Blue City (4 page)

“He was shot at approximately 6:35 in the evening on April 3, 1944, as he was on his way home from the hotel. The shooting occurred one block north of Main Street on Cleery, near the corner of Cleery and Mack. Two shots were fired, almost simultaneously, according to witnesses. Both shots struck him in the head and pierced his brain, and he died immediately.”

“Didn’t anybody see the killer?”

“That’s one of the things that stymied me. Nobody did. It was an ambush killing, well planned ahead of time, and the killer had his getaway prepared. Remember the old Mack Building?”

“No. Tell me about it.”

“It’s on the corner of Cleery and Mack, with entrances on both streets. J.D. went past it every day about the same time on his way home from his office. The man who shot him must have known that, because he waited for him at a window on the second floor of the Mack Building. The window was about fourteen feet above street level. When J.D. came past, the killer leaned out of the window and shot him from above. At least that’s the way I reconstructed it. It fits in with the path the bullets took.”

“Whose window was it?”

“Nobody’s. It was an empty office—used to be a dentist’s office. We found out afterwards that somebody had broken into it. The door had been jimmied, and there were marks
in the dust on one of the window ledges where somebody rested his arm.”

“Fingerprints?”

“No. I told you it was well planned. The killer fired his two shots, put down the window, and beat it through the building and out the other entrance. By that time nearly all the offices were closed and there was hardly anybody in the building, so nobody saw him. Probably he had a car waiting for him at the Mack Street entrance. Anyway, he got clear away.”

“And that’s all you’ve been able to find out in two years?”

“One more thing. We recovered the murder weapon and traced it. It was an old Smith and Wesson revolver, and it’s definitely the gun that fired the bullets that killed J.D. We found it in the sewer on Mack Street near the entrance to the Mack Building. Up to a certain point it was easy to trace. The daughter of the original purchaser, a man called Teagarden, sold it to Kaufman the secondhand dealer. Kaufman admitted buying it, but claimed that it was stolen from his store a couple of days before the murder.”

“You investigated Kaufman?”

“Naturally. He’s a shady customer all right, some kind of an anarchist or radical. He writes crazy letters to the newspapers. But he didn’t kill your father. He was in his store at the time of the murder, and has two or three people to swear to it. It could be that he sold the gun to somebody and then to cover up he made up this story about a shoplifter. But it sounded to me as if he was telling the truth.”

“I suppose you went into the matter of who stood to profit by J.D.’s death.”

His long body wriggled uneasily against the cushions of his chair. “I did what I could. Mrs. Weather was the only one who profited directly. She inherited his money and property. But there isn’t any other reason to suspect her. You know that as well as I do.”

“The hell I do. Just who is this woman?”

“Don’t you know her? I thought you’d probably be staying with her.”

“Not if I can help it.” I stood up and walked across the rug to the mantel. “I’ve never seen her, and what I’ve heard about her I don’t like.”

“Naturally you wouldn’t like her. But she’s a pretty nice kid. She’s got a good deal of class.”

“Where did she come from?”

“Chicago, I think. Anyway, your father brought her home from Chicago on one of his trips. She was his secretary for a while before he married her. From all I heard, she made him a good wife. The women in the town don’t like her much, but you can expect that. They haven’t got her class.”

“I’ll have to take a look at all that class. She still lives here?”

“Yeah, she just stayed on in J.D.’s house. It’s her house now, of course.”

“Do I know as much about the case now as you do?”

“I told you the main facts. Maybe I left out some of the details—”

“Such as who killed my father.”

He stood up and faced me with bubbling anger in his narrow green eyes. “I told you a straight story. If you don’t like it, you can shove it.”

“I don’t like it and I’m not going to shove it. I’d like to know if anybody warned you not to find out too much.”

His lips drew back from his teeth again and his voice rasped: “I did my job and I told you what I knew. Now you can get out of my house.”

I found his eyes with mine, stared hard, and stared him down. “You’re acting nervous, Inspector Hanson. Tell me what’s making you nervous and I’ll get out.”

“I’m not afraid of anybody, and if a snotnose like you thinks he can—”

“You could have the makings of an honest man, Hanson. You like good, clean wood. How do you put up with working on a dirty police force like the one in this town?”

He took a step towards me and glared in my face. He was a tall man, an inch or two taller than I, but lean and brittle. I could have broken him in two, but he didn’t seem to be worrying about that: “One more crack out of you—”

“And you’ll swing at me and I’ll have to hurt you and you’ll call your wagon and put me away in jail to rot.”

“I didn’t say that. But in this town you’re going to talk yourself into trouble.”

“If I talk myself into it, I’ll fight my way out.”

“I mean bad trouble,” he said soberly. “Maybe you better drop the whole thing.”

“The way you did? Are you trying to scare me the way somebody scared you?”

“Nobody scared me!” he shouted. “Get out!”

“So you really like this town the way it is. You like being a middling-big frog in a puddle of slime.”

For a full half-minute he didn’t say a word. His face
twitched once or twice and became still. Finally he said: “You don’t know what you’re talking about. When a man’s got a wife and kids and a house to pay for—”

“You want your kids to grow up in a place where the cops are as crooked as the crooks? You want them to find out that their old man is one of those cops, and getting along pretty nicely in a setup like that? It’s funny you wouldn’t want to clean the place up for your kids.”

A bitter smile drew the corners of his mouth down. “I told you you didn’t know what you were talking about, Weather. If this town needs cleaning up, your old man had a lot to do with it.”

“Whatever the hell that means.”

“It means that this town got its first real taste of corruption when J.D. moved in his slot machines thirty years ago. First, he bought himself into the police force so they wouldn’t throw his slot machines out of town. Then, he bought himself into the municipal government so they wouldn’t clean up the police force. And don’t call me a liar, because I know what I’m talking about. I’ve had my cut.”

I didn’t want to believe it, but it sounded like the truth. It gave my stomach a queer twist. Except where women were concerned, I had always thought my father was the straightest man in the Middle West.

Taxis were costing me more than I could afford, but I was in a hurry and the evening was slipping away. The driver took me straight down Main Street into the heart of town. The night streets were crowded with noisy couples, young girls in twos and threes looking for a pickup, boys and young men in threes and fours marching abreast and wearing bright ties like banners. Spring ran in the gutters like a swift, foul stream, and the people in the streets moved and regrouped in a slow, enormous Bacchic dance. We turned at the Palace Hotel and went up Cleery Street into the north side of town.

All the windows were dark on the second floor of the Mack Building, and there was no bronze plaque on the sidewalk where J.D. Weather had died.

Even his house looked the same, though it was smaller than I remembered. Nothing had changed, except that I couldn’t walk in without knocking, and nobody there would be glad to see me. When I went up the front steps I had the feeling that I was about to do something I had often done before. I rang the bell and waited. The feeling went away
before the door opened, and left me half-angry and half-embarrassed.

The porch light came on over my head, and the door opened on a chain. Through the opening I could see a four-inch section of a woman: carefully lacquered, upswept auburn hair, dark eyes in a pale face, a white neck rising from a low, plain neckline.

“Mrs. Weather?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to talk to you. I think you must be my stepmother.”

She made a noise in her throat, a little chuckling gasp. “Are you John Weather?”

“Yes. May I come in?”

“Of course. Please do.” She unhooked the chain and stepped back to open the door. “I shouldn’t have kept you standing outside. But I’m alone in the house tonight, and you never know about night callers. This is the maid’s night off.”

“I know how you feel,” I said, but I wasn’t thinking of her. The old hall tree was gone, and the moose head was missing from over the door. The floor had been refinished, and there was a new pastel rug on it. Ivory enamel made the staircase look unreal. Everything was too pale and neat.

“You used to live in this house, didn’t you?” she said.

“I was just thinking of that. It’s different.”

“I hope you approve of the changes.” Her tone was a subtle blend of arrogance and feminine cajolery.

Her voice interested me. It was a good voice, low, rich,
and complex, with a more frankly female quality than perfect ladies allow themselves. I looked into her face and said: “There have been too many changes to generalize about, haven’t there? Not that my opinion matters one way or the other.”

She turned on her heel and walked to the door of the living-room. “Won’t you come in and sit down and have a drink? We must have things to talk about.”

I said: “Thank you,” and followed her. If her breasts and her hips were her own, her figure was very handsome. Even if they weren’t, she had her legs, and the way she moved her body. In her dark silk dress she moved with the free, shining fullness and flow of a seal in water.

The face she leaned towards me, as we sat down facing each other, was in contrast to her body. It had a bloodless kind of beauty, emphasized by her scarlet mouth, but it was thin and worried-looking. Her wide, dark eyes seemed to have drawn out and to hold all the life and energy of her face. Her bright hair stood above her pale face and neck like a curled red flower on a stalk that the sun had missed.

She smiled nervously under my stare. “Do you think you’ve got my Bertillon measurements by now?”

“Excuse me. I’m naturally interested in my father’s last wife.”

“That’s not a very chivalrous thing to say.”

“My chivalry is my weakest point.”

“That’s true of your whole generation, isn’t it? Or maybe you’ve been reading Hemingway or something.”

“Don’t start talking down like a stepmother. You haven’t got much of a drop on me where age is concerned.”

Her laugh came strangely out of her unmoving face. “Maybe I was wrong about your chivalry. But don’t kid yourself. I belong to the lost generation. Which reminds me, I promised you a drink.”

I said: “Who’s been reading Hemingway now?” and looked around the room while she went to the bar in the corner. The bar had been J.D.’s idea, but the rest of the room had been remade. Thick, bright curtains at the windows, low, square-cut furniture placed in complicated geometric patterns on a desert expanse of polished floor, chaste walls and soft indirect lighting, which made the ceiling seem high and airy. The only old-fashioned survival was the pair of sliding doors which closed off the dining room. It was a beautiful room but it lacked life. Time and change had tiptoed away and left it breathless and still. I wondered if the rich, widowed body of the woman who had invented the room spent lonely nights.

She gave me a bourbon with a little soda and a lot of ice. Then she raised her glass and said: “Here’s to chivalry.” Her hands were white and well kept, but there was a little gathering and puckering of the flesh at the wrist. Perhaps I had been wrong about her age, but it couldn’t be more than thirty-five.

“Here’s to women that aren’t dependent on it.”

She looked at me for a moment and said slowly: “You’re rather a nice boy.”

“You’re not exactly a typical stepmother. Or did I read too much Grimm in my formative years?”

“I doubt it. What are your plans, John?”

“It’s a funny thing. I came here with the idea of asking
J.D. for a job. I’ve been at a loose end since I got out of the army—”

“Didn’t you know he was dead?”

“Not until today. You see, after my mother left him we never heard from him. I almost forgot I had a father. But I’ve been thinking about him the last couple of years in the army. I didn’t try to get in touch with him, but I thought about him. So I finally decided to come and see him. I was a little late.”

“You should have come before.” She leaned forward to touch my knee, and I could see the single young line made by the separation of her breasts in the V of her neckline. “He often talked about you. You should have written, anyway.”

“What did he say about me?”

She made the removal of her hand from my knee as definite a gesture as placing it there. “He loved you, and he wondered what had happened to you. He was afraid your mother would teach you to hate him.”

“She did her best, but in the long run it didn’t take. I can’t say I blame her entirely.”

“Don’t you, really?”

“Why should I? He hated her for leaving him. He never tried to get in touch with us.”

“Why did she leave him, Johnny?” Her way of speaking to me was moving through gradual stages of intimacy, and I felt a little crowded. “He never told me,” she said.

So far, the conversation had gone all her way, and she had chosen the reminiscent and sentimental vein. I chose another: “Because he couldn’t keep his hands off women.”

She seemed neither shocked nor displeased. She leaned back in her low chair and stretched her arms over her head. Her live, stirring body in that still room was like a snake in a sealed tomb, fed by unhealthy meat. She said in a soft and questioning voice: “You must have known your way around when you were twelve.”