Night of the Toads (19 page)

‘Only Ted Marshall knew the place,’ I said.

‘So you killed Marshall, too?’ Gazzo said.

Emory Foxx had been sitting tall as if resisting a wall falling on him. Now he moved his head a sharp negative.

‘I don’t murder people. That’s Vega,’ Foxx said. He pressed his hands down on his knees. ‘All right, yes, I waited thirteen years for the chance. Thirteen years! Waiting; watching Rey Vega.’

The silent detectives waited stonily, a small incident in their lives of wives, kids and a home in Brooklyn. Lehman showed cold fury, and Boone Terrell his calm impassiveness. Only Gazzo and I breathed hard. A moment of confession is like seeing a man cut open. Foxx looked up at us, his face almost proud.

‘I knew everything Vega did where he went. Thirteen years I’ve watched him. Every chance I could.’

The pride faded. Maybe he was thinking of those thirteen years, and saw his wife in her costume jewellery from gaudier days. A woman lost in romantic novels, indoor plants, and goldfish, dead because of his obsession.

‘I went to Sarah to at least make trouble,’ he said. ‘Then there was the abortion. It was my chance. Maybe I couldn’t make it work, but it was a chance. I’d saved money while we rotted, just for when I might need it against Vega. I’d carried that money clip ever since I found it five years ago.’

Gazzo said, ‘Marshall told you where the abortion was done?’

‘You hit me?’ I asked. ‘Tied me in that cellar?’

‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘When I paid Terrell to tell you Anne had implicated Vega, it was just a story. I had him mention a note to make it sound better. Then I realized I could maybe plant a note out in Queens. It was late, but it might work, evidence is missed the first time, sometimes. So I went and got that page from her plans, and started looking for Marshall. He didn’t move out of that apartment with his mother until she left for work. When he came out, I lost him. So I waited in his place. I had to know where the abortion was done to write the note. Fortune came first, I had to hit him.’

He sneered. ‘Marshall showed up just then. When he saw Fortune tied up, he was scared out of his wits. He was eager to help me. He jumped at the chance to blame anyone but himself. We carried Fortune to the cellar, but Marshall was ready to crack. He kept telling me it was an accident, they’d made a mistake. So he told me where it had been done, and I went and planted the money clip. Then I went out to Queens, typed the note on that page I had, and planted it in the garbage.’

‘What time did you leave Marshall?’ Gazzo asked.

‘I had to calm him, he was breaking up. He might have blown the whole thing. So we talked some. I suppose it was just after eight-thirty. I saw Sean McBride again. He had been outside the building when I went in, but inside when I left. He didn’t know me, then, but I knew him. He must have been watching Marshall. When I left, the super was threatening to call the police if McBride didn’t stop loitering around the lobby. I could see McBride didn’t like being warned, but he left. He must have come back. He killed Marshall for Vega, just as he tried to kill me for Vega! But he didn’t kill me, he killed my wife, and I’ll see Vega burn!’

His voice had risen, almost happy in its intense hatred. Triumph was all over his heavy, buffalo face, eager in his thick body dressed in the remains of his days of success. He had been a prince of success, too, an important writer who was paid well, and he had waited thirteen years for revenge. But he wasn’t a prince any more, just another victim now.

‘Rey Vega didn’t send McBride,’ George Lehman said.

Gazzo didn’t look at Lehman, he looked at me. I nodded. Lehman took my pistol from his pocket, gave it to Gazzo with the bullets.

‘No one brought me in. I could have run, Captain,’ Lehman said. ‘I came in to clear Rey Vega. I was with McBride when he took that bomb to Foxx’s place.’

‘He was there, Captain,’ I said. ‘I saw him that day.’

Gazzo held my gun. ‘You didn’t tell me, Dan.’

‘Not until I had all of it,’ I said.

Gazzo turned to Lehman. ‘You might as well give us your yard. Go on, tell me Vega didn’t do anything.’

‘He didn’t,’ George Lehman said. In his velvet-collared topcoat, immaculate white shirt and Broadway-tie, he was all wrong in the dim room. But he was the ex-con, he knew what he was doing. ‘It was all McBride alone.’

He looked for a cigarette in his pockets, found one. He lit it. His movements businesslike as if talking to some clients. ‘After Vega found out from Fortune that Emory Foxx was mixed in the thing, he blew his top. ‘Wasn’t he ever to get rid of Foxx? Wasn’t there any way to stop Foxx short of killing him? God, he wanted it finished with Foxx, over, ended!’—Like that more than once. Raging. You know how he talks, Fortune. ‘Did he have to handle everything himself?’ all that like. Just blowing steam, the way he does. It’s the tension.

He smoked, spread his fleshy, soft hands out in disbelief. ‘That McBride was half-nuts, at least. After Rey fired him he begged me to help him get back in good. He’d lost his big chance playing the fool. I like people; I’d helped guys Rey was mad at before. Rey cools quick, sometimes. So I tried. Rey said what good was Sean McBride to him? I told McBride. I figured that was the end. Only it wasn’t, McBride came around to the office. I was out, so he left a note—my secretary saw him write it, and I’ve got it here. He said he was going to do Rey a favour by handling Emory Foxx, he wanted me to help.’

Here he stopped again. His face had a distant look, as if seeing how it had all happened. ‘I knew how much Foxx had driven Rey crazy over the years. This time it was worse, and even the show was going bad.’ He looked at Gazzo. ‘Right then I heard you’d pulled Rey in, and heard what you said you’d found out. I guess I was worried crazy, figured maybe McBride could scare Foxx off like Ted Marshall. So I went to see McBride. He wanted me with him to help, so I could tell Vega what he’d done. I thought it was going to be a beating, I swear that. McBride never told me. I guess it doesn’t matter, I’m still an accessory. You know, he had this messenger uniform on, had that package, didn’t even ask about it! I figured he’d just gotten a messenger’s job. Actors do that. Maybe I was too worried about Rey to think. Anyway, Foxx wasn’t home. McBride waited upstairs, sent me out to watch for Foxx. I was to signal when I saw Foxx coming. Only I saw Fortune, and beat it. I just ran. I forgot that was the signal—look up, and cross the street, when I saw Foxx. McBride only really wanted me there so I could be a witness, tell Rey what McBride had done for him.’

I suppose everyone in that room was thinking the same—how crazy can a man be, Sean McBride; how stupid can a man be, Lehman. But it wasn’t so stupid. Not if you put yourself in Lehman’s place. Who would even dream that a man would kill just to get back into favour? Who would do it, except a half-sane, dull-minded, semi-savage given to impulses and violence he had never controlled, who hungered for a dream of success he had almost had in his fingers? McBride would have, yes, without a second thought, a hesitation.

Gazzo said, ‘That’s why he thought Fortune was Foxx, you’d given the signal by mistake, Jesus!’

Emory Foxx was on his feet, out of the chair. ‘You don’t believe that Lehman, do you? He’s lying! All of it!’

Chapter Twenty-Four

Emory Foxx laughed at us. ‘That’s quite a story. Lehman should write TV scripts. Beautiful! You notice how it makes Vega pure as snow, and Mr Lehman a poor duped lamb? Everything done by Sean McBride—who happens to be conveniently dead and very silent. A really perfect story—for Ricardo Vega.

Gazzo said, ‘An ex-con? He lies, risks going back to prison, loses everything he’s made for a lot of years?’

‘Lehman would do anything for Vega,’ Foxx snorted. ‘He’s grateful. I’ve watched him bowing and scraping for years. Vega would pay him a fortune to save his yellow skin, and what does Lehman risk? That you don’t believe the part about him now knowing McBride had a bomb. It’s a risk, yes, but Vega would pay big, and if you believe Lehman, he gets a slapped wrist.’

I said, ‘I believe him, Foxx. In thirteen years neither Vega or Lehman tried to kill you. McBride is with Vega a few weeks, and he takes a bomb to you. It fits McBride alone.’

‘Vega never found an animal to do his killing before!’

Gazzo said, ‘That note McBride wrote, you have it, Lehman?’

Lehman took the note from his inner pocket. Gazzo read it. ‘It’s handwritten, Foxx. It says what Lehman told us: McBride wanted to do Vega a favour by handling you, he wanted Lehman’s help. We’ll prove it’s McBride’s writing. Lehman’s secretary is a witness. McBride alone bought the bomb materials; we checked. He made it in his room, all night like a crazy man, alone. No, McBride had the idea by himself.’

‘Ted Marshall, then!’ Foxx said. ‘McBride hadn’t been fired then. He was working for Vega. Maybe Vega found out that Marshall was helping to frame him. I saw McBride there—twice that night. I’m not lying, the superintendent saw him.’

‘He already told me he saw McBride,’ I admitted.

George Lehman said, ‘I don’t know. Rey was pretty mad at Marshall, yeh. Before he found out about you, Foxx, he had the idea Marshall was working against him. He sent McBride to watch Marshall, and Fortune, and Fortune’s girl—off and on. Rey blows a lot of steam, that’s how he is. Maybe he said something about wanting Marshall off his back, and McBride did the same thing he tried with Foxx.’

‘It’s a pattern,’ Gazzo said. ‘Men usually work, and kill in a pattern.’

‘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.