Blue City (2 page)

“It didn’t used to be like this,” he said. “But after all, life begins at sixty-five.”

“Are you sixty-five?”

“Sixty-six. Yeah, I know I look older, but those strokes I had take it out of a man. The first one gave me a hell of a jolt, but it didn’t hurt me any except that it slowed me down. But the second one was a dandy. I still can’t use my left hand, probably never will be able to again.”

“You’ve got funny reasons for saying that life begins at sixty-five.”

“Sweet Cæsar, those aren’t my reasons! It’s for different reasons entirely that my life began at sixty-five. That was when I qualified.”

“Qualified for what? Voting?”

“Qualified for the old-age pension, son. Ever since then I’ve been my own boss. No more getting pushed around, no more licking asses, not for me! Nobody can take that pension away from me.”

“It’s a great thing,” I said.

“It’s a wonderful thing. It’s the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me in my life.”

He finished his beer and I ordered him another.

“Who was your boss before you got the pension?”

“Can you imagine what they did to me?” the old man said. “And that was when I couldn’t walk yet after my second stroke. They put me out in the county poorhouse, with nobody to look after me except my chums out there. They said all the hospitals were full. I still have some of the bedsores I got then. And then they weren’t going to give me my old-age pension, even after I qualified.”

“What was the matter?”

“You see, son, I couldn’t prove my age. You’d think if they took one look at me they could see how old I am, but that wasn’t good enough. I was born on a farm and my daddy never registered my birth, so I couldn’t get a birth certificate. I would’ve been up the creek without a paddle, if it hadn’t been for Mr. Allister. He got my case investigated and people to swear to me, and everything turned out jake. Now I got me a little place of my own under the stairs at the warehouse, and nobody can say boo to me.”

Two men came in and sat down at a table near us. One was short and broad. He wore a limp cloth cap and a decayed leather windbreaker. The other was tall and very thin, his face a vague triangle with the apex pointed down. He took a mouth organ out of the pocket of his shiny blue suit coat and blew a few dreamy notes. His companion drummed on the table with cracked dirty knuckles and looked stonily ahead.

“Who is this Allister?” I asked the old man.

“You don’t know who Mr. Allister is? You haven’t been around here long, have you? Mr. Allister is the Mayor of this town.”

“And he helped you with your pension? He must be a pretty good egg.”

“Mr. Allister is the finest man in this town.”

“Things have changed around here,” I said. “It used to be that J.D. Weather was the man to go to when you needed help like that. He used to have a line-up at his office every morning.”

“J.D. Weather got killed before I had my second stroke. Let me see, that was two years ago this coming June. You used to live in this town, eh?”

“J.D. Weather got killed?”

“Yeah, about two years ago. Excuse me.”

“Wait a minute. How did he get killed?” I put my hand on his arm, which felt like a bone wrapped in rags.

“He just plain got killed,” the old man said impatiently. “Somebody shot him and he died.”

“For Christ’s sake! Who shot him?”

“You got to let me go, son. I been drinking beer.”

I let go of his arm and he shuffled away to the men’s room. The blonde and the redhead and their joint property in imitation llama had drifted away to other bars. The short man and the tall man finished their draught beers and wandered into the men’s room. Now the room was deserted except for the bartender, who was wiping glasses and paying no attention to me. The ugly, empty room was one of a long series of lonely bars in towns I didn’t know. If J.D. Weather was dead, this town was going to be as lonely as the rest.

There was a low growl of men’s voices from the lavatory. I couldn’t make out any words but there was unpleasantness in the sound, which was emphasized a minute later by a muffled thud. I glanced at the bartender, but he was busy with his glasses.

Then somebody sobbed in the men’s room. I got up and walked through the door. The old man was sitting on the dirty tile floor with his back to the wall. A bead of blood had fallen from one of his nostrils onto his white mustache. The tall mouth organist and his companion stood in the center of the small room, watching me. The old man’s hat was on the floor near their feet.

The old man was crying. “They took my money,” he sobbed. “Make them give me back my money.”

“We ain’t got his money,” the short man said. “He called me a dirty name, so I gave him a slap.”

“The lousy, bullying bastards!” the old man said. “They took my sixteen dollars.”

“You shut up,” said the tall man, taking a step towards him.

“Leave him alone,” I said. “And give him back his money.”

The tall man stayed where he was.

“Oh, yeah?” the short man said. His eyes were bright blue, as hard and glistening as glass eyes. “You and who else is going to make me?”

“I’m getting tired waiting,” I said. “Give him back his money.”

“He didn’t have no money,” the short man said. “C’mon, Swainie, let’s get the hell out of here.”

I braced my heel on the doorjamb and swung as I moved into him. He ducked his jaw quickly, but my fist caught the bridge of his nose. He moved in on me and clinched me around the waist with his round head under my right arm. “Get him from behind, Swainie,” he said.

Before Swainie could circle me I backed into the closed door. I worked on the short man’s arms but couldn’t break his hold. Swainie came within range and I caught him on the ear with a backhanded left. The old man got to his feet and grabbed Swainie from behind with his one good arm. Swainie slammed him back against the wall, and the old man sat down on the floor again.

Meanwhile I had found the short man’s belt. He was as squat and heavy as a sack of coal, but I strained him off the floor as Swainie came in again. When his legs were higher than his head, he let go of my waist. Then I threw him at Swainie.

One of his heavy work boots struck Swainie in the face and Swainie fell backwards onto the floor. The short man landed sprawling, rolled once to the far wall, and whirled
like a terrier on his hands and knees. Before his hands were off the floor I hit him with an uppercut that had traveled three feet through the air. His head snapped back against the wall and he lay down on the floor, his open eyes looking more than ever like glass eyes. I was starting to breathe hard.

“You’re pretty good,” the old man said. I looked at him and saw that he wasn’t sobbing any more.

“You’re not so bad yourself. I saw you try to take on the big fellow. Which one got your money?”

“The short one. I think he put it in the breast pocket of his windbreaker.”

I found the money and gave it to him. “Is there a phone in the bar?”

“Yeah.”

“Then go and phone the police. I’ll stay here and keep ’em quiet.”

He looked at me in surprise, and chewed his bloodstained mustache. “Phone the police?”

“They robbed you, didn’t they? They should be behind bars.”

“Maybe so,” the old man said. “But these fellows have an in with the police.”

“You know them?”

“I’ve seen ’em around town. I think the cops brought ’em in for strikebreakers two years ago. They been here ever since.”

“What kind of a police force does this town have, anyway?”

“That kind.”

“Look.” I found a nickel in my pocket and gave it to him. “Go and phone yourself a taxi and get out of here.” He went out.

The short man was coming to. His head rolled on the floor and his eyes focused. He saw me and sat up.

“Stand up,” I said. “Pour some water on your friend’s face. I couldn’t be bothered with him.”

“You’ll be sorry, fella. You don’t know what you just been messin’ with.”

“Shut up or I’ll hit you again! With both hands.”

“Tough, eh?”

My left split his upper lip and my right closed his left eye. “See what I mean?”

He leaned against the wall and put his black-grained hands over his damaged face. I went out to the bar, where the old man was sitting on a stool.

“I like your class of clientele,” I told the bartender.

“You back? I don’t recall as how we sent you a gilt-edged invitation.”

“If the comic in the lavatory doesn’t come to in another five minutes, you better send for the police ambulance.”

“You been fighting?” He looked at me with hypocritical disapproval. “We don’t allow any roughhouse stuff around here.”

“I didn’t notice you raising a howl when this old guy got hit. What’s your cut?”

“One more crack like that out of you!” the bartender yelled.

A car honked softly in front of the tavern, and the old man slid off his stool.

“Save it,” I told the bartender.

The old man was at the door, and I called to him to wait a minute. “Do you live far?”

“Just a few blocks.”

“Fifty cents should cover it.” I gave him two quarters.

“You’re a good boy, son.”

“I just happen to like fighting. What’s your name?”

“McGinis.”

“If those characters give you any more trouble, let me know. I’ll be staying at the Weather House, I guess. My name’s John Weather. Better stay away from here, though.”

“You mean the Palace Hotel? That’s the old Weather House.”

“Yeah, I suppose they would change its name.”

The taxi honked mildly again, and the old man turned away. “Wait a minute,” he said again. “What did you say your name was?”

“John Weather.”

“You any relation to J.D. Weather that I was telling you about?”

“That’s right.”

“Is that a fact?” the old man said. He got into his taxi and rode away.

They had changed more than the name of the Weather House. The Palace Hotel had revolving doors instead of the big oak doors with the brass knobs that I remembered. The dim old lobby with the tobacco-colored, tobacco-smelling leather chairs had been cleaned out and redecorated. It was a bright, female sort of place now, with indirect lighting and new, colored chesterfields, and there were no old men sitting in it. The ground-floor poolroom where J.D. once played Willie Hoppe had been changed into a cocktail lounge with dark blue women painted on the walls. I looked past the bare shoulders of a couple of floozies at the door of the cocktail lounge and saw that it was doing a good business, which included the high-school trade. I couldn’t help wondering where the money from the business was going.

I crossed the lobby to the room clerk’s desk. It bore a little wooden sign which said “Mr. Dundee.” Mr. Dundee looked at my rain-stained fedora, my beard-blackened chin, my dirty shirt, my canvas bag, my old field boots. I looked at Mr. Dundee’s wig-brown hair, carefully parted in the exact center of his egg-shaped skull. I looked at his fat,
laundered little face and his dull little eyes, his very white hard collar and his pale-blue tie which was held in place by a gold-plated initialed clasp.

I began to look at each of the eight manicured fingers with which he daintily clasped the inside edge of the desk.

“What can we do for you?” he said, delicately omitting the “sir.”

“Single without bath. I never take a bath. Do I?”

He raised his thin eyebrows and blinked. “That will be two dollars and a half.”

“I usually pay when I check out of a hotel. Who runs this place?”

“Mr. Sanford is the owner,” said Mr. Dundee. “Two dollars and a half, please.”

I took out a roll that looked bigger than it was and gave him three ones. “Keep the change.”

“The salaried officers of this hotel do not accept tips.”

“Excuse me,” I said. “You remind me of a butler I once had. He died of chagrin on his fiftieth birthday.”

Mr. Dundee placed my key and my change flatly on the counter and said distantly: “Six seventeen.”

Just before he closed the door of 617, the bellboy looked at me sideways with a fifty-cent smile. “Anything else I can get you, sir? There’s some pretty nice stuff in this town.”

“Alcoholic or sexual?”

“Both. Anything you want.”

“Just buy me a piece of privacy. But don’t bring it up yourself.”

“Yes, sir. Excuse me, sir.” The door clicked behind him.

I stripped to the waist, washed from there up, shaved, and put on a clean shirt. I counted my money and found that I still had sixty-three dollars and some change from the last hundred dollars of my mustering-out pay. I weighed a hundred and eighty stripped and was almost as fast as a welter-weight. It was twenty minutes past seven.

I went down the fire stairs to the broadcasting studio on the third floor. It occupied the same suite as it had ten years before, but the partition between the anteroom and the broadcasting chamber had been torn out, and a plate-glass window substituted. On the other side of the window, a dried-up little man in a swallow-tailed coat was talking into the microphone. It took me a moment to realize that the great deep voice coming through the loudspeaker in the anteroom belonged to the little man at the mike.

“Fearful One,” the great voice said, and the little man’s lips followed the syllables like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “Fearful One, you stand at the crossroads of your destiny, and I believe you possess the spiritual power to sense that disturbing fact. But do not be alarmed by the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune. I can help you, out of the power of my knowledge and the knowledge of my power.…”

A big young man in a gray suit was sitting at a table in the corner. I said to him: “Anybody in charge around here, or does the old gent just carry on by himself?”

“I happen to be the program director.” He stood up and shook the wrinkles out of his sharply creased trousers. He looked as if he had just stepped out of a men’s clothing store via a barbershop.

“In that case,” I said, “maybe you can tell me who runs this station.”

“I just told you I was the program director.” His voice was as cultured as an uncultured voice ever gets to be. Already it contained a little whine of impatience and wounded vanity.