Night of the Toads

by Michael Collins

  ‘I’ll bet people underestimate you, Captain,’ Vega said.

  ‘Not so much anymore,’ Gazzo said mildly.

  ‘Maybe not,’ Vega agreed, his dark eyes steady. ‘You do your work well. All right, I’ve told you I didn’t kill anyone, and know nothing about Anne Terry. That’s all I can do.’

  Gazzo nodded. ‘I guess so. Well, we’ll go work on it some more. Thanks for the time.’

  I said, ‘You know a man named Emory Foster, Vega?’

  ‘No,’ he snapped, then his eyes flickered to me. ‘Emory Foster?’

  ‘Yeh,’ I said. ‘Heavy man, red-faced, maybe fifty or maybe younger. A free-lance writer of sorts. A friend of Anne Terry’s sister Sarah Wiggen.’

  ‘No,’ he said. He was looking at me, but I had a feeling he didn’t see me. ‘I don’t know him.’

  He turned, and then seemed to look at his walls of paintings in the fading sunlight. Maybe Gazzo talking about his troubles had gotten to him. I heard Anne Terry’s bony voice. ‘He’ll never be sure enough to relax, Gunner.’ He looked at his paintings as if he saw them all melting away, the colours dripping.

  ‘Next time, Captain,’ the lawyer said, ‘bring a paper.’

  Vega came from his trance. ‘Come when you want, Captain. I’ve got nothing to hide. Now, damn it, I’ve got work to do. Where the hell’s my coat?’

  He strode out of the room calling for George Lehman. The lawyer chewed on his lip. Gazzo led me out, and rumbled low in his throat all the way down in the elevator. He was talking to himself, and I knew better than to interrupt. If he wanted to talk to me, he would. We were being driven downtown when he did.

  ‘Vega’s got the ego to think he can get away with anything he has to. Terrell needs a reason to lie. Maybe revenge, only I figure Terrell more for direct action. There’s something missing, Dan. I better go talk to Denniken.’

  I wasn’t invited to talk to Lieutenant Denniken, which was just as well. I was starved. I hadn’t gotten to lunch after all. Gazzo let me out in Sheridan Square, and I called Marty again. She still wasn’t home—or wasn’t answering. If I hadn’t just left Ricardo Vega, I might have wondered. Instead, I was a little worried. I called the theatre. She wasn’t there either. They said she hadn’t been on call, she might have been there at some time, and she was on call for tonight.

  I wasn’t really worried, Marty was a big girl, but I decided to have an early dinner at The Sevilla Restaurant. I like the paella at The Sevilla, and an oily-looking but bone-dry Spanish white wine they have, and the place is half a block from Marty’s pad. From the bar you can see her front door.

  I kicked off my badly needed dinner with an Irish and soda at the bar. I didn’t see Marty, but before I was through that first drink I saw another familiar face. I told Mano behind the bar that I’d be right back.

  Twilight was a clear, cool, dying pink over the spring city, and he was standing on the corner not looking at anyone. Just standing. He wore the same chino levis and black boots, but his shirt was black and Cossack now, and his jacket was faded denim. He was talking to himself—literally. His lips moved in his lean, boyish face.

  ‘Waiting for someone, McBride?’ I said.

  He looked at me. ‘Yeh.’

  Just ‘Yeh,’ and looked away. I didn’t seem to worry him. He stood lithe and easy, relaxed on the street corner as if his body was resting, his brain in repose. I wondered if he’d forgotten our rainy alley, but it wasn’t that. I just didn’t scare him. He wasn’t a man who worried about the possible. He looked vaguely bored.

  ‘It’s a cute name, Sean. Vega going to adopt you?’ I said.

  ‘You got to have the right name.’

  ‘You here for Vega?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘You wouldn’t be looking for a contract and some money? What Vega gave to Anne Terry?’

  He snickered. ‘That ain’t what he gave her.’

  ‘Watching someone? Me, maybe?’

  He moved his head in circles as if his neck hurt. After the first moment he hadn’t looked at me again. He looked right, left, up, down; talked to me, but looked everywhere else. Marlon Brando. Yet not an act. McBride was himself, and Brando, at the same time. I was seeing life reborn through art. Brando, to communicate the essence of a type of uneducated, inarticulate American male, created his brilliant projection of their explosive, caged anguish through a series of external mannerisms. Those same males, instinctively recognizing themselves in Brando’s masterpiece, adopted the mannerisms. Brando had portrayed the McBrides of America, and now McBride played Brando.’

  ‘You like being an errand boy?’ I said. ‘A pimp?’

  ‘Go away, man.’

  ‘You’re rough in a dark alley from behind.’

  He looked at me from under his brows—Brando again. His eyes were violet yet uncertain; that caged pacing inside again. Sure of his needs, but not sure of himself in having those needs. I realized that McBride could never really think straight enough to act in his own best interest for very long. A man who would see only the moment and the need, like a lion who sees meat.

  ‘Man, I got two arms, forty pounds, and maybe fifteen years on you. Go on away.’

  ‘Tell me what a famous movie star you’ll be,’ I said.

  ‘Man, you talk for a cripple.’

  He was right. I was no match for him, yet I had to be the brave bull, the loud rooster. Someday the mindless roosters, all hormones and square jaws, will destroy the world. There’s no merit to challenging a stronger man on his terms, with his weapons. Losing with pride isn’t something to build your life on. Dying bravely in battle may be noble, but it’s not what you build a world on. No, I don’t feel good when I talk big. I know it’s only my missing arm that makes me do it.

  ‘There’s more than one kind of cripple,’ I said.

  He went through his look-everywhere-except-at-me act. As if he didn’t know what he would do with me. I had the sudden realization that he didn’t know. Behind his uncertain eyes his brain was too busy—filled with dreams, hopes, and notions that remained random, uncontrolled. He literally didn’t know what he wanted to do with me: fight, ignore, sneer or talk. Then he decided.

  He walked away. Without another word or glance. Neither afraid of me, nor hating me anymore. He had decided to walk away, and I no longer concerned him. The instant his back was turned to me, I ceased to exist for him.

  I watched him until he turned the next corner. I wasn’t sure I envied Ricardo Vega his services.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I ate my paella at the window table in The Sevilla. Marty hadn’t shown by the time the coffee came. I hate Spanish desserts, so I settled for Irish in the coffee. Cognac is better, but I can afford only so much indulgent spending. I didn’t see where I was going to make money in this affair.

  It wasn’t money I was after. Face it, I was after only one reward—Ricardo Vega skewered. I faced it. Sure, I had gotten to like Anne Terry, her hard days had deserved better than a cheap funeral. If her work hadn’t been what a solemn D.D., or even an upright card shark, would have approved, we don’t often choose what we work at. The options open can be pretty narrow. Sure, I burned for the kids who didn’t even have a weekend mother now, but collaring someone for her death wasn’t going to help them.

  There are moments when a man has to look at himself. Alone is best. I was a hound on a scent. I wanted Ricardo Vega to be guilty. If I had wanted him innocent, what would I be thinking? That Vega had no motive big enough I could see.

  Without Ricardo Vega, what was there?

  A common abortion. A girl who had enough complications in her life, who wasn’t too bright, and who was tough enough to take a hard risk. Accidental death.

  A common abortion, but arranged by Ted Marshall. He seemed to be number one stud in her life at the moment. If Marshall confessed he was the arranger, the police would believe him instantly—standard and logical, no matter what anyone said about Ricardo Vega. Murder? I didn’t think Marshall
was the type, but there are dark places in ambitious young men.

  Boone Terrell? His own story said he was a man who would do just about anything for Anne, who accepted anything she did if she let him stay around. His story was also the kind of dog-like love that could turn fast to hate. A small straw; the straw of another man’s baby? Love turned to hate, a rage in heaven that could become murder in a breath. His story an attempt to protect himself, get revenge on Vega, or both? Terrell was too quiet, too alert, too calm.

  Or was there an unknown motive for Ricardo Vega, big enough? There were too many small hints. They kept coming up. Boone Terrell couldn’t have arranged them all. Hints that the payoff might have been made after all: from Sarah Wiggen, Ted Marshall, Terrell himself again. Emory Foster wondering who had the money and influence for a good abortion. Terrell with his story, and Marshall indicating maybe Vega arranged it all. Sean McBride skulking around. All coincidence? I didn’t think so, and where there was smoke, something had to be burning.

  Gazzo said it—something was missing.

  Then, too, did we limit it to men? Sarah Wiggen had known Anne was pregnant, and had more than a few reasons to hate her. Some sisterly pills? Or Mrs Marshall with her boy to mother? That’s the trouble with murder, the motive doesn’t have to be rational, concrete, An urge will do, a momentary need rational only to the killer. And murder itself was only a thin possibility; simple chance bad luck more probable.

  Like a scientist, you make an assumption and go on from there. An assumption from the facts you have. I had made an assumption at the start—Ricardo Vega, and something was missing. I decided on another assumption, the most simple after Anne Terry herself—Ted Marshall. The most logical man in the case. Maybe it would lead me somewhere new.

  I walked down Fourth Street in the crisp spring dusk. I got no answer to my ring at Marshall’s apartment, and there was no light in the windows above. I tried Frank Madero. He was home. I went down through the basement. He stood aside to let me walk into his ascetic living room. He had been sitting in the dark, votive lights burning under all his crucifixes. He turned on the light for me. He was alone.

  ‘Where’s Ted Marshall, Frank?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe he go to the sister.’

  ‘Sarah Wiggen?’

  ‘I think maybe. He say maybe he go.’

  He perched on the edge of one of his hard chairs like a woman in a tight skirt, alert and birdlike, but that was all. His act was way down. No, not an act. No more than a woman arching out her breasts with a man is an act, or a man being strong and gallant with a woman is an act. The overt mannerisms need the proper stimulus, and so did his. I wasn’t any stimulus. Maybe the votive lights of his religion held him down, or my continued presence—the normal public. Most homosexuals feel a litte ashamed, and learn to hide. Our world has made them feel ashamed, taught them to hide.

  ‘He needs a girl now,’ I said.

  ‘They were friends, Mr Fortune. They have bad time.’

  ‘Tragedy bringing them together?’ I said.

  ‘I see it many times,’ Frank Madero said.

  ‘How close are you to Marshall, Frank?’

  ‘Not that way, I said. Good friends.’

  ‘If he told you anything we don’t know about Anne’s death, you’d do him a favour by telling me. He’d do better going in on his own, Frank. He’ll break sooner or later.’

  ‘He tell me nothing.’

  ‘Did you see him around here Saturday? Maybe with Anne?’

  ‘Only Friday I see them.’

  ‘Friday? You’re sure, Frank?’ I sensed that I was rigid, like a vulture on a dead tree, alert. Was it going to be this simple? Such a small mistake? My brand-new assumption finding paydirt under the first rock? Why not? Most crimes are solved on trivial mistakes because no one knew, before it happened, that there would be a crime. Neither Marshall nor Anne Terry aware that she was going to die, that for Marshall’s sake they shouldn’t be seen together on Friday.

  Madero’s eyelashes fluttered. ‘I think Friday.’

  ‘Be sure! What time on Friday?’

  He was thinking. ‘The afternoon, I was not working. They were here, sure. But—maybe Thursday?’

  ‘There’s a hell of a difference, Frank.’

  He shrugged, helpless. ‘I think maybe Thursday.’

  He had said, first, Friday, and immediate thoughts are often right. After that I had scared him, made it too important. On the other hand people really don’t remember small incidents well enough to say Thursday or Friday without going back and relating it to other incidents to fix the day.

  ‘Was Mrs Marshall with Anne this weekend?’

  ‘I never see her with Anne no time.’

  ‘Okay, Frank, listen. If Ted arranged the abortion, you tell him it’s better if he goes in on his own.’

  ‘Ted don’t do that, but I tell him what you say.’

  Maybe I’m not a bad detective. If Ted Marshall was the man, then Ricardo Vega was clear, but I went up to the street eagerly. A good job was more important than my revenge. I went straight up to Anne Terry’s apartment on Tenth Street. The happy fat woman super had changed her housedress for a robe, but the cigarette still hung from her mouth. The TV boomed behind her.

  ‘No rest for the law, huh?’ she said.

  ‘I love my work,’ I said. ‘You said you knew some of Anne Terry’s men friends. How about Ted Marshall?’

  ‘Him, yeh. A boy. Nice, but weak, you know? She had to mother him. The kind that crawls inside a woman to be safe.’

  ‘Did you happen to see him last Friday?’

  ‘Nope, not a hair.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I said so, mister.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t know if he’d been here or not?’

  ‘Sure I’d know. He wasn’t here. Least, not like usual.’

  ‘You’d know he wasn’t here?’

  She nodded. ‘Not like every Friday. I ain’t missed him in almost a year, except last Friday.’

  ‘How? I mean, how did you always see him?’

  ‘Because he always comes the same time: ten o’clock. I’m always out picking up the garbage cans after they been dumped. I watch TV until ten every morning, then I get the cans, and I been sayin’ hello to that Marshall every Friday.’

  ‘But not this Friday?’

  ‘Nope, and I’m out there a half hour at least.’

  A real lie? Marshall had told everyone that he had gone to Anne’s apartment on Friday, as usual, and she hadn’t been home. It was his whole proof that he knew nothing—he had expected Anne to be at home as usual, so, clearly, she had told him nothing. If he hadn’t gone, then he had known that she wasn’t home, and what more had he known or done?

  I took a taxi uptown this time. Sarah Wiggen’s downstairs door was open. I went up. There were voices behind her door. I recognized Ted Marshall’s voice. My finger was on the doorbell when the tone of his voice stopped me. I listened. Muffled voices, Marshall and Sarah Wiggen, rising and fading.

  ‘… she wouldn’t listen, Sarah. She had to do it. I was scared, but …’ Ted Marshall’s voice. Tragic, breaking as it rose higher; yet reluctant, jerky. ‘… she was so.…’

  ‘… determined … always that way,’ Sarah’s voice. ‘… challenge anyone, anything, when she made up her mind.’

  ‘… didn’t want to …’ Marshall’s voice with that odd jerkiness again, as if he was rocking where he sat. ‘Vega had me beat up, I couldn’t fight … weak, that’s me … I’d have married her … married all the time … those kids, God … I didn’t know.…’

  ‘She destroyed things,’ Sarah’s voice loud, a throb in it. Somehow, I knew she was holding his hand. ‘She didn’t mean to, she just had to plunge ahead her own way.’

  I heard movement, a shuffling of bodies, and silence. Sarah’s low voice seemed to mumble softly. Ted Marshall’s voice had a kind of thin hope.

  ‘We … we knew each other first, didn’t we?’ Mar
shall said.

  Her voice was bitter, but thick, too. ‘She was more beautiful. You wanted her more. My body isn’t the same, is it? Or is it? Tell me my body’s as good.’

  Silence, and, ‘Christ, Sarah, you.…’

  ‘A live sister better than a dead one,’ she said. That combination, muffled through the door, of bitter edge and a drugged thickness. ‘Is my body good, Ted? Am I good—now?’

  Movement on a creaking couch, and Marshall’s voice lower. ‘I shouldn’t even have come. I just … had to talk. What could I do? She forced me … damned pills … what do I do now? … finished, that’s me.…’

  Silence. Sarah again, ‘I reported it to hurt you, both of you. I guess that means I still wanted you.’

  ‘God, Sarah, if we could, maybe I could.…’

  A soft thud and a rustle of clothing. I rang the doorbell. Time seemed to hang in the silent hall, and inside the room behind the door. Time suspended. I rang again. I could see them in my mind—close together, staring at the door.

  ‘Open up,’ I called. ‘It’s Dan Fortune.

  Another silence, a whisper, and then she came and opened the door. Her hair was dishevelled, her blouse open, her eyes smoky with the feel of a man’s hands on her. I pushed past her. Ted Marshall sat on the couch, his shirt open at the collar, the shirt pulled out of his pants. He struggled into his jacket.

  I stood facing him. ‘You never went to Anne’s apartment on Friday. You were seen with her on Friday. You handled the abortion. I was listening at the door.’

  He was up and running at me. Like a blind bull charging. His weight caught me, his arm under my chin. I went over like a poleaxed steer. My head hit hard. For a moment I lay stunned. All black and green and red. When I struggled up, I could hear him running down the stairs. Sarah Wiggen stood pale, her hand in her mouth, her teeth biting her own hand. As I ran past her, her eyes were a battlefield of fear, desire, confusion.