Night of the Toads (8 page)

Vega seemed to think about it. ‘She made it sound pretty bad. Luck made the date airtight, she said—two weeks we spent at my Vermont farm just after New Year. She could prove she’d had no relations the week before, and not for a couple of weeks after. Since it really was my kid, the blood tests would show positive to every test. To top it all off, Ted Marshall had faked up a tape that sounded like me refusing to help her after she had told me she was pregnant, and I’d admitted it was mine. I sounded pretty nasty on that tape, arrogant.’

He smiled a little ruefully. ‘She arranged that tape on me beautifully. Around the time we were beginning to bust up, about a month or so ago, we taped a couple of scenes from plays about lovers in trouble. When Marshall edited them some, and spliced them together right, she had what sounded like me refusing to help. It was a good job, even the voice levels were perfectly matched. It would be damned hard to prove it was a fake, and Anne was a good actress. I could picture her using that tape in court, tearfully telling how she’d had to trap me with a tape recorder after I refused to help her.’

Vega looked grim, shook his head where he sat. ‘She didn’t expect me to believe that she could really prove it all, she didn’t think she had to. A jury might not believe her, but odds were that they would. Juries love the underdog, the weak against the big, important man. No, she didn’t think I’d want a long court fight—adultery, lies, headlines, dirt, my whole past raked over. I’m no angel, so she didn’t think I’d want to risk a battle in the open I could easily lose.’

I said, ‘But could she really hurt you that way? In these days?’

‘Blackmail doesn’t always depend on real damage,’ Vega said, ‘but on possible damage. The victim afraid to risk damage.’

‘You thought there was a chance of damage?’ Gazzo asked.

‘She did, Captain,’ Vega said. ‘Anne wasn’t bright. Tough, not bright. We live in a transition time. The young have free morals, but strong ethics. Free, but honest, and she was going to make me look dishonest, smelly, dirty. The older middle-class people show a lot of backlash for rigid morality. My own money goes into my movies. I could be hurt at the good middle-class box office. My name is a draw. I could lose financial backing. The young admire me, I could become an ethical leper.
Could
, Captain. For a price, I’m safe. That’s what she tried.’

Gazzo said, ‘What price?’

‘Twenty-five thousand, my name on a contract to direct one play, co-produce with her for one season, at New Player’s. A little cash, and my name. She gets an abortion, I’m safe.’

‘You agreed?’ Gazzo scowled.

Vega’s face was like dark granite. ‘I grew up in a Havana slum, Captain. I don’t scare, I don’t pay blackmail. It was tried before. I didn’t think she’d do it, but that didn’t matter. I don’t sell my name or my work, not ever.’

‘You turned her down?’ I said.

‘Flat,’ Vega said. ‘I also took some positive action. You might as well hear it from me. Some friends of mine went to see Ted Marshall. When they left, he didn’t want any part of blackmailing me, no. He was on my side. I never saw Anne again, and that was over two weeks ago.’

‘Then why send Sean McBride to Anne’s place yesterday?’ I asked. ‘To get what you’d left there, maybe?’

‘McBride? I didn’t send him. Why would I want to hide I knew her, the police had already questioned me?’ He gave me his superior smile—the prince chiding a dull mortal. His story was over. It was like coming out of a quiet movie theatre into the noise and chaos of the real city. His dark eyes glinted, ‘McBride said I sent him to Anne’s apartment?’

‘He didn’t mention your name,’ Gazzo admitted. ‘You never knew she was married, had kids, lived in Queens, too?’

‘She had children? Damn, no! I didn’t know any of that.’ Vega leaned toward Gazzo. ‘Look, Captain. I knew a young girl; tough, determined, not bright. We talked plans, theatre. I liked her. I’m sorry she’s dead. Now do I go home, or do I let the lawyer start earning his pay?’

Gazzo nodded them out. Ricardo Vega was all smiles, like the champ leaving the ring. There was no formal statement; the story wasn’t part of Anne Terry’s death—if it was true.

‘A good story, it sounds true, ‘Gazzo said.

‘Probably most of it is,’ I said.

‘Yeh, most of it.’ The Captain swivelled. ‘She did a lot of living for twenty-two. If we have to dig in all of it, we’re in trouble. Maybe Ted Marshall can help. I guess you’ll want to go along, too?’

I wanted to go along.

Chapter Ten

Mrs Marshall answered our ring. Something had happened to her. The motherly face had grown longer, taken on rocky cliffs. Her dyed hair was tied back like a combat nurse prepared for hard action, all trivia put behind her. There was a bottomless stare to her eyes, as if she had seen what could lie on the other side of her hope. Anne Terry had happened.

‘More police?’ she said. ‘And you, Mr Fortune?’

‘Other police were here, Mrs Marshall?’ Gazzo asked.

‘Late last night, yes. Ted went with them. He’s still not back.’

‘Denniken,’ Gazzo said to me. ‘He’s got the right, a known boy friend. If he’d learned anything, I’d know by now.’

‘What can Ted tell you?’ Mrs Marshall said, her voice level and quiet. ‘He knows nothing about poor Anne.’

‘He might not realize what he knows,’ Gazzo said. ‘You haven’t heard from him since the other police took him?’

‘He called from the police station. He said he was all right because he knew nothing. That was hours ago.’

Gazzo turned for the door. ‘I’ll stake a man here from the local squad.’

I followed Gazzo. Mrs Marshall spoke behind me.

‘Do you think he was the father?’

I turned. ‘Probably not, no.’

‘If he was, he’d have married her. He wanted to anyway.’

‘She was already married, Mrs Marshall.’

‘He didn’t know. She could have divorced.’

‘I guess she could have,’ I agreed.’

‘She wasn’t living with her husband, was she?’

‘In her own way she was,’ I said. ‘Weekends. Maybe not really with the husband. More with her children.’

‘The police told Ted there were children.’ She had that expression women with grown children got remembering when their children were little. ‘Every weekend? With all her work?’

‘She didn’t miss often, I don’t think.’

‘She must have been a good mother—in her own way.’

Her eyes went vacant, considering the qualities of being a mother. I went out after Gazzo. As I walked out of the elevator into the bar lobby, I got a quick glimpse of a small man in army fatigues ducking behind the basement door. I found Gazzo on the street beside his car. He’d already called for a local man. A Captain of Detectives has more than one case.

‘You want a lift?’ he asked me.

‘I’ll hang around for a while.’

Gazzo got into the back seat of his car. He’s not one of those high-rankers who like to prove they’re just-plain-cops by poses like riding up front with their drivers, scorning the soft privileges. Gazzo says he likes soft seats and thoughtful privacy as befits his rank and age.

I waited for the squad detective. This was one of my areas, and I knew him when he walked up: Detective (Second Grade) Leo Puskis. A nice cop, Puskis—too nice to make First Grade unless he gets lucky or gets shot in the line.

‘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.’