Blue City by Ross Macdonald

Author:Ross Macdonald [Macdonald, Ross]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780307740724
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-01-10T23:00:00+00:00

chapter 13

I stood where I was while Floraine got her coat and Kerch turned out the light in the front room. The front door closed behind them, and their footsteps receded on the walk. Kerch had been the last to leave, and I had missed my chance to shoot him. The thought of shooting him then hadn’t even occurred to me. New questions were rising in my mind like bubbles in a stirred drink, and the death of Kerch wouldn’t answer any of them. Besides, Floraine wanted him dead, which gave me a reason for wanting him kept alive. For a while, listening to Sault and Floraine, I had begun to believe that Floraine had killed my father and that Kerch knew of it, but what she and Sault said at the end made me doubt it again. Suspicion wavered but continually swung back to Kerch, like a compass needle to the north.

If only I could get Kerch alone, I thought as I pulled on my boots. Such smooth talkers were nearly always gnawed by internal weaknesses and fears. And I remembered what Carla had said about him. As soft as jelly. If I could get my hands on him. My bootlace broke, and I swore at it and tied it in the dark at the top of the stairs.

I remembered vaguely where the Wildwood was; it was a roadhouse that my father had owned, six or seven miles north of the city. Too far to walk, and it might be dangerous to take a cab. But Floraine should have a car.

I went down the hall to the master bedroom which my mother had shared with my father before she left him. When I turned on the light I saw that it was Floraine’s now. Frilled curtains at the windows, mules under the chenille-covered bed, which I noticed hadn’t been slept in, a dressing-table with a triple mirror, a heavy odor of perfume, which grew heavier when I approached the dressing-table. There was a Corde purse on it, thrown carelessly among an array of bottles and jars. I unzipped the purse and found her car keys where I had hoped they’d be.

Just before I turned out the light, a picture on the wall above the bed caught my eye. It was a still life, crowded with brilliantly colored tropical flowers. My heart beat once and the picture wasn’t a still life after all, and the flowers weren’t flowers. They were hands and faces and other parts of human bodies, male and female. Another heartbeat, and they were flowers again. I turned out the light and left the house, thinking that my father’s last sexual fling had carried him a hell of a long way—a hell of a long way down.

The keys fitted the Packard roadster that I found in the garage. I backed it out slowly and headed north at a speed that wouldn’t be worth a policeman’s second glance. About five miles out of town I came to a gas station that contained a light and a man moving in front of it.

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