Dark Passage by David Goodis Page B

Francisco sky was
greying.
    Irene came in and said dinner was ready.
She really knew how to fry a chicken. She opened a bottle of
Sauterne and he knew before he took the first taste it was
high-priced wine. He told her she was a good cook. She smiled and
didn’t say anything. For dessert they had butterscotch pudding. She
told him she had a weakness for butterscotch pudding and made it
three times a week. He asked her if she ate out much and she said
no, she liked her own cooking and besides restaurants these days
were an ordeal.
    They had black coffee and then they sat
there smoking cigarettes. He offered to help her with the dishes
and she said no, she could do them in a jiffy. He went into the
parlor and she did the dishes in a jiffy. Parry took another look
at the sky and it was getting dark. He was watching it get darker
as Irene came into the parlor. She followed his gaze out the
window. She followed his gaze to the wrist watch.
    She said, “Don’t go. Stay here tonight.
You can sleep on the davenport.”
    “That’s out. We've got maybe thirty
minutes and then I'm on my way. And now I want to ask you
something. Where is your brother?”
    “Dead. He was in a terrible automobile
accident six years ago. What you really want to know is how I got
my money. And that’s how. My father willed it to Burton, and then
in the hospital, just before he died, Burton willed it to me. It
amounts to a couple hundred thousand dollars.”
    “That’s a lot of cash.”
    “It’s good to have. It's the only thing I
have.”
    “What about your husband?”
    “I received the final decree a few months
ago. I don’t know where he is. Do you want the name?”
    “Why should I want the name?”
    “Why should you want to know where I got
my money?”
    “Curious. You didn’t get it with water
colors. I knew that. And you didn't get it through sociology. I
knew that. So I went back to the clipping and I wanted to check on
it and I wanted to know why you had it and not your brother. Was
this where you lived with your husband?”
    “No.”
    “What kind of guy was your
husband?”
    “A louse.”
    “When did you find it out?”
    “The first week.”
    “Why didn’t you leave?”
    She said, “I had the money and I had me
and I had him. I wasn’t much interested in the money. That left me
and him. He liked to drink, but that was all right, so did I. And
he liked to gamble and that wasn't so good, because he had an idea
he knew poker and he didn't know the first thing about poker. Even
nights when we stayed home together he wanted to play poker and one
night I took him for every cent he made that month. I think that
was the only thing he liked about me—the fact that I could make him
look sick when it came to poker.”
    “What was his line?”
    “All right, Vincent, I’ll tell you about
him. His name is George Hagedorn and I met him three years ago. We
knew each other four months and then we got married. We were a
couple of lonely people and I guess that was the only reason we
married. He didn't know I had money. I told him a few days after
the wedding and it didn't seem to make much difference. I guess
that was one of the very few things that was good about him. He had
a lot of pride. Maybe too much. I think that was why he gambled. I
think that was the only way he reasoned he could get money with his
own hands. He hadn't tried many other ways because he was very
lazy. One of the laziest men I've ever seen. When we married he was
thirty-two and a complete failure. A statistician making forty-five
a week in an investment security house.”
    “What house?”
    “Kinney.”
    “I know that firm,” Parry said. “They’re
big. Offices in Santa Barbara and Philly. I can't figure Santa
Barbara.”
    “He tried to get transferred down to Santa
Barbara but they didn’t need him there. He wouldn't have lasted at
the office here but he had asthma and it kept him out of the Army
and I guess they figured they might as well keep him for the
duration. Besides, they had him broken in. But he was late