Blue City (23 page)

“That’s not true,” he said quickly. “It’s merely another wild accusation.”

“I intend to substantiate it. I’ve already substantiated some facts about your partner Kerch. Any power he has is based on blackmail. Surely you knew that he was blackmailing Floraine Weather? That the money you paid him for the Weather House undoubtedly went into his own pocket?”

“I knew nothing of the sort. Nor do I know it now.”

“The evidence is in his safe at the Cathay Club. Roger Kerch was married in 1931 to the woman who called herself Floraine Weather. Apparently they were never divorced. Floraine Weather was a bigamist, and Kerch got control of her property because he knew it. Did you?”

“Certainly not!”

“For all your knowledge of life, haven’t you been rather naïve? Or was the situation too useful to you to be examined critically? It must have been useful, too, to have
Kerch to control Allister for you, and through him, all the little people in the town who respect Allister and vote for him. Did you ever stop to wonder why Allister took orders from Kerch, and thus indirectly from you?”

“Allister never took orders from Kerch. The two men are violently antagonistic.”

“Maybe so, but it never led to anything. Allister never took any sort of action against Kerch, and I’ll tell you why. Kerch has something on him. Your partner has been blackmailing the Mayor of your city to keep him in line.”

The old man walked to a chair and sat down heavily. His face showed neither shock nor confusion, but his eyes looked tired. “Leaving aside for the moment the validity of your accusations—they come as a complete surprise to me, but no doubt you have some reason for making them—I object to your calling this man my partner. I’ve had necessary business dealings with him, of course, as I have with practically every businessman in the state. But I have thoroughly detested the man from the first.”

“You tolerated him and used him. In this town your mere tolerance of a man is like a stamp of approval. It makes him immune.”

“If what you say of him is true, my tolerance will be withdrawn.”

“I haven’t told you all of it. He murdered Floraine Weather last night.”

“Have you any evidence?”

“I have enough.”

He said casually and dryly: “You didn’t mention, by the way, what Kerch has on Freeman Allister, as you put it.
Surely our worthy reform mayor doesn’t have a guilty secret?”

“It’s going to stay a secret,” I said. “It’s strictly between Allister and himself.”

He fluttered his hands in cold gaiety. “As you wish, John. You seem to have quite a talent, do you not, for discovering unsuspected skeletons in irreproachable closets? I’ve always considered Allister a veritable Caesar’s wife of political virtue.”

The door of the room opened behind me and Allister came in. “Did I hear somebody taking my name in vain?” he said with strained cheerfulness. “Good morning, Mr. Sanford.”

“Good morning, Freeman,” he answered in an unruffled voice. “You know John Weather, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course.” He turned to me and his blue eyes widened. “Heavens, man, what happened to your face?”

“I bumped a door.”

“Fortunately,” Sanford said smoothly, “John’s troubles are approximately at an end. I haven’t had a chance to tell you. John, since we got off on that rather unrewarding discussion, but I’ve been talking to our Coroner, Dr. Bess, and he has established that Floraine Weather had been dead several hours before you were seen with her body. Something to which he referred as post-mortem lividity, I believe, indicates that her body had been moved after death. There also seemed to have been some attempt to give medical treatment to the wounds from which she bled to death. I presented those facts to Judge Simeon, and he
was willing to set bail for you at $10,000. I took the liberty of posting your bail without consulting you.”

“Thank you.” I would have smiled if my mouth had been fit for it. “But I’ll stay here until I can walk out without posting bail.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” he said tartly. “It’s merely a temporary loan. You have ample resources to cover it.”

“I’ll accept, if you realize clearly that I’m going to stay in this city and fight you.”

“I realize that only too clearly.” He smiled bitterly, got out of his chair with difficulty, and moved across the room. Before he went out he turned his white head on his scrawny bird’s neck and gave me a long look: “I warn you, however, that the possession of property in a so-called democracy involves more complex responsibilities than you realize.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Some of us did a lot of thinking and talking about those things when we were in the army. Human decency has its responsibilities, too. And I don’t like the implications in your phrase ‘so-called democracy.’ ” The closing door put a period to my sentence, but I had a feeling that my argument with Alonzo Sanford would go on till he died.

Allister had gone to the window and raised the blind while we talked, and stood restlessly looking out at a wall of grimy white brick.

“Hanson gave me the word on Garland,” I said when he turned.

“That he died, you mean?”

“Yeah, he thought I killed him. If Garland had died of a fractured skull, I might blame myself. Or congratulate myself. But he was choked to death, Hanson said.”

“And you didn’t choke him?” There was a queer look in his cloudy blue eyes, which probably meant that he didn’t believe me.

“I could have, but I didn’t. I just put him out of action, the quickest way I knew how. I never killed a man except when I was wearing a uniform, and that made it all right and proper.”

“It must have been Kerch,” Allister said slowly. “He would naturally destroy the witnesses against him.”

“Did he go out to the Wildwood again?”

“He must have. Rusty Jahnke was in his suite at the Palace. That old quack doctor Salamander was working on him there when Hanson picked him up.”

“Hanson really did it, then?”

“Yes. He’s bringing Rusty and Salamander here for questioning.”

“If you’re in on all this, aren’t you taking a chance?”

He walked diagonally across the room with a jerky, forward-leaning stride, and came to an unstable position of rest against the wall. “What do you mean?” he said. “Hanson is handling the case.”

“But you’re backing him up, aren’t you?”

“I can’t act openly.” He moved sideways against the wall as if the room cramped him, as if any four walls threatened his freedom. “I have cogent reasons.”

“I opened Kerch’s safe this morning.”

He looked at me with such startled eyes that I might
have been in command of a firing squad and about to give the final order. “Yes?” he said.

“No doubt you think Kerch can ruin your political career. I doubt it. If you act quickly and boldly and pin the murders on him, he won’t be able to do a thing to you. Your affair with Mrs. Sontag is small potatoes compared with the things we have on Kerch. But you’ve got to take the bit in your teeth and act now, or he’ll take the play away from you.”

There was fear and confusion in his eyes, as if he suspected me of bitter irony. “What did you see in Kerch’s safe?”

“Your letters to Mrs. Sontag. I think you were a fool to let him frighten you with those. If you’d have the courage of your indiscretions, you could fight him in the open and win.”

“You don’t understand this town. I’d lose the support of the one group of people I can count on.”

“All right.” I sat down and looked out of the window. The dirty brick wall which cut off the horizon was as blank and stubborn as human fear. “I’m bloody tired of giving pep talks. I’ve given so many pep talks in the last two years that I feel like sealing off my mouth and stopping talking for good.”

“I don’t know what to do,” he said miserably.

I stood up and gave him the pay-off: “If you’ve got any guts left at all, you can make a monkey out of Kerch. Have you got a gun?”

“Yes, I got one from Hanson before we went out to the inn.”

“Then go out to the Cathay Club and bring in Kerch.”

“I’m not a gunman.”

“Neither is he.”

“But what about my letters in his safe? You haven’t got them, have you?”

“No, they’re probably still there. But I think I can remember the combination.”

“You can?”

“Lend me your pen and an envelope.”

He gave me writing materials and I sat down at the desk. My head wasn’t good for much else by then, but it was still a good head for figures. One by one I picked the numbers out of my bruised memory and set them in the right order.

“It’s an envelope in the second drawer from the upper right-hand corner,” I said. “Alphabetically, under ‘A.’ Kerch is a great man for system.”

He thanked me emotionally when I handed him the combination. Then he went out the door in nervous haste, like a rattled hunting dog going up for his last chance to pass the test on the firing range.

The sergeant opened the door and moved backwards into the room. “Bring him in here, Alec,” he said. “Inspector Hanson wants him in here.”

He looked taken aback when he turned and saw me sitting there. “You’re free to go now, Mr. Weather. I’ll take you out to the desk so you can check out.”

“I feel too weak to move.”

“Hold it a minute, Alec,” the sergeant called into the hall. He turned to me again with a look that tried to be ingratiating and wasn’t. “You can’t sit here, Mr. Weather. Mr. Sanford bailed you out, didn’t you know?”

“I like it here. It’s very interesting.”

An obscure worry crawled across his face. “I didn’t want to hit you, Mr. Weather, you know that. I tried my best to keep Moffatt from beating you up. You won’t say anything to Inspector Hanson?”

“I’ve got nothing against you but your job and your personality and the company you keep. I won’t tattle on you. But you better keep out of dark alleys for a while. And tell your pal Moffatt to keep off the streets entirely.”

“Yeah, sure, Mr. Weather. Don’t you think you need some first aid for your face? Come with me and I’ll get you fixed up.”

“I’m staying here. You can bring me my belt and tie—and my wallet, with all the money in it.”

“O.K., Mr. Weather. But the Inspector don’t want you here when he’s questioning a prisoner.” He plodded out.

A minute later Hanson came in, with Rusty Jahnke handcuffed and escorted by a uniformed policeman. Jahnke looked beaten and sick, the way I felt. His face was badly bruised and his head hung down on his chest. The unbruised sections of his face were as pale and inert as lard. Even when he looked up under his red brows and saw me, there was hardly a flicker of recognition in his small eyes.

Hanson gave me a hard, bright look as if to say: “You see?” He carried his body with authority.

“Do you mind if I sit in on this, Inspector? If Jahnke starts telling his dreams, I’m an expert on dreams.”

“Yes, you stay, Weather,” he said crisply. “Sit him under the light, Alec, and pull down the blind. I told Rourke to hold the other one across the hall.”

Alec pushed Jahnke into the chair and sat down behind him with a pencil and stenographic notebook. Under the staring light the red spikes of Jahnke’s beard stood out individually and cast minute shadows on his chin. “If you think you can get anything outa me,” he said, “you’re nuts. I wanta lawyer. I wanta talk to Mr. Kerch.”

“You’ll get a lawyer,” Hanson snapped. “And you’ll get Mr. Kerch. I’ll put you in adjoining cells.”

Jahnke uttered a loose and mirthless laugh. “You’re talking
awful big, copper. Pretty soon you’ll be talking awful small.”

“I don’t care how you talk, Jahnke, so long as you talk. At what time did your employer cut Mrs. Weather to death? Was it before or after he beat Sault to death?”

Jahnke looked up in stupid surprise. Perhaps he didn’t know Floraine was dead. More likely he hadn’t expected to be asked such large questions so definitely and so soon.

“I don’t know nothing about it. Somebody hit me from behind and knocked me out, and I didn’t see nothing happen to nobody.”

“You held Sault’s arms while Kerch beat him,” I said. “I saw you.”

Hanson turned on me. “When I want you to talk up, I’ll ask you to.”

This encouraged Jahnke: “He’s a dirty liar,” he yelled. “He killed Sault and buried him himself.”

“How could you know?” Hanson said. “You were unconscious.”

“Somebody told me. Mr. Kerch told me.”

“Was Mr. Kerch there when Sault was killed?”

“No, he wasn’t there. Nobody was there except this guy here. He did it.” He started to raise a hand to point at me, but his handcuffs thwarted the gesture.

“How do you know he did it?”

“I told you Mr. Kerch told me.”

“But he wasn’t there.”

“No, but Sault was a friend of his, and he heard about it.”

“I’ll tell you how close friends they were,” Hanson said in a hard voice. “Sault was beaten to death with an iron
spoon. It’s got his hair and his blood type on it, and it’s got Kerch’s fingerprints.”

“You’re bluffing, copper,” Jahnke feebly scoffed. “You ain’t got Kerch’s fingerprints.”

“But I have. He left them all over his suite in the Palace. He was too careless to get away with murder. He thought he had nothing to worry about, so he didn’t even take elementary precautions. That’s why we’re going to burn him, Jahnke. And that’s why you’re in so deep I can hardly see the top of your thick head.”

“You ain’t got nothing on me.”

Hanson laughed in his face. “You’ve got a faint chance of getting off with life, Jahnke. I’ve already given it to you. But you’re not talking the way you should be. You’re not talking about the murder of Floraine Weather.”

Jahnke’s head was down on his chest again like a tiring bull’s. “I don’t do no talking till I see a lawyer. You can’t make me talk.”

“All right, Alec, take him away. I’d rather get it from Salamander, anyway, he’s got more brains.” He turned to me and said in a conversational tone: “If we don’t get him for killing Sault, we’ve got him for the murder of your father.” His eyelid slid over his eye and snapped open again.

“You can’t frame me for old man Weather,” Rusty said to his back. “I wasn’t even there.”