Blue City

chapter 4

Taxis were costing me more than I could afford, but I was in a hurry and the evening was slipping away. The driver took me straight down Main Street into the heart of town. The night streets were crowded with noisy couples, young girls in twos and threes looking for a pickup, boys and young men in threes and fours marching abreast and wearing bright ties like banners. Spring ran in the gutters like a swift, foul stream, and the people in the streets moved and regrouped in a slow, enormous Bacchic dance. We turned at the Palace Hotel and went up Cleery Street into the north side of town.

All the windows were dark on the second floor of the Mack Building, and there was no bronze plaque on the sidewalk where J.D. Weather had died.

Even his house looked the same, though it was smaller than I remembered. Nothing had changed, except that I couldn’t walk in without knocking, and nobody there would be glad to see me. When I went up the front steps I had the feeling that I was about to do something I had often done before. I rang the bell and waited. The feeling went away before the door opened, and left me half-angry and half-embarrassed.

The porch light came on over my head, and the door opened on a chain. Through the opening I could see a four-inch section of a woman: carefully lacquered, upswept auburn hair, dark eyes in a pale face, a white neck rising from a low, plain neckline.

“Mrs. Weather?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to talk to you. I think you must be my stepmother.”

She made a noise in her throat, a little chuckling gasp. “Are you John Weather?”

“Yes. May I come in?”

“Of course. Please do.” She unhooked the chain and stepped back to open the door. “I shouldn’t have kept you standing outside. But I’m alone in the house tonight, and you never know about night callers. This is the maid’s night off.”

“I know how you feel,” I said, but I wasn’t thinking of her. The old hall tree was gone, and the moose head was missing from over the door. The floor had been refinished, and there was a new pastel rug on it. Ivory enamel made the staircase look unreal. Everything was too pale and neat.

“You used to live in this house, didn’t you?” she said.

“I was just thinking of that. It’s different.”

“I hope you approve of the changes.” Her tone was a subtle blend of arrogance and feminine cajolery.

Her voice interested me. It was a good voice, low, rich, and complex, with a more frankly female quality than perfect ladies allow themselves. I looked into her face and said: “There have been too many changes to generalize about, haven’t there? Not that my opinion matters one way or the other.”

She turned on her heel and walked to the door of the living-room. “Won’t you come in and sit down and have a drink? We must have things to talk about.”

I said: “Thank you,” and followed her. If her breasts and her hips were her own, her figure was very handsome. Even if they weren’t, she had her legs, and the way she moved her body. In her dark silk dress she moved with the free, shining fullness and flow of a seal in water.

The face she leaned towards me, as we sat down facing each other, was in contrast to her body. It had a bloodless kind of beauty, emphasized by her scarlet mouth, but it was thin and worried-looking. Her wide, dark eyes seemed to have drawn out and to hold all the life and energy of her face. Her bright hair stood above her pale face and neck like a curled red flower on a stalk that the sun had missed.

She smiled nervously under my stare. “Do you think you’ve got my Bertillon measurements by now?”

“Excuse me. I’m naturally interested in my father’s last wife.”

“That’s not a very chivalrous thing to say.”

“My chivalry is my weakest point.”

“That’s true of your whole generation, isn’t it? Or maybe you’ve been reading Hemingway or something.”

“Don’t start talking down like a stepmother. You haven’t got much of a drop on me where age is concerned.”

Her laugh came strangely out of her unmoving face. “Maybe I was wrong about your chivalry. But don’t kid yourself. I belong to the lost generation. Which reminds me, I promised you a drink.”

I said: “Who’s been reading Hemingway now?” and looked around the room while she went to the bar in the corner. The bar had been J.D.’s idea, but the rest of the room had been remade. Thick, bright curtains at the windows, low, square-cut furniture placed in complicated geometric patterns on a desert expanse of polished floor, chaste walls and soft indirect lighting, which made the ceiling seem high and airy. The only old-fashioned survival was the pair of sliding doors which closed off the dining room. It was a beautiful room but it lacked life. Time and change had tiptoed away and left it breathless and still. I wondered if the rich, widowed body of the woman who had invented the room spent lonely nights.

She gave me a bourbon with a little soda and a lot of ice. Then she raised her glass and said: “Here’s to chivalry.” Her hands were white and well kept, but there was a little gathering and puckering of the flesh at the wrist. Perhaps I had been wrong about her age, but it couldn’t be more than thirty-five.

“Here’s to women that aren’t dependent on it.”

She looked at me for a moment and said slowly: “You’re rather a nice boy.”

“You’re not exactly a typical stepmother. Or did I read too much Grimm in my formative years?”

“I doubt it. What are your plans, John?”

“It’s a funny thing. I came here with the idea of asking J.D. for a job. I’ve been at a loose end since I got out of the army–”

“Didn’t you know he was dead?”

“Not until today. You see, after my mother left him we never heard from him. I almost forgot I had a father. But I’ve been thinking about him the last couple of years in the army. I didn’t try to get in touch with him, but I thought about him. So I finally decided to come and see him. I was a little late.”

“You should have come before.” She leaned forward to touch my knee, and I could see the single young line made by the separation of her breasts in the V of her neckline. “He often talked about you. You should have written, anyway.”

“What did he say about me?”

She made the removal of her hand from my knee as definite a gesture as placing it there. “He loved you, and he wondered what had happened to you. He was afraid your mother would teach you to hate him.”

“She did her best, but in the long run it didn’t take. I can’t say I blame her entirely.”

“Don’t you, really?”

“Why should I? He hated her for leaving him. He never tried to get in touch with us.”

“Why did she leave him, Johnny?” Her way of speaking to me was moving through gradual stages of intimacy, and I felt a little crowded. “He never told me,” she said.

So far, the conversation had gone all her way, and she had chosen the reminiscent and sentimental vein. I chose another: “Because he couldn’t keep his hands off women.”

She seemed neither shocked nor displeased. She leaned back in her low chair and stretched her arms over her head. Her live, stirring body in that still room was like a snake in a sealed tomb, fed by unhealthy meat. She said in a soft and questioning voice: “You must have known your way around when you were twelve.”

She leaned her head against the back of the chair and looked at the ceiling. Her body, stretched out before me, seemed lost in a dream of its own power and beauty. I could have reached out and taken it, I thought, like a ripe fruit from a tree. But then she was my stepmother and that would be incestuous. Besides, I hated her guts.

I said as casually as I could: “Just what happened to J.D.?”

Her head came erect and her dark emotional eyes looked at me. “He was shot down on the street. Nobody knows who did it. It was a hideous thing. I’m not sure I can talk about it – even yet.” Her voice broke.

“You must have loved him very much.”

“I was mad about him,” she said throatily. “He was the man in my life.” She was sitting straight up now. Her white hands on the arms of the chair and her crowning hair made her look like a tragic queen.

“Wasn’t he a little old for you?”

She watched me for a moment and decided that I meant nothing by it. “Some people thought so,” she said defiantly, “but I never did. Jerry had the secret of eternal youth.”

“If not eternal life. Property lasts, though. He left a good deal of property, didn’t he?”

I hadn’t been feeding her the right lines and she seemed a little confused. “What do you mean? He left me well provided for, of course.”

“That’s fine. It must be almost as fine for you as if he’d gone on living.”

She regrouped her forces and fell back to her original lines of defense: “Johnny, you don’t hate me, do you? I hadn’t even the slightest idea what was in his will before he died. I know it’s rough on you.”

“He didn’t die. He was shot. It was rough on him. Have you an idea who shot him?”

“How should I know?” She made a face like a little girl, pursing her lips in an artificial rosebud. “He must have had enemies, Johnny. He had so many different business interests.”

“You think it was assassination for business reasons, then? Who do you have in mind?”

The question frightened her. Her white face remained composed, but her whole body stiffened. “Why, nobody. I know so little about his business.”

“Did you post a reward for the murderer?”

“No, I didn’t. I was advised not to.”

“Who advised you?”

“I don’t remember. One of his friends, it must have been. They said the police wanted a chance to work on the case quietly.”

“They worked quietly, all right. This case has closed up so quietly I feel as if I’ve gone deaf.”

“I think the police did their best, Johnny. Inspector Hanson worked on it for weeks.”

“Sewing it up at the seams, probably. Sealing it hermetically so no air would ever get in. Where were you when J.D. was shot, or is that part of the secret archives?”

I had given her cause for genuine anger, but she was doped by the histrionic emotion she had been feeding me. She covered her face with her hands and said brokenly between them: “How can you make such an utterly horrible insinuation? I was home helping the cook to prepare his dinner – a dinner he never ate.”

The defensive unreality of her reactions was too much for me. I decided to play along with her and see where it got us: “I didn’t really mean that, you know that. It’s just that I haven’t been able to find out anything, and it’s getting me down.”

She took her hands away and peered into my face with dry eyes. “I know. It got me down long ago. I’ve had two years of this dreadful uncertainty.”

“About what, exactly?”

“About what happened to Jerry. And what might happen to me. I’ve been carrying on his business, you know.”

“I heard you sold the hotel.”

“Yes, I had to let it go.” She seemed embarrassed. “But I’m still running the Cathay Club, and the station. That used to be my work, you see. I’ve been in radio for years. Jerry hired me in the first place to look after his radio interests.”

“What about the slot machines?”

“I keep out of that side of the business. They’re not really a woman’s field. I had to hire a business agent. He manages the Cathay Club, too.”

“I suppose that’s Kerch.”

“Oh, do you know him?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“If you’d like to meet him I could arrange it. Though I don’t see what interest you’d have–”

“I’m interested in anybody that got anything out of J.D.’s death.”

She looked at me uncertainly. “Surely you’re not still interested in me – in that way?”

I stared frankly at her red mouth, let my stare drop to her full bosom and taut waist. “I’m interested in you in all sorts of ways.”

“I was afraid for a while you were going to act like a stepson. But you’re not talking like one now.” She let her lips remain parted when she finished speaking. A little flicker of triumph danced in her eyes. She stood up and expanded her body. “Let me make you another drink.”

“Thanks. I don’t think I’ll have another drink.”

“You’re not leaving again, so soon?” She spoke as she moved across the room.

“I’ve got a lot of things to do that won’t wait. A lot of people to see.”

She turned from the bar and faced me. Her right hand twisted a bracelet on her left wrist, almost as if she were clutching at herself for support. “What people?”

“Maybe you can make some suggestions. You know what I’m looking for.”

She filled a double pony with bourbon and drank it quickly. “No, I can’t offer any suggestions. I’m as much in the dark as you are. Don’t you believe me?”

“Why should I?”

“But you’ve got to believe me.” She recrossed the room towards me. Her arms hung straight down by her sides now, lending her body a queer, stealthy dignity.

I stood up and looked into her face. It was deceptively calm, like the frozen surface of a dark stream. In the bottom of her eyes I could see the shifting play of hidden currents, without being able to guess their meaning.

“If you want to see Kerch,” she said rapidly, “I’ll take you to him tomorrow.”

“Do I need a formal introduction?”

“No, of course not. But you can’t do anything tonight. It’s getting late. You might just as well sit down and have another drink.”

“Maybe it would suit you better if I waited till next year or the year after.”

“What do you mean?”

“You seem very eager to have me do nothing at all. I’d expect you to have some interest in the matter of who killed your husband. Curiosity, anyway.”

“You don’t understand, Johnny. You can’t understand how hard it’s been for me to live here, since Jerry died. I just can’t bear the idea of your stirring up more trouble.”

“He didn’t die. He was killed. And I’m not making trouble. I’m simply not dodging it.”

“You think I don’t know he was killed? You think I could ever forget it? I know what the old ladies say about me behind my back. And the stodgy wives at their bridge parties, who think they’re so goddam respectable! They think their husbands are such solid citizens, but most of them are too stupid to know where their money comes from. My husband was killed, but I get no sympathy from them. I wasn’t born here, you see, and I made my own living before I was married, so I’m a suspicious character. It hasn’t been easy for me. Sometimes I thought I’d go crazy with nobody to talk to.”

“You shouldn’t have such a hard time finding someone to talk to.”

“Men, you mean? They’ve come sniffing around. I could have their men, if I thought they were worth having.”

“Why don’t you leave here, if you don’t like it? There are other cities. Where did you come from?”

She didn’t answer for a minute. She went to the bar and poured herself another shot of whisky. When she had drunk it, she said: “I’ve got a business to run here. I’m carrying on.”

“You got rid of the hotel fast enough.”

“I told you I had to. Anyway, that’s no concern of yours.”

“Where did the money go?”

Alcohol had refueled her fires. She said fiercely: “I’m not answerable to you.”

“I understand I’m next in line for J.D.’s property.”

“As long as I’m alive I have a perfectly free hand.”

I got up and walked toward her across the room. “Now I know where we stand,” I said. “What makes you certain you’re going to be alive very long?”

With my shoulders coming towards her, it must have sounded like a direct threat. Her face went to pieces finally. She moved back into the corner between the bar and the wall, watching me with a basilisk grin, the breath hissing in her nostrils.

“Get away from me,” she whispered.

I leaned on the bar and smiled as cheerfully as I could. “You scare easily, don’t you? You’ve got a lot of fear inside you, but I didn’t put it there. I’m just the peg you’re hanging it on for the moment. Now I wonder where all that fear came from?”

Her whole face was twisting, trying to cover the nakedness of her emotion. “Go away,” she whispered again. “I can’t stand any more of your talk.”

“I’m not crazy about it myself, but there isn’t much else I can do. Now, if you’d do a little of the talking and tell me what you’re afraid of–”

“You came here to torment me, didn’t you?” she said in a low monotone. “You thought you could break me down. You hate me because your father left me his money, and you think you should have it. Get out of here, you overgrown bully!”

I was young enough to be hit hard by the epithet. But before I walked out of the house I threw her something to chew in bed:

“What you need is a good psychiatrist. I hear there’s a good one in the state penitentiary.”