Blue City (13 page)

“I want to give you a break. I’d love to give you a break. But I got expenses to meet, remember that. I don’t have capital to carry my friends on the cuff.”

She spoke now with a deathly coquetry, and her shadow huddled towards him. “If you give me just one, you could come home with me. I got to keep a buck to eat tomorrow. You used to like me, Joey.”

“Did I? Maybe I did. But I don’t pay for it, kid. Hell, sometimes I get paid.”

“Please, Joey.”

He pushed her away, and her shadow staggered soundlessly across the alley. I had a childish impulse to play Robin Hood, to hold him up and give her all the marijuana in the brief case. But in the long run it wouldn’t do her any good, and it wouldn’t do me any good at all.

“I got no more time to waste, Gert,” he said sharply. “Pay me the four dollars from last week and I’ll sell you two, cash on the line.”

“All right, you dirty Shylock.”

His shadow jerked and started to walk away.

“Joey, where are you going?” she cried in sudden terror. “Don’t go away. Come back. Please.”

“Pretty please. And I like you to call me Mr. Sault.”

“Pretty please,” she said desperately. “Mr. Sault.”

“And five bucks, eh?”

She went to him humbly and gave him what was in her hand. He clicked open the brief case and handed her a little package wrapped in newspaper. I watched them over the edge of the carton.

“Now thank me,” Sault said. “I didn’t like your crack.”

“Thank you, Mr. Sault,” she said, in a voice breaking with hatred and relief. “Thank you, Mr. Sault. Thank you, Mr. Sault.”

He turned on his heel and walked down the alley. She followed him like a vicious she-dog who hates and fears her master, still mouthing her thanks. Their shadows stalked them out, hardening and shrinking to life-size as they emerged into the street. The woman went one way and Sault went the other, walking more jauntily than ever. I followed Sault.

One block north of Main Street he turned left on West Mack. I crossed the street as soon as he was out of sight and came up to the corner cautiously. A block away on Main Street I caught sight of a policeman dawdling under a street light, but he paid no attention to me. When I looked around the corner in the direction Sault had taken, he had disappeared.

A hundred yards down the block a woman came out of a doorway, her raddled face lit into brief rosy youth by a red neon sign over her head which said, “Full Course Italian Dinners.” She hobbled mincingly towards me on high heels, and I went to meet her.

“Lonesome, friend?” she said as we passed.

“Yeah. I like to be lonesome.”

“O.K.,” she said wearily. “I was just asking.” She went on up the block like a sick old bird with a drooping tail.

I looked into the restaurant window, past a boiled lobster and a big plaster sundae on which generations of flies had left their marks, and saw Sault’s profile in a phone booth. He seemed to be arguing excitedly, like a man being asked to do something he didn’t want to do.

I moved away from the window and walked back to the corner to wait for him. In another minute he came out of the restaurant without his brief case, and walked rapidly in my direction. I left the corner, jumped into the first doorway I came to, and flattened myself against the door inside a triangle of shadow. He passed me on quick feet, his eyes fixed straight ahead in gloomy concentration.

I gave him a slow count of fifty, and stepped out of the doorway. He had almost reached the next corner. I recrossed the street and hurried after him, staying close enough to keep him in sight and far enough away to be unrecognizable if he turned around. He went straight on uphill towards the northside residential section. Up Lillian Street to West Farmer, across the little park at Farmers’ Square, around the corner at the First Presbyterian Church, and up Fenton Boulevard. We were coming into the streets where I had played when I was a kid, and all their names came back to me of their own accord. I passed the iron fence I used to vault over into the churchyard, and noticed how much lower it seemed.

Once we got on Fenton Boulevard, which was lined with elms and maples, it was easy to keep him in sight without
being seen myself, though I had to stretch my legs to keep up with him. His broad-brimmed fedora and dark, form-fitting topcoat moved ahead of me down a corridor of trees, alternately lighted and shadowed. The pace he set made me breathe noticeably, but the chase took on a dreamlike quality, as if we were hustling down dark streets that existed only in my own mind. I had the irrational nightmare suspicion that I was hunting a man who was hunting another who would turn out to be me.

I noticed a house I had trespassed in when it was being built, and written my name in the wet plaster. It didn’t look like a new house any more. When I looked back to the street Sault was gone.

I stepped off the sidewalk onto the spongy lawns and ran after him. A long, black car crawled down a side street and turned the corner ahead of me in the direction Sault had gone. I instinctively stopped behind a bush, and, when the car passed under a street light, I knew why. Garland was at the wheel.

Two houses up from the corner a front door opened suddenly and threw a shaft of light across the porch where Sault was standing. He stepped inside and the door closed behind him.

Garland’s car crawled up the boulevard and out of sight. I stood in the dark, wondering about several things. I wondered, for example, why Joe Sault should go to my father’s house to visit my stepmother at four o’clock in the morning.

The street was empty now, and I went back to the sidewalk and along it to the house that Sault had entered. There was light in the front room where Mrs. Weather had entertained me, but the tightly drawn curtains cut it off almost completely. The side windows of the room were equally well curtained, so that there was not a chink to see through. I thought of trying the front door, but decided against it. Even if it was unlocked, which was unlikely, I could hardly get in without being heard or seen from the front room. I went around to the back.

The service entrance at the side was locked, and so was the back door which led to the kitchen. I tried the kitchen windows; they were all firmly shut. But nothing had been changed at the back of the house. I sat down on the bottom step of the kitchen stoop and took off my boots and socks. I stuffed the socks into the toes of the boots, which I hung around my neck by their strings. Then I went around to the laundry cistern at the back of the stoop. The grass was chilly and ticklish on the naked soles of my feet.

I took hold of the drainpipe that emptied into the cistern, and pulled hard. It seemed steady, but I doubted
whether it would hold my weight. It had when I was twelve, more than once, but I had weighed half as much then. Still, I had had a good deal of practice in house-to-house fighting since then. If the drainpipe wasn’t rotten with rust I should be able to make it.

I went up hand over hand, bracing my back against the kitchen stoop, which formed a right angle with the rear wall of the house. The thin pipe groaned in my fingers, but I was high enough now to support some of my weight with my foot on a windowsill. An ornamental row of bricks, which projected slightly above the window, gave me my next foothold. I couldn’t see what I was doing, but I was surprised to find that I didn’t need to. I had done it before in the dark, and muscles have a long memory.

Sweat was wetting my undershirt and the muscles in my arms were starting to go dead when I finally got hold of the railing that ran around the second-story porch. For a moment I hung suspended, one hand on the drainpipe and the other on the railing, with the concrete lid of the cistern fifteen feet below me in the dark. I didn’t trust the railing to bear my weight, but I had to or quit. I swung my other hand onto the railing and started to pull myself over. It creaked and gave, but held me. I drew myself up and stepped over onto the porch.

The outside screen door was locked, as it always had been, with a simple hook. I slit the screen with Sault’s spring knife and let myself into the house. The inner door had never had a key.

There was a dim night light burning in the newel post at the head of the front stairs, enough to give me my bearings.
I unslung my boots, left them on the top step, and went down the back stairs to the kitchen. Nineteen steps, with a ninety-nine degree turn at the tenth step and a closed door at the bottom, which my fingers anticipated. I caught myself wondering if the refrigerator was still in the same corner of the kitchen.

The swinging door between the kitchen and the dining-room was standing open. I found it with my hands and went through on tiptoe. The only noise I made came from my heart, which pounded in my ears like rapid surf.

The sliding doors which separated the front room from the dining-room were imperfectly closed. A wafer of light came through between them and made a bright band across the dining-room table. I could hear low voices in the next room.

I took the automatic out of my pocket and pushed off the safety, holding it between thumb and forefinger so that it wouldn’t click. Walking heel and toe I crossed the carpet to the doors and peered through. All I could see was an empty section of floor, part of an armchair with nobody in it, a shadowy curtain. But I could hear what the voices were saying. They must be in the chesterfield to the right of the door, I thought.

“I can’t see why you’re so scared of this boy Weather,” Sault said. “He tried some rough stuff on me, but it didn’t take me long to get rid of him. He slunk away like a yellow dog with his tail between his legs.”

“You’re a man,” Mrs. Weather said softly. “You know how to handle people like that—”

“O.K., so what you want me to do for you? Run him out of town? I can do that.”

She continued her own train of thought: “It isn’t that I’m so much afraid of anything he’ll do to me directly. He threatened me last night—”

“He did, did he? Why the hell didn’t you call me up? I wouldn’t’ve let him get away so easy.”

“I did call you. I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all night. I told you that.”

“Yeah. You know the boy to come to when you want something done, eh, Floraine?”

“You’re sweet, Joey. I feel ever so much better, now that you’re here.”

For a while there was nothing but silence, broken finally by the slow ending of a kiss.

“You’re hot stuff, baby,” Sault said throatily. “It’s about time you decided to give me another break.”

“Don’t, Joey. You take my breath away. I’ve got to talk to you.”

“Don’t look so gorgeous then. How can I sit here and not do anything with you looking so gorgeous?”

“Listen to me, Joey.” Her voice was quick and cool again. “John Weather threatened my life, but it’s not him I’m afraid of. I don’t think he’s got the guts to do anything. He’s a wild talker, though, and I’m afraid he can make trouble. His father had some good friends in this town, and he’ll go to them and talk about me.”

“So what? Talking won’t hurt you. Nobody’s got anything on you.”

“Maybe not,” she said uncertainly. After a pause: “Joey, you said you wanted me to give you another break?”

“You know I go for you. It wasn’t any fun for me when you cut me off.”

“I had to, darling. Don’t you see? Everybody in town was watching me after the old man died. I couldn’t afford to take any chances.”

“But now you can afford to take chances? I don’t get it.”

Her voice had risen a full octave when she spoke again: “I’ve got to take a chance. A big chance. I can’t go on like this any longer.”

“Looks to me as if you’re sitting pretty.”

“Sitting pretty?” She laughed shallowly. “I’m sitting pretty on the rim of a volcano. I’ve never told anybody, Joey. Not even you.”

“This Weather guy,” Sault said slowly. “He got something on you?”

“Not yet. I’m afraid he will.”

“What’s he going to get on you, baby? Tell your Uncle Joey.”

“He won’t get anything if you’ll help me. If you’ll help me, we’ll both be sitting pretty for the rest of our lives.”

“You know I’ll help you, baby. Help you do what?”

“You’ve got a gun, haven’t you?”

“Sure. Not with me, but I can get one.” A little whine threaded the masculine assurance of his voice. “I don’t like working with guns, Floraine. I can get away with most things in this town, but not murder.”

“You can get away with murder, too. I’m asking you to take a chance, Joey, but I’m offering you the big break of
your life. We’ll both be in it together, and we’ll work together from now on. Everything I’ve got, I’ll split with you fifty-fifty.”

“For wiping out this John Weather? I’ll do it.”

“Not John Weather, Joey. If you do what I want you to do, he can never touch me. I want you to kill Kerch.”

“Kerch?” Surprise and terror plucked simultaneously at his vocal cords, and turned the harsh syllable into a squawk.

“You’ve got to kill Roger Kerch,” she said evenly.

“But I thought you and Kerch was like that? My God, Floraine!”

“Are you afraid?”

“Me? Afraid?” His voice cracked. “You know I’m not afraid. I’m just surprised, that’s all. I always heard that you and Kerch were—you know, pretty good friends.” The way he said it, “friends” was as obscene as any four-letter word.

“Somebody’s been kidding you. I can’t stand him.”

“He’s got something on you, eh?”

“That’s right, Joey. For the last two years, ever since he came here, I haven’t had a moment’s peace. Will you help me?” The range and complexity of her voice fascinated me. It had purred like a cat in passion, cut like whips in scorn, teetered on the edge of hysteria, sunk low in maternal solicitude. Now she was a little girl again, appealing to his masculine strength. “Will you help me, Joey?” she repeated.

He answered her with difficulty: “I can’t kill him, Floraine. He keeps Garland and Rusty with him all the time. If I did, I got no protection for that kind of a rap. He’s in solid with the cops.”

“He won’t be when he’s dead, Joey. He’ll be nothing but cold meat when you step into his shoes. You take over the Cathay Club and the machines, and the cops’ll know which side their bread is buttered on. They follow the graft, and you’ll be the man that’s handing it out.”