Free Dark Passage by David Goodis Page A

thing to lose.”
    “But you,” Parry said. “You’ve got plenty
to lose. You and your friend.” “Don't worry about me and my
friend,” the driver said.
    “You just be there at three. That’s all
you got to worry about.” Parry opened the door and stepped out of
the taxi. He walked toward the entrance of a third-rate apartment
house. He heard the taxi going away and he turned and saw the tail
light getting smaller in the blackness down the street.
    The lobby of the apartment house was
dreary. People who stayed in this place were in the forty-a-week
bracket. The carpet was ready to give up and the wallpaper should
have given up long ago. There were three plain chairs and a sofa
sinking in the middle. There was a small table, too small for the
big antique lamp that was probably taken at auction without too
much bidding. Parry had been here before and every time he came
here he wondered why George Fellsinger put up with it. He looked at
it through the window of the door that kept him in the vestibule.
He sighed and wanted to go away. There was no other place to go. He
gazed down the list of tenants, came to Fellsinger and pressed the
button. There wasn’t any voice arrangement. There wasn't any
response to the first press. Parry pressed again. There wasn't any
response. Maybe the Bridge was better after all. It didn't pay to
keep up with this, all this vacuum in the stomach, going around,
going up to Ms brain and going back to his stomach and coming up
again and eating away at his heart. He pressed the button again,
and this time he got a buzz and he opened the door, quickly crossed
the lobby, saw that the elevator was right there waiting for him.
Maybe the police were waiting upstairs. Maybe they
weren't.
    The elevator took him to the fourth floor.
He hurried down the corridor, knocked on the door of Fellsinger’s
apartment.
    The door opened. Parry stepped into the
apartment. The door closed. George Fellsinger folded his arms and
leaned against the door and said, “Jesus Christ.”
    George Fellsinger was thirty-six and
losing his blonde hair. He was five nine and he had the kind of
build they show in the muscle development ads, the kind of build a
man has before he sends the coupon away and gets the miracle
machine. Fellsinger had blue eyes that were more water than blue
and the frayed collar of his starched white shirt was open at the
throat.
    The apartment was just like Fellsinger. It
consisted of a room and a bath and a kitchenette. The davenport was
set with pillow and sheets and there were six ash trays stocked
with stubs, a magazine on the floor, an empty ginger-ale bottle
resting on the magazine. Parry knew Fellsinger had fallen asleep on
the davenport after having finished the magazine and the ginger ale
and the cigarettes. There was a trumpet on one of two
chairs.
    “Jesus Christ,” Fellsinger said
again.
    “How’ve you been, George?”
    “I’ve been all right. Jesus, Vincent, I
never expected anything like this —ran to a small table, opened a
drawer, took out a carton of cigarettes. With a thumbnail he slit
the carton, extracted a pack, and with the same thumbnail he opened
the pack, with the same thumbnail got a match lit. He ignited
Parry's cigarette, ignited his own and then went back to the door
and leaned against it.
    “You saw the papers?”
    “Sure,” Fellsinger said. “And I couldn’t
believe it. And I can't believe this.”
    “There’s no getting away from it, George.
I'm here. This is really me.”
    “In that brand-new suit?”
    Parry explained the suit. From the suit he
went back to the road, told Fellsinger how she had picked him up,
told Fellsinger everything.
    “You can’t work it that way,” Fellsinger
said. “What you've got to do is take yourself out of town. Out of
the state. Out of the country.”
    “That’s for later. What I need now is a
new face.”
    “He’ll ruin you. I tell you, Vince, you're
working it wrong. Every minute you waste in town is—”
    “Look, George, you said I was innocent.
You always