David Goodis - The Burglar (Vintage Crime Black Lizard)

by David Goodis

Copyright 1953 by David Goodis

Copyright renewed 1981 by ProvidentNational Bank

All rights reserved under Internationaland Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the UnitedStates by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., NewYork, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited,Toronto. This edition published by arrangement with Scott MeredithLiterary Agency.

First Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Edition,May 1991

ISBN 0-679-73472-4

the

burglar

At three in the morning it was dead aroundhere and the windows of the mansion were black, the mansion darkpurple and solemn against the moonlit velvet green of gentlysloping lawn. The dark purple was a target and the missile wasNathaniel Harbin who sat behind the wheel of a car parked on a wideclean street going north from the mansion. He had an unlitcigarette in his mouth and in his lap there was a sheet of papercontaining a diagram of burglary. The plan gave the route aiming atthe mansion, moving inside and across the wide library to the wallsafe where there were emeralds.

In the parked car Harbin sat with histhree companions. Two of them were men and the third was a blondeskinny girl in her early twenties. They sat there and looked at themansion. They had nothing to express and very little to thinkabout, because the mansion had been thoroughly cased, the plan hadbeen worked and re-worked with every move scheduled on asplit-second basis, the thing discussed and debated and rehearseduntil it was a fine, precise plan that looked to be foolproof.Harbin told himself it was foolproof, allowed that to simmer for awhile, then bit hard on the cigarette and told himself nothing wasfoolproof. The haul was going to be risky and as a matter of factit might prove to be more risky than any they had ever attempted.It was certainly the biggest haul they had ever attempted and itwas these big hauls that offered the most danger. Harbin's thinkingwent that far and no further. He was inclined to pull the brakes onthinking when his mind began looking at risk.

Harbin was thirty-four and for the pasteighteen years he had been a burglar. He had never been caught anddespite the constant jeopardy he had never been forced into areally tight corner. The way he operated was quiet and slow, veryslow, always unarmed, always artistic without knowing or interestedin knowing that it was artistic, always accurate with it and alwaysextremely unhappy with it.

The lack of happiness showed in his eyes.He had gray eyes that were almost never bright, subdued eyes thatmade him look as though he was quietly suffering. He was a rathergood-looking man of medium height and medium weight and he had hairthe color of ripe wheat, parted far on one side and brushed flatacross his head. His mode of attire was neat and quiet and he had asoft quiet voice, subdued like the eyes. He very seldom raised hisvoice, even when he laughed, and he rarely laughed. He rarelysmiled.

In that respect he was on the order ofBaylock, who sat next to him on the front seat of the car. Baylockwas a short, very thin man in his middle forties, getting bald,getting old fast with pessimism and worry, getting sick with livertrouble and a tendency to skip meals and sleep. Baylock had badeyes that blinked a lot and small, bony hands constantly rubbingtogether with the worry and the memory of several years ago whenthere was prison. Baylock had been in prison for what he considereda very long time and on certain occasions he would talk aboutprison and say what an awful thing it was and claim that he wouldrather be dead and buried than be in prison. Most of the timeBaylock was a bore and sometimes he could really get on one'snerves and at certain times he was truly intolerable.

Harbin could remember specific occasionswhen he had been fed up with Baylock, finally weary of Baylock'scontinual whining and nagging, the sound of complaining andpessimism that was like a dripping faucet, going into the nervesand going in again and again until the only thing to do was walkaway from Baylock and keep on walking to keep away from him untilhe got tired of hearing himself talk. Baylock always took a longtime to get tired of that, and yet Baylock was completelydependable during a haul, valuable after a haul because of hisability to appraise loot, and valuable mainly because all hismotives and all his moves were always displayed out in theopen.

Harbin recognized and appreciated thatrare trait in Baylock, and so did the others, the two in the backseat, the girl and Dohmer. Although Dohmer at times showed activehostility toward Baylock, it was a temporary hostility that alwaysbubbled and climbed and blew up and died. Dohmer was a tall, heavyDutchman, touching forty, with a wide, thick nose and a thick neckand a thick brain. The brain never tried to accomplish what it knewit couldn't accomplish and for that reason Dohmer was just asvaluable to Harbin as Baylock was. Dohmer was quite clumsy on hisfeet and he was never allowed to work the inside of houses, butfrom the outside he functioned well in the capacity of lookout andduring emergencies he was more or less automatic, reacting like anetwork of gears and wires.

Harbin took the cigarette from his mouth,looked at it and put it back in again. He turned his head to lookat Baylock, then went on turning his head to look at Dohmer and thegirl. The girl, Gladden, looked back at Harbin and as their eyesmet and held there was a moment of strain and difficult waiting, asthough this was as far as it could go, this thing of just lookingat each other and knowing it couldn't go any further than justthis. Glow from a streetlamp far back came through the rear window,came floating in to settle on Gladden's yellow hair and part of herface. The glow showed the skinny lines of her face, the yellow ofher eyes, the thin line of her throat. She sat there and looked atHarbin and he saw her skinniness, this tangible proof of her lackof weight, and in his mind he told himself she weighed tons andtons and it all hung as from a rope around his neck. He looked atthis burden that was Gladden, tried to smile at her but couldn'tsmile because he saw her in that moment as a burden and nothingmore than a burden, then drew himself up and away from that momentand saw her only as Gladden.

Only as Gladden she was quiet and kind andit was pleasant to have her around. When it came to the hauls shewas completely mechanical and went through her maneuvers as thoughshe was knitting. On all the hauls she did all the casing and shedid it in a relaxed, somewhat detached manner that made it lookalmost easy although it was really very difficult, sometimes moredifficult than the haul itself. On this haul, aiming at somethingaround a hundred thousand dollars worth of emeralds in a wall safe,Gladden had worked for six weeks to get in good with certainservants who worked in the house, to get into the house on thepretext of visiting with the servants when the family was away fora weekend, to line up the information and take it back to Harbinand Baylock and Dohmer. She did all that with each move carried outaccording to plan, getting her directions from Harbin, asking noquestions and going through with the directions exactly asspecified, coming back with all the facts she was told to obtain,and just standing there quietly when Baylock began to whine and nagand complain. Baylock said she should have come back with more,there were undoubtedly more burglar alarms than the ones she hadlisted. Baylock said it was an unsatisfactory job of casing. Butthen Baylock was always getting his digs in at Gladden.

There was nothing personal in the digs.Baylock was really fond of Gladden and when they weren't working ona haul he was amiable toward her and he showed her a kindness nowand then. But the hauls were the big things in Baylock's life andhe saw Gladden as a drag, her femininity a negative force workingagainst the success of the hauls, and even if the hauls weresuccessful, Gladden was a woman and sooner or later a woman causesgrief and Baylock was constantly taking Harbin aside and drillingaway at this issue. Gladden was Baylock's major complaint though henever made the complaint bluntly in her presence. He would waituntil she wasn't around, and then he would start on it, thisfavorite complaint of his, telling Harbin that they didn't needGladden, they ought to give her some money and send her away, andshe would be better off and most certainly they would be betteroff.