Read Dark Passage Online

Authors: David Goodis

Tags: #Fiction, #Classics

Dark Passage

DAVID GOODIS

ZEBRA BOOKS KENSINGTON PUBLISHING
CORP.

ZEBRA BOOKS

are published by

Kensington Publishing Corp. 475 Park
Avenue South New York, NY 10016

Copyright Š 1946 by David Goodis. Renewed
in 1974 by the Estate of David Goodis.

All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior
written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in
reviews.

First Zebra Books printing: July, 1988
Printed in the United States of America

TO MY BROTHER

CHAPTER 1

It was a tough break. Parry was innocent.
On top of that he was a decent sort of guy who never bothered
people and wanted to lead a quiet life. But there was too much on
the other side and on his side of it there was practically nothing.
The jury decided he was guilty. The judge handed him a life
sentence and he was taken to San Quentin.

The trial had been big and even though it
involved unimportant people it was in many respects sensational.
Parry was thirty-one and he made thirty-five a week as a clerk in
an investment security house in San Francisco. He had been
unhappily married for sixteen months, according to the prosecution.
And, according to the prosecution, a friend of the Parrys came into
the small apartment one winter afternoon and found Mrs. Parry on
the floor with her head caved in. According to the prosecution,
Mrs. Parry was dying and just before she passed away she said Parry
had banged her on the head with a heavy glass ash tray. The ash
tray was resting near the body. Police found Parry’s fingerprints
on the ash tray.

That was half the story. The other half
meant the finish of Parry. He had to admit a few things. He had to
admit he hadn’t been getting along with his wife. He had to admit
he was seeing other women. The fact that his wife was seeing other
men didn't make any difference to the court. Then they got Parry to
admit that he hadn't gone to work that day. A sinus headache kept
him at home all morning and in the afternoon he had gone for a walk
in the park. When he came home he found a crowd outside the
apartment house and several police cars, the usual picture. That
was what he said. The police said differently. The police said that
Parry had hit his wife on the head with the ash tray and then
arranged the body so that it would look as if she had tripped,
knocking the ash tray off a table as she fell, then knocking her
head on the ash tray when she reached the floor. The police said
that it was a very clever job and no doubt it would have succeeded
except for Mrs. Parry's dying statement.

Parry’s lawyer tried hard but there was
too much on the other side. There was only one weak link in the
prosecution. It involved the fingerprints. When the prosecuting
attorney claimed that Vincent Parry was a shrewd, devilish
murderer, Parry's lawyer came back with the statement that a
shrewd, devilish murderer would have wiped fingerprints from the
ash tray. Parry's lawyer said it was no murder, it was an
accident.

That was about all, except the character
stuff. A lot of people wanted to know why Parry wasn’t in uniform.
The prosecution played that up big. Parry was a 4-F. The sinus was
one reason, a bad kidney was another. Anyway he was a 4-F and added
to that was something connected with a stretch in an Arizona
reformatory when he was fifteen. He was an only child, an orphan,
and his only relative in Maricopa said no and a week later he was
hungry and robbing a general store. Then again there was this
business of playing around with other women and there was a
collection of statements from bartenders and liquor dealers. Parry
had a habit of drinking straight gin despite the kidney trouble.
The prosecution claimed that the gin was primary cause for the
kidney trouble. Connecting the gin with the kidney, the prosecution
made another connection and inferred that the 4-F status was
attained through excessive gin that made the kidney worse. A few
newspapers bit into that and began calling Parry a draft dodger.
Other newspapers took it up. There were editorials calling for
further examination of the 4-F's who complained of kidney trouble.
When Parry was sentenced his picture was in all the papers and one
of the papers captioned his picture “Draft Dodger
Sentenced.”

Just before he was taken to San Quentin,
Parry got permission to talk to a friend. This was Fellsinger, who
was a few years older than Parry and worked in the same investment
security house. Fellsinger was Parry’s best friend and one of the
persons who believed Parry innocent. Parry gifted Fellsinger with
all his possessions. These included a waterproof wrist watch, $63.
75, a Packard-Bell phonograph-radio, a collection of phonograph
records featuring Parry's assemblage of Count Basie specials and
the late Mrs. Parry's assortment of Stravinsky and other moderns.
Parry also handed over his clothes, but Fellsinger burned those and
also got rid of everything that belonged to Mrs. Parry. Fellsinger
was unmarried and he had spent most of his time with the Parrys. He
had never liked Mrs. Parry and when he said good-by to Vincent
Parry he broke down and cried like a baby.

Parry didn’t cry. The last time he had
cried was when he was in the reformatory in Arizona. A tall guard
had punched him in the face, punched him again. When the guard
punched him a third time, Parry went out of his head and put his
hands around the guard's throat. The guard was dying and Parry was
sobbing with tears as he increased pressure. Then other guards came
running in to break it up. They put young Parry in solitary
confinement.

Later on the brutal guard pulled another
rotten trick on one of the kids and the superintendent investigated
the situation and had the guard dismissed.

Parry was thinking about that as he
entered the gates of San Quentin. He hoped he wouldn’t run into any
brutal guards. He had an idea that he might be able to extract some
ounce of happiness out of prison life. He had always wanted
happiness, the simple and ordinary kind. He had never wanted
trouble.

He didn’t look as if he could handle
trouble. He was five seven and a hundred and forty-five, and it was
the kind of build made for clerking in an investment security
house. Then there was drab light-brown hair and drab dark-yellow
eyes. The lips were the kind of lips not made for smiling. There
was usually a cigarette between the lips. Parry had jumped at the
job in the investment security house when he learned it was the
kind of job where he could smoke all he pleased. He was a
three-pack-a-day man.

In San Quentin he managed to get three
packs a day. He worked as a bookkeeper and he made a financial
arrangement with several non-smokers. He got along agreeably with
other inmates and the first seven months were no hardship. In the
eighth month he ran into the same sort of guard who had punched him
during his Arizona confinement. The guard picked on him and finally
arranged a situation where it was necessary to exert authority.
Parry was willing to take the bawling out but he wasn’t willing to
take the punch. Then came the second punch. And on the third punch
Parry started to sob, just as he had sobbed in Arizona. He put his
hands around the guard's throat. Other guards came in on it and
broke it up. Parry was placed in solitary.

He was in solitary for nine days. When he
came out he was fired from the bookkeeping job and switched to an-
other cell block, much less comfortable than the one he had been
in. He learned that the guard had almost died and the episode had
reached outside the prison walls and it had been in the papers. He
was now doing hard work with a spade and a sledgehammer and at
night he was practically out on his feet. He was almost too tired
to read the letters he received from Fellsinger. But one night he
got a letter from Fellsinger and it told him he was a sap for
mixing with that guard. It ruined any chances he might have for a
parole. He got a laugh out of that. He knew he was going to spend
the rest of his life in this place. He knew what kind of life it
was going to be.

It was going to be a horrible life. The
food at San Quentin was decent but it wasn’t good enough to get
along with his condition. And somehow he had the paradoxical
feeling that gin had helped his kidney and here he couldn't have
gin. He couldn't have women and he couldn't have bright lights and
he couldn't have a fireplace. He couldn't have the kind of friends
he wanted and he couldn't have streets to walk on and crowds to
see. All he had here were the bars on his cell door and the
realization that he would be looking at those bars for the rest of
his life.

He was sitting on the edge of his cot. He
was looking at the bars of the cell door. Like a snake gliding into
a pool a thought glided into his mind. He stood up. He walked to
the door and put his hands against the steel bars. They weren’t
very thick but they were strong. He thought of how strong these
bars were, how strong was the steel door at the end of corridor D,
how ready was the guard's revolver at the end of corridor E, then
the two guards at the end of corridor F, and how high the wall was,
and how many machine guns were waiting there along the wall. The
snake made a turn and started to glide out of the pool. Then it
turned again and it began to expand. It was becoming a very big
snake because Parry was thinking of the trucks that brought barrels
of cement into that part of the yard where they were building a
storage house. Parry worked in that part of the yard.

Sleep was a blackboard and on the
blackboard was a chalked plan of the yard. He kept tracing it over
and over and when he got it straight he imagined a white X where he
was going to be when the truck unloaded the barrels. The X moved
when the empty barrels were placed back upon the truck. The X moved
slowly and then disappeared into one of the barrels that was
already in the truck.

The blackboard was all black. It stayed
black until a whistle blew. The motor started. The sound of it
pierced the side of the barrel and pierced Parry’s brain. There
wasn't much air but there was enough to keep him alive for a while.
A little while. The sound of the motor was louder now. Then the
truck was moving. He knew just how far it had to move until it
would be out of the yard. He waited to hear the sound of a whistle.
The sound of a siren. He had the feeling that this was nothing more
than a foolish idea that would get him nowhere except back in
solitary. He shrugged and told himself he had nothing to
lose.

There was no whistle. There was no siren.
The truck was going faster now. He couldn’t believe it. This had
been too easy. He told his mind to shut up, because this wasn't
over yet. This was only the beginning and from here on it was going
to be tough. He had to get out of the barrel and that was going to
be a real picnic. He was in one of the bottom barrels and they were
stacked three deep. The truck was rolling now. He sensed that it
was making a turn. It made another turn and then it rolled faster.
He was having trouble drawing air from the black inside of the
barrel. He told himself that he had five minutes and no more. Two
barrels on top of him, and four rows of barrels between him and the
edge of the truck. He took a deep breath that wasn't so deep after
all. That scared him. He took another deep breath and that was less
deep than the first. He threw his weight against the side of the
barrel and the barrel wouldn't budge. He tried again and he made
about an inch. He tried a third time and made another inch. He kept
on trying and making inches. All at once it came to him that he was
battling for his life. It scared him so much that he stopped trying
and he decided to start yelling, to start begging them to stop the
truck and let him out of the barrel.

Just before he opened his mouth he
analyzed the idea. The gap at the top of the barrel was wide enough
for his voice to get through, but if his voice got through it would
mean that he would soon be back at San Quentin.

His mouth stayed open but did not release
sound. Instead he made another drag at air. He pushed again at the
side of the barrel. Now he estimated that three minutes were
subtracted from the original five. He had two minutes in which to
make good. He kept on dragging at air and pushing at the side of
the barrel.

August heat came gushing through the gap
at the top of the barrel, mixed with the black thickness in the
barrel and the anguish and the effort. Perspiration gushed down
Parry’s face, formed ponds in his armpits. All at once he realized
that more than two minutes had passed, considerably more. Put it at
ten minutes. He looked up and through the gap at the top of the
barrel he could see yellow sky. He smiled at the sky and now he
understood that he had a good chance. Along with the sky a supply
of new air was coming through the gap.

Heaving at the side of the barrel, pushing
it away from the two barrels on top, he widened the gap to ten
inches. He was working on the eleventh inch when the truck hit a
bump in the road and the two barrels on top went sliding back to
their previous position. He looked up and instead of yellow sky all
he could see was black, the black under- side of the second barrel.
He had lost the gap and he had lost all the air. Now he must start
all over again.

He didn’t want to start all over again. He
wanted to weep. He began to weep and the tears were thick spheres
of wet mixing with the wet of increased perspiration. His cramped
limbs were giving him pain. He measured the pain and knew that it
was bad. And it would get worse, keep getting worse until finally
it would blend with the pain in air-starved lungs. Once more he
told himself that he was going to die here in the
barrel.

Other books

To Love and to Cherish by Leigh Greenwood
Tempest in the Tea Leaves by Kari Lee Townsend
Rocky Mountain Sister by Wireman, Alena
Charger the Soldier by Lea Tassie
Death in Daytime by Eileen Davidson
The Spring Madness of Mr Sermon by R. F. Delderfield