Blue City

chapter 15

The Packard was waiting where I left it, with the engine still running. The tank was less than half full, but that was more than enough to take me where I wanted to go. I drove back to the concrete highway but left it at the first turning, in order to avoid my inquisitive friend at the gas station, and entered the city by another road. It was too early for the residents of the north side to be going to work, but even there I saw signs that the city was waking up. There were lights in many of the houses and some traffic on the streets. I passed a garbage truck and a milk truck, a man in overalls rolling a lawn-mower along the sidewalk, a few colored girls coming up from the black ghetto on the other side of Lillian Street to wash the glasses from last night’s parties and give their white mistresses breakfast in bed.

Before I reached Sanford’s house, a cruising police car came up behind me and slid slowly by. I had an impulse to stop my car and duck down in the seat, but the patrol car went on and paid no attention to me. The sudden pounding of my heart and my white-knuckled grip on the wheel told me what a chance I was taking, but I had no alternative – unless I wanted to leave town and drop the case just when it seemed to be breaking. I didn’t want to do that. No, I did want to do it, but I couldn’t.

I circled the block in which Sanford’s house stood alone. I couldn’t see any trace of Kerch’s black car, but there were lights on in the house, upstairs and down. I parked in the side street by the tennis courts, and walked up the back driveway to the service entrance at the rear of the house.

The Negro maid who had let me in the night before was washing dishes at an open window beside the door. Her profile was to me, and I could see her lips moving as she talked steadily to herself:

“Keep me up till all hours and then get me up in the middle of the night to make breakfast six o’clock in the morning. Who they think I am, the mechanical girl they showed down in the window of the five-and-ten? Fetch and carry, bring me a drink, just bring me the yolks of three eggs. I can’t eat the white, what’s the matter with you, girl, this toast is like it’s made out of old leather? Yes, Mr. Sanford, no Mr. Sanford – Mr. Sanford, kiss my rump.”

She threw down a final spoon with a clatter, and dumped the dishpan in the sink. Throwing back her head in a buoyant gesture, which contrasted with her growling voice, she began to sing the opening bars of I Wanna Get Married. Her eyes roved around and saw me at the door, and she stopped in the middle of the line. I knocked tactfully as if I had just arrived, and she opened the door, talking:

“Ain’t nothing for you to do today, and the cook got orders from Mr. Sanford not to feed anybody at all at the door. Wait a minute, though, if you want to wait around for a while until Sim gets up, he might let you polish one of the cars, he was saying yesterday the Lincoln needed washing, if you want to wait.”

“I’m not looking for work.” I took a dollar out of my wallet and wrapped the end of it around my forefinger.

“Say, ain’t you the man that was here last night? What you doing, coming to the back door? You want to see Mr. Sanford again?”

“Is he up?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think he wants to see anybody this early in the morning. Wait a minute, I’ll go and see. You can come in here if you don’t want to go around to the front. Say, your clothes is a mess. What’s the matter with you, mister?”

She opened the door and I slipped her the dollar. “I was in an accident.”

“You wait here. I’ll go and ask–”

“No, don’t disturb Mr. Sanford. I’m looking for a man called Kerch. Do you know him?”

“I ought to. He had breakfast with Mr. Sanford this morning.” She relapsed into her singsong monologue: “Get up at six o’clock and make breakfast for two people because the cook isn’t here yet. I wasn’t hired for a cook.”

“Listen to me. Is Kerch still here?”

“No, he left. Four fried eggs I had to give him. Six slices of toast he ate. Juice of five oranges. And he didn’t even have the manners to leave me anything.” She caught herself up and looked at me a little nervously. “Mr. Kerch a friend of yours?”

“Has Mr. Kerch got any friends?”

She allowed her lips to stretch in a large, warm smile. “Not likely. Mr. Sanford is a friend of his, though, I guess.”

“If you served them breakfast, you probably heard what they were talking about.”

Her dark face stiffened and she gave me a narrow look. “I never talk about anything that goes on in the front of the house. Mr. Sanford’s strict with us about that, and don’t you forget he could fix me so I’d never get another job in this town.”

I took a ten out of my wallet, folded it carefully, and tucked it in the frilled pocket of her apron. She made a token gesture of repelling the contamination, but she let the bill stay in the pocket.

“I’m not asking you to give away any secrets,” I said. “I think I know what they were talking about. All I want is confirmation.”

She smiled again. “You give me ten dollars so you can tell me what Mr. Sanford was talking about at breakfast?”

“I’ll tell you, then you tell me whether I’m right.”

“All right, mister. I’m listening.”

“They were talking about the property of a woman called Mrs. Weather.”

“They didn’t say nothing about no Mrs. Weather–”

“Floraine, then. Did they mention Floraine?”

“Go on, mister. I’m still listening.”

“Kerch was in a hurry to sell Floraine’s property to Mr. Sanford. Am I warm?”

“You’re hot, mister. You’re burning up. How you know all this?”

“I’m a good guesser. But there’s one thing I can’t guess. Was Mr. Sanford willing to buy? Did the deal go through?”

“I don’t know,” the maid said. “Mr. Sanford told me to take the trays out and not come back. But I don’t think he wanted to do it. He had that frozen-face look, you know.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve seen it. Where’s Mr. Sanford now?”

“He’s still up in his room, I guess. He reads all the time in the morning before he goes over to the office. I never saw a man read so much.”

“Go and ask him if he’ll see me, will you?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll ask him.” But she lingered in the kitchen and finally said: “You won’t tell him I was talking to you about Mr. Kerch? That’d be my job for sure.”

“I won’t tell him,” I promised. “I appreciate your help.”

“I appreciate your eleven bucks.” She flashed me another smile. “Maybe you better come in the front hall and wait. The cook’ll be here any time and she don’t like people in the kitchen.”

I waited in the hall while she danced up the baronial staircase and a minute later danced down:

“Mr. Sanford says you can come right up. It’s the door that’s open at the top of the stairs.”

He was sitting by a tall window in a leather armchair, which emphasized by its amplitude the thinness of his shrunken body. His silk robe fostered the illusion, supported by his changeless pallor and the unsleeping vigilance of his cold eyes, that he had been up all night. But the wide, Elizabethan bed in the alcove behind him was unmade.

He turned his book over on his knee – it was the Everyman’s edition of Progress and Poverty – and looked up at me: “You’ll excuse my not getting up.”

I sat down in the armchair facing him. “You’ll excuse my sitting down. I’ve been running around all night trying to clean up your lousy town. It’s tiring.”

“You look tired,” he said drily. “You seem, too, to have gotten yourself rather thoroughly mussed in the course of your nocturnal crusade.”

I cut in harshly on his careful urbanity: “I came here to warn you, Mr. Sanford. Kerch left me an hour or two ago, and I heard he was on his way to see you. Does he, by any chance, have Floraine Weather’s power of attorney?”

He took off his reading glasses and looked at me. A kind of smile puckered the flesh around his eyes and fanned the crow’s-feet almost back to his ears. “That’s a somewhat interrogative warning, is it not?”

“The warning will come in a minute. You might as well answer my question. I can easily find out anyway.”

He didn’t say anything for a while. He folded his glasses and tapped them on the withered knuckles of his left hand. “As a matter of fact, he does. He’s Mrs. Weather’s business agent, you know.”

“And he negotiated the sale of the hotel to you?”

“He did. It was Mrs. Weather’s wish, and he acted for her. You’d be foolish to think it wasn’t a perfectly legitimate proposition.”

“Of course, Kerch wouldn’t offer you a proposition that wasn’t perfectly legitimate. And naturally, if he did, you wouldn’t wish to have anything to do with it. That’s why I’m warning you.”

“But against what eventuality are you warning me? Your warnings are excessively cryptic, aren’t they?”

“Did Kerch try to sell you the rest of my father’s property? – the Cathay Club and the radio station?”

“If he had, it would not have been any concern of yours. I repeat, if he had.”

“Who administered my father’s estate?”

“The County National Bank. But why you should choose me to instruct you in your family’s affairs–”

“I’m doing you a favor. I’m keeping the holy name of Sanford out of a very nasty criminal case. The County National’s your bank, isn’t it?”

The old man sighed. His breath rustled through the passages of his head like a desert wind in a dying tree. “People who know nothing of the intricacies of a financial structure – people like yourself – might call it mine. I’m chairman of the board.”

“You told me last night I was Mrs. Weather’s heir. Is that the straight dope?”

“I’m not sure I understand your jargon–”

“You can’t snub me,” I said unpleasantly. “You didn’t get where you are by talking with six-syllable words at pink-tea parties. Were you telling me the truth?”

He made a weary gesture with his hand. “Why should I tell you anything but the truth? The will was probated long ago.”

“Then the sale of my father’s property is very much my concern. I own it.”

“Aren’t you rather anticipating events? Mrs. Weather is the owner. She has given Mr. Kerch the legal right to act for her in all her business arrangements. I hope that’s clear.”

“It’s clear but it’s not true. Floraine Weather died a couple of hours ago.”

His keen, pale eyes probed my face and looked away again. “I don’t know whether to believe you. What did she die of, if she died?”

“You’ll read it in the papers. I only came here to warn you. Don’t try to buy anything that belonged to my father, or you’ll get into very bad trouble. Maybe you’re in it already.”

“I’m inclined to doubt it.” He spoke evenly, but he was leaning forward in his chair. “I may as well tell you that I wouldn’t touch Kerch’s proposition. It struck me as much too hasty. As a matter of fact, I was determined to talk it over with Mrs. Weather.” He raised his left hand a few inches and dropped it back on the arm of his chair. “Now you tell me she’s dead.”

“But you bought the hotel.”

“Why should I not?”

“It’s possible that neither Floraine Weather nor her agent had any right to sell it. A murderer can’t inherit property from his victim, isn’t that the law?”

“I don’t believe there’s a law on the subject.” He smiled slightly. “But it’s something that isn’t done. The principle has the status of an unwritten law in our courts. You’re not suggesting that your stepmother murdered your father? She had, you know, what they call a perfect alibi.”

“No doubt she had. That wouldn’t prevent her from conspiring to murder him.”

“Conspiring with whom?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.” I rose to go.

“Just a minute, John,” the old man said. “If what you tell me is true, and I assume it is, you’re in the position of stepping into your father’s shoes, so to speak.”

“Not literally,” I said. “He died in them.”

“You understand me, I think. Your father enjoyed a unique position in this city, John. I think I can say he and I established an efficient, and quite profitable, system of co-operation between our various interests. Perhaps, if you’ll consider the situation for a few days, I’m certain you’ll come to the conclusion that co-operation is a desirable thing. Particularly in a middle-sized community like ours–”

“I understand you, all right. Now that I’ve come into a little property you think I’m worth buying.”

He wagged his white hand under his nose. “Nothing was further from my thoughts. But I don’t see why we can’t be friends. Your father and I were close friends over a period of many years. Come and see me in a few days, John. I think you’re somewhat shaken emotionally, this morning.”

“Murder always leaves me emotionally shaken.”

“Murder? What murder? Was Mrs. Weather murdered?”

I left him with the questions echoing unanswered in his dry old ears.