Night of the Toads (9 page)

‘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 was 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?’

‘No, he—’ The downstairs buzzer rang. ‘There he is.’

She went to release the street door, and waited at her door as footsteps came up slowly, limping. Footsteps are distinctive, conjure up a mental picture of the man, and the steps coming up didn’t make me see Emory Foster. I went for the door.

Sarah Wiggen was staring out.

I pushed her aside. He stood at the top of the stairs. Tall, stooped, his work clothes crusted with gutter grime, his pale eyes watery and red with booze and, maybe, grief. The gaunt man from the cafeteria. He tried to run, but he was shaky, weak. I got my hand on his arm, enought to ruin his balance, and he slipped, fell, crashed down the stairs to the next landing. I jumped down after him. Groggy, he tried to get up. I kicked him in the stomach. He fell back, gasping, and stared up at me. I put my hand into my pocket, held a foot aimed at his chin.

‘Call Captain Gazzo, Sarah.’ I gave her the number of Gazzo’s private office. ‘Tell him I found Boone Terrell.’

Chapter Twelve

Graffiti covered the walls of the Interrogation Room. A generation of janitors had tried to scrub them off. They had given up, and settled, puritanically, for scratching over the obscene ones. It left plenty of reading:
Johnny Knucks, I’ll never learn … Little Sal been here and gone … You’ll be back, Sal
…
Rory Connors, a bum rap … I’m sorry, Marge, I’m sorry.…

Gazzo said, ‘Tell us where you’ve been, Terrell. ’

Boone Terrell sat in the chair under the light. Gazzo half-sat on the bare table. Three other detectives in shirt sleeves, guns prominent for intimidation, stood spaced around at the edge of the circle of light. I leaned on a wall, read graffiti, and listened to Gazzo work.

‘Drunk, Captain,’ Terrell said. ‘I drink some.’

Terrell’s voice had the shakiness of a bad hangover, very bad. Under the hangover it was a firm voice, with a strong regional twang of the South, but without any whine. The voice of a decent farmer. His big hands shook, but that was booze, too. He sat like a man who didn’t scare easily, a slow rock against threats or danger, the hands stuck out of his sleeves again, as if he never could find clothes that fit. His face was paler than ever, but not flabby, and his sunken eyes seemed more stunned than worried. He continually brushed at the caked grime on his clothes as if ashamed to be seen so dirty.

‘I guess you do,’ Gazzo said. ‘A routine binge?’

‘The weekend, Captain. You know how that is.’

‘Don’t we all? Why’d you go to Sarah Wiggen?’

‘You know, family an’ all. I ran out of money.’

‘Did you know we were looking for you?’

‘Hell, no, Captain. I sure didn’t.’

‘Don’t you want to know why we were looking?’

Terrell brushed dirt. ‘I guess I know.’

‘You guess you know,’ Gazzo said. ‘Then why didn’t you come in? No, never mind for now. We checked you out, Mr Terrell. You drink, sure, but you don’t binge. Your local Queens pals say Boone Terrell he drinks, but he never goes on a binge. No sir! Boone Terrell has two kids, he takes care of his kids. Oh, sometimes he’ll tie one on over a Friday or Saturday night, but never any longer. His wife comes out from somewhere on the weekends, so sometimes he gets drunk, but not often. No, Boone Terrell he watches his kids, stays with his wife.’

Preacher Gazzo, Captain Mouth. They say, the thousands who have faced his verbal barrage, that when he starts talking, lawyers plead guilty. Boone Terrell only looked at him.

‘I guess it’s true? My Annie’s dead?’

Gazzo walked away into a corner. Terrell’s eyes followed him. That’s one of the tricks, the walkaway. Prisoners, or witnesses, want to please their interrogator. Deep down, somehow, they all want to please, as if that will make them safe. Sergeant Jonas took Gazzo’s place. Jones is the hard questioner.