Blue City (10 page)

“I’m coming, hon. Tell baby to keep his shirt on.”

“It’s not his shirt I’m worried about,” Mabel giggled.

We opened the door and passed them in the hall—another tart and another sucker. But on the way downstairs I said to the girl’s back: “I meant it.” And I did.

If she answered anything it was drowned out by the renewed blare of the orchestra. She left me at the foot of the stairs, and her white back and shoulders disappeared among the tables like a fading ghost.

There was a bank of slot machines along the wall beside the stairs—a couple of nickel ones for the pikers, dime machines for cautious women, quarter machines for gay couples, fifty-cent machines for big spenders, a massive job with a gullet big enough to swallow a silver dollar for the gamblers and lucky drunks. A few couples and two or three solitary men were working with the levers and pouring their money in. A thin youth with the complexion and quick, jumpy movements of a galvanically controlled cadaver roved up and down and made change.

I changed a dollar and tried a quarter machine with a heavy jackpot which had been gestating for a long time. The first two were blanks. The third drew two cherries and a lemon, worth four slugs. I ran my investment up to over three dollars, and the dead-looking youth began to throw interested glances in my direction. He had the evil eye—the machine closed up like a clam and stopped paying. I played
in my dozen slugs and got nothing better than two bars with an ironic lemon beside them.

“More quarters, mister?” the youth said.

“Not for me. Business pretty good?”

“Can’t complain, I guess. We had some trouble last month with that gang that tried cupping the machines, but we fixed that.”

“Call the police?”

“We don’t have to call the police, bud. See that guy sitting by himself over there?” He jerked his thumb toward a heavy curly-haired man at a table by the orchestra. “That’s a plainclothes man the boss keeps handy. Just so there won’t be any trouble.”

He turned away to change a bill for a nervous drunk.

“I’ve been wondering if your boss is around,” I said. “I’d sort of like to talk to him.”

“I saw him go in the back office a while ago. What you want to see him about?”

“I’ll tell him. Where’s the office?”

He pointed to a door under the stairs. “Through there, down at the end of the hall. It’s got his name on it.”

There wasn’t much light in the hall, but there was enough to read the sign on the door: “R. Kerch, Manager.” It was a heavy door, so thick it didn’t vibrate under my knuckles. My heart was knocking on my ribs for luck.

“Come in,” somebody said.

I opened the door and walked in. It was a low, square room, lit from the ceiling by indirect lighting. It contained a big veneered desk, a few chairs, a heavy safe in a corner fastened to a steel plate that was sunk in the floor, a leather
couch against one wall. A big man in shirt sleeves was lying on the couch reading a paper, with his red head propped up on his arm. A shoulder holster hung over the back of the chair beside him.

Kerch was sitting at the desk counting money. His small, white hands moved quickly among sheafs of green bills, like little naked birds in a garden of good things to eat. His wrists bulged out thick above his hands, as if someone had bound his hands and blown air into the rest of him. He was very big behind the desk, and a double-breasted suit of gray gabardine made him look even bigger. A purple silk tie, hand-painted in sunset colors, blossomed at his throat.

Kerch raised his eyes. They came up slowly in his head, as if they had weight and required an effort to lift. They were large, brown eyes with unnaturally wide pupils, which seemed on the point of falling all the way out of his face. The face was broad and flabby, with heavy, bulldog lips. But it was the eyes that gave Kerch his look of soft, infinite malice.

“Yes?” he said. “Is there anything I can do for you?” His voice was carefully modulated and his enunciation, coming from the gross mouth, was surprisingly clear and good.

“I hear you more or less run this town.”

“That’s an unexpected compliment,” he said without expression. It occurred to me that perhaps his face was incapable of expression. “After all, I’ve been in business here barely two years.”

“You seem to be doing all right for yourself.” I looked frankly at the piles of money on the table. The man on the
couch put down his newspaper and sat up with his feet on the floor.

“Thank you,” Kerch said. “Did you come here to discuss my business success with me?”

“In a way. I was told you’re a good man to work for—that you paid well, if a man was willing to take a few risks.”

“I can’t imagine who you’ve been talking to.”

“I’ve been talking to a few of your employees.”

“It was nice of them to put in a good word for me. What sort of risks did you have in mind?”

“Any kind of risk. Life has been pretty dull since I got out of the army.”

“And it hasn’t been paying so well?” His glance went from my collar down the front of my coat to my scuffed field boots.

“It hasn’t been paying at all. I’d like to start in at the bottom of some good lively business and work up.”

“I can understand why you might want to work for me,” Kerch said. “But what have you got to recommend yourself to me?”

“I’ll try anything once. I don’t discourage easily. I can fight.”

“Can you handle a gun?”

“Yes.”

“Rusty, stand up, will you? I’d like to see if this young man can hit you.”

Rusty stood up and stretched. He moved away from the couch and crouched forward with his arms hanging loose, his weight on the balls of his feet. He thrust forward his scarred face, which looked rugged enough to break a hand
on. His mouth was loose in a playful grin, which showed his broken teeth, but his little eyes, pale-blue slits under brows padded with scar tissue, were watching my feet.

I moved in cautiously and tapped at him with my left to test his speed. He got out of its way without moving his feet, which showed that his speed was fair. But my right cross followed it very quickly and got him on the cheek. While he was off balance my left came back to his jaw and jolted him. Before I could throw another right, he had clinched and began to pound my kidneys with both fists. I broke the clinch and shouldered him heavily. He took two involuntary steps backwards and sat down on his leather couch.

“Stay where you are, Rusty,” Kerch said. “I didn’t tell you to hurt him. I told you to see if he can hit you. He can.”

“He caught me off balance. This punk couldn’t lay a finger on me if he didn’t catch me off balance.” But he didn’t get up again.

“I don’t want you boys fighting among yourselves,” Kerch said. “I like to see a harmonious relationship among my employees.”

“Does that mean I’ve got a job?”

“You should give me one chance at him, Mr. Kerch. You let him hit me.”

“You let him hit you, Rusty. He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“Naw, a punk like that couldn’t hurt me, even with me giving him the sucker punch.”

“Exactly. But if you hit him you’d probably kill him. So, no fighting, please.”

Rusty was silent. His battered face caricatured the
expression of a small boy who has been refused permission to go to the ball game.

“I said no fighting, please, Rusty.”

“No, Mr. Kerch.”

Kerch turned to me: “Come and see me at noon tomorrow. I’ll be in my suite on the top floor of the Palace. What’s your name?”

“John.”

“John what?”

“Doe,” I said. “My name makes trouble for me.”

“Is that so?” Kerch said softly. “Well, John, I think I may be able to give you something to do.”

“That’s fine.”

His swollen eyeballs rotated upwards to look at my face. “By the way, John, my employees usually address me as Mr. Kerch. I’m a little bit of a disciplinarian, you see.”

“Yes, Mr. Kerch.” The words came out with such difficulty that a lump formed in my throat, but it wasn’t the time or place to talk out of turn.

“That’s better, John. You may go now.”

“Thank you, Mr. Kerch,” I said.

I went out the door and down the hall with the blood beating in my head. The door at the end opened before I reached it, and let in a gust of music with Garland walking daintily in the midst of it. We saw each other in the same instant and stood facing in the narrow passage. A swart automatic hopped into his hand like a toad.

“You’ve certainly got your nerve to come here,” Garland said. “Now turn right around and walk to that door at the other end. Kerch will want to see you.”

“Aren’t you supposed to call him Mr. Kerch?”

“Turn around and move quickly,” Garland whined. “You make me impatient.”

“You bore me. I don’t think you’re pretty at all.” I took a step towards him.

All the blood ran out of his lips and nostrils, leaving them white and shriveled. “If you come near me I’ll fire.”

Kerch’s door opened behind me, and over my shoulder I caught a glimpse of Rusty coming down the passage.

“Jump him, Rusty,” Garland said.

I turned to face the red-headed man who was so big he blocked the hallway from wall to wall. He bore down on me on rapid, shuffling feet, his chin drawn in and a happy snarl wrenching at his face. But I was afraid to hit him because Garland was behind me, balanced precariously on a high, thin peak of hysteria, with a gun.

Rusty swung at me and I stepped back. He swung with his other hand and I moved away again, into the arc of Garland’s descending blow. The butt of the gun struck me at the base of the skull and made the floor teeter under my feet. Rusty’s third swing made the floor stand up vertically and bounce against the back of my head.

Kerch appeared in his doorway and said: “I told you no fighting, please, Rusty. What are you doing, Garland? Put away that gun.”

“You don’t know who he is, do you?” Garland chattered. “He’s J.D. Weather’s son. He came to my flat tonight and made trouble.”

I sat up again and looked up into Kerch’s bovine face. In spite of his huge head and torso his legs were very
short and his feet were tiny. “I’m not surprised you were unwilling to give me your name,” he said. His feet moved in an awkward little dancing step and the pointed toe of one caught me under the chin. “I don’t like wretched little liars who come to me and try to take advantage of my openmindedness, worming their way into my good graces.”

I tried to speak, but all my throat would produce was a cawing retch. Kerch leaned over me and slapped me twice, with the front and the back of his hand. It didn’t hurt me, but it was like being slapped by a dead fish.

“Let me handle him, Mr. Kerch,” Rusty said with boyish eagerness.

“Wait a minute. You said he made trouble, Garland?”

“He slugged Joey Sault and tried to make him talk about what happened to his old man. I scared him off.”

“Of course Sault didn’t talk?”

“He just said that we’d better tell you about it—”

“Now that was unwise, don’t you think? Garland, I’d like you to go and get Sault and bring him here.”

“He isn’t at my flat any more—”

“Go and find him. Rusty, bring this wretched creature into the office.” He turned and walked down the hall, wide and foreshortened like a man seen from below.

“Get up, punk,” Rusty said, and yanked me by the collar. I got as far as my knees and he cuffed me on the back of the neck. “When I say get up, I mean in a hurry.”

I was on my hands and knees in front of him. He raised one foot to step on my fingers. I came up fast underneath him with my head in his crotch, and kept coming up,
carrying him off the floor. He let out a yelp of pain and surprise, but swung his legs together, trying to lock a scissors on my neck. I took his ankles, one in each hand, and jerked them apart. Now he was straddling my shoulders, with his body hanging head downwards on my back. I threw myself backwards onto the floor with him under me.

Kerch was watching us around the corner of his door. He made no move to join in the fight. Instead, he took a police whistle out of his pocket and blew once.

Rusty was still under me but his arms were around my waist. Before I could break his hold, a heavy man with curly, black hair came through the door at the end of the hall, moving at a run.

Kerch said: “Arrest this fellow, Moffatt. He came here to try to rob my office.”

I had enough voice to croak: “He’s a goddamn liar.”

“Do your duty, Moffatt,” Kerch said. “Surely the two of you can handle him.”

Rusty had twisted under me and had my throat in the crook of his elbow. I reached for his wrist with both hands to bend his arm away. Moffatt sat down on my chest and put handcuffs on me.

“Get the hell off,” Rusty said in a muffled voice. “I’m under here.”

Moffatt stood up and yanked me to my feet. “Do I take him down and book him, Mr. Kerch?”

“Bring him into the office.”

We all went into the office. Kerch hid his short legs under the desk. I stood in front of him like a prisoner at the bar, Moffatt and Rusty on either side of me.

“What charges you want to make, Mr. Kerch?” Moffatt said.

“I’ve been thinking about that. He’d be good for attempted robbery and aggravated assault.”

“Resisting an officer in the performance of his duty? Assault with a deadly weapon while attempting to commit a robbery?”

“On the other hand, I wouldn’t wish to be too hard on him, Moffatt. He’s young. He may have a future, though God knows that’s doubtful. And after all, he didn’t get away with anything, thanks to you.”

“I was holding him, Mr. Kerch,” Rusty said anxiously. “He couldn’t get away from me.”

“I’ll talk to you later, Rusty.”

“What do I do with him, Mr. Kerch?” Moffatt said.

“Take him down the highway, about three miles, I think. Start him walking in the direction of Chicago. I don’t believe he’ll want to come back and face the charges.”

“You certainly are a pretty generous guy, Mr. Kerch. Personally, I don’t think a few days in the cells would do him any harm.”

“Perhaps not, Moffatt. But I was young once myself. I wouldn’t want this boy’s life to be shadowed by a term in jail. Have you ever been in jail, son?”