Night of the Toads

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.

‘You’re saying you’re not sure she’s dead?’

‘I guess I just don’t want to be sure,’ Terrell said.

‘Then how did you know? You sneaked out there Saturday, right? Sure; your wife, another man’s kid in her. You helped her out, gave her some extra pills, killed her!’

‘Anne died from pills? I never did hold with pills,’ Terrell said. ‘Saturday? The kids was all alone-with her?’

I said from my wall, ‘Sally Anne took good care.’

Terrell nodded. ‘Sally Anne’s a good kid.’ He wiped at his face with his big hand. ‘Word got around to me. From the Queens saloon. Fellows told fellows to tell me.’

‘When did word get to you?’ Jonas asked.

‘About morning.’

‘You mean today? Why did you stay away Sunday, even Monday? Your wife always went back to Manhattan on Sunday night. You stayed away, left your kids alone? Why? Because you knew she was dead, you were afraid to go back even for your kids?’

‘You got it wrong,’ Terrell said. Hangover or not, he had an odd dignity. ‘Annie, she come early Friday. Said she was goin’ down to Carolina with the kids, but not with me. We had us a fight. I walked out. I didn’t go back ’cause I figured she was gone. I never knew about that abortion. Didn’t know she was that way. I guess it wasn’t mine.’

Sergeant Jones glanced at Gazzo. The Captain drank a glass of water, walked back to sit on the table in the light.

Gazzo said, ‘You married her when she was fourteen. You must be twenty years older than she was. Tell me about your life with her, Terrell. How did you get to New York?’

Terrell nodded. ‘I was thirty-five when we met up, been married once before down Arkansas. I was up Carolina visitin’. We had us a dance, Annie was there. She’d sneaked out on her folks. She was real beautiful. She liked me, and I told her I had my own place. A woman down that way likes her own place, so marryin’ with older fellers ain’t so special. We married up, and I took her back to Arkansas. Her people cut her off, and that kind of hurt her. I guess my place wasn’t like she’d figured, neither. When we had Sally Anne and Aggy she didn’t even write her Ma. I guess she was ashamed, the life I give her. A hard-rock farm, no better than her Daddy had.’

‘How did she get the idea of New York and the theatre?’ Gazzo asked. ‘A fourteen-year-old from a Carolina farm?’

‘We got TV, Captain, and there was this summer acting place over to Huntsville. I give her a bad life. I never got to no school. All I know is hand farming. She had two kids and not even a cash crop for maybe a decent dress. It wasn’t goin’ to get better. Government people come down and spend more money than God got sinners improvin’ farming. All that does for niggers and folks like me is send us walking. We ain’t needed.’

‘So you walked up here?’

Gazzo said.

‘She done. Eighteen. I did what I could down home. The kids missed Annie; me too. She missed the kids, maybe me, too. She wrote, said come on up we’d figure out something. I was losin’ the farm anyway, not that there was much worth losin’. She got us the place in Queens. I tried to work. The Government don’t do so much for us when we comes up here after we got no place down home. I got a bad leg, it pains me. I ain’t smart, got no work for up here. Odd jobs. Had one once for six months ’fore I got paid off. Annie brought money every week. I lied, got welfare. She come out weekends.’

Gazzo said, ‘You took it; the way she lived along, how she made her money?’

‘You ever see her, Captain? Alive, I mean? Know her?’

I said, ‘I did, Boone.’

‘Then you know why I hung around. What was I about to do in Arkansas alone with the kids and no better off? Up here anyways I seen her regular. There was some money.’

‘You met her in the city, too?’ I asked. ‘Regularly?’

‘Not much, she got to keep us hid. If I was in town, she’d see me a few minutes if she could.’

‘Who watched the kids if you were in town, or boozing?’ Gazzo asked.

‘Baby-sitters if I had money. Most times Sally Anne took care. What else we supposed to do? Everyone got a right to some livin’ of their own. Her Ma taught Sally Anne good. Annie was a good Ma. Tried real hard for the kids, even for me.’

‘And for herself,’ Gazzo said. ‘The big ambition.’

‘Ain’t a person entitled to what she wants, too? Try for it, leastways?’ Terrell said. ‘I ain’t got much schoolin’, but it seems to me we all got our wants, and who says a woman got to forget it all ’cause of what she done at fourteen? She done her best for her kids, and worked for herself, too. Worked like a field hand. She had to keep us hid, she had to get men to help her out. Sure, it made me feel bad. Sometimes she even had to come in on a date Saturday night, but what else did Annie have to help her? She could’ve done better without us, left us in Arkansas. She didn’t. She was good to us.’

We were all silent for a time. Terrell sat with his big hands clasped between his knees, his head down. The detectives just stood. I read some more graffiti: I’m sorry, Marge, I’m sorry… George M. took a plea… So long, Georgie…

Gazzo said, ‘An interesting story, Terrell. You thought a lot of Anne. You expect us to swallow that you went on a big binge just because she was taking the kids to North Carolina? It won’t play, Terrell, not with that story.’

For a time Terrell sat motionless, head down, then he took a deep breath. He raised his head. For an instant, a flash, I had a peculiar feeling that he had expected the Captain to react in exactly that way. He began to nod.

‘I guess you figure me too good,’ he said. ‘She told me she was carrying. She told me what she was fixin’ to do. It wasn’t mine, only maybe it was, too, see? Who wouldn’t go get drunk? By Saturday I got worried, though, so went and watched her come home. She looked okay to me, so I come into town an’ took me a good drunk. I was dryin’ out this mornin’ when some fellers got word to me. I snuck on out to Queens. I saw cops, and the kids was gone, so I knew it was true. I come back in the city to drink some more. I was broke, so I went to Sarah.’

I said, ‘Did you know she tried to blackmail Ricardo Vega?’

‘She talked some,’ Terrell admitted. ‘She said maybe we’d have some money; us and for her theatre. Said it was good I was sick the week before she took them two weeks away in January, and she was alone in Queens. Said it was good I got one kind of blood type. I figured she was fixin’ to squeeze this Vega, only I never did know what happened about it. The Vega feller fixed it up for her to get rid of the kid. She had somethin’ wrote down in case Vega couldn’t take her to the place on Saturday. I guess this Vega knew the Doc who done it.’

For a moment, coming like that in his slow voice, the words seemed unimportant enough. A slow bombshell, delayed. But the words were heard after a few beats, and Gazzo stood up in a kind of slow motion.

Gazzo said. ‘She told you Ricardo Vega arranged the abortion? That he was taking her to the doctor himself? Going with her?’

‘Yes, sir, she said that. Vega’s a name you remembers.’

‘What about Ted Marshall?’ I asked.

‘Never heard about him. I guess I didn’t want to know about all her fellers. Just her, and me, and the kids. That’s what I wanted. Don’t just figure what I do now. I got no money, no work. How do I keep the kids? Could take ’em down Arkansas, or send them to her folks in Carolina. Annie wouldn’t like none of that for the kids.’ He sighed deeply, as if hearing Anne Terry and her plans for her children. ‘Well, you think I can see the kids anyway, Captain?’

‘I’ll fix it,’ Gazzo said. ‘We’ve got no reason to hold you now. But we’re going to check your story and your movements all the way. You understand?’

‘You got your job. I thank you kindly for the kids.’

Terrell stood up, and Gazzo instructed Sergeant Jonas to arrange for Terrell to go to his children. Gazzo nodded to me to follow him out. He didn’t say anything until we were both seated in his shade-drawn office, and he had a cigarette.

‘Well, Dan?’

‘What does Terrell gain by lying?’ I said. ‘Revenge?’ ‘He’s got stone in him, Dan,’ Gazzo said. ‘A man like that can do a lot if he thinks he has to. But just for revenge on one of her men? Anyway, all we have is his word for what she said. His word against Vega’s. We’ll need more.’

‘You’d think he could make a better lie if he was after Vega,’ I said.

‘Yeh, you would,’ Gazzo agreed. He stood up. ‘Let’s go and talk to Vega.’