Blue City (17 page)

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.

Floraine Weather lived, when she was alive, only a few blocks from Sanford’s house. I drove there with the idea that I’d probably find her at home. Parking her car around the corner, I went on foot to her front door. A maid who was sweeping the steps of the house next door, the one on the corner, glanced at me as I climbed the porch, so I went through the motions of ringing the bell. After waiting a minute I tried the door, found it open, and went in.

The curtains in the front room were still drawn, but enough light came through them to show what was in the room. She was lying by the chesterfield on which she had tried, the night before, to persuade Joey Sault to let greatness be thrust upon him. Her body had been arranged in a grotesque and awkward position, half-leaning against the chesterfield with her legs sprawled wide and her chin on her shoulder. In the subdued light of the quiet, beautiful room, it was as if a corpse laid out in a funeral parlor had, in a last bitter spasm of life, viciously parodied the final peace of the dead.

I moved into the center of the room and looked down at her. The knife that I had taken from Sault lay open and
blood-smeared on the rug beside her twisted leg. Above the grimy mask of congealed blood which disguised her throat and the lower part of her face, her open eyes regarded me steadfastly. I didn’t want to do it, but I kneeled beside her and looked at her hands. Between the fingers of one I found the hair that Kerch had plucked from my head, and I took it back. The button from my coat had been placed under her body, and I had to move her before I found it. She was stiffer and colder than she had been, all but returned to the resistant mindlessness of inanimate objects. Kerch was giving me lessons in the natural history of death.

I had picked up the knife and was closing it when the abrupt hiss of intaken breath behind me turned my own body momentarily rigid. I glanced over my shoulder and saw a middle-aged woman standing in the doorway with her legs apart. The look of horror on her plain face was so intense that it outlawed me to myself, as if she had really caught me in a shameful act. The knife sprang open in my hand as I turned and stood up. Then, the breath that she had taken and held came out in a high scream. I walked towards her and saw in detail the unplucked eyebrows raised on her lined forehead, the lines that ran down from the fleshy wings of her nose, deepened and curved by her smile of terror, the tense wrinkle across her hairy upper lip, the false upper teeth that slid down into the space between her parted lips and made even her fear ridiculous. The insane logic of the situation was so pressing that I felt almost compelled to kill her as she expected me to. Her
screaming was intolerable. Nothing I could say would silence her. The knife was in my hand.

But I refused the role of murderer for which I had been cast. As I approached the doorway she cowered away from me and fell backwards on the floor. I closed the knife and went out the front door, leaving her with her legs spraddled in front of her, her cotton print dress dragged up past her blue-veined thighs, her black mercerized stockings twisted around her thick ankles.

The maid on the next veranda was watching the house when I came out. I controlled the panic with which Mrs. Weather’s servant had infected me and walked briskly but casually down the steps and sidewalk to the street, past the staring girl with the immobilized broom. A door across the street burst open suddenly, but I didn’t turn my head to look. I turned the corner and made for the Packard. Before I reached it a woman shouted: “Stop him! Murder!” I jumped into the car and turned on the ignition. Then I realized that Floraine Weather’s car was no use to me if I wanted to get away.

As I got out, a big man in trousers and bathrobe came round the corner and ran heavily toward me. He had a white-lathered neck and a safety razor in his hand. I took Garland’s gun out of my pocket and showed it to him. He stopped in his tracks and stood panting, his little razor clenched in his hand like a weapon. The maid with the broom appeared at the corner and called to him:

“Don’t go near him, Mr. Terhune. He’ll kill you.”

“Throw down that gun,” Mr. Terhune commanded me. His voice was husky and uneven.

Several other women joined the maid at the corner, howling and squealing when they saw me. “Come back, Terry,” one of them cried. “Can’t you see he’s got a gun?”

For his age and weight, Mr. Terhune was a brave man. He walked toward me uncertainly but without halting, crouched forward slightly in his flapping bathrobe, like an old wrestler coming down the aisle to meet the unbeaten masked marvel.

I couldn’t shoot him, I couldn’t talk to him, I couldn’t stop him. I turned and ran. Mr. Terhune ran after me, bellowing: “Stop! Murderer!”

By the time I reached the next corner he was half a block behind me, but there must have been a dozen people, men and women, strung out along the street in chase. More were streaming from the houses to join them. They made a confused, rapid chattering, like a pack of monkeys that has been frightened by a snake.

As soon as I was out of sight around the corner, I slowed to a quick walk and looked up and down the street. For the moment there was nobody to be seen. I went up the first driveway, beside a tall, red brick house built close to the street. Before I reached the closed garage at the end of the driveway, I heard shouts and footsteps at the corner. I ducked around the rear corner of the house and stood against the wall, wondering where to go from there. The running feet I had heard went by and on up the street, but more kept coming.

I detached myself from the wall and ran across the deep back yard, past a covered sandbox and a child’s swing, through a row of leafless bushes that scratched at my
clothes, over the high wooden fence. I crouched against the fence for a minute, looking ahead and listening behind me. The noise seemed to be fading away—at any rate coming no closer than the street. Ahead of me and to my right, a man came out the back of the house next door, buttoning his topcoat. He went into his garage and a minute later backed his car out. A little girl in a bib ran to the door and waved goodby to him. A woman with curlers in her hair came to the door behind the little girl and told her to get away from the open door, she’d catch cold. I watched these people with all the interest of a member of the family. They didn’t see me.

When the door slammed finally shut, I stood up and walked across the muddy lawn towards the back porch of the house I had landed behind. There were sounds of movement in the back kitchen, and a woman’s voice rose in a yell which froze me for a moment. What she said was: “Alec! Are you up yet? You don’t want to be late for school.”

There was a bicycle leaning against the back wall of the house beside the driveway. I climbed on, and coasted down the gentle slope to the street. After what seemed a long chase, I was back on Fenton Boulevard, half a block from Floraine Weather’s front door. I tried to comfort myself with the reflection that a bicycle is a kind of disguise, which makes an old man look older and a young man look younger, but going back to that street was like diving into ice-cold water. Out of the tail of my eyes as I turned downtown, I saw women and children scattered like confetti on the sidewalks and porches of the next block. I gripped the
rubber ends of the handle bars and pedaled hard away from them. A steady blast of cold air poured into my face and made my eyes water, and my feet sprinted round on the pedals. God knows where I was going, but I was going, and I felt almost good about it.

At the second corner I passed, my inflated mood was smashed like a paper bag. Mr. Terhune was slogging up the side street towards me, his bare, sweating belly bouncing over his trousers in front of him and his bathrobe flying out behind. I put down my head and kept going, but he saw me, brandished his safety razor like a talisman, and let out a breathless yell. The motley pack behind him took up the cry of murder. I looked back from the next corner and saw him waving his arms in the middle of the road. A car slowed down and he jumped on the running board. When I looked again he was crouched on the side of the accelerating car, pointing ahead like a manhunter in an old movie serial—a middle-aged householder tapped by destiny and rising to the occasion with everything he had. I began to dislike him intensely, and even to regret I hadn’t shot him in the foot. But all I could do now was pedal for my life, which I did.

Ahead of me and somewhere out of sight a desultory whining formed itself into a steady tone that mounted gradually to a high shriek, so loud that it dominated the morning. As if to disclaim its threat, the siren died away and lost itself. But then it recovered its voice, nearer and louder. When I was passing the Presbyterian Church a police car turned into the street two blocks ahead of me and came towards me howling. I turned up the driveway at
the side of the church, applied the brakes and found that there weren’t any, skidded on the gravelly sidewalk, and coasted shakily around the back of the church. The back door was locked. Somebody fired a shot on the other side of the building. I picked up the bicycle and threw it through the stained-glass window as a diversion, then ran around the corner of the church.