“What you kill that guy for?”
“What you think I killed him for? So he cooperates, and he’s doing it. Like he is now, he don’t give no trouble.”
“We could have tied him up, or dropped him off, or knocked him out. We could have handled him somehow, so they wouldn’t have this on us.”
“You done all you could.”
“You bet I did.”
“I hope he appreciates it.”
“Shut up and drive.”
“Says who?”
I hauled off and let him have it, right in the mouth. His foot came off the gas, and we slowed, and I stamped on the brake, and we stopped. I let him have it again, so the blood spurted out of his lip. Then I grabbed him, jerked him out from behind the wheel, and drove my fist in till my arm was numb and his face looked like something the butcher would pitch in the bucket. Then I kicked him into my seat, took the wheel myself, and went on. It didn’t do any good. We were in the same old truck, with the rain pouring down in front, a dead man in behind, and headed nowhere. But it made me feel better.
On the dashboard was a button at the top of what looked like a grill, and I give it a twist. Plenty of drivers have shortwave, so they can pick up the police calls, and I figured I could find out what was being done about us. But ’stead of a grill it was a panel, and it opened up on a compartment full of cigarettes, chewing gum, maps, apples, and what looked to me like a flashlight. I took the cigarettes and lit up, and had me a deep inhale, and all the time he was looking at me, and I was wondering whether to give him one, just because he couldn’t help being like he was, and anyway I’d done all I wanted to do to him, and maybe more than I really wanted to do. I began sliding one out of the pack, when he moved. When I looked up I knew that flashlight wasn’t a flashlight at all, it was a automatic. Because I was looking straight into it.
“Rat, you listening what I say?”
“I hear every word, Bugs.”
“Drive.”
“I’m driving.”
“Drive like I tell you to drive.”
“Just say it, Bugs.”
He told me, and we began a zigzag course, part on the main highways, part on the crossroads, but as near as I could tell we were zigzagging for Los Angeles, and getting there. Then we had to stop for a freight that was crossing. Ahead of us was a green sedan, and for a while Bugs sat there looking at it and bearing down on some chocolate bars he found in with the apple. Then he sits up and says: “Bump him! Bump him!”
“What do you mean, bump him?”
“Bump him so he has to get out!”
I came up slow, then stepped on it so I smacked right into the rear bumper of the sedan. I no sooner untangled than Bugs jumped out and ran around front, shoving the gun in his pants as he went. Sure enough, the guy gets out, and Bugs began yelling and pointing at the truck. But the guy can’t make any sense out of it because he’s looking at Bugs’s face, where it’s still running blood, and he can’t connect all that grief with the little bump he felt. Bugs just keeps on talking. All that time the freight is going by, and he can’t take a chance the train crew might hop off to help some guy out. But soon as the bell stops he whips out the gun and tells the guy to peel off his clothes and hand over his dough. I hop out then, and run around the right-hand side and jump in the sedan and slide over behind the wheel. But Bugs thought of that. By the time I was set he had the guy out front, blocking me off. The guy’s taking orders now, and each piece of his clothes he peels, Bugs lays it on the hood and covers it with the guy’s raincoat. When the guy’s stripped naked, so his teeth are chattering and he’s begging Bugs not to keep him out there in the rain any more, Bugs plugs him. It was like something in a movie. First I could see them in front, on the other side of this pile of clothes on the hood, then comes the shot, and I can see Bugs and I can’t see him. Then Bugs has scooped up the clothes under his arm and is jumping in the back door of the sedan, telling me to drive. I start up, and I cut the wheel hard left. But the right side of the car goes up, then bumps down, as we go over something soft.
When Bugs climbed up in the front seat, maybe a half hour later, he was all dressed up in the guy’s clothes and his face was wiped off a little. He didn’t really look good, but he wasn’t in prison denims, like I was, and he could take out some money and count it. There was quite a little money, and he took quite a while. Then he says: “I guess you wonder why you killed him too?”
“You’re running it, Bugs.”
“Nekkid like he is, they may be quite a while identifying him, see? Without any driver’s license, or Elks’ pin, or tailor’s label, or that stuff they generally go on, they might be some little time. Well, all that time we’re moving, you get it, stupid? We’re on our way, and they don’t know what car we got, or the number of it, or anything at all, except we’re not no longer hauling meat. Pretty, isn’t it?”
“Oh, it’s clever. I can see that.”
“I killed him so he can’t talk to the cops and tell them what they might want to know. Of course, we all know you killed him.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“What do you mean, ‘that’s right’?”
“I mean if you say I killed him.”
“Quit cracking smart.”
“O.K.”
“And quit chattering them teeth.”
Changing cars I had got wet, and he hadn’t give me any chocolate bars, and I was cold and hungry and weak, and my teeth were chattering all right. I bit down on them, and they stopped. It was four or five in the afternoon by then, and we were in Los Angeles already, and I began wondering why he didn’t kill me. He had everything he wanted, a car, a suit, a raincoat, and dough. He didn’t need me any more. Then I got this awful sensation in the pit of my stomach, when I saw he was going to kill me, and it was just a question of when. He sat there staring at me, the gun in his lap, and I figured it would be at the next stop. So when we come to it I went right through. He snarled like a mad dog. “What’s the big idea, going through that light?”
“I didn’t see it.”
“I told you quit cracking smart.”
“I swear I didn’t see it.”
“You want some cops stopping us?”
“If you don’t see it, why would you stop?”
“You stop at the next one, though.”
“Oh, sure.”
The next one, I went through at seventy, and he began to scream. He’d have plugged me right there, but at that speed he was afraid. But I had the mirror and he didn’t, and back of us I see a light, just a single. Then behind that there’s another one, and then still another. I hold on seventy, but they begin closing in. The next light, I come off the gas, like I’m going to do like I’m told, and stop. I feel him tighten, and aim the gun. When we dropped to forty I hit the brake and cut the wheel. We spun around like something crazy. Inside, it’s like we’ve exploded, because he’s thrown on the floor but he shoots just the same. Whether I’m hit I don’t know, but I throw open the door and jump. Inside there’s more shots, and outside the motorcycles deploy, all three guns barking. I start to run, then I go down. But I don’t lay there. Because it was the torrent in the gutter that threw me, and it rushed me along like I was a hunk of rubble. I try to get up and can’t. Then all of a sudden it’s pitch dark and I’m falling. Then I crash down, so I think my back is broken. Then the water is rushing me along again, and I tumble where I am.
I’m in a storm drain.
They have them all over the city, some little, made out of terra-cotta pipe, some big, made out of concrete sections. They run under streets, and every so often there’s a manhole, so they can clean them out, and off under the sidewalks are intakes, to tap the flow in the gutter. In the intakes, they got handholds and bars, just in case somebody did fall in, and if I’d been quick I might have saved myself, but I was too crossed up. How big the pipe was that I was in I don’t know, but at a guess I would say three feet, maybe. In that was running about a foot of water, and I was bumpin
g along with it, feet first. I kept trying to stop, but I couldn’t. Over my face all the time the water kept pouring, and I kept gasping for air, and every time I’d gasp I’d swallow a gallon and then start over again.
How long that went on I don’t know. It seemed like an hour, but figuring it up now, I’d say about a minute. Then I see some gray light, and almost before I knew it, I was shooting past another intake pipe. I caught it, and four or five feet away, I could see bars. I reached and tried to grab one, but the water was pulling me back. I slipped off and went helloing down the black pipe again, still trying to breathe, still strangling from the water that was pouring over me. But my mind began to work, anyway a little bit. I knew there’d be another intake further on, and I set myself to watch for it and grab for a handhold. But I was watching on the right-hand side, where the other one had come in, and I shot right by one on the left. Then a couple more went by and I began to scream. It came to me, somehow, what a no-account life I’d led, and here I was, winding it up like a rat in a sewer, and even with the water in my mouth I began to scream like a maniac.
I saw light again, and got ready, but it wasn’t an intake this time. It was a grating over a big square drain that my pipe spilled me into, and then I really began to move, and for just that long I could breathe better and my back didn’t bump any more, because it was deeper. I put my head up, and there must have been two feet of clearance above me. But then I noticed there wasn’t that much, and pretty soon I knew why. Every so often pipes came roaring in, and each one filled the big drain fuller, and pretty soon it would be running full with no air, like a water pipe. I wasn’t screaming any more. I had just give up. I was going along, but I didn’t care any more.
Pretty soon something clipped my nose, and I put up my hands. I almost died then, because the top was only six inches from my face. There was a roar, and I figured another pipe was coming in. I knew I was up tight, and drew the biggest breath I could. When the top bumped my face I pushed down under to keep it away. Then I rolled over. I could feel the top bumping my back, and I kept telling myself I mustn’t breathe. I had that many seconds to live till I breathed, and I clamped down on my throat like I had in the truck, when we were bumping down the hill. Then something bumped my belly, and I breathed. But what I breathed was air. I opened my eyes and it was almost dark, and street lights were on, and I was washed up on a slab of concrete in the middle of water that was boiling all around me. About twenty feet away I could see the square mouth of a drain, and I figured it was what I come out of. It was at least five minutes, I guess, before I doped it out I was in the middle of the Los Angeles River.
I won’t tell you much about how I got out of there, about the guy that seen me, and stopped his car, and found a length of rubber hose, and threw me one end of it, and then ran me home, and wrapped me in blankets, and opened up a can of hot soup, and then give me hot coffee and hot milk mixed, and then put me to bed. If I told you too much, maybe you could figure out who he is, and he’d be in more trouble than I’m worth. And anyway, what I want to tell about, what I been leading up to all this time, was next morning, when he come in the little room he had put me in, and sat down beside the bed, and it was just him and me. He kind of mentioned that his wife and little boy were visiting her folks over the weekend, and I got the idea that was what he was trying to tell me, that it was just him and me, that nobody else knew anything. After a while he says: “What’s your name?”
“…Bud O’Brien’s my name.”
“Funny. I thought it was Conley.”
“What made you think that?”
“There was a convict named Conley that made his escape yesterday. From the stencil marks on those denims you were wearing, I figured you came from a prison yourself.”
“In that case, you might be right.”
“Want to read about it, Conley?”
“Yeah, I’d kind of like to.”
He went out and came back with the papers, and it was all plastered over the front pages how me and Bugs had slipped out in the meat truck, killed the driver, then killed another guy and taken his car, then been shot by the cops, with Bugs wounding a cop before they got him, and my body washing down the storm drain. Identification was certain, though, it said, because a cop recognized me before I went down. So I read all that stuff, and then I started to talk, and I told the guy what I’ve just told you, and ’specially I tried to make him believe I never killed anybody, which I didn’t. He listened, and sat there a long time, and then he said: “I figured it might be something like that. ’Specially when I read that item that covered Calenso’s record and your record…. All right, let’s say it’s true, the way you tell it. Well—O.K. I guess I really believe it. You didn’t kill anybody, and you’re dead. So far as the cops are concerned, they know they got you, and that means that today, this Sunday morning, you can, if I say the word, begin a new life. Suppose I do say the word, what then? What are you going to do with this life?”
Well, what was I going to say? The last I did any thinking about my life, I was ten feet under the street, in a drain pipe that was drowning me so fast I couldn’t see myself sink, and I wasn’t ready to talk. I began mumbling about I hope I would die if I ever pulled any crooked stuff again, and how I sure was going to get a job and go to work, and he listened, and then cut me off short. “That’s not good enough, Conley.”
“It’s all I know to do.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-three.”
“There’s just one place for a guy your age, these days, with your country in a war. Just one place, and you haven’t once mentioned it.”
“Well, I’m all registered up.”
“You sure of that?”
“You bet I’m registered up. O.K., so it’s the army, but don’t you think I’d have been in it long ago if it hadn’t been for that rap I was doing?”
“Which is your draft board?”
We talked for a minute about that, and then we both seen that wouldn’t do, because even if I give a new name to the draft board, the fingerprints would trip me, and then all of a sudden I said: “O.K., mister, I got it. This man’s army, the one we got, it can’t take me, because before it does, it’s got to turn me over to the state of California to die for what Bugs Calenso done. But that’s not the only army. There’s other armies—”
He looked up and come over and shook hands. So that’s where I am now, on my way to another army, that’s fighting for the same thing and that needs guys just as much as our army does. And I’m writing this on the deck of a freighter headed west, and the agreement is I mail it to him, to prove I did like I promised. If it all goes O.K., he keeps this locked up, and that’s that. If something goes wrong, and the ship gets it, or maybe my number goes up and I check in over there, why then maybe he hands it to some guy, to be printed if somebody wants to read it. So—
Say, that’s a funny one. Them reporters, they generally get it right, don’t they? Because now, if you happen to read this, why then Red Conley, he is dead!
Serial
JAMES M. CAIN WROTE six magazine serials, all while he was in California, and he considered them “commercial stories”—written primarily for quick money from either a magazine, studio, or both. But Cain also considered “Old Man Posterity” the only judge of literary merit, and by the Old Man’s measure some of these stories have had a surprising life of their own. Double Indemnity, for example: It was Cain’s first serial, written strictly for a quick sale in the hope of capitalizing on his fame as the author of the controversial, best-selling Postman. The editor of Redbook, especially, had been pressing Ms. Haggard for a Cain mystery. But when Cain sent Double Indemnity to New York, Redbook declined it. This annoyed Cain, who told Alfred A. Knopf that he considered the story “a piece of tripe [that] will never go between hardcovers while I live. The penalty, I suppose, for doing something like this is that you don’t even sell it to magazines.”
Cain gave serious thought to rewriting Double Indemnity in
the manner of Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey, exploring “what forces of destiny brought these particular people to this dreadful spot, at this particular time, on this particular day.” But before he could rework it, Edith Haggard sold Double Indemnity to Liberty, and when it came out over eight weeks in early 1936, it created a sensation. Liberty immediately wanted another, and Cain by then needed money to finance a trip to Mexico to research his still-evolving Serenade. So he wrote a serial about a female opera star whose businessman husband suddenly discovers his voice is better than his wife’s. Cain called this one Two Can Sing, but when he sent it to New York, Liberty turned it down. The editor wanted more murder. Then 20th Century-Fox bought Two Can Sing for $8,000. (It was made twice into movies, in 1939 as Wife, Husband and Friend starring Loretta Young, Warner Baxter, Binnie Barnes, and Cesar Romero, and in 1949 as Everybody Does It starring Linda Darnell, Paul Douglas, and Celeste Holm.) Later, after it sold to the American, it proved the most popular short novel the magazine ever published. The editor, Albert Benjamin, pleaded with Cain for another. By now, Serenade had been published, creating almost as much excitement as Postman, and Cain was hotter than ever.
His next serial grew out of a conversation he once had with a Collier’s editor (“How about a Cinderella story with a modern twist? What about a waitress marrying a Harvard man?”). He wrote it specifically with Collier’s in mind, but when his agent sent the magazine the story—called Modern Cinderella—Collier’s turned it down, primarily, Cain thought, because it was also concerned with organized labor. But Universal bought it for $17,500 late in 1937 and made it into a soppy little film called When Tomorrow Comes, starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer.
The following year, Cain wrote Money and the Woman, which Liberty bought immediately. It was also sold to Warner Brothers, and the studio assigned the script to Robert Presnell. When the film, starring Jeffrey Lynn and Brenda Marshall, was released in 1940, Variety said the script was all right and the story okay, “but somewhere along the line, the plot went askew. Result is a mild ‘B’ film.”