Night of the Toads df-3

by Michael Collins

  ‘It can’t be much if you’re in it, Danny,’ he grinned.

  ‘It isn’t,’ I said, ‘but Gazzo thinks big.’

  ‘What Captain Gazzo thinks, I think. Fill me in.’

  Nice. Not many detectives ask a private to fill them in, it’s not proper. I gave him the high points, and a better description of Ted Marshall. He went up to the Marshall apartment to wait. I went down into the basement. It was a neat basement, as meticulous and scrubbed as a Dutch housewife’s kitchen. There were three apartments for superintendents. One was empty, one was locked and silent. The third had slow music behind the door, and an engraved visiting card taped to the door: Francisco Orlando de Madero y Huerta. I had to knock twice. The music didn’t stop but the door finally opened.

  ‘Yes, mister?’ It was the small super, Madero. ‘Hey, it’s Mr?’

  ‘Dan Fortune.’

  ‘Sure.’ His lashes fluttered. ‘You come to see me?’

  He made a fluid motion until his weight all rested on his left leg, his left hip thrust sideways-the way a woman stands to challenge a male with her body. A posture of assessment, of provocation. It was unnerving how a small, thin, hipless male could seem so female with a few gestures, phrases.

  ‘No, Frank. I want Ted Marshall.’

  ‘You don’t want me?’ He pouted.

  I had no doubt he was homosexual, or bi-sexual-he wasn’t effeminate; a man, not a woman. The phrases, the mannerisms, were too natural to be an act. But there was tension in his dark eyes, and he wasn’t really interested in me. He was putting on an act-now, for me. His mind wasn’t on my body, it was on my reason for being there. ‘I want to talk to him, Frank,’ I said.

  ‘I tell him when I see him. Okay?’

  ‘There’s another detective upstairs. He’s going to have to talk. Why not practice on me? He might learn something.’

  ‘More policemen?’ He glanced back into his apartment. A concerned gesture, protective of something inside his rooms.

  ‘Ted better get used to it,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ Madero said, serious, ‘I guess maybe.’

  His act slipped away leaving almost a new face: firm, even strong. We all live various acts, have public faces to tell other people what we are, and what we are feeling, at any given moment. We have friendly faces for friends, loving faces for our lovers, responsible faces for business. We have a real face, too, more complex because aimed at no one special, for ourselves. A homosexual doesn’t think all the time of his sex, any more than a sailor thinks always of the sea. His homosexuality isn’t all of him. Frank Madero’s real face was like that of any other man concerned with serious demands.

  ‘Okay, you come in, Mr Fortune.’

  His living room was as austere as a monastery cell on a Greek mountaintop no one had visited since the Crusades. All the furniture had a medieval look-the dark, massive pieces you see in cathedrals, bare and hard as if there was merit in discomfort. There were religious pictures on the walls, and giant crucifixes with dead Christs bloody on them.

  ‘He is there,’ Madero said. ‘In the bedroom.’

  The bedroom hit me like a blow-sensual, gaudy, with a giant bed, mirrors, purple hangings and a thick rug, all perfume like a steaming boudoir. The contrast made the living room seem like a penitent cell, an atonement for the bedroom.

  ‘Teddy,’ Madero said, ‘Mr Fortune wants he should talk.’

  Ted Marshall lay flat on the bed wrapped in the slow music from a record player. He needed a shave. His tie and jacket were off, and his shirt was open far enough to show the top of the bandage around his rib cage. The scars and bruises on his face stood out livid, and his shirt was dirty. He wasn’t smoking. He wasn’t doing anything. I didn’t think he even heard the music.

  ‘Leave me alone.’ His soft voice was thick, not pleasant now, like a man sunk in a stupor.

  ‘Can’t be done,’ I said. ‘You know it.’

  Marshall moved against invisible ropes. ‘I already told the police. How much more? Anne’s dead. She’s dead.’

  His shoulders and legs moved in an aimless motion, slowly as if movement was painful. His cool manner, the swinger with no strings between him and Anne Terry, was far gone. It looked like he had been tied to Anne Terry not with string but with thick rope. Frank Madero bent down to him.

  ‘She is gone, Teddy,’ the small super said. ‘You must talk about it, yes?’ Madero looked up at me. ‘Ask him what you got to, Mr Fortune.’

  Ted Marshall turned his head away. Deep inside his stupor like a man under thick water. His whole body, slow movements, seeming to say: What does it matter? I’m finished.

  I said, ‘Did you pay for the abortion, Ted?’

  His head jerked around. ‘No! Damn you-’

  ‘Did you send her to the abortionist?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Do you know who did pay, or where she went for it?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘now for your lies. You said you-’

  His eyes widened. ‘It’s no lie! I don’t know-’

  ‘Vega,’ I broke in. ‘You said you knew nothing about Anne and Vega. That was a lie. You said you’d fallen off a ladder. That was a lie. Don’t try to squirm out. Vega already told us about the blackmail and the beating.’

  He started to turn his head away again-what did any of it matter-but stopped, his empty gaze up toward the mirror on the ceiling. ‘Vega killed her. It was his kid, for real. After he tossed her over flat she busted up, and mad, too. I guess she really liked the bastard. Only she was going to make him pay, get something out of it. That’s when she got the blackmail idea.’

  ‘And you were part of it, the witness. You faked that tape to make him look very bad?’

  ‘I’m pretty good with electronic stuff,’ Marshall said. ‘She was sure it would work, we’d get plenty for our theatre. I guess she wasn’t too smart.’ He seemed to be seeing Anne in the ceiling mirror. ‘Then last week two of them came to me at the theatre. George Lehman and some blond muscleman. I was alone; they beat me pretty bad. I never could take pain. I was scared, too. I mean, if I didn’t-?’ He squirmed under his heavy, invisible ropes. ‘I gave them the tape, signed a paper saying I didn’t know anything.’

  ‘So then you had to arrange an abortion for her?’

  ‘No! I told you I don’t know about that! I never saw her after Thursday!’

  ‘You think she went through it on her own? After Vega wouldn’t pay?’

  He was silent, a kind of deep fear in his eyes. ‘I don’t know. Maybe Vega did pay-something. After they beat on me, she was madder than ever. She said she’d still get him. Maybe she went on with the blackmail on her own. Maybe he paid, and arranged the abortion. Maybe he fixed the abortion so she’d die! He wanted her dead!’

  Frank Madero sat in the corner, looked at the floor. Ted Marshall stared up at his own unshaven face in the ceiling mirror. Ricardo Vega a murderer?

  ‘Can you back that up at all, Ted?’ I asked.

  ‘The way she looked, what she said. She was tough.’

  ‘When you saw her on Friday?’

  ‘I didn’t see her Friday! I told you! I went like always, and she wasn’t home. I never saw her!’

  ‘Did you know she was planning to go home to North Carolina? Maybe to recover after an abortion?’

  ‘No. Why would she? She had her family in Queens.’

  ‘You knew she really went to Queens on weekends? You knew she had a husband and children?’

  ‘No! I swear I didn’t know!’ He came up on one elbow, his thick voice taking on urgency. Fervent that I knew he didn’t know. Guilt for making love to a married woman with children? A modern free swinger like Marshall? ‘Anne never told me about any of that!’

  ‘Ted did not know,’ Frank Madero said. ‘She keep it all very secret. She don’t tell.’

  ‘You knew Anne, Madero?’ I asked.

  ‘I have that honour, yes. A nice woman.’

  I looked down at Marshall. �
�Just what did she say?’

  His eyes closed up, flicked away. ‘If I was chicken, she wasn’t. Maybe I was scared green; she wasn’t. You got to take risks. Life wasn’t worth living without risk. You have to live your own way. Hold back and you’re dead. Like that.’

  It was Marshall’s thick voice, but the words belonged to Anne Terry all right. I could hear her, ‘You got to take risks, Gunner. Hold back and you’re dead.’ The question was: had she acted on her words, gone on with the blackmail of Vega?

  ‘You have any real proof, Marshall?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you going to tell the police about it?’

  ‘Why not? I’ve got nothing to hide.’

  I looked at Frank Madero. ‘Nothing to hide?’

  Madero’s eyes were flat. ‘We are not lovers, if you mean that. We are friends. It is possible, you see?’

  ‘Then get your ‘friend’ up to his apartment. Don’t make the police find him. You don’t have to mention me.’

  Madero nodded; he understood. Gazzo wouldn’t be happy about going off on my own to Marshall. I guess I just wanted to nail Ricardo Vega myself, if I could. Ted Marshall said no more. He seemed almost paralyzed on the bed.

  I went up to the street, and called Marty from a Sixth Avenue booth, but there was no answer. At her theatre they said she wasn’t on call until later. I wanted to talk to her over lunch, so decided to give her an hour.

  Anne Terry’s apartment was near. Maybe I could find some evidence to show that she had gone on with her blackmail.

  Chapter Eleven

  A fat woman in a housedress with a cigarette hanging from her mouth was sweeping out the vestibule of Anne Terry’s building. She gave me a smile, hummed at her work. The smile faded when I showed an old badge and said I wanted Anne Terry’s apartment. It wasn’t me who faded the smile, it was the dead girl.

  ‘Awful. She was a fine girl. Straight and on the line. Maybe she liked men too much. Women are all born lonely and too eager. That’s nature’s way, I guess.’

  ‘I guess,’ I said. ‘Did you know her men?’

  ‘Some, not many: She didn’t broadcast.’

  ‘A Ricardo Vega? You saw him Friday or Saturday?’

  ‘Nope. The cops asked me that. He’s that big shot, right? What was she doing with a man like him?’

  ‘A little blackmail, maybe,’ I said, watched her.

  ‘Anne? I’d have to know more to know about that. Ain’t no one you know for sure what they are, but I got to hear reasons, and know who says what. All I know, she was nice.’

  ‘She was nice,’ I said. ‘Can I have the key?’

  ‘Don’t need it. A friend’s up there now.’

  I went up carefully. The ‘friend’ could be Sean McBride again, or Ricardo Vega, or anyone. The door was open. I found him bending over the old desk, and recognized the hunting-lodge clothes: Emory Foster, the florid friend of Sarah Wiggen. An open suitcase was on the floor, filled mostly with photo albums and books. The heavy man heard me and turned.’

  ‘Mr Fortune. You’re still at work?’

  ‘I’d like to know more about what happened,’ I said.

  ‘So should I,’ Emory Foster said. ‘Poor Sarah is taking it quite hard. She asked me to get some things of hers Anne had.’

  ‘I didn’t think she cared much about Anne.’

  ‘They were sisters, Fortune.’

  ‘Not close,’ I said. ‘You said you never knew Anne?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘You’re an old friend of Sarah’s, though?’

  ‘A friend, not so old. She doesn’t have many friends.’

  ‘How’d you meet her?’

  ‘She’s interested in writing. I teach a class.’

  ‘You’re a writer, Mr Foster?’

  He gave a small shrug. For a thick, florid man he was subdued, tentative. He looked like a man who should roar and slap backs, hold forth at some artistic party full of celebrities, be photographed kneeling beside a lion he had shot. That kind of man, but who had been cut open and hollowed out. A shell, isolated inside a floating bubble.

  ‘I write,’ he said. ‘Free-lance, teach a few classes. I do advertising copy, some stories. Small beer.’

  ‘For the theatre?’

  ‘No, not for the theatre.’

  ‘Is it much of a living?’

  ‘I survive, Mr Fortune. A serious writer who doesn’t find a clique of elite, or command an obvious market, hasn’t much chance. So I write my books which no one will publish, and make a living doing copy, teaching, and writing trash under pseudonyms.’ He shrugged, stepped away from the old desk. ‘That seems to be all that Sarah asked me to get. Can I help you with anything? You’re looking for who helped her?’

  ‘If anyone did.’

  ‘I suppose she could have handled it alone. A tough girl, they tell me. You’d think she would have found a real doctor.’

  ‘Maybe she did. Maybe the curette slipped.’ I was really wondering if someone could have known what the combination of drugs would do to her?

  ‘A real doctor would have cost a lot of money,’ he said. ‘Not to mention influence to force the risk. I wonder who she knew with both money and influence?’

  ‘I wonder,’ I said

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well, I’ll leave that in your hands. I better get back to Sarah. I have my own work to do.’

  He went, and I searched again. The desk was a mess by now. I found no whisper of blackmail. The file was no better. It, too, had been manhandled, everything out of order. The place had been oversearched, like a field with too many footprints. I called Marty before I left. She still didn’t answer.

  I took the subway to Seventy-second Street, walked up beside the spring park. Even on a weekday it was crowded. There were the old with nothing to do, their years of service rewarded with idleness and the slow starvation we proudly call social security. (We’re a narrow Puritan nation at the core. We grudgingly keep our old alive, but make sure they have no joy in it.) The odd and unemployable fed pigeons, and stared wondering into space. In a field, young men played soccer while their women encouraged in some foreign tongue. Without work, they played the sport of their homeland to know they still existed. We’re a rich nation, we can afford to waste lives.

  We can also afford to let a women take time off when her sister dies. Sarah Wiggen was at home. She stood with her arms hugging herself as if cold. She wore black. It didn’t help her to look like her sister. Yet I could see, again, that she was really a pretty woman-her drabness was inside, behind the lustreless eyes.

  ‘What do you want, Mr Fortune? It’s over.’

  ‘You’re sure, Sarah?’

  She was shivering. Her eyes saw far away or long ago. Maybe both-North Carolina and a young sister she had hated for marrying first and leaving her to hold the bag on a dirt farm. She saw something much closer in time and space, too. Herself, maybe, and her hate.

  ‘How much did you really know, Sarah?’ I asked.

  ‘Know?’

  ‘I wondered about how fast you ran to the police. You knew about Queens, her kids, the abortion.’

  ‘No!’ She hugged herself. I waited. She sat down on one of her sterile chairs. ‘I knew she was pregnant. I guessed what she planned to do when she talked about going down home.’

  ‘So you knew where she was? You knew she was dead?’

  ‘Dead?’ Some small life flashed in her slack eyes. ‘You don’t think I’d have left those children alone with her? No, I didn’t know about Queens, or any children. I didn’t know where she was.’ Her hands moved to her belly. ‘Are they… nice children?’

  ‘You haven’t seen them?’

  ‘I didn’t want to, yet. Are they pretty, like Anne?’

  ‘I think so. She never told you she had children?’

  ‘I guess she didn’t think the family deserved to know. Up here I suppose she wanted to keep them apart from her… her life here. I knew about Boone, yes, but I really thought he wa
s in Arkansas. Have they found him?’

  ‘Not yet. They have the kids in a shelter. Maybe you should go to them. They need someone.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What will happen to them and Boone?’

  ‘That depends on Boone and the state,’ I said. ‘Okay, you suspected abortion. Why report her missing? The noble sister trying to stop her?’

  Her chin came up, and I saw a little of Anne’s boniness in her face. ‘No, not noble. Jealous. Plain female fury. I wanted to make trouble-for both of them.’

  ‘Anne and Ricardo Vega?’

  ‘Ted Marshall. I was sure Ted was the man.’

  ‘He dumped you for her?’

  ‘I thought we had… something. I met him in acting class when I first came here. I burned to be an actress, and I liked Ted. I suppose I still do. Then Anne met him. He never called me again. Not once! I quit everything, took a safe job.’

  Her lustreless eyes looked like mud. I was getting the first real clue to the drabness inside Sarah Wiggen. A body full of dead dreams. Anne’s dreams had been alive, vivid.

  ‘What did you expect the police to do, Sarah?’

  ‘Catch them, prove the abortion, send Ted to jail. I don’t know. When she didn’t call Sunday evening, I was half scared for her, and half hoping she was sick and Ted would be caught.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘What about Ricardo Vega?’

  ‘I don’t care about him.’

  ‘The baby was his, almost sure. Anne didn’t say anything about Vega, a deal, maybe a payoff?’

  ‘No, but she wouldn’t have told me about Mr Vega.’

  ‘Think! That last call, when she talked of going home. She said nothing about plans, hopes, her future?’

  ‘She just said she was tired, wanted to go home to rest. She did say she’d have a suprise for me, would pay my fare. She seemed anxious to have me go. But I-’

  ‘A surprise? money? Nothing more?’

  ‘I wasn’t going. I didn’t think about it.’

  ‘Anyone been here? Vega? Friends of his?’

  Only Mr Foster. He offered to go to Anne’s and get some things I wanted. When you rang I thought it was him.’

  ‘He hasn’t been back yet?’