Blue City (24 page)

Hanson turned on him again, and barked: “You were seen driving a car in the neighborhood of the Mack Building at the time of the shooting. I’ve got a witness, Jahnke.”

“That wouldn’t prove nothing, even if it was true. There
was plenty of cars on the street—” He stopped with his mouth open.

“I suppose your employer Mr. Kerch told you that, too?”

“I didn’t say nothing about Mr. Kerch. He didn’t have nothing to do with it.”

“Maybe you can tell me who did. You were there. You saw all those cars on the street.”

“There’s always lots of cars on the street that time of night.”

“What time, Jahnke? What time exactly? What time in the evening of April 3, 1944, did you shoot and kill J.D. Weather?”

“I didn’t kill him, I tell you. I didn’t even know about it till afterwards. Ask Garland, he’ll tell you I didn’t know about it.”

“You want me to get in touch with Garland’s spirit?”

“What are you trying to pull on me? Just call up Garland and ask him. He’ll tell you I didn’t know about it.”

“I haven’t a telephone that would do it,” Hanson said cheerfully. “Garland’s dead.”

“You’re a liar. You’re bluffing me again. You can’t bluff me.”

“You want to come over to the morgue and see him? You want to poke your fingers in his eyeballs?”

“Garland in the morgue? I don’t believe it.”

“Everybody dies some time, Jahnke. They die like flies in your racket. Why should I try to kid you? You’ll read it in the papers—if they give you any papers in the death house.”

Jahnke’s pale-blue eyes looked up into the light and were stared down.

“If Garland’s dead, then I can tell you,” he said finally. “He’s the one that killed old man Weather.”

“That’s an easy way out, isn’t it, Jahnke? Putting the blame on a dead man?” Hanson paused, and then rapped out: “Now let’s have the truth!”

“I’m telling you the truth. Garland killed him.”

“Where’s your proof?”

“The proof is what I saw.”

“You just said you weren’t there.”

“I wasn’t there when it happened, but I was right before. That musta been when somebody saw me in the car.”

“Whose car?”

The clumsy evasion of his brain showed on his face. “Garland’s car. I was driving for Garland.”

“And who did Garland work for? Who hired him to kill J.D. Weather?”

“Nobody. I don’t know nothing about that. I told you I didn’t even know he killed Weather till after.”

“But why would Garland kill J.D. Weather? He didn’t even know him, did he?”

“No, he didn’t know him, except to see.”

“Who hired him?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about that. I told you I’d tell you what I saw.”

“Go ahead. What did you see?”

“Garland and me was tailing Weather. We been tailing him off and on for a week. We was brought here from Chicago, and that was the job I was hired for, to tail J.D. Weather.”

“Who hired you?”

“You know who I work for. I only worked for one boss in this town. The same guy that’s gonna take your badge off your chest and pin it to your tail.”

“Sure, sure,” Hanson said sardonically. “After you get through talking, we’ll have a cup of tea and you can read my teacup for me. That’s after you get through talking.”

“Who’s been buying you, Hanson?” He tried again to look up into Hanson’s face but the light was too strong.

“Stop worrying about me and get on with your story. Kerch ordered you to follow Weather and wait for a chance to kill him—which you did.”

“He didn’t give me any orders like that. I took my orders from Garland. I was just driving the car. I wasn’t even packing a rod. That’s the truth. You can ask anybody.”

“There isn’t anybody to ask.”

“Anyway, I wasn’t in on any shooting. I guess Garland had been figuring the best place to shoot him and make a getaway and decided that the Mack Building was a good place. Old man Weather used to pass there every night about the same time. This was about half past six and we was double-parked near the corner, waiting for him to go past. Garland was sitting beside me in the front seat. I guess he was casing the second-story windows but I didn’t know what he was doing. All of a sudden he jumped out and told me to drive around the corner and beat it, he’d take a taxi back to the hotel. He ran in the Mack Street entrance of the Mack Building and I drove away. When I was halfway down the block I heard the two shots but I kept right on going. I didn’t know who did the shooting or who got it until I read in the night papers that it was J.D. Weather.”

“What did you do then?”

“What would anybody do? I kept my mouth shut.”

“Did you talk to Garland about it?”

“I never talked to Garland about nothing. I took orders from him. I told you everything I saw and everything I did, and that’s all I can tell you.”

“It’s not a very good story, Jahnke. You should’ve been able to do better than that to save your skin. Didn’t you help Garland jimmy the door in the Mack Building? Didn’t you stand by in the car to give him a quick out?”

“I’m telling you the truth. I didn’t tell you nothing else but the truth. Garland didn’t want me around, see? He didn’t want no witnesses.”

“Your stories are bad, but they’re getting better. Let’s hear what you can do on Mrs. Weather now.”

“I ain’t saying no more. When I tell you the truth it don’t do me no good. It don’t do me no good no matter what I say.” His jaw set stolidly and his mouth clamped shut.

“Take him down to the cells, Alec,” Hanson said briskly. “There’s nobody in nine, is there? And you better get Dr. Brush to look at his head. We wouldn’t want a fine intelligent witness like Jahnke to die on our hands, would we? Although it might save electricity.”

“— you, you —ing —”, Jahnke said repetitiously as he was led out.

Hanson turned to me, rubbing his hands. His green eyes shone in the margin of the white glare like sunlight caught in the bottom of a beer bottle. “You asked me a question last night, Weather. Now it’s answered.”

“I’ve got to take back what I said, Inspector. When
somebody knocks the chocks out from under you, you’re hell on wheels.”

“All I needed was something on Kerch. You gave it to me.”

“But you had a witness who saw Jahnke near the Mack Building on the night of the murder. You didn’t tell me that last night.”

“It didn’t mean anything last night. There were hundreds of people on the streets, and Jahnke was one of them. If I had been able to follow it up two years ago—”

“What stopped you?”

“Politics,” Hanson said. “I was ordered to lay off Kerch and his little family.”

“By whom?”

“You want him in here, Inspector?” somebody said from the door.

“Yeah, bring him in.” He said to me: “We’ll talk about it later.”

“But you believe Jahnke’s story?”

“Sure,” he said. “He hasn’t got enough brains to make up a story that good. And if somebody taught it to him two years ago, he’d have forgotten the words and music by now.”

The sergeant crossed the room and silently handed me my belt and tie and wallet. The bills in the wallet were folded. I never fold bills in a wallet.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Don’t mention it, Mr. Weather.”

On his way out, the sergeant passed Salamander and the policeman who was bringing him in. A caricaturist who
wanted to portray the degradation of age and fear, but who had run out of colors and had nothing but a lump of dirty yellow wax to work with, might have made the face that Salamander carried sideways on his neck. The glance of his urine-yellow eyes darted into every dark corner of the room, like a frenzied rodent looking for a hole. He saw me but avoided my eyes.

“This is a despicable outrage,” his large voice said. But the movements of this thin, old body were infinitely humble as he crossed the room in a slow lope on continuously bent knees.

“Don’t start telling me how Kerch is going to take care of you, Professor. Kerch is going to be too busy taking care of himself. How come you’re a professor, by the way? Professor of what? Professor of abortion?”

The waxen face was so bloodless and transparent under the light that you could see the shadow of the skull. “Professor of Occult Sciences,” he said apologetically.

“You don’t practice medicine any more, eh?”

“I retired from the profession some years ago.”

“I’m not talking about illegal operations. We’ll forget about that for now. Have you been doing any surgical work lately?”

“As you know very well, I was examining Mr. Jahnke’s head when you burst in on us. I wouldn’t describe that as surgical work. I was merely doing a favor for a friend as one layman to another, you understand. I warn you, however, that he requires medical attention, since he probably had a slight concussion.”

“He’s getting it. But apart from Jahnke, you haven’t been giving medical treatment to anyone lately?”

“Certainly not,” the old man said. “I reiterate that I am no longer a member of the medical profession. For many years I have been concerned exclusively with the spiritual ills of mankind.”

“Uh-huh. Weather, have you ever seen this specimen before?”

“I saw him working on Mrs. Weather at the Wildwood Inn. I heard him tell Kerch he couldn’t save her.”

“He’s a liar!” Salamander cried shrilly. “You’re trying to frame me!”

“That’s what they all say. But I go by the facts myself. The facts don’t lie, if you study them carefully enough. How many stitches did you put in her face and neck?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come off it, Professor. We’ve got the marks of the stitches on Mrs. Weather. We’ve got the bloody pieces of catgut you put in your garbage this morning. We’ve got a direct witness. What else do you want—Technicolor movies of the big operating scene?”

Salamander’s face and body seemed to shrink perceptibly, and became very still. Only the clean, thin hands moved in his lap. They scampered lightly and aimlessly, like blind, white spiders, up and down his fleshless thighs.

“I could never refuse to minister to the afflicted,” he said at last. “Mrs. Weather was my employer, in a sense. When I was informed that she had been seriously injured in an accident, I did what I could for her. When she died in spite
of my efforts, I removed the stitches in order to protect myself against prosecution as an unlicensed practitioner.”

“Who informed you of the accident? Who took you to the Wildwood?”

“Mr. Roger Kerch.”

“That’s fine,” Hanson said. “Take him down and put him in one of the new cells, Ron. We’ll take his full story later.”

“I want a lawyer,” the old man said as he was led out. “Don’t think I can’t afford to pay a good lawyer.”

“Get him a lawyer if he wants one,” Hanson said. “Get everybody a lawyer—they’re going to need one. We’re booking him for now as a material witness.”

“Are you ready to bring in Kerch?” I said.

“Right.” He took a heavy automatic out of his shoulder holster, examined the clip, and replaced it.

“Let’s go.”

“You better stay here and see Dr. Brush—”

“Let’s go,” I said again. “If I don’t ride with you I’ll follow you in a taxi.”

He shrugged his high shoulders and put on his hat. I had slipped my belt on but I couldn’t be bothered with a tie, so I stuffed it in my pocket.

On the way out he said: “Don’t you ever get tired?”

“Kerch stimulates me,” I replied. “The way I feel about him is like benzedrine.”

We drove straight west on a boulevard that was parallel to Main Street and almost clear of traffic.

“We’ve got enough on Kerch to fry him twice over,” Hanson said. “But there are some things I still don’t understand. Sure, he came to town with a couple of hired gunmen to kill
your father and muscle in on his slot-machine rac—business. But how in hell did he get Floraine Weather to co-operate with him? She didn’t have to let him take over the Cathay Club, for one thing. What do you think, was she working for Kerch all along? Did he send her here in the first place to marry J.D. if she could, and make an opening for him?”

“I doubt it. We can’t be sure, but she didn’t talk that way. I think she came to town with my father and married him because he had money and was getting old. Kerch heard about the marriage and followed her here. He studied the setup a little and it gave him a brilliant idea. You see, Floraine married Kerch a long time ago and never took the trouble to get a divorce. Probably he dropped out of her life completely for a good many years, and she practically forgot about him. Then he came to town.”

“I get it—blackmail.” He glanced quickly to left and right and went through a red light at fifty. “Now, why would a woman with her figure marry a thing like that?”

“He didn’t always look like that. I think that’s the real reason he cut her. It didn’t do him any good at all.”

“Killing the goose that laid the golden eggs, eh?”

“Exactly. That’s why he hired Garland to kill my father, so Floraine would be able to start laying golden eggs for him. It’d have been better for her in the long run if she’d come to you and told her story two years ago. I don’t think she had a very happy two years.”

“I guess not,” Hanson said soberly. “But I told you I had orders to lay off Kerch.”

“You didn’t tell me who gave them to you.”

“The Chief did, but it wasn’t his idea. He takes orders
from the police board. I figured it was the new mayor, but I couldn’t figure why. Allister campaigned on a reform platform and claimed he was going to clean up the rackets. He said he was going to run your father out of town. Then, as soon as he gets in, less than a week after your father died, he starts fronting for a rat like Kerch.”

“Kerch was blackmailing him, too.”

“He was? What with?”

“That’s not your business.”

“Maybe you know what you’re talking about, but it doesn’t look like it. If Allister wasn’t backing me now, I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing.”

“Things have changed,” I said. “Forget what I told you about Allister. He’s all right.”

“One thing—I don’t think he has to worry about anything Kerch can do to him. Kerch is a gone gosling.”

He turned sharply right at the next traffic light, came onto the highway at the city limits, and turned left again toward the Cathay Club. “Come Again,” a painted tin sign at the side of the road said. “We Hope You Have Enjoyed Your Stay.”