evelyn yet?”

He took a long time to answer. “No, she’s disappeared completely.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” I said.

He didn’t get it at first. It was almost too much to hope for. “You…mean you know where she is?”

“Exactly.”

“Where? Please, Dune …where is she?” In a split second he became a vital being again. He was bursting with life and energy, demanding that I tell him.

I laughed and told him to let me get a word in and I would. The silence was ominous then. “She’s not very far from here, Walter, in a small hotel right off Fifth Avenue.” I gave him the address and had hardly finished when I heard his phone slam against the desk. He was in such a hurry he hadn’t bothered to hang up …

* * *

Duncan stopped and drained his glass, then stared at it remorsefully. The inspector coughed lightly to attract his attention, his curiosity prompting him to speak. “He found her?” he asked eagerly.

“Oh yes, he found her. He burst right in over all protests, expecting to sweep her off her feet.”

This time the inspector fidgeted nervously. “Well, go on.”

Duncan motioned for the waiter and lifted a fresh glass in a toast. The inspector did the same. Duncan smiled gently. “When she saw him, she laughed and waved. Walter Harrison died an hour later …from a window in the same hotel.”

It was too much for the inspector. He leaned forward in his chair, his forehead knotted in a frown. “But what happened? Who was she? Damn it, Duncan …”

Duncan took a deep breath, then gulped the drink down.

“Evelyn Vaughn was a hopeless imbecile,” he said.

“She had the beauty of a goddess and the mentality of a two-year-old. They kept her well tended and dressed so she wouldn’t be an object of curiosity. But the only habit she ever learned was to wave bye-bye …”

1953 DAVID GOODIS PROFESSIONAL MAN

David Goodis (1917-1967) was born in Philadelphia and received a BS in journalism from Temple University, briefly working for an advertising agency after graduation. He quickly became a prolific freelance fiction writer, his first novel, Retreat from Oblivion, being published in 1939. After numerous short stories sold to various pulp magazines, under both his own name and several pseudonyms, he had tremendous success with his second novel, Dark Passage (1946), which was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post and was bought for the movies. Delmer Daves directed and wrote the screenplay, and Humphrey Bogart starred as Vincent Parry, the wrongfully imprisoned convict who escapes from prison in order to find the real killer of his wife; Lauren Ba-call also starred. Other films made from his work include Down There (1956), filmed by Francois Truffaut as Shoot the Piano Player (i960); Street of No Return (1954), a 1989 film directed by Samuel Fuller; The Burglar (1953), adapted for a 1957 film with a screenplay by Goodis; and many others, mainly in France. Although his early novels and some short stories are powerful and memorable, his later work is so hopelessly dark that he has failed to maintain his place among the top rank of noir or hard-boiled writers. The people in his books are losers and know it. This sense of utter despair seems to appeal to the French, where Goodis is ranked among the greatest American crime writers. Goodis himself was a recluse, and his appraisal of his own work suggests a familiarity with depression. “My first novel was published when I was twenty-two,” he wrote in a letter shortly before he died. “It was nothing and the same applies to most of the sixteen others published since then.”

“Professional Man” was televised as an episode of the Showtime series Fallen Angels, on October 15, 1995. The script was by Howard A. Rodman, Steven Soderbergh was the director, and it starred Peter Coyote as the Boss and Brendan Fraser as Johnny Lamb. It was first published in the October 1953 issue of Manhunt.

At five past five the elevator operated by Freddy Lamb came to a stop on the street floor. Freddy smiled courteously to the departing passengers. As he said good night to the office-weary faces of secretaries and bookkeepers and executives, his voice was soothing and cool-sweet, almost like a caress for the women and a pat on the shoulder for the men. People were very fond of Freddy. He was always so pleasant, so polite and quietly cheerful. Of the five elevator-men in the Chambers Trust Building, Freddy Lamb was the favorite.

His appearance blended with his voice and manner. He was neat and clean and his hair was nicely trimmed. He had light brown hair parted on the side and brushed flat across his head. His eyes were the same color, focused level when he addressed you, but never too intent, never probing. He looked at you as though he liked and trusted you, no matter who you were. When you looked at him you felt mildly stimulated. He seemed much younger than his thirty-three years. There were no lines on his face, no sign of worry or sluggishness or dissipation. The trait that made him an ideal elevator man was the fact that he never asked questions and never talked about himself.

At twenty past five, Freddy got the go-home sign from the starter, changed places with the night man, and walked down the corridor to the locker room. Taking off the uniform and putting on his street clothes, he yawned a few times. And while he was sitting on the bench and tying his shoelaces, he closed his eyes for a long moment, as though trying to catch a quick nap. His fingers fell away from the shoelaces and his shoulders drooped and he was in that position when the starter came in.

“Tired?” the starter asked.

“Just a little.” Freddy looked up.

“Long day,” the starter said. He was always saying that. As though each day was longer than any other.

Freddy finished with the shoelaces. He stood up and said, “You got the dollar-fifty?”

“What dollar-fifty?”

“The loan,” Freddy said. He smiled offhandedly. “From last week. You ran short and needed dinner money. Remember?”