Blue City

by Ross Macdonald

  There was fear and confusion in his eyes, as if he suspected me of bitter irony. “What did you see in Kerch’s safe?”

  “Your letters to Mrs. Sontag. I think you were a fool to let him frighten you with those. If you’d have the courage of your indiscretions, you could fight him in the open and win.”

  “You don’t understand this town. I’d lose the support of the one group of people I can count on.”

  “All right.” I sat down and looked out of the window. The dirty brick wall which cut off the horizon was as blank and stubborn as human fear. “I’m bloody tired of giving pep talks. I’ve given so many pep talks in the last two years that I feel like sealing off my mouth and stopping talking for good.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said miserably.

  I stood up and gave him the pay-off: “If you’ve got any guts left at all, you can make a monkey out of Kerch. Have you got a gun?”

  “Yes, I got one from Hanson before we went out to the inn.”

  “Then go out to the Cathay Club and bring in Kerch.”

  “I’m not a gunman.”

  “Neither is he.”

  “But what about my letters in his safe? You haven’t got them, have you?”

  “No, they’re probably still there. But I think I can remember the combination.”

  “You can?”

  “Lend me your pen and an envelope.”

  He gave me writing materials and I sat down at the desk. My head wasn’t good for much else by then, but it was still a good head for figures. One by one I picked the numbers out of my bruised memory and set them in the right order.

  “It’s an envelope in the second drawer from the upper right-hand corner,” I said. “Alphabetically, under ‘A.’ Kerch is a great man for system.”

  He thanked me emotionally when I handed him the combination. Then he went out the door in nervous haste, like a rattled hunting dog going up for his last chance to pass the test on the firing range.

  chapter 20

  The sergeant opened the door and moved backwards into the room. “Bring him in here, Alec,” he said. “Inspector Hanson wants him in here.”

  He looked taken aback when he turned and saw me sitting there. “You’re free to go now, Mr. Weather. I’ll take you out to the desk so you can check out.”

  “I feel too weak to move.”

  “Hold it a minute, Alec,” the sergeant called into the hall. He turned to me again with a look that tried to be ingratiating and wasn’t. “You can’t sit here, Mr. Weather. Mr. Sanford bailed you out, didn’t you know?”

  “I like it here. It’s very interesting.”

  An obscure worry crawled across his face. “I didn’t want to hit you, Mr. Weather, you know that. I tried my best to keep Moffatt from beating you up. You won’t say anything to Inspector Hanson?”

  “I’ve got nothing against you but your job and your personality and the company you keep. I won’t tattle on you. But you better keep out of dark alleys for a while. And tell your pal Moffatt to keep off the streets entirely.”

  “Yeah, sure, Mr. Weather. Don’t you think you need some first aid for your face? Come with me and I’ll get you fixed up.”

  “I’m staying here. You can bring me my belt and tie—and my wallet, with all the money in it.”

  “O.K., Mr. Weather. But the Inspector don’t want you here when he’s questioning a prisoner.” He plodded out.

  A minute later Hanson came in, with Rusty Jahnke handcuffed and escorted by a uniformed policeman. Jahnke looked beaten and sick, the way I felt. His face was badly bruised and his head hung down on his chest. The unbruised sections of his face were as pale and inert as lard. Even when he looked up under his red brows and saw me, there was hardly a flicker of recognition in his small eyes.

  Hanson gave me a hard, bright look as if to say: “You see?” He carried his body with authority.

  “Do you mind if I sit in on this, Inspector? If Jahnke starts telling his dreams, I’m an expert on dreams.”

  “Yes, you stay, Weather,” he said crisply. “Sit him under the light, Alec, and pull down the blind. I told Rourke to hold the other one across the hall.”

  Alec pushed Jahnke into the chair and sat down behind him with a pencil and stenographic notebook. Under the staring light the red spikes of Jahnke’s beard stood out individually and cast minute shadows on his chin. “If you think you can get anything outa me,” he said, “you’re nuts. I wanta lawyer. I wanta talk to Mr. Kerch.”

  “You’ll get a lawyer,” Hanson snapped. “And you’ll get Mr. Kerch. I’ll put you in adjoining cells.”

  Jahnke uttered a loose and mirthless laugh. “You’re talking awful big, copper. Pretty soon you’ll be talking awful small.”

  “I don’t care how you talk, Jahnke, so long as you talk. At what time did your employer cut Mrs. Weather to death? Was it before or after he beat Sault to death?”

  Jahnke looked up in stupid surprise. Perhaps he didn’t know Floraine was dead. More likely he hadn’t expected to be asked such large questions so definitely and so soon.

  “I don’t know nothing about it. Somebody hit me from behind and knocked me out, and I didn’t see nothing happen to nobody.”

  “You held Sault’s arms while Kerch beat him,” I said. “I saw you.”

  Hanson turned on me. “When I want you to talk up, I’ll ask you to.”

  This encouraged Jahnke: “He’s a dirty liar,” he yelled. “He killed Sault and buried him himself.”

  “How could you know?” Hanson said. “You were unconscious.”

  “Somebody told me. Mr. Kerch told me.”

  “Was Mr. Kerch there when Sault was killed?”

  “No, he wasn’t there. Nobody was there except this guy here. He did it.” He started to raise a hand to point at me, but his handcuffs thwarted the gesture.

  “How do you know he did it?”

  “I told you Mr. Kerch told me.”

  “But he wasn’t there.”

  “No, but Sault was a friend of his, and he heard about it.”

  “I’ll tell you how close friends they were,” Hanson said in a hard voice. “Sault was beaten to death with an iron spoon. It’s got his hair and his blood type on it, and it’s got Kerch’s fingerprints.”

  “You’re bluffing, copper,” Jahnke feebly scoffed. “You ain’t got Kerch’s fingerprints.”

  “But I have. He left them all over his suite in the Palace. He was too careless to get away with murder. He thought he had nothing to worry about, so he didn’t even take elementary precautions. That’s why we’re going to burn him, Jahnke. And that’s why you’re in so deep I can hardly see the top of your thick head.”

  “You ain’t got nothing on me.”

  Hanson laughed in his face. “You’ve got a faint chance of getting off with life, Jahnke. I’ve already given it to you. But you’re not talking the way you should be. You’re not talking about the murder of Floraine Weather.”

  Jahnke’s head was down on his chest again like a tiring bull’s. “I don’t do no talking till I see a lawyer. You can’t make me talk.”

  “All right, Alec, take him away. I’d rather get it from Salamander, anyway, he’s got more brains.” He turned to me and said in a conversational tone: “If we don’t get him for killing Sault, we’ve got him for the murder of your father.” His eyelid slid over his eye and snapped open again.

  “You can’t frame me for old man Weather,” Rusty said to his back. “I wasn’t even there.”

  Hanson turned on him again, and barked: “You were seen driving a car in the neighborhood of the Mack Building at the time of the shooting. I’ve got a witness, Jahnke.”

  “That wouldn’t prove nothing, even if it was true. There was plenty of cars on the street—” He stopped with his mouth open.

  “I suppose your employer Mr. Kerch told you that, too?”

  “I didn’t say nothing about Mr. Kerch. He didn’t have nothing to do with it.”

  “Maybe you c
an tell me who did. You were there. You saw all those cars on the street.”

  “There’s always lots of cars on the street that time of night.”

  “What time, Jahnke? What time exactly? What time in the evening of April 3, 1944, did you shoot and kill J.D. Weather?”

  “I didn’t kill him, I tell you. I didn’t even know about it till afterwards. Ask Garland, he’ll tell you I didn’t know about it.”

  “You want me to get in touch with Garland’s spirit?”

  “What are you trying to pull on me? Just call up Garland and ask him. He’ll tell you I didn’t know about it.”

  “I haven’t a telephone that would do it,” Hanson said cheerfully. “Garland’s dead.”

  “You’re a liar. You’re bluffing me again. You can’t bluff me.”

  “You want to come over to the morgue and see him? You want to poke your fingers in his eyeballs?”

  “Garland in the morgue? I don’t believe it.”

  “Everybody dies some time, Jahnke. They die like flies in your racket. Why should I try to kid you? You’ll read it in the papers—if they give you any papers in the death house.”

  Jahnke’s pale-blue eyes looked up into the light and were stared down.

  “If Garland’s dead, then I can tell you,” he said finally. “He’s the one that killed old man Weather.”

  “That’s an easy way out, isn’t it, Jahnke? Putting the blame on a dead man?” Hanson paused, and then rapped out: “Now let’s have the truth!”

  “I’m telling you the truth. Garland killed him.”

  “Where’s your proof?”

  “The proof is what I saw.”

  “You just said you weren’t there.”

  “I wasn’t there when it happened, but I was right before. That musta been when somebody saw me in the car.”

  “Whose car?”

  The clumsy evasion of his brain showed on his face. “Garland’s car. I was driving for Garland.”

  “And who did Garland work for? Who hired him to kill J.D. Weather?”

  “Nobody. I don’t know nothing about that. I told you I didn’t even know he killed Weather till after.”

  “But why would Garland kill J.D. Weather? He didn’t even know him, did he?”

  “No, he didn’t know him, except to see.”

  “Who hired him?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about that. I told you I’d tell you what I saw.”

  “Go ahead. What did you see?”

  “Garland and me was tailing Weather. We been tailing him off and on for a week. We was brought here from Chicago, and that was the job I was hired for, to tail J.D. Weather.”

  “Who hired you?”

  “You know who I work for. I only worked for one boss in this town. The same guy that’s gonna take your badge off your chest and pin it to your tail.”

  “Sure, sure,” Hanson said sardonically. “After you get through talking, we’ll have a cup of tea and you can read my teacup for me. That’s after you get through talking.”

  “Who’s been buying you, Hanson?” He tried again to look up into Hanson’s face but the light was too strong.

  “Stop worrying about me and get on with your story. Kerch ordered you to follow Weather and wait for a chance to kill him—which you did.”

  “He didn’t give me any orders like that. I took my orders from Garland. I was just driving the car. I wasn’t even packing a rod. That’s the truth. You can ask anybody.”

  “There isn’t anybody to ask.”

  “Anyway, I wasn’t in on any shooting. I guess Garland had been figuring the best place to shoot him and make a getaway and decided that the Mack Building was a good place. Old man Weather used to pass there every night about the same time. This was about half past six and we was double-parked near the corner, waiting for him to go past. Garland was sitting beside me in the front seat. I guess he was casing the second-story windows but I didn’t know what he was doing. All of a sudden he jumped out and told me to drive around the corner and beat it, he’d take a taxi back to the hotel. He ran in the Mack Street entrance of the Mack Building and I drove away. When I was halfway down the block I heard the two shots but I kept right on going. I didn’t know who did the shooting or who got it until I read in the night papers that it was J.D. Weather.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “What would anybody do? I kept my mouth shut.”

  “Did you talk to Garland about it?”

  “I never talked to Garland about nothing. I took orders from him. I told you everything I saw and everything I did, and that’s all I can tell you.”

  “It’s not a very good story, Jahnke. You should’ve been able to do better than that to save your skin. Didn’t you help Garland jimmy the door in the Mack Building? Didn’t you stand by in the car to give him a quick out?”

  “I’m telling you the truth. I didn’t tell you nothing else but the truth. Garland didn’t want me around, see? He didn’t want no witnesses.”

  “Your stories are bad, but they’re getting better. Let’s hear what you can do on Mrs. Weather now.”

  “I ain’t saying no more. When I tell you the truth it don’t do me no good. It don’t do me no good no matter what I say.” His jaw set stolidly and his mouth clamped shut.

  “Take him down to the cells, Alec,” Hanson said briskly. “There’s nobody in nine, is there? And you better get Dr. Brush to look at his head. We wouldn’t want a fine intelligent witness like Jahnke to die on our hands, would we? Although it might save electricity.”

  “— you, you —ing —”, Jahnke said repetitiously as he was led out.

  Hanson turned to me, rubbing his hands. His green eyes shone in the margin of the white glare like sunlight caught in the bottom of a beer bottle. “You asked me a question last night, Weather. Now it’s answered.”

  “I’ve got to take back what I said, Inspector. When somebody knocks the chocks out from under you, you’re hell on wheels.”

  “All I needed was something on Kerch. You gave it to me.”

  “But you had a witness who saw Jahnke near the Mack Building on the night of the murder. You didn’t tell me that last night.”

  “It didn’t mean anything last night. There were hundreds of people on the streets, and Jahnke was one of them. If I had been able to follow it up two years ago—”

  “What stopped you?”

  “Politics,” Hanson said. “I was ordered to lay off Kerch and his little family.”

  “By whom?”

  “You want him in here, Inspector?” somebody said from the door.

  “Yeah, bring him in.” He said to me: “We’ll talk about it later.”

  “But you believe Jahnke’s story?”

  “Sure,” he said. “He hasn’t got enough brains to make up a story that good. And if somebody taught it to him two years ago, he’d have forgotten the words and music by now.”

  The sergeant crossed the room and silently handed me my belt and tie and wallet. The bills in the wallet were folded. I never fold bills in a wallet.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Don’t mention it, Mr. Weather.”

  On his way out, the sergeant passed Salamander and the policeman who was bringing him in. A caricaturist who wanted to portray the degradation of age and fear, but who had run out of colors and had nothing but a lump of dirty yellow wax to work with, might have made the face that Salamander carried sideways on his neck. The glance of his urine-yellow eyes darted into every dark corner of the room, like a frenzied rodent looking for a hole. He saw me but avoided my eyes.

  “This is a despicable outrage,” his large voice said. But the movements of this thin, old body were infinitely humble as he crossed the room in a slow lope on continuously bent knees.

  “Don’t start telling me how Kerch is going to take care of you, Professor. Kerch is going to be too busy taking care of himself. How come you’re a professor, by the way? Professor of what? Professor of abortion?”
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  The waxen face was so bloodless and transparent under the light that you could see the shadow of the skull. “Professor of Occult Sciences,” he said apologetically.

  “You don’t practice medicine any more, eh?”

  “I retired from the profession some years ago.”

  “I’m not talking about illegal operations. We’ll forget about that for now. Have you been doing any surgical work lately?”

  “As you know very well, I was examining Mr. Jahnke’s head when you burst in on us. I wouldn’t describe that as surgical work. I was merely doing a favor for a friend as one layman to another, you understand. I warn you, however, that he requires medical attention, since he probably had a slight concussion.”

  “He’s getting it. But apart from Jahnke, you haven’t been giving medical treatment to anyone lately?”

  “Certainly not,” the old man said. “I reiterate that I am no longer a member of the medical profession. For many years I have been concerned exclusively with the spiritual ills of mankind.”

  “Uh-huh. Weather, have you ever seen this specimen before?”

  “I saw him working on Mrs. Weather at the Wildwood Inn. I heard him tell Kerch he couldn’t save her.”

  “He’s a liar!” Salamander cried shrilly. “You’re trying to frame me!”

  “That’s what they all say. But I go by the facts myself. The facts don’t lie, if you study them carefully enough. How many stitches did you put in her face and neck?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Come off it, Professor. We’ve got the marks of the stitches on Mrs. Weather. We’ve got the bloody pieces of catgut you put in your garbage this morning. We’ve got a direct witness. What else do you want—Technicolor movies of the big operating scene?”

  Salamander’s face and body seemed to shrink perceptibly, and became very still. Only the clean, thin hands moved in his lap. They scampered lightly and aimlessly, like blind, white spiders, up and down his fleshless thighs.