Night of the Toads df-3

by Michael Collins

  ‘McBride went crazy when he beat a man,’ Lehman recalled. ‘When that friend of Marshall’s was patching Marshall up after we beat him, he said McBride had almost killed him then. Maybe McBride thought Rey wanted Marshall ‘handled’ again, went and beat him around some more, and killed him. That could be where he got the idea to use the bomb next-nothing to lose.’

  I said, ‘My woman can tell things about McBride’s violence, and impulse action. You’re blinded by hate, Foxx. You want to hurt Vega any way you can. I know about that, believe me. Too much hate in you, Foxx.’

  ‘Too much?’ Foxx said. ‘Too much hate? There isn’t any hate too much for Vega, Fortune.’

  ‘What was it, Foxx?’ Gazzo said. ‘Your reason? The D.A. never has told me the motive would shake a jury so hard.’

  Foxx seemed to shrink where he stood, said nothing.

  ‘Lehman told me,’ I said. I told them everything Lehman had told me about Hollywood, and Congressional investigation, the blacklisting. ‘It’s a sad story, but not enough for all Foxx has done for thirteen years. An obsession, magnified.’

  Emory Foxx sat down as if the memory of those years I had told about was too much weight. He looked at George Lehman. Lehman met his stare. Foxx licked at his lips, the heavy face twisted, the words he wanted to say somehow unable to come out. He looked at me, his voice hoarse when it came.

  ‘Broke with Communism? Vega told them he’d broken with the Party, and he proved it?’ Foxx said, looked around at all of us. ‘Did Lehman tell you how Vega proved he’d broken with Communism? Did he tell you that? No, he didn’t tell you, he wouldn’t.’

  All at once my neck began to crawl. A faint sensation, somehow aware of what was to come. ‘How, Foxx?’

  Foxx watched Lehman. ‘He says Vega had no reason to want me out of his way. He’s right. Vega was the new genius then. I wasn’t in his way. He had it all going, a brilliant future. He has his brilliant future now, but at that moment back then he was afraid he’d lose it at the start. Down inside he’s always been a coward, fearful, he won’t be on top someday.’

  ‘What did he do, Foxx?’ Gazzo said.

  Foxx laughed the coldest laugh I’d ever heard. ‘He proved he wasn’t a Communist anymore, he was clean.’ His voice was almost light, amused in a macabre way. ‘He proved it to those Congressmen by giving them every name of everyone who’d been Communists with him! He crawled on his belly to make them forgive him, let him go. He confessed everything about himself-and everything he knew about everyone else! His friends! He talked, and talked, and I was one of the names he talked about. They called me back. I wouldn’t talk. So I went to jail, I was blacklisted for thirteen years, and Ricardo Vega went on to the top.’

  Lehman said, ‘He was scared, a kid from the slums of Havana. One slip, Foxx. He’s a genius. One mistake.’

  ‘One mistake? Forgive him?’ Foxx said. ‘He destroyed twenty men one way or the other, to save himself. He wasn’t even really in danger, a small risk, but he wouldn’t even take the risk. He volunteered to talk, babbled. To please that committee! And since then? He’s been safe, but he kept me on the blacklist, used lawyers to keep me quiet, threatened everyone who might listen to me, or hire me! He’s got the power. I was a convicted Communist, so he’s kept me silent for thirteen years. One mistake?’

  Lehman had no more to say. It was a long time ago, and those had been frightened days for a lot of people, but how many had volunteered to destroy others to save themselves? Vega a little more scared-a kid from the Havana slums, to be understood? Would I have understood? Forgive? I don’t know. Maybe Foxx could be understood, forgiven.

  ‘I’ll go to jail?’ Foxx said. ‘For framing Vega?’

  ‘You’ll go to jail,’ Gazzo said.

  ‘Good.’ Foxx smiled, and it was a toad smile now. ‘A trial, right? A jury, newspaper, TV, magazines. I can tell my story at the trial. They’ll print it now. No danger to print it when I tell it all in court. Vega is news. They’ll do it big; magazine stories, the works. My story, Anne Terry’s story, all about McBride. It all comes out. I’ll get him after all!’

  Thirteen years is a long time to hate, and to be frustrated. An obsession big enough to make him grasp at a frail staw to commit legal murder on Vega had to be fed.

  ‘I guess you will,’ Gazzo said, ‘if anyone cares by now. You paid a hell of a price. Prison, and a dead wife.’

  Emory Foxx was pale for a moment. ‘We all die, Captain. She hadn’t had much life since I went to prison anyway.’

  Gazzo waved an arm. ‘Take him and book him. Lehman, too.’

  Dectectives took Foxx and Lehman out. The rest of the detectives left. Boone Terrell waited. After his own story had been told, Terrell had listened in silence. His impassive farmer’s face had reacted only once-when Foxx told what Vega had done to him so long ago. Then Terrell had set his gaunt face in hard judgment on a man who betrayed his friends.

  Gazzo said in the vacuum that seemed to hang over the dim room now, ‘The D.A. doesn’t take to frame-ups. He won’t go gentle on Foxx. The trial should be a circus all right. Vega’ll find enemies he never even heard of.’

  ‘Lehman?’ I said.

  ‘He came in on his own. If the D.A. believes him, we might settle for a low guilty plea, suspend it.’

  ‘If he goes to trial, I can help. A jury should believe my story about him.’

  ‘Yeh, a patsy for Sean McBride and Vega,’ Gazzo said, and he looked at Boone Terrell. ‘You helped Foxx. You signed a false statement. Maybe your wife’s death had you all mixed up. Go on home now, but stay close. I’ll talk with the D.A. If he won’t drop charges, we should get probation at least.’

  Terrell unwound his gaunt frame from the chair.

  ‘I thank you, Captain,’ he said, and walked erect from the room.

  I had a momentary vision of seeing him through the cafeteria window on the rainy night when it had all started for me. A vision of Anne Terry’s face, gentle as she had looked at Terrell.

  ‘She meant a lot to him,’ I said. ‘And she tried to give him something.’

  Gazzo watched the door, and scowled into the room.

  ‘I wish I’d met her. I’ve wished that since about halfway,’ Gazzo said. ‘A blackmailer, and a crazy fool!’

  ‘You have a drink,’ I said, ‘and you wonder.’

  Gazzo’s been a policeman for a long time. ‘They go through here like a parade, Dan. Sometimes the guilty, sometimes the victims, and the difference is a push one way or the other. She was born poor in a rich world; lived poor in a country that still believes in its Puritan lousy soul that the poor deserve to be poor! We gave her a crazy dream and no way to get it. I see that, too-every damned day. Most just dream, but some got to try. What did we give her to try with? A Senator who uses his power to squeeze a better deal than his neighbours: big companies that spend millions to con the public, and thousands to silence critics; blackmail in high places-except we call it influence, the payoff. She’s tough, and strong, and never got past seventh grade, and she uses the weapon she finds! What the hell else do we expect with what we’ve given her?’

  ‘Expect, Captain?’ I said. ‘We expect her to be a good little girl, accept that she was supposed to be poor.’

  ‘Let the Ricardo Vegas use her, power her. Yeh.’

  ‘Not Anne Terry,’ I said. ‘Never passive, no. She had to act, shape her own life, even if it meant the end of her.’

  ‘You clear the smoke away, it’s a common abortion, Foxx muddying it up, and a nut named Sean McBride,’ Gazzo said. ‘You know what gives me bad dreams, Dan? We get them all, the weak ones caught by circumstances, and the really dangerous one gets away.’

  ‘The abortionist,’ I said. ‘He was a professional, Gazzo; you’ll get him someday.’

  ‘Yeh, after he maybe kills how many poor kids got nowhere else to turn the way our very moral citizens make it?’

  ‘The rich can go to Japan, Denmark,’ I said.

  ‘Swell,’ Gazzo said
.

  There was nothing more to say. Gazzo gave me my old gun with its bullets and I left. Boone Terrell was still in the corridor. He sat on the bench with Sarah Wiggen, and the two sleeping little girls. Sarah’s face was flushed and smiling. She thanked me, and Terrell nodded his thanks.

  ‘Gazzo’ll go to bat for you,’ I said.

  ‘I appreciate it,’ Terrell said.

  ‘What do you do now? ‘I said.

  Sarah said, ‘I’m going to move out with Boone. We’re going to try, raise the children. I need something more than the job I settled for. Boone’s going to try to work.’

  I didn’t ask the obvious question, I didn’t have to. Sarah had a bright glow to her face. She had come to like Boone Terrell over the last week. It was harder to tell with him. His face showed little. He had Anne Terry to forget; a very special woman, and he had loved her maybe too much.

  ‘Sarah’s a fine woman,’ Terrell said.

  I saw Sarah wince. Just a little. It wasn’t a ‘fine woman’ she wanted to be to Terrell. She wanted to be what Anne had been, she probably always would. But she couldn’t be and a ‘fine woman’ was at least a start.

  ‘Can you find work up here, Boone?’ I said.

  ‘I reckon I can try,’ he said. ‘Last couple days I been thinkin’. Annie, she was a woman shook a man-like a head o’ real powerful liquor. Like I was drunk on her. Annie was a strong female, and I never wanted to chance losin’ her. If I don’t need her, if the kids don’t need her, maybe she leaves me, see? Maybe I knew that, you know, and didn’t want to find work. Could be all this time I plain wanted to depend on Annie so she’d stay around. Could be my leg ain’t so bad, I could find work don’t pain it much.’

  We all seemed to think about that for a time. Sarah stood and began to wrap the little girls in their blankets to carry them out. I said my good-byes, told Boone I was sure he’d find work, told both of them they’d be okay.

  Maybe they would be. Sarah could be a different woman if she had a purpose, and Terrell was a simple man. Sally Anne and Aggy could even get a better life out of it. Sarah might get some things of Anne’s after all. Good can come from bad, sometimes.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I called Marty from a tavern. There was no answer. I took the subway home. She was waiting in my bedroom, when I came in. She had the heat on to welcome me.

  ‘I called Gazzo’s office,’ she said, smiled. ‘They told me you were there, so I came to wait. Is it over, Dan?’

  ‘Over,’ I said.

  I dropped my clothes on a chair. My broken ribs hurt, my leg ached, and I looked like a bandaged mummy, but I got into bed. I was shaken, drained. It was all over. Vega could walk tall, and Anne Terry was gone for good. She was no longer with me. She had ended like a fading note of music that slips into silence leaving only the memory of an echo.

  I told Marty about it all. I needed to talk, and I needed Marty. Two people are always worlds apart no matter how close. Minute to minute you have to find each other again, before separate needs and weaknesses tear you apart. Everyone must have somewhere to rest. So I told her, talked it out of me.

  ‘Boone Terrell and Sarah Wiggen might even make it,’ I said. ‘Good for those kids, anyway. Anne Terry did what she had to do, and she was a good mother, but the kids are different people. They have to find their own way, and it might be easier for them in the end this way.’

  She gave me a cigarette. ‘Vega comes out all free?’

  ‘Like a virgin,’ I said. ‘There we all were in that room clearing Ricardo Vega. All the little flies food for the toad. In our own trouble, or dead, yet saving the golden idol. We had to do it-for truth, justice, morality. But the result was all for Vega. It’s a lousy world.’

  ‘Not lousy, Dan, just not very fair. But who said that the world was supposed to be fair? Who said it could be fair?’

  ‘No one, I suppose,’ I said, and I held her. ‘Maybe it’s not such a bad world. I’ve got you. You and me, even if the abortionist goes free.’

  ‘A simple abortion after all? Vega not involved?’

  ‘Only Ted Marshall and some abortionist he knew. Marshall arranged it all. Anne told Boone Terrell that. Marshall fixed it, paid for it, and Anne-’

  I stopped talking. Marty kissed me in the warm bed. I put out my cigarette. I sat up. Words marched around in my mind. Voices, words, phrases filling my head.

  ‘Dan?’ Marty said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m not sure. All of a sudden I’m hearing voices, small pieces of conversation,’ I said. ‘Where did Ted Marshall get the money to pay a professional abortionist? That costs money, a lot of money. Marshall barely had beer money.’

  ‘You’re sure, Dan?’

  ‘He lived on his mother,’ I said. I got out of the warm bed, began to dress. ‘I’m sorry, baby; you go on home. This could take a while.’

  ‘I’ll stay here,’ she said.

  I put on my old duffle coat, and the black beret this time to keep my bandaged head warm in the early morning hours. I reloaded my cannon, slipped it into a coat pocket, and kissed Marty before I left.

  There was light under the apartment door. It was late for light. I rang the bell, put my hand back into my pocket. This time, no mistakes.

  When he opened the door, he was fully dressed. The votive lights flickered behind him. It didn’t look like he’d been asleep much for some days. The skin of his dark, girlish face seemed drawn, like parchment over a skull. He tried for lightness.

  ‘So late, Mr Fortune? It got to be me you want this time, yes? I never know you swing like that.’

  ‘I don’t, but it doesn’t make me proud,’ I said. ‘Can I come in, Madero? The police have the case all solved. I thought you’d like to hear about it.’

  ‘They have who kill Ted?’

  ‘They have it worked out,’ I said.

  He backed inside, bowed me in after him. The ascetic, medieval room hadn’t changed. Fresh votive lights burned under all the crucifixes. Madero sat down on the biggest throne-chair, his slender body lost in its massive back and arms. I took a smaller high-backed throne.

  ‘Who killed Ted?’ Madero asked. ‘Why?’

  ‘Sean McBride,’ I said. ‘We’re not so sure why. There’s a few things I can’t make fit. You knew Marshall better than anyone. Maybe you can help me.’

  ‘Ted was my friend,’ he said. ‘I try.’

  I told him the whole story as it had worked out. He listened with his serious, public manner. He showed little reaction to any of it until I got to McBride. Then he leaned forward, and there was something like an angry hiss deep in his throat.

  ‘That Sean McBride! I hated him when he beat Ted.’

  ‘An animal,’ I said. ‘We should have known, I guess. You told me you saw him that night here.’

  ‘Yes, I see him.’

  ‘You talked to him in the lobby, threatened him.’

  ‘Yes, I see him hang around. I throw him out.’

  ‘He came back, it looks like,’ I said. ‘Ted Marshall had Anne’s abortion done for her, right? You knew, didn’t you? He was cracking all the way.’

  Madero nodded sadly. ‘I know he do it. He try to help Anne. He don’t mean to kill.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘He paid for it, even. I wonder where he got the money?’

  Madero shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He didn’t have much money,’ I said. ‘The Medical Examiner said the abortion was a good job, professional. Real skill, and that costs money. A trained man did the work, her death was a small mistake, the wrong pills. A real doctor maybe.’

  ‘Just like a real doctor,’ Madero said. ‘Maybe some guy never got no real chance to be doctor, maybe.’

  I nodded. ‘Just what I was thinking. A medical student, maybe. Maybe an army medical corpsman who worked a lot with doctors. The job was that good. Someone who should have been a doctor, maybe.’

  ‘Some guys never got no chance,’ he said, a little bitter. ‘No breaks. A man with skil
l no one will let him use, held down when he should have been using his talent.’

  ‘Nobody helps,’ he said. ‘Everybody laughs-look who wants to be doctor. I know.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘you weren’t always a super, were you, Frank? What were you? a medical student? An army corps man helping out in operations? An operating room nurse?’

  The tight skin seemed to stretch thinner over his girlish face, his dark eyes sank almost out of sight in the flickering light of the votive candles. He said nothing. Eyes on me.

  ‘In Cuba, maybe? Or here,’ I said. ‘George Lehman said you patched up Marshall after Lehman and McBride beat him. Marshall was pretty badly banged around: most people would have been afraid to touch him. You patched him up. What do you have, a bag of instruments stolen from a hospital?’

  ‘You got to be crazy,’ Madero said.

  ‘No, Frank, I don’t think so. Anne Terry told her husband that the abortionist was someone Ted Marshall knew. Emory Foxx spoke of ‘them’ when he reported Ted talking about what had happened, about where the operation was done. Ted spoke in the plural; two men in it together. Ted had no money, and Anne Terry had some two hundred dollars-which she didn’t spend; she made no big withdrawals recently. Yet the job was pretty good. That should have cost money, real money. It didn’t because it was done free, by a friend-you.’

  ‘You go out of here now!’ Madero said.

  I produced my big pistol. He looked at it, licked his lips. I wasn’t being surprised this time.

  ‘That first day I met you, you came in like a man with a problem. You were both nervous. Something going on between you and Marshall; I saw it. You covered, and I thought it was sexual, but Marshall wasn’t your lover. What was between you was the abortion, the danger you were both in. You’re a super, that room is close. You’re in the best position to have known, and used, that empty room. You admitted knowing Anne Terry.’

  ‘It is all lies!’

  ‘The police will find your medical background, and they’ll find your instruments, unless you got rid of them, which I doubt. Those instruments are your dream-the medical man. The super on Hudson Street will talk now. There were fingerprints all over that room; some will be yours.’