Росс Макдональд - Blue City

“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.”