Blue City (8 page)

There was nothing Oriental about the Cathay Club except its name and an insane plaster turret, of remotely Byzantine influence, over the front entrance. It was a long, white two-storied building, standing by itself a hundred feet back from the highway on the west side of town. It was just outside the city limits, and the taxi driver charged me two dollars to take me there.

It cost me another dollar to get in, since a fat man in a decaying tuxedo collected the cover charge at the door. I had seen the place before, but I had never been inside. It was like a hundred other city-limit night clubs all over the country—a room as big and as roughly built as a barn, the cheap simplicity of its construction concealed by dim lighting and fire-hazard decorations. A tiered orchestra stand at the back, precariously supporting an apathetic and underpaid Negro orchestra. In front of the orchestra stand, a dance floor, where the crowds of paying customers walked around in time to the music, and the paid entertainers sweated out their three-a-day. The rest of the floor was packed elbow to elbow and back to back with rickety little tables and uncomfortable little chairs. A blonde waitress in
a bright red slack suit led me to one of them, and brought me a ninety-cent drink as hard to swallow as an insult.

“You missed Archie Calamus,” she said. “He’s the best number in the floor show. Where he takes off the young girl getting ready to go to a party—”

“I’d certainly hate to miss Archie,” I told her.

“He comes on again at 3
A.M
., if you want to wait. This is only the second show.”

“That’s swell,” I said, thinking how disappointed she’d be when she didn’t get the tip she was working for.

A Hawaiian dancer with Polish blue eyes from the northwest side of Chicago came on the floor and rotated her hips, which looked fine for child-bearing. She did a few concluding bumps, with percussion accompaniment by the orchestra, and swaggered massively off. The crowd clapped.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” said the slender, dark young man who served as master of ceremonies, “I take great pride and pleasure in presenting to you a fine young singer whom you all know. That sensational lyric tenor, Ronald Swift.”

The crowd clapped and laughed. “You tell ’em, Ronnie,” a woman yelled.

The dark young man stayed where he was at the microphone and began to sing in a limply endearing way. I looked around at the audience. It seemed prosperous and indiscriminate. Young couples waiting for their chance to dance, and above all to take or be taken home. Older couples from the stores and insurance companies and factory offices nibbling with a delightful sense of shame and daring at their bimonthly slice of life. Middle-aged men paternally
fondling their young companions. Some middle-aging women striving a little desperately with smiles and chatter to hold the attention of their younger escorts. A few unattached girls and women drinking alone, their eyes on the prowl. All but the last were drunk enough to be enjoying themselves.

The sensational lyric tenor became a master of ceremonies again, and announced a sensational Spanish dance team. The man was drying up with age, and the woman was getting too heavy, but they danced well. The dialogue of their castanets was as sharp as good repartee. When their intricate steps brought them together, passion crackled between them like electricity. Their stamping was as violent and real as love or hate. They left the floor with wet faces, walking stately together.

Somebody close behind me was saying: “I didn’t think Kerch’d be able to keep his slot-machine racket after Allister got in.”

“He had a lot of you bastards fooled,” a brash salesman’s voice cut in. “I could’ve told you what’d happen, and it happened.”

“You mean nothing happened.”

“Absolutely. What’d you expect to happen? It’s always the same when these wild-eyed reformers get in. I seen it happen when I was a kid in Cleveland. But what the hell are you kickin’ about?”

“Who’s kickin’! I always said a wide-open town was good for business. Which is why I didn’t come out for Allister.”

“You might as well next time. Looks as if he’s going to be with us a long time.”

The orchestra began to play dance music. “C’mon, Bert,” a woman whined. “We didn’t come here to talk politics. Let’s dance before it gets too crowded.”

“Absolutely, Marge. Absolutely.”

I saw them step onto the dance floor, a florid man in Harris tweeds, with his thick arm around the waist of a fading blonde.

“He knows his way around,” the other man said behind me. “Bert’s a good head.”

“He’s too fat,” a woman said. “You’re not too fat.”

One of the unattached girls sat down opposite me at my table. Her thick brown hair swung forward and brushed her white shoulders. Her face was solemn and young, with steady somber eyes and a still mouth too garishly painted.

“A nice boy like you,” she recited, “shouldn’t be sitting all by his lonesome.”

“A nice girl like you shouldn’t be wasting her time on a guy like me.”

“Why, what’s the matter with you? I think you’re kind of cute.”

“You flatter me.”

“Sure. Now that I’ve flattered you, you can buy me a drink.”

I said: “The approach abrupt. Do I look well heeled?”

“Appearances are so deceptive.”

“In your case, for example. You’ve got your face made up to suit this joint. Protective coloration, they call it in biology.”

“Kid me some more,” she said flatly. “You can if you buy me a drink. Biology is a very interesting subject.”

“I like my biology experimental. Not cut and dried.”

“You’re not flattering me. I’ll go away unless you buy me a drink.”

“And take all the beauty out of my life? Just when my heart was opening up like a flower?”

“To hell with you!” she said suddenly and fiercely. She stood up and flung back her hair. Her slender body looked a little incongruous in a low-cut gown.

“Sit down again,” I said. “What are you drinking?”

She sat down again. “Scarlett O’Hara.”

“Are you on the staff of this enterprise?”

“Now, what would make you think that?” she said bitterly. “I come out here every night because I like it.”

“You should be studying biology in school.”

“I tried that. It didn’t pay well. They expected to get it for free.”

The waitress came over, and I ordered our drinks.

“Well,” the girl said. “You certainly made me work for it.”

“I’m not as well heeled as my appearance deceived you into not thinking I was.”

“How you twist the language. You remind me of my grandfather.”

“I’m not really that old. It’s just the hard life I’ve led.”

She raised her thin eyebrows. Her eyes were soft and young, but there was a hard glaze over them. “Quite a line you’ve got. I never saw you here before, did I?”

“Never been here before. Think of what I’ve been missing.”

“What’s your name?”

“John. What’s yours?”

“Carla.” So this was Kaufman’s granddaughter.

“What’s the name of your boss?”

“Kerch. Mr. Kerch is
so
lovely to work for.”

“Everywhere I go,” I said, “people tell me the most wonderful things about Mr. Kerch.”

“You must run in some awful peculiar circles.”

“I do—and Mr. Kerch is always at the center of them.”

“You’re kidding me again.”

“I never kid when I’m talking about Mr. Kerch.”

“You sound as if you don’t like him.”

“Do you?”

She leaned forward with her elbows on the table, her pointed chin supported on her palms. Her arms were round and slender, covered with a light golden fuzz, which caught the light like a faint phosphorescence. “It turns my stomach when he looks at me,” she said. “When he touches me, I want to go home and take a bath.”

“Does he go in for touching you a good deal?”

She lengthened her mouth at the corners in an expression of dull irony. “More or less.”

“Why don’t you go home and take a bath and stay home?”

“Who’d pay the water bill? And who the hell do you think you are, an evangelist or something?”

“I just don’t like to see people playing themselves for a sucker.”

Our drinks came, and the girl raised her pink cocktail: “Here’s to you, sucker.”

“Hello, sucker.” My second drink tasted better than my first one.

“How well do you know Kerch?” she said after a pause.

“Don’t know him at all.”

“That’s funny. You were talking as if you knew him.”

“I don’t have to know him not to like him, if that’s what you mean.”

“Wait till you get to know him. Then you’ll really not like him.”

“I wish he’d try to touch me. I’d tear him down and rebuild him.”

“Don’t try that,” she said soberly. “You’d get hurt.”

“Don’t tell me he’s a tough boy in addition to all his other virtues.”

“He’s not tough.” There was a contemptuous snarl in her taut voice. “He’s as soft as jelly—but he’s got tough boys working for him.”

“Like Garland? He’d make some man a good wife.”

“You know Garland, do you? It’s true what I said, appearances are deceptive. Garland is a very dangerous boy.”

“He wouldn’t be so dangerous if somebody took his gun away.”

“Maybe not. But who’s going to take his gun away? It’s been tried.”

“So what happened?”

“So there was business for the morgue. Kerch has Jahnke, too. Rusty makes the slot-machine collections. He hasn’t got much on the ball, but he’s pretty rugged. He used to be a boxer when he was in Pittsburgh.”

She finished her drink and held up the empty glass. “All this talking makes me thirsty.”

“I’ll get you a glass of water.”

She laughed. “You’re the damndest cheapskate I ever sat down with.”

“How much of a cut do you get on a drink?”

“Couldn’t we keep this on a glamorous basis?”

“How glamorous? Champagne?”

She laughed again. “Thirty cents. Thirty cents a drink. Just like piecework in the rubber factory.”

“Except that this is cleaner work, I suppose?”

“In a way, it is. In case you’re wondering, I tried working in the rubber factory. It wasn’t for me. I didn’t like the smell. I didn’t like what it did to my hands. And I don’t like getting pushed around.”

“You have pretty hands.”

“Think so?” she said without enthusiasm. “It’s about time you flattered me a little. You make a girl feel she’s losing her grip.”

I caught the waitress’s eye and ordered two more drinks.

“You say you don’t like being pushed around, but you work here. Don’t you get pushed around quite a bit?”

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s why I’m getting out of here. As soon as I can save a little money, I’m shaking the dirt of this town off my feet.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t care where I go, as long as it’s a long way from here. Maybe Chicago.”

“What would you do there?”

“I got a friend in Chicago. You’re kind of a nosy parker, aren’t you?”

“Not all the time. I like you.”

She gave me a long, straight look. For a moment her mouth and eyes forgot to be hard.

“I like anybody who doesn’t like Kerch,” I went on.

“Oh,” she said.

“What does Kerch look like?”

“Why should you be so interested in him if you don’t know him?”

“He did me a bad turn once.”

“What kind of a bad turn?”

“The kind I don’t talk about. What does he look like?”

“He’s probably in the back office now. Why don’t you go and take a look for yourself?”

“Maybe I will,” I said. “But I like to know what I’m looking for.”

“Did you ever read the fairy story about the frog king? My mother used to read it to me when I was a kid. Anyway, it’s about a man that got changed by magic into a frog, and then changed back into a man. That’s the way Kerch looks, as if he didn’t change all the way back into a man.”

“I wonder why Mrs. Weather would pick a guy like that to run her night club.”

“Ask me another. He’s smart, though. He’s too goddam smart. But I don’t think that’s the reason he’s working for her.”

“Why, then?”

“If you ask me, he’s not working for her, he’s working for himself.”

“She owns this place, doesn’t she?”

“She’s supposed to. But I’ve seen her out here talking to him a few times. He doesn’t take his orders from her.”

“Did he buy it from her?”

“I wouldn’t know. I never heard that he did. The way she looks at him, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had something on her.”

“Such as?”

“What is this, the third degree? You ask more questions than a quiz program.”

“Maybe that’s the sixty-four-dollar question,” I said.

“I was just telling you how it looked to me. I don’t know of any special reason for her to be afraid of Kerch. Everybody’s a little bit afraid of him.”

“Are you?”

“No,” she said slowly, “I don’t think I am. I hate his guts too much to be afraid of him.”

“Why? Has he got something on you?”

“The hell he has! I’ve got something on him. He likes doing some strange things.” She was silent for a moment. “Why did you ask me if I was afraid of him? What difference does it make?”

I said in a low voice: “Because I’m going to get Kerch, and I can probably use some help.”

“You a cop?”

“Not me. That’s one reason I need help.”

“You’re biting off a big chunk of trouble if you think you’re going to get Kerch. I told you he was smart, and I told you he’s got tough boys working for him.”

“I’m working for myself,” I said, “so I put everything I’ve got into my work.”

“I don’t see how I could help you. If you’re on the up-and-up, you better go and see Allister.”

The florid man and his fading blonde had returned to the table behind me. I noticed a pause in their conversation at the word “Allister.”

“This isn’t a good place to talk,” I said. “Is there some place more private around here?”

“You can take me upstairs,” she said demurely.

The room to which she took me was furnished with a couple of cloth-covered chairs, a Hollywood bed with a bright silk cover, a dressing-table lit by a silk-shaded floor lamp, a washbasin in a corner behind a cheap Japanese screen. The single window was hung with a heavy drape, which seemed to cut the room off from time and space. But the sound of arriving and departing motors in the parking lot below the window sifted through the cloth like a muffled obbligato of impermanence.