Night of the Toads df-3

by Michael Collins

  I went after him. Ahead he went around the corner onto the avenue. When I reached the corner in a sprint, he was invisible among the throng of afternoon people. A taxi pulled away from the curb. He could have been in it, but it had green lights all the way. I went back to number 422. I went in, and climbed up to the fourth floor. I slowed, stepped softly as I reached the top of… lifted and flung like a feather…

  … an illusion-the door of 4-B bent out like a bow, flying past to crash into the opposite wall…

  … a giant hand crushed at my chest, lifted me, hurled me in midair backwards and flailing in empty space…

  … Crump!.. Wooooosshh…

  … wall of air… smoke… debris… burning Bang!.. ear-splitting…

  … halfway down the stairs, bounced… rolled like a giant pinwheel

  … smashed a wall on the floor down…

  I knew an explosion when one hit me. How many times at sea in the war? Exploding, the whole ship and out into black water…

  A thing, smoking and burning. At the top of the stairs. A man?… One arm, half a face, half of one leg, smoking cloth hanging in pieces, strips… a ‘thing’ falling… one enormous eye with a look that wasn’t pain or hate or anger or…

  … Oh… the pain… Oh…

  There were dreams.

  A burning man with half a face and one eye with a mild look, reproachful. ‘Now what did you want to go and do that to me for, world? It’s not fair, you know?’ Did I know that half-face?

  A heavy face, florid, and thick shoulders bent over to look into my eyes. ‘Fortune… Fortune… What…’

  Something blue… dark blue… something white… wail of sirens… black slickers…

  Dreams-and my mind clear the instant I opened my eyes.

  Clear, crystal sharp.

  I had been bombed. Yes. I was in a hospital room. Yes. I had been blown up. Yes.

  Marty sat reading a book in the dim light. I watched her. Awake, my mind clear. Clear in terror. I whimpered.

  ‘Dan?’ Marty put down her book.

  I said, ‘Tell me.’

  ‘What darling! Tell you what, Dan?’

  She stood beside the bed, touched my right shoulder. Why? Why not hold my… hand?

  ‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘My… my…’

  ‘It’s all right!’ She understood. ‘It’s all right, Dan.’ I felt her fingers on my hand. ‘Your arm is fine, Dan.’

  It was there. My arm. My one arm. My one-and-only-thank-God-arm! Sweat poured into my eyes. I giggled. I shook. I laughed. Someone called for a nurse…

  The second time I woke up sunlight blinded me.

  ‘Close that damned shade.’

  Sunlight cut off. Orange juice, and my face and throat seemed to be all there. I wondered what hospital it was? I didn’t really give a damn.

  ‘Drink it all now, that’s a good boy.’

  The juice went. I lay back and closed my eyes. I thought of all the hospitals I’d been in. How nice it was to lie and think of the other men out on the cold seas with storms, and submarines, and mines, and sharks, and weary work. I dozed. I felt peaceful.

  There were two doctors and three nurses.

  ‘Well, how do you feel?’ one doctor said.

  ‘Pleasant,’ I said. I decided to spend my life in bed.

  ‘Don’t you want to know what day it is?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘They always want to know that first,’ the doctor said.

  ‘Okay. What day is it?’

  ‘Friday afternoon. Two days, but you’re okay now.’

  I don’t know when they left. I was thinking how nice it was to doze and not have to do anything, think of anything.

  On Saturday I ate breakfast and lunch and saw the city outside. Time came back. It always does.

  ‘What’s the report, Doc?’ I asked.

  ‘A concussion, no fracture. A wound on your head. Two broken ribs, torn ligaments and muscles in your left leg. Bruises all over. Some wood splinters. All-in-all, lucky. You should go home on Monday or Tuesday.’

  ‘Have I had visitors besides Miss Adair?’

  A nurse said, ‘A Captain Gazzo, and a Joe Harris.’

  ‘Who was killed by the bomb?’

  ‘Two people, I think,’ the doctor said. ‘I’m not sure.’

  I dozed. I’m one of those people who bring books to a hospital, but never read. I go over in my mind all the places I’ve been in my life, places that are always alive for me. Maybe because in a hospital death has to be kept away.

  But death, like time, comes back, and with it all the busy, important schemes and tactics and drives of life.

  That bomb had not been meant for me.

  Chapter Twenty

  A bomb meant for Emory Foxx, alias Emory Foster. I thought about it all Sunday morning.

  When health returns, all the needs return, too: good and bad. Maybe the only time in his life that a man sees what is really important is when he’s sick, or dying-sun, time, and being alive with everyone else alive. I was feeling normal, back in the world with my today-and-tomorrow desires, demands. I wanted Ricardo Vega guilty of something. Now I was sure he was. That bomb had been intended to kill Emory Foxx.

  I thought about it all morning, fiercely, and in the afternoon Marty came. She had a tall, fair, handsome man with her. A man I didn’t know, who wore good, quiet clothes, and had a nice smile.

  ‘Hello, baby,’ Marty said. ‘Kurt came along; we’re doing some scene work. Dan Fortune, our director Kurt Reston.’

  Kurt Reston had a firm grip, but not too firm since I was a sick man. He made easy small talk, then faded into the background. A confident man. Probably good at his work.

  ‘You scared me this time, Dan,’ Marty said.

  ‘Who was killed?’ I asked.

  ‘Sean McBride, and a Mrs Emory Foxx.’

  So I really had known the half-faced ‘thing’ at the top of those stairs. Sean McBride, wondering in his last seconds why the world had gone and done such a thing to him. And Mrs Foxx, sure: the innocent bystander, who, from the glimpse I’d had of her, had died inside a long time ago from standing by while Emory Foxx hated Ricardo Vega. Now she’d taken his bomb.

  ‘They’ve arrested Vega,’ Marty said. ‘We’ve suspended.’

  ‘What’s Vega charged with? Did they arrest Emory Foxx?’

  ‘That’s all I know, Dan. We’re being paid while we wait. George Lehman’s running things. Kurt has a new show for next year I may have a part in. We’re working on it.’

  ‘Very good, baby,’ I said.

  She talked some more about what she was doing, and kissed me before she left. Kurt Reston held the door for her. He had the manners not to touch even her arm while I could still see them. My one and only real friend, Joe Harris, came in next. We talked about nothing for an hour. Joe is that kind of old friend. He was just glad I was alive.

  Captain Gazzo finally arrived about 5:00 p.m. He had a two-day growth of whiskers on his tender face, and his eyes had that steel surface that comes from long sessions of talking around and around a case.

  He lighted a cigarette. ‘Ten seconds earlier and you’re dead. Homemade bomb, a stinking fuse job. The damn fool.’

  His hands shook on the cigarette. It had to be fatigue; Gazzo has no nerves.

  ‘Sean McBride took the bomb there?’

  Gazzo nodded. ‘We found the makings in his room. Bomb squad tells it like this: McBride wore a messenger’s uniform, had the bomb in a package. Must have told the wife he had to see Emory Foxx in person, and waited. Foxx was late-he got there right after it blew, found you down on the third floor.’

  ‘Yeh,’ I said. ‘I remember seeing his face-vaguely.’

  ‘When McBride heard you coming up, he must have figured it was Foxx. He gave the package to Mrs Foxx, and went to open the door. That’s when it blew. It has to figure like that: the woman was in pieces, she had to be holding the bomb. McBride lived a couple of minutes and staggered out.’

&nbs
p; ‘Ricardo Vega sent him with the bomb? To get Foxx?’

  Gazzo blew smoke. ‘McBride never met Emory Foxx. But Vega and Foxx have been enemies for maybe thirteen years.’

  ‘So you’re holding Vega. What does he say?’

  ‘He says Emory Foxx framed him for Anne Terry’s death, and maybe for Ted Marshall’s murder. He says he knows nothing about McBride and the bomb. Says he’d fired McBride.’

  ‘He had,’ I said. ‘I was there.’

  ‘Sure,’ Gazzo said. ‘Maybe he wanted you to hear him fire McBride. Or maybe he cooled down, kissed and made up. Vega’s got the reputation for blowing up fast, cooling down fast. Artistic temperament. Remember when he told us he hadn’t sent McBride to Anne Terry’s apartment the day you saw McBride there, and McBride got picked up by us?’

  ‘I remember. Vega said he had no reason to send McBride.’

  ‘He didn’t have a reason, not logically, but Ricardo Vega seems to work to his own logic,’ Gazzo said dryly.

  I could believe that-the prince makes his own logic.

  ‘Now he admits he did send McBride to Anne Terry’s place that day,’ Gazzo said. ‘He’d read the newspaper, and we’d talked to him a little, so he sent McBride to find out what was up, and to keep him out of it. A little private investigation to cover himself just in case. He had McBride keep an eye on everyone just to know what was what. Then after you described ‘Emory Foster’ when we were at his place, he knew that Emory Foxx was involved, and sent McBride around to find out what Foxx was doing. All that he admits-but no bomb!’

  ‘Yeh,’ I said, thought in the bed. ‘If it’s true, Vega dug himself in deep by trying to be too smart, too arrogant.’

  ‘If it’s true,’ Gazzo said.

  ‘What’s Emory Foxx’s story?’

  ‘He admits to hating Vega. He says he knew Anne Terry was a Vega girl friend. When he read she was missing, he went to Sarah Wiggen and told her about Vega. After that he snooped around, watched Vega, watched Ted Marshall, talked to Boone Terrell. He hoped to prove that Vega handled the abortion. He thinks Vega found out, and sent McBride to kill him.’

  ‘Does he say why they’re enemies? So long?’

  ‘The D.A. won’t talk about that, not even to me. He says it’s a bombshell motive. The kind juries believe.’

  ‘Won’t Vega tell what it is?’

  ‘Not a word. Refuses to discuss Emory Foxx, except to say the man was framing him. The lawyers have Vega clammed up, too. They don’t want him denying things he won’t be charged with. Juries have a way of remembering denials.’

  ‘How does the D.A. see it all?’

  In sunlight Gazzo seemed smaller, drier. Night was his life. ‘Vega paid the blackmail to Anne Terry, but just to lull her. With Ted Marshall’s help, he fixed the abortion. He murdered her with the wrong pills, probably by letting Marshall give them to her so she’d think it was okay. He had McBride kill Marshall to silence him. Emory Foxx was snooping too much, found out too much, so Vega sent McBride with the bomb.’

  ‘What did Foxx find out that was too much?’

  ‘He says he saw McBride at Mashall’s building just before Marshall took his dive, among other things. Mostly he backs up what we know-says he saw Marshall and Vega talking on Tuesday, saw McBride skulking around you, Marshall, Anne’s apartment. The money clip traced to Vega, by the way. He claims he lost the clip five or six years ago.’

  I knew what the D.A. would do with a money clip lost six years ago that turned up in an abortion room where evidence already placed Ricardo Vega.

  ‘Version number two,’ Gazzo said. ‘Vega did it all the same, except that he didn’t murder Anne Terry. It was a bungled abortion. Once she was dead, Vega panicked and covered with two murders. The D.A. likes that better. With Marshall dead, unless we find the abortionist, we can’t tie Vega to the pills. A bungled abortion, covered by murder, is the kind of panic a jury understands. They can see themselves doing that.’

  I let it all sink in for time. Gazzo seemed to be doing the same.

  ‘You don’t like either version, Dan?’ Gazzo said.

  ‘I’m sure that the note was a plant.’ I told him why. ‘Probably the money clip, too, but I can’t prove it.’

  ‘Maybe they were, especially the note,’ Gazzo said, ‘but that doesn’t clear Vega. Lieutenant Denniken is up for a commendation on Vega. Denniken points out that maybe the note is a plant, but that doesn’t make Boone Terrell a liar. Vega was the man, and Anne told Boone, but there wasn’t any proof. Emory Foxx talked to Terrell, heard what Anne had said, and made up the note to back it up.’

  ‘I think it was a frame-up all the way,’ I said. ‘That’s why Vega sent McBride with the bomb.’

  He crushed out his cigarette. ‘Prove it, Dan. Maybe I see it the same, but I’m blocked. Chief McGuire says I have to give him one solid piece of proof it was a frame-up before he’ll let me put taxpayer’s time into busting a good case. I could work on my own time, but a Homicide Captain out of his own territory doesn’t blend into the background, and Denniken’s out to hog-tie me. The D.A.’s convinced, too-Vega’s guilty of the abortion. I think he’s guilty, too. Dan, but I want it to be the right crime. Go and get me the right crime.’

  I thought about it for the rest of the night-alone. Sometimes lack of knowledge can help a man see better. An expert, like Denniken and the D.A. rarely see that things can be different than they are. An aura of inevitability hangs over the judgment of experts-what is, must be. They can’t see beyond their own experience. I can, sometimes.

  Now I could see Boone Terrell in the Interrogation Room-too firm, too contained, too calm. Like a man holding in his grief because he had work to do. Money work, maybe-paid to tell a false story. Money work for his children.

  Or maybe Boone Terrell just wanted to hurt Ricardo Vega. And maybe, in the end, he had-if he had lied, and that lie had made Vega send a bomb to Emory Foxx.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The hospital let me out at 4:30 p.m. on Monday. My ribs ached, I limped, and my hat wouldn’t have fit if I’d worn a hat, but I could have been another victim. I felt good.

  I cabbed home, got my old. 45 calibre revolver, my duffle coat for the night, and took the subway to Long Island City. I rode the same bus I had the night I found Anne Terry in the house on Steiner Street where the two smallest victims waited for her to wake up. This time I stopped first at The Pyramid bar. I had an Irish. It still tasted fine.

  ‘You know Boone Terrell?’ I asked the bartender.

  ‘Sure do,’ he said. ‘You a cop?’

  ‘Insurance adjuster,’ I said. People like to help other people get insurance money, beat the big company. ‘Terrell needs a man he says was in here looking for him on Monday night. Heavy man, red-faced,’ and I described Emory Foxx.

  ‘I remember, sure. He come in after the cops was here. Talked to Matt Boyle, a pal of Boone. You want Matt?’

  ‘Later, maybe,’ I said.

  In the daylight the semi-detached houses on the quiet streets looked neither individual nor manipulated. Anonymous houses, unimportant, like the homes of all the faceless billions on earth at any given moment. At the house on Steiner Street there was loud music again from inside. When I rang, the same small, running feet answered like an echo.

  ‘Hello, it’s you,’ Sally Anne said. ‘My Mommy’s dead.’

  Behind her, the smaller girl, Aggy, wailed in fury because her sister had answered the door first.

  ‘Be quiet, baby,’ Sally Anne commanded. ‘You want my Daddy? He’s home.’

  What I wanted was to walk away, leave it alone. At least I think I did. I hope I did. What happened to Ricardo Vega, and justice, didn’t matter, no. Let him go to jail on a frame, or go free on a bombing. Let these little girls have what they could get. I hope I wanted to walk away, even if I couldn’t.

  ‘Can I come in, then, Sally Anne?’ I said.

  ‘Aunt Sarah’s here,’ little Aggy said, needing to have her share of me. ‘Aunt Sarah’
s nice like Mommy.’

  The barren living room was still grim, but it no longer had the look of children playing house. A woman’s hand was obvious, and Sarah Wiggen sat on a sagging couch. She watched me as I came in. Boone Terrell was beside her, still wearing work clothes. I suppose he was comfortable in them. They were together, yet somehow apart, as if they had been waiting for me-waiting for someone, or something. Terrell spoke gently to the two little girls.’

  ‘You go hear your music now.’

  Aggy ran out. I saw her fall onto a pillow in front of the record player in the middle room. Sally Anne perched on chair, determined to stay with the grownups. Maybe she was afraid inside that if she lost sight of her father, and her new-found aunt, they, too, would go to sleep and not wake up.

  ‘Go on now, honey,’ Terrell said.

  Reluctant, the little girl backed from the room. Visitors had not been happy events in her life of late. Boone Terrell watched her for some seconds after she had gone. Then he looked at me. His gaunt face had that faint smile I had seen before on the faces of big, slow men in rural towns. Calm and alert behind quiet, flat eyes.

  ‘You come out to talk with me, Mr Fortune?’

  ‘Perhaps he wants me, Boone,’ Sarah Wiggen said ‘Did you find Emory Foster, Mr Fortune?’

  ‘In a way,’ I said. ‘Someone tried to murder him. You didn’t hear about it?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I hardly knew him, and Boone didn’t know him. Your head! Were you-?’

  ‘I got too close,’ I said, and said, ‘You didn’t want me to talk to him, did you Sarah?’

  ‘You think I tried to-!?’

  Boone Terrell said, ‘Sarah’s been with us most all the time since Wednesday. The funeral was Thursday.’

  ‘Here?’ I said. ‘Since Wednesday? All day?’

  ‘I took my vacation to stay with Boone and the children for a time,’ Sarah said. ‘Boone has to find work now.’