Blue City

chapter 19

The room had a high ceiling and narrow windowless walls covered with burlap painted brown. A green shaded drop-light threw a bleak glare over the lower half of the room and cast the upper half into shadow. Beneath the light there was a tall desk of battered oak with a stool behind it. There was nothing else in the room but a old sour smell – the smell that men emit when they are dirty and afraid.

The aging police sergent took my tie, my belt, my handkerchief, and my wallet. He didn’t give me a receipt for them.

“We’ll keep these for you,” he said. “Looks as if we’ll be keepin’ them a long time.”

I said: “Yeah.”

The plain-clothes man Moffatt was standing in the hall when we went out.

“Guess we better put him in one of the new cells, eh?” the sergeant said.

“Bring him in under the light, Stan. He should be ready to talk.”

“What do you want me to talk about?” I said. “Who stole my money last night?”

Moffatt hit me quickly on the side of the head. My arms jerked so that I involuntarily cut my wrists on the handcuffs.

“You telegraph your punches,” I said. “You should stick to hitting people from behind.”

He hit me with the edge of his hand on the back of my neck, just below the soft spot which his blackjack had made the night before. A buzzing sickness started in my head and ran erratically through my body, settling in my stomach and my knees.

“That’s the way you want it, eh?” Moffatt said.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s better.” The sickness forced its way up my throat and I vomited on the floor.

“Better not hit him again,” the sergeant said. “Not if you want him to be able to talk.”

“Crap!” Moffatt said. “He deserves to be beaten to death. He’s a brutal killer, Stan. All I can say is it’s lucky for Mr. Kerch that Ron heard him call for help. Did you see what he did to poor Mr. Kerch?”

I said: “You mean, poor Mr. Kerch, the Christ of the Indian road?”

“Shut up, you. Or I’ll use your face to clean up that mess you made on the floor.”

“C’mon, Dave,” the sergeant said. “You want to get his confession before Hanson gets back.”

“Where the hell is Hanson, anyway?”

“Damned if I know. The Mayor took him off on some wild-goose chase. He’s always getting crazy ideas.”

They took me into a dark room and made me sit down on a backless chair. Moffatt turned on a bright light which shone directly into my eyes. I closed them, but found I couldn’t do without that contact with the physical world. My mind was a blank wilderness, swept by a rattling wind of pain. I lost my balance and almost fell off the chair.

A fist came out of the darkness and cuffed me upright. “Open your eyes,” Moffatt said. “Don’t try playing possum.”

I looked up at his shadowed face, then down his body at his dark wool tie, his solid vest front with the thin watch chain glittering across it, his thick legs planted apart in a bold, firm pose. He had an odor of sweat, cigars, bay rum, and after-shaving powder. I couldn’t think of a word heavy enough to throw at him, so I said nothing.

“We know you killed Mrs. Weather,” he said. “We know why. You’ll save yourself a lot of trouble if you give us a statement.”

“I like trouble.”

The four fingers of his right hand ploughed down my face from forehead to chin. I snapped at his hand, but he drew it back too quickly.

“What big teeth you got, Grandmother,” he said. “You got too many teeth for good looks. Stan, give me the knuckles.”

The sergeant handed him a piece of molded brass, which he slipped over his fingers. Then his armed fist invaded my mouth. I felt a sharp piece of bone on my tongue and spat it out between numb lips.

“You better not hit him again, Dave,” the sergeant said. “Judge Simeon don’t like it when they’re all marked up.”

“Don’t worry, Stan. He was resisting an officer, wasn’t he? He tried to escape, didn’t he?”

He drew back his dully shining fist. “You want to dictate a statement while you still got the use of your mouth?”

I leaned back and kicked him in the groin. He grunted and bent double, clutching at himself. “I’ll kill him,” he said between gritting teeth. “The bastard ruptured me.”

The sergeant’s truncheon swung in a quarter circle to my forehead, and a whirlpool of shattered light sucked me down a drain and underground. Later, someone exhumed my consciousness – someone who said in a blurred voice:

“I hope I ruptured you properly. Then you’ll be the last of the Moffatts.”

Someone kicked a man who was lying on a floor. Pity for the man on the floor coursed through my body as real as pain. I’m learning some fine humanitarian lessons, I thought, but somebody should put a stop to this.

“Somebody should put a stop to this,” the man on the floor said. My tongue moved awkwardly in my mouth and scratched itself on a broken tooth.

“So you’d resist an officer of the law in the performance of his duty,” some clown said.

The man on the floor tried to get up but his stomach was weak and the handcuffs interfered with the use of his hands. I thought it would be nice if another whirlpool would take me down another drain, and immediately a whirlpool began to turn in my head. I lay back and waited for the blackout.

“Get up, get up,” I said to the man on the floor. “You’ve got to get up and fight.”

I opened my eyes and looked steadily at the leg of a table beside my head. Gradually it took on solidity, became realer than the whirlpool, realer than pain. From its reality I deduced the reality of my own body lying on the floor. My pity changed to anger and my head cleared.

I managed to sit up then, but a man standing over me planted his foot on my chest and flung me backwards. My very real head grazed the indubitable leg of the table. I rolled my head aside and lay quietly, fighting off self-pity. The repetition of physical violence, I told myself, is beginning to bore me. But boredom was another thing I had to fight.

A door opened and a ceiling light was switched on.

“What goes on here?” somebody said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“He tried to escape,” Moffatt said. “He kicked me in the balls.”

“You’re not on duty, are you, Moffatt?”

“No, sir.”

“Go home, then, before I lose my temper.” I recognized the bitter, twanging voice of Inspector Hanson.

Moffatt went out and Hanson bent over me and looked into my face. “The bastard fixed you, didn’t he!” He stepped behind me and helped me to my feet. I would have fallen again if he hadn’t held me.

“Bring that chair over here, Sergeant,” he said. “Then you can get out.”

I sat down in the chair and he leaned against the table facing me. “I warned you last night, Weather. I told you you were heading into bad trouble.”

“I’m doing all right,” I said. “There’s nothing the matter with me a good dentist can’t fix.”

“And a good lawyer?”

“Don’t talk crap. The worst lawyer in the state could spring me from this kind of a frame-up. Who is the worst lawyer in the state, by the way? I’d like to talk to him.”

“You want a lawyer?”

“Maybe I don’t need one. Did you catch Garland?”

“He didn’t run away very fast,” Hanson said. “On account of he was dead.”

“Dead?”

“You choked him, didn’t you? When you cut off somebody’s air supply it causes them to become dead.”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“You were the one that was manhandling him, weren’t you? You manhandled him a little too rough.”

“I didn’t choke him. I knocked him out. I broke his wrists so he couldn’t shoot me. That’s all.”

“You’re a rough boy, Weather. You seem to like hurting people.”

“Whether I like it or not, sometimes it has to be done.”

“Did it have to be done to Floraine Weather?” he barked.

“If you thought I killed her, you wouldn’t be talking to me this way.”

“What I think isn’t here or there,” he said. “I let the facts do the thinking for me.”

“Facts can be arranged. Kerch murdered her. I saw him do it, and so did Garland and Rusty Jahnke. You’ve got three witnesses.”

“One,” he said sourly. “You don’t count, and there isn’t any Garland.”

“What happened to Jahnke? I suppose you dropped him at some convenient street corner.”

“He wasn’t at the Wildwood. Maybe you have been having bad dreams? They say murderers have bad dreams.”

“Go and find him, then. The city isn’t paying you to sit in a room and make comical remarks.”

He stood up and looked down at me with hot, green eyes. “Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?”

“It sounds like it. Climb off your high horse, Hanson, and be yourself. I think you’ve got the makings of a good cop. Allister seems to think so, too. Isn’t it about time you did something about it? Your friend Kerch committed two murders last night–”

“Kerch is no friend of mine,” he growled. “What do you mean, two murders?”

“Floraine Weather and Joe Sault. Maybe three: somebody killed Garland, and it wasn’t me. Rusty Jahnke was his accomplice in both murders. If you’re afraid to go after Kerch himself, you can bring in Rusty. You’ll do it, Hanson, if the graft hasn’t spread all the way down to the soles of your flat feet.”

“Where did you get the idea you could give me orders?”

“As of today I’m paying part of your salary. I own property in this town, as of today, and I pay taxes. Does that make any sense to you? You’ve been taking lousy orders all your life. Take some decent orders for a change. Go and get Rusty Jahnke.”

“I don’t know where he is,” he said uncertainly.

“You’re afraid of Kerch,” I taunted. “To hell with you, Hanson!–”

He slapped me across the face.

“To hell with you, Hanson!” I repeated. “Beat me up and toss me in a cell, you rotten, lily-livered grafter. I’ll get the best lawyer in the state and tear this reeking town wide-open from gullet to gut. Get somebody to take me away, for Christ’s sake. You stink in my nostrils, Hanson.”

He trembled like an old hound after a long run. He didn’t hit me again.

“Why don’t you sock me some more, Hanson? There’s no danger in it. I’ve got handcuffs on. Now Rusty Jahnke might take a shot at you, and scare the living daylights out of you.”

“Shut your yap,” he said. “I’m going to bring him in.”

He walked stiffly towards the door, chewing his long lips.

“While you’re at it, there’s another witness against Kerch. You know Professor Salamander? You should be able to handle him, Inspector. He’s very little and old.”

He whirled on me savagely. “I said shut your yap! If you don’t shut up, I’ll shut you up for good!”

He turned again abruptly, and went out the door. The sergeant came back into the room, unlocked my handcuffs, and led me downstairs to the cells. I wasn’t sorry when the iron door clanged shut. There was a wooden cot hinged in the concrete wall of my cell, and that was all I needed. I stretched out, found a section of my head that wasn’t too sore to rest against the boards, and went to sleep.

A minute later – I found out afterwards it was more than an hour – I was wakened by a hand on my shoulder.

“What’s the matter?” I said. “Are they attacking?” Then I remembered that it wasn’t France or Germany, even though I was sleeping on wood, even though my whole body was stiff and sore.

“Wake up, Mr. Weather,” the policeman said. “Mr. Sanford wants to see you.”

“Tell him to go chase himself.”

“Aw, come on now, Mr. Weather. You know you wouldn’t want to talk like that to Mr. Sanford. He’s waiting upstairs to see you.”

I sat up carefully, balancing my head as delicately as if it were high explosive. My lips felt raw and puffed, and one of my broken teeth was aching viciously. “He can come down here.”

“Come on, Mr. Weather. You wouldn’t want to talk to him down here.”

Alonzo Sanford was waiting in the room where Moffatt had questioned me.

“Here he is, Mr. Sanford,” the guard said with forced enthusiasm. He went out and closed the door behind me.

“So good of you to return my call so soon,” I said. “Please don’t think me inhospitable if I fail to offer you a drink.”

He walked towards me slowly, looking into my face. “Good God, John, what have they been doing to you? Your mouth–”

“Yeah, it makes me lisp a little, doesn’t it? But I can still sound off.”

“Who is responsible for this brutality?”

“You are, as much as anybody, I’d say. The man that used the brass knuckles on me doesn’t matter. I’ll take care of him myself one of these days – the way he needs to be taken care of.”

“You must be hysterical, John. To claim that I have any responsibility–”

“Maybe I’m a little hysterical. Hysteria isn’t such a bad thing. It makes you see things very clearly and simply, in black and white. You support a system in this town under which this kind of thing can happen to anybody – to anybody but you and your friends, that is. There are only two kinds of police systems, Sanford, when you look at it hysterically. The kind that exists to uphold the law and to treat everybody equally under the law, and the kind that exists to serve private interest. Your idea of a useful police force is the second kind – a police force that will lay off your friends, and bear down hard on your enemies, a force of strikebreakers, and bully boys, a Swiss Guard for the elite.”

“You make it hard for me, John,” the old man said, “but I do not consider you my enemy.”

“That’s not because I’m a man, is it? It’s because I’m a property owner. You came over here this morning to talk property. Property has to stick together. The only reason you see the marks on my face is because it’s got property behind it.”

“Believe me, John, I sympathize with you. You’ve been violently mishandled, and it’s only natural for you to be upset. Still, I fail to understand why you number me among your enemies. I came here to help you. You know that your father and I were close friends.”

“No doubt you found him useful, as you hope to find me useful, perhaps?”

“He was closer to me than anyone.” He spoke with the shallow sentimentality of the old.

“He was your political lieutenant, wasn’t he? He built up the machine through which you kept the rubber workers in line and indirectly controlled the municipal government. I’m not concerned with personal blame – though I blame you both – but with the fact that the two of you saddled the town with a corrupt machine. The trouble is that corruption isn’t something you can have a little of. It’s like cancer; inject it into a political organism and it’s bound to spread. It’s almost an axiom that power that has been taken out of the hands of the people is bound to grow progressively more corrupt.”

“You haven’t seen as much of life as I have,” Sanford said wearily. “Your picture is oversimplified and terribly one-sided. I admit that I’ve exercised political power in this city and state, and I’ve worked unceasingly to retain that power. But my motives have been purer than you suspect, I think. My industry is a small one, and it has not been easy to keep it from being swallowed up by its immense competitors. It has been my lifework to survive, so to speak, merely to keep my plants in operation. The Sanford plants are the economic heart of this city and of this whole area. If they were to close, as they are not going to do so long as I am alive, this city would become a ghost town. They would not be operating today if I had not deliberately developed my political power for the last fifty years. I’m not talking only of municipal politics, of course. But, if I lost political control of this city, I would have no weight at all in the state legislature, and very little influence in Washington.”

“You wouldn’t be able to survive, as you call it – by which you mean survive very comfortably, even luxuriously – if you gave political power back to the people?”

“If I had to pay union wages, if the city government got out of hand and raised my assessments and taxes, I wouldn’t be able to survive.”

“Isn’t it possible, then, that you’re an anachronism? You’re trying to stay on top of the heap by forcing conditions to remain as you determined them fifty years ago.”

“I have done what I have had to do,” he said soberly. “My own hands are clean.”

“Your picture is more oversimplified than mine, Mr. Sanford. You’ve stayed on top of the heap and assumed that everything was fine because you were on top. Meanwhile, the heap rotted away from under you. I’ve been in some rotten towns, but never a rottener one than yours.”

“Original sin, John. You can’t change human nature. I’ve tried to set an example of decency in my own life.”

“Don’t go theological on me, and don’t go self-righteous. You’re the better half of a working partnership with the underworld. You’re propped up by pimps, thieves, blackmailers, and murderers.”

“Good morning, John. You can’t expect me to remain here and listen to your wild nonsense.”

He started around me towards the door, walking with the incontestable dignity of lifelong authority and wealth. I stood in his way.

“Just a minute,” I said. “Let me tell you what’s happened in this city in the last two years.”

He stood still and regarded me coldly. I went on:

“You and my father built a machine to control the town. One pole of the axis was your wealth and social position, the other was my father’s slot-machine graft and his influence with the ordinary people. Two years ago my father was shot, and you’d have expected the axis to bend a little. But that didn’t happen, because the axis was more important than a man’s life, or justice, or anything else at all. You took a new partner to hold up the other end of the axis, because you were old and tired and wouldn’t dirty your own hands. The new partner was the very man who muscled in on my father and killed him–”

“That’s not true,” he said quickly. “It’s merely another wild accusation.”

“I intend to substantiate it. I’ve already substantiated some facts about your partner Kerch. Any power he has is based on blackmail. Surely you knew that he was blackmailing Floraine Weather? That the money you paid him for the Weather House undoubtedly went into his own pocket?”

“I knew nothing of the sort. Nor do I know it now.”

“The evidence is in his safe at the Cathay Club. Roger Kerch was married in 1931 to the woman who called herself Floraine Weather. Apparently they were never divorced. Floraine Weather was a bigamist, and Kerch got control of her property because he knew it. Did you?”

“Certainly not!”

“For all your knowledge of life, haven’t you been rather naïve? Or was the situation too useful to you to be examined critically? It must have been useful, too, to have Kerch to control Allister for you, and through him, all the little people in the town who respect Allister and vote for him. Did you ever stop to wonder why Allister took orders from Kerch, and thus indirectly from you?”

“Allister never took orders from Kerch. The two men are violently antagonistic.”

“Maybe so, but it never led to anything. Allister never took any sort of action against Kerch, and I’ll tell you why. Kerch has something on him. Your partner has been blackmailing the Mayor of your city to keep him in line.”

The old man walked to a chair and sat down heavily. His face showed neither shock nor confusion, but his eyes looked tired. “Leaving aside for the moment the validity of your accusations – they come as a complete surprise to me, but no doubt you have some reason for making them – I object to your calling this man my partner. I’ve had necessary business dealings with him, of course, as I have with practically every businessman in the state. But I have thoroughly detested the man from the first.”

“You tolerated him and used him. In this town your mere tolerance of a man is like a stamp of approval. It makes him immune.”

“If what you say of him is true, my tolerance will be withdrawn.”

“I haven’t told you all of it. He murdered Floraine Weather last night.”

“Have you any evidence?”

“I have enough.”

He said casually and dryly: “You didn’t mention, by the way, what Kerch has on Freeman Allister, as you put it. Surely our worthy reform mayor doesn’t have a guilty secret?”

“It’s going to stay a secret,” I said. “It’s strictly between Allister and himself.”

He fluttered his hands in cold gaiety. “As you wish, John. You seem to have quite a talent, do you not, for discovering unsuspected skeletons in irreproachable closets? I’ve always considered Allister a veritable Caesar’s wife of political virtue.”

The door of the room opened behind me and Allister came in. “Did I hear somebody taking my name in vain?” he said with strained cheerfulness. “Good morning, Mr. Sanford.”

“Good morning, Freeman,” he answered in an unruffled voice. “You know John Weather, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course.” He turned to me and his blue eyes widened. “Heavens, man, what happened to your face?”

“I bumped a door.”

“Fortunately,” Sanford said smoothly, “John’s troubles are approximately at an end. I haven’t had a chance to tell you. John, since we got off on that rather unrewarding discussion, but I’ve been talking to our Coroner, Dr. Bess, and he has established that Floraine Weather had been dead several hours before you were seen with her body. Something to which he referred as post-mortem lividity, I believe, indicates that her body had been moved after death. There also seemed to have been some attempt to give medical treatment to the wounds from which she bled to death. I presented those facts to Judge Simeon, and he was willing to set bail for you at $10,000. I took the liberty of posting your bail without consulting you.”

“Thank you.” I would have smiled if my mouth had been fit for it. “But I’ll stay here until I can walk out without posting bail.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” he said tartly. “It’s merely a temporary loan. You have ample resources to cover it.”

“I’ll accept, if you realize clearly that I’m going to stay in this city and fight you.”

“I realize that only too clearly.” He smiled bitterly, got out of his chair with difficulty, and moved across the room. Before he went out he turned his white head on his scrawny bird’s neck and gave me a long look: “I warn you, however, that the possession of property in a so-called democracy involves more complex responsibilities than you realize.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Some of us did a lot of thinking and talking about those things when we were in the army. Human decency has its responsibilities, too. And I don’t like the implications in your phrase ‘so-called democracy.’ ” The closing door put a period to my sentence, but I had a feeling that my argument with Alonzo Sanford would go on till he died.

Allister had gone to the window and raised the blind while we talked, and stood restlessly looking out at a wall of grimy white brick.

“Hanson gave me the word on Garland,” I said when he turned.

“That he died, you mean?”

“Yeah, he thought I killed him. If Garland had died of a fractured skull, I might blame myself. Or congratulate myself. But he was choked to death, Hanson said.”

“And you didn’t choke him?” There was a queer look in his cloudy blue eyes, which probably meant that he didn’t believe me.

“I could have, but I didn’t. I just put him out of action, the quickest way I knew how. I never killed a man except when I was wearing a uniform, and that made it all right and proper.”

“It must have been Kerch,” Allister said slowly. “He would naturally destroy the witnesses against him.”

“Did he go out to the Wildwood again?”

“He must have. Rusty Jahnke was in his suite at the Palace. That old quack doctor Salamander was working on him there when Hanson picked him up.”

“Hanson really did it, then?”

“Yes. He’s bringing Rusty and Salamander here for questioning.”

“If you’re in on all this, aren’t you taking a chance?”

He walked diagonally across the room with a jerky, forward-leaning stride, and came to an unstable position of rest against the wall. “What do you mean?” he said. “Hanson is handling the case.”

“But you’re backing him up, aren’t you?”

“I can’t act openly.” He moved sideways against the wall as if the room cramped him, as if any four walls threatened his freedom. “I have cogent reasons.”

“I opened Kerch’s safe this morning.”

He looked at me with such startled eyes that I might have been in command of a firing squad and about to give the final order. “Yes?” he said.

“No doubt you think Kerch can ruin your political career. I doubt it. If you act quickly and boldly and pin the murders on him, he won’t be able to do a thing to you. Your affair with Mrs. Sontag is small potatoes compared with the things we have on Kerch. But you’ve got to take the bit in your teeth and act now, or he’ll take the play away from you.”

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.