Night of the Toads

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.’

‘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.