Blue City

chapter 14

“Couldn’t find him, eh?” the man in dungarees said when I stopped the car. “What’s the matter, friend? You look worried.”

“I couldn’t find the house. I’m not what you’d call worried, but I’d like to get out there before he leaves. Can I use your phone?”

“Yeah, but I looked it up and he ain’t in the phone book. Spell it ‘P-i-s,’ don’t you?”

“That’s right. I want to call another fellow that knows him.”

“If he lives in the city, it costs a dime to phone the city.”

I changed a ten and gave him a quarter. He pointed out the phone on the wall of his tiny office. “That’s the phone book there on the table.”

“Do you mind stepping out and closing the door?” I said. “This is a private call.”

He looked at me suspiciously. “You ain’t going to make a long-distance call? You can’t make no long-distance calls on this phone.”

I tossed him another quarter. “Go away for a minute, will you? I’m calling the city and I’m in a hurry.”

“O.K., friend. Long as it ain’t no long-distance call.” He walked out slowly, in token of his right to remain where he was, and slammed the door behind him.

I riffled through the first pages of the phone book and found the Al’s. Allbright. Allen. Allin. Allison. If Kerch and the other four in the Wildwood could be caught as they were, literally red-handed, the rotten core of the city would be smashed wide open. It had to be done now, before Floraine and Sault were silenced for good. But Kerch had two gunmen and I knew that, single-handed, I wouldn’t be able to take the five of them alive. Yet I couldn’t call the police. Allister was the only one I could count on.

Allister’s name wasn’t in the phone book. That meant he had a privately listed number! The City Hall? No, there wouldn’t be anybody there at this time. I called the operator and told her I had to talk to the Mayor. She told me she couldn’t give me his number, and cut me off with a lilting “Sorry.”

It looked as if I’d have to drive back to town. But that might give the people at the Wildwood time to clean up and get away. And if the city police picked me up driving a stolen car, it would be the end of everything – the end of me. I had a last chance, the number which Allister had called from his house when he got me the gun. I remembered it as well as the date I was released from the army – 23748.

I asked for the number and chewed the inside of my lower lip while the phone at the other end of the line rang four times. A woman’s sleepy voice said: “Hello?”

I thought it was a voice I had heard before, but I was never good at recognizing voices over the telephone. “I have a message for Mayor Allister–”

“Call his house, why don’t you?” the woman said petulantly. “He’s at home, isn’t he?”

“I can’t get his number. Can you give it to me?”

“How am I supposed to know? I don’t know the Mayor. You’ve got your gall calling me in the middle of the night–”

“Don’t hang up,” I said quickly. “Listen to me. This is dead serious. Will you deliver a message to Allister?”

“Who are you, anyway?” the woman whined.

“I’m a friend of his. I need his help. Will you please give him a message?”

“What’s the message? Depends on what it is.”

“This is it. Come to the Wildwood Inn now. If you have any honest police, bring them. If not, bring a posse of citizens. There’s a murder going on.”

“What?”

I repeated the message. “Have you got that? Allister’s got to get it immediately.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I got it.” Her voice had been scraped bare of sleepiness. “Who shall I tell him sent it?”

“John,” I said. “He’ll know. You’ll tell him right away?”

“Get off the wire and give me a chance.”

I hung up.

“You find out O.K.?” the thin man said, as I climbed into the roadster.

“Yeah. Thanks very much.”

“You’re welcome. You know how it is about those long-distance calls.”

“Yeah.” I used every ounce of pickup the car had as I turned up the highway.

I found the lane and parked in the same place, leaving the motor idling. Instead of going back to the gravel road, I cut straight through the woods. The blue steel concavity of the sky was whitening at the edges, giving me enough light to see by. Before I reached the Wildwood it was chilly aluminum dawn.

The front of the inn, faced with roughhewn logs, had a certain rustic charm, especially at night. In the morning light its back kitchen looked like the underside of appearances, the pocked hindquarters of reality. Leprous yellow paint, blistered by summer and cracked by winter, peeled from the weather-warped boards. The broken steps to the back door were flanked by a row of rusting garbage pails, half of them overturned. At the end of the row there was a six-foot pile of empty cans and bottles, like a sardonic pyramid to a tinhorn Pharaoh.

While I watched from the trees beside the path, the back door opened and Rusty Jahnke came out carrying a spade over his shoulder. He set it against the wall, took off his topcoat, rolled it up, and left it on the stoop. Then he tested the bare earth with his spade in several places. Finally he found a soft spot beside the pile of cans, and began to dig.

He worked fast, breathing audibly through his nose, and the pattern of his excavation took shape. It was about six feet long and three feet wide. When it was a little more than a foot deep, he quit digging, leaned momentarily on his spade, and took off his suit coat. He folded it and put it on top of the other. But when he began digging again, his shoulder holster got in his way. He unsnapped the harness and took it off, laying it down carefully on the stoop.

He began working again, harder than before, and a dark blotch of sweat appeared on his shirt and spread gradually across his back. It looked like the best chance I’d ever have to put him out of action.

I stepped into the path and walked toward him. When the muzzle of my gun was four feet from his bent spine, I said: “Raise your hands. Don’t speak. Don’t move.”

His hands jerked above his head and the spade stayed where it was, upright in the earth. I clubbed the gun, took a long step forward, and swung it by the muzzle against the base of his skull. It made a sharp cracking sound like an axe on wood. He lay down quietly in the shallow grave he had dug.

I tossed the gun, caught it by the butt, and turned towards the closed door of the kitchen. There was no sound, no movement, as if all life had ceased with my single blow. I took a step towards the door, another, and another. The tarnished brass knob turned and the door sprang open. I fired twice through the center of the opening, then saw that there was nothing there to hit. Three long steps brought me under the window, where I crouched against the wall watching the door. The window flew up with a snap above my head. I wasted two more bullets through the open window. That left me two, or was it three? I couldn’t risk reloading. I was beginning to get frightened, and it made me a little trigger-happy.

I saw the shoulder of a gray coat edging around the corner of the door. I emptied my gun into it and saw the triangle of black holes appear in the cloth. Then the coat collapsed and fell across the doorsill. It was empty. I had used all seven bullets to drill air.

The gun in Rusty’s holster was a forlorn chance, but I jumped for it and got my hand on the butt. The harness was wrapped around it and the gun got tangled in the straps. I wrenched at them, infuriated by the animistic feeling that doors, windows, guns – all physical objects – were conspiring with Kerch against me.

“Drop it,” Garland said from the doorway. “I’m getting pretty tired of you.”

I hesitated a moment, holding the useless gun. He fired once and it flew out of my hand, leaving it numb. I looked at him and saw that he had done it from the hip. I could feel my nerve draining out of me like water.

“You should know by now that I mean what I say.” He tripped down the steps and walked around me. “Go inside. Take it slow. I’ll kill you for any reason at all.”

I climbed the steps on shaky legs and stepped inside the kitchen. My foot slipped on the floor and I almost fell.

“Take it easy,” Garland said. “You almost got it that time. I can put a line of slugs right up your backbone like a punch machine.”

“I know you’re good,” I said. “You don’t have to keep telling me.”

“No more cracks out of you, fellow,” he said from behind me. “I didn’t kill you, because Kerch might want to see you alive. But I can always change my mind. Or drill your fanny for you.”

I didn’t make the obvious retort. My throat was busy resisting the fierce pressure of nausea that clenched my stomach and squirted streams of saliva into my mouth. It may have been the slick of blood on the floor where my foot had slipped. It may have been the half-naked man in the corner with the discolored neck and dead, swollen face. It may have been the woman who lay on the table with her limp legs dangling over the end. The gasoline lamp had been moved to the stove and shone fully on the bloody towel which wrapped her face. The rhythmic bubbling sounds of her breathing were the only sign that she was still alive.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Garland said. “You see what happens to boys and girls that try to buck our organization.”

I had conquered the nausea, but the effort had left me weak. I sat down with my back to the window. The soles of my boots were sticky when I moved my feet. Garland sat down facing me in the chair where Sault had died. He held the gun politely on his knee, like a cup of tea. I began to estimate the minimum time it would take for Allister to come with help. If everything went well, it seemed to me that he could get there any minute.

“You’re very foolish to come back, fellow,” Garland said. “Kerch isn’t going to like it a little bit.”

I looked at him, and didn’t answer. His slender fingers, delicate features, girlish mouth, made a strange contrast with the pleasure he took in killing. His gray eyes held no history. I couldn’t imagine behind him a boyhood of school, family life, ambition, or any kind of hope. He looked as if he had been always what he was, as if he had emerged from the womb murderous, cheaply elegant, and epicene.

“While we’re waiting,” he said after a while, “you might as well bring Rusty in. He’ll catch cold out there.”

“That would be a terrible pity.”

“Get going,” he snapped. “You go first now. Remember I can drop a man with this gun up to fifty yards.”

Rusty was lying where he had fallen in the raw earth, his arms outspread and his face turned awkwardly to one side. His knees were drawn up slightly, and, though his eyes were open, the lower rims of the pupils were barely visible under the lids.

Without taking his eyes or gun from me, Garland crouched and felt the great swelling under the red hair. “You hit him a nasty smack,” he said indifferently. “It’s a good thing Salamander’s coming.”

“Salamander?” I remembered the dried-up little man in the radio station who claimed to be the seventh son of a seventh son.

“He used to be a doctor,” Garland said in a gossipy way. “He lost his license when they sent him up. Now, pick Rusty up and be careful not to drop him.” He giggled. “Or I’ll drop you right in your tracks, fellow.”

Rusty was hard to handle, because his back was rigid and his bent legs refused to straighten, but I finally got him over my shoulder and up the steps into the kitchen. I laid him on the floor beside the dead man.

“They make a pretty pair, don’t they?” Garland said. “Now go and sit down and be thankful there aren’t three of you on the floor.”

“Aren’t you going to do anything for this woman?”

“We did what we could. I wasn’t the one that cut her. If you ask me, it was a bad mistake. She’s still breathing, isn’t she?”

“Yes, but she’s losing blood.”

“Salamander should be here soon. I’m no doctor.”

After a pause, during which I sat and looked at his gun some more, he said: “Maybe you better finish that hole Rusty started. Kerch won’t like it if Sault’s still above ground.”

“Kerch won’t like it if anybody’s still above ground.”

“Maybe you’re right, fellow.” He smiled a sad little smile, and stood up again. “Walk ahead of me. You might as well dig it deep enough for two.”

I was sweating and digging with blistered hands, shoulder-deep in the grave, when the sound of the car came down the road and stopped in front of the inn. My first thought was that Allister had come, and I stopped digging and straightened up.

“Go on digging,” Garland said above me. “You want to make a good impression on Mr. Kerch, don’t you?”

Kerch came around the corner of the building, followed by the man who called himself Professor Salamander. There was a long gauze bandage on the side of Kerch’s face, held in place by strips of adhesive. He looked as worried and excited as his wide phlegmatic face could ever look.

“What’s this, Garland?” he said when he saw me.

“Boy friend here came along and hurt Rusty, so I put him to work. I told him to dig it deep enough for two, didn’t I, boy friend?”

“You’re very audacious,” Kerch said to me. “Your audacity will be the death of you.”

“Electricity will be the death of you. I think you’ll all die in a chair before long.”

“Keep him digging,” Kerch said to Garland. “Don’t shoot him unless you have to. I may have another use for him.”

“Where’s the injured lady?” Salamander said in his rich voice.

“In the kitchen.”

They went in and closed the door.

I went on digging in a slowing rhythm. I was very tired. The blood beat painfully in my sore head. Some of the blisters had broken, leaving my hands raw. The hole was up to my chin when I straightened up.

“That should be deep enough,” Garland said. “It’s probably only temporary anyway.”

“Do I climb out now, or do I just stay here?”

“You can come in and get Sault and fill it up.”

I was so tired that I didn’t realize for a minute what that meant. It meant that I wasn’t going to share the grave with Sault.

In the kitchen, the ex-doctor was working over Floraine Weather’s ex-face. I looked once, and looked away. Kerch’s vanity had been thoroughly avenged. The only human thing left about the woman was the little bubbling sound her breath still made.

“I can’t save her,” Salamander said. “She’s lost too much blood.”

“She has to be kept alive,” Kerch said from where he sat at the window. “If you don’t save her, you’ll do no more abortions in this town. I could have you put away for the rest of your life, Professor.”

The old man looked at Kerch with panic in his little, yellow eyes. “I tell you I can’t save her. The only thing that would save her is a transfusion. She’s in profound shock.”

“Then give her a transfusion.” Kerch glanced at me. “Here’s a healthy young source of blood for you.”

“I can’t! I haven’t got the instruments. I don’t know what her blood type is. If you want to save her, you’ve got to take her to a hospital. Even then, it’s probably too late.”

“No, we can’t do that,” Kerch said slowly. “How long will it take her to die?”

“She might live for a couple of hours. I can’t give you an accurate estimate. She’s not losing any more blood.”

“Take out the stitches, then. If she has to die, she had better die quickly. I can’t wait a couple of hours.”

Salamander looked at him in horror. “Take out the stitches?”

“That is what I said. Then you can attend to Rusty. What do you want, Garland?”

“The hole’s about five feet deep. Is that deep enough?”

“I think so,” Kerch said. “We’ll make other arrangements later, when we’re not so pressed for time.”

“Pick him up, fellow,” Garland said to me. “Pick him up and bring him along.”

Death had not yet stiffened Sault’s body, but he wasn’t convenient to carry. Perhaps it was simply that I had never buried a man before, and it made me weak. I carried him gently, but the final drop into the earth jarred a gasp of air out of his lungs. I covered his body with earth before I covered his upturned face. It was hard to throw the spadeful that hid his dead face from the sky.

Garland recited a derisive singsong:

“I thought he was a friend of yours.”

“Nobody is a friend of mine,” he said seriously. “What do you think I am, a softie?”

Before I had finished filling the grave, Kerch opened the door and called to Garland: “Bring him in here.”

“Quick march,” Garland said.

They had wrapped the woman in a car rug, head and all. Kerch ordered me to carry her out and put her in the back seat of the car. I did this. Already I was getting the mortuary feeling that dead bodies weren’t human any more, merely clumsy bundles to be disposed of. The woman wouldn’t have been comfortable with her head in the corner of the seat and her swathed legs twisted sideways onto the floor, but her comfort no longer mattered.

When Garland and I returned to the kitchen, Kerch ripped a button from my coat and a few hairs from my head. Garland’s gun in the small of my back kept me from taking hold of him.

“Now let me see,” Kerch said. “It would be nice if he carried a knife.”

Garland dipped his free hand in my pocket and brought out the spring knife. “But this is Sault’s,” he said.

“All the better,” Kerch said. “The more confusion, the better.”

He dropped the knife in his pocket and put my button and hair in an envelope. “You stay here, Garland, and take care of Weather. The Professor says that Rusty will come around if we just leave him. I should be back in two or three hours. If anyone interferes with you in the meantime, I’ll probably be at Alonzo Sanford’s house.”

“Can I shoot him if he acts too wise?” Garland said.

“It would be more convenient if you didn’t, not just now. But use your own judgment. Come along, Professor.”

The little man scampered after him like a frightened lizard. Their motor roared, receded, and faded out in the distance. I had given up hope on Allister, who had either failed to get my message or disregarded it, but a new hope formed in my tired muscles and rose to my head. Garland was a terrifying shot, but otherwise he wasn’t much of a man, and he was the only one I had to deal with. If I could get close enough to touch him before Kerch returned, before Rusty came to, before his bullet could find me. I closed my eyes so he couldn’t see them, and sat thinking in the dark.

“Be very careful,” he said, as if he could read my mind. “I’ve got this gun on you all the time.”

I didn’t open my eyes or answer him. After a while I heard the click of his lighter and the tiny crackling of a cigarette taking fire, and a few minutes later the light plop of the butt on the floor and the grinding of his heel as he put it out. The gasoline lamp hissed constantly like a simmering kettle on the stove.

Much later, I heard the scrape of his chair as he got up. My head was tilted back, and I scarcely had to raise my eyelids to see him. He was walking sideways towards the sink, watching me from the corners of his eyes. Shifting the gun to his left hand, he turned on the tap, rinsed a clouded tumbler which he took from a shelf above the sink, and filled it with water. When the lower rim of the tilted glass was in his mouth and the upper rim was approaching the bridge of his nose, I moved.

He fired twice before I reached him, but the bullets went over my crouched back. Then my shoulder caught him in the belly and bore him backwards against the sink. My right hand found the gun and took it away from him. I clenched my fingers in his fair, waved hair and beat his head against the edge of the sink until he no longer struggled. Then I took each of his slender wrists in turn, and snapped it across my knee. I was getting pretty tired of Garland.