Blue City by Ross MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

friend. “Was J.D. Weather that bad?”
    “He was bad for the town. I don’t think he ever took direct graft himself, but he made it possible for others to take it. Once corruption starts, it always spreads, right down to the policeman on his beat, taking a cut from a floozie or protecting a petty thief. Personally, J.D. Weather wasn’t a bad man. He did a lot of good for individuals—that was one of his holds on the town. But he interfered with the democratic processes and corrupted this city from the top down—all so he could rake in a thousand a week from his slot machines, and feel generous and powerful in the bargain.”
    “You didn’t like him much.”
    “Why is this town twenty years behind the times?” he snorted. “Underpaid men and women in the rubber plants, working for fifteen-twenty dollars a week. They try to do something for themselves, and the cops take their leadersto the edge of town and give them a beating and send them up the road. Slot machines and poolrooms and whorehouses, instead of playgrounds and community houses to keep the juvenile delinquents from going delinquent. Some of the worst slums in the country, with Alonzo Sanford taking in high rents from them. Why do things stay that way? Because they conspired to keep ’em that way. I thought things might start to be different when Allister got in the year before last—”
    “It’s funny,” I said. “I asked you about the town, and you give me past history. J.D. Weather’s been dead for two years.”
    “But the melody lingers on, boy. That’s what I can’t understand about Allister.”
    “He’s the mayor now, isn’t he?”
    “He’s been mayor for nearly two years. He ran on a reform platform. He promised to clean up the town. He was a young lawyer out of the D.A.’s office, and he talked like a fighter, and I thought he meant it. So did a lot of other people; he got the support of the honest middle-class elements, and the workers that had any idea what was good for them. After J.D. Weather got killed, he practically swept the town. He knew the facts of municipal corruption, and he didn’t pull any punches. That was during his campaign for election. But when he got in, things went on as before. Last year he came up for re-election, and he toned down his talk a lot. He didn’t go in for facts any more, he went in for high-sounding generalities. But he got in by a whopping majority, because there wasn’t any opposition worth talking about.”
    “How do you account for that? You’d expect Sanford to oppose him.”
    “I think Jefferson was right,” the old man said gravely. “Power corrupts. Why should Sanford and the forces of reaction oppose a man if they can absorb him and use him? I don’t know a darn thing about it, but I’m suspicious Sanford is grooming him to take J.D. Weather’s place. All I know is this. Allister hasn’t moved a muscle in nearly two years in the mayor’s office. He rants about evil in the city, but he never seems to put his finger on any of it. He spends his time building up his political machine. I guess power corrupted him, or maybe Sanford’s money hypnotized him. I don’t know. Anyway, it’s an example of the difficulty of reform by constitutional methods. I’m not a gradualist myself.”
    “I didn’t expect you’d be.” I glanced at the picture of Marx on the wall. “But anything else is pretty precarious, isn’t it? You’re liable to lose what freedom you’ve got while you think you’re fighting for more freedom.”
    “What freedom have they got?” he demanded. “Freedom to slave in the factories, vote and think the way the radio and newspapers and political bosses tell them to vote and think, freedom to befuddle their brains in the taverns and the moving picture shows: freedom to be exploited and dispossessed. Let them stand up and fight for their rights!”
    “I was wondering,” I said slowly, “I was wondering if J.D. Weather could have been shot by somebody who