Free Blue City by Ross MacDonald Page B

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.

chapter
8
    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.
    She snapped the Yale lock and said uncertainly from the door: “You might as well sit down.”
    I took one of the chairs, and she sat facing me on the stool in front of the dressing-table.
    “I didn’t expect to be told to go to Allister,” I said. “I thought he was protecting Kerch.”
    “Not Allister. He’d like to see him run out of town.”
    “What’s he waiting for, then?”
    “Allister isn’t a fighter the way you are—at least, the way I think you are. His hands are tied, he says.”
    “Is he honest?”
    “I think so,” she said after a pause. “Anyway, I know he’s Kerch’s enemy.”
    “What makes you so sure?”
    “I know him.