Night of the Toads

Chapter Twenty

A bomb meant for Emory Foxx, alias Emory Foster. I thought about it all Sunday morning.

When health returns, all the needs return, too: good and bad. Maybe the only time in his life that a man sees what is really important is when he’s sick, or dying-sun, time, and being alive with everyone else alive. I was feeling normal, back in the world with my today-and-tomorrow desires, demands. I wanted Ricardo Vega guilty of something. Now I was sure he was. That bomb had been intended to kill Emory Foxx.

I thought about it all morning, fiercely, and in the afternoon Marty came. She had a tall, fair, handsome man with her. A man I didn’t know, who wore good, quiet clothes, and had a nice smile.

‘Hello, baby,’ Marty said. ‘Kurt came along; we’re doing some scene work. Dan Fortune, our director Kurt Reston.’

Kurt Reston had a firm grip, but not too firm since I was a sick man. He made easy small talk, then faded into the background. A confident man. Probably good at his work.

‘You scared me this time, Dan,’ Marty said.

‘Who was killed?’ I asked.

‘Sean McBride, and a Mrs Emory Foxx.’

So I really had known the half-faced ‘thing’ at the top of those stairs. Sean McBride, wondering in his last seconds why the world had gone and done such a thing to him. And Mrs Foxx, sure: the innocent bystander, who, from the glimpse I’d had of her, had died inside a long time ago from standing by while Emory Foxx hated Ricardo Vega. Now she’d taken his bomb.

‘They’ve arrested Vega,’ Marty said. ‘We’ve suspended.’

‘What’s Vega charged with? Did they arrest Emory Foxx?’

‘That’s all I know, Dan. We’re being paid while we wait. George Lehman’s running things. Kurt has a new show for next year I may have a part in. We’re working on it.’

‘Very good, baby,’ I said.

She talked some more about what she was doing, and kissed me before she left. Kurt Reston held the door for her. He had the manners not to touch even her arm while I could still see them. My one and only real friend, Joe Harris, came in next. We talked about nothing for an hour. Joe is that kind of old friend. He was just glad I was alive.

Captain Gazzo finally arrived about 5:00 p.m. He had a two-day growth of whiskers on his tender face, and his eyes had that steel surface that comes from long sessions of talking around and around a case.

He lighted a cigarette. ‘Ten seconds earlier and you’re dead. Homemade bomb, a stinking fuse job. The damn fool.’

His hands shook on the cigarette. It had to be fatigue; Gazzo has no nerves.

‘Sean McBride took the bomb there?’

Gazzo nodded. ‘We found the makings in his room. Bomb squad tells it like this: McBride wore a messenger’s uniform, had the bomb in a package. Must have told the wife he had to see Emory Foxx in person, and waited. Foxx was late-he got there right after it blew, found you down on the third floor.’

‘Yeh,’ I said. ‘I remember seeing his face-vaguely.’

‘When McBride heard you coming up, he must have figured it was Foxx. He gave the package to Mrs Foxx, and went to open the door. That’s when it blew. It has to figure like that: the woman was in pieces, she had to be holding the bomb. McBride lived a couple of minutes and staggered out.’

‘Ricardo Vega sent him with the bomb? To get Foxx?’

Gazzo blew smoke. ‘McBride never met Emory Foxx. But Vega and Foxx have been enemies for maybe thirteen years.’

‘So you’re holding Vega. What does he say?’

‘He says Emory Foxx framed him for Anne Terry’s death, and maybe for Ted Marshall’s murder. He says he knows nothing about McBride and the bomb. Says he’d fired McBride.’

‘He had,’ I said. ‘I was there.’

‘Sure,’ Gazzo said. ‘Maybe he wanted you to hear him fire McBride. Or maybe he cooled down, kissed and made up. Vega’s got the reputation for blowing up fast, cooling down fast. Artistic temperament. Remember when he told us he hadn’t sent McBride to Anne Terry’s apartment the day you saw McBride there, and McBride got picked up by us?’

‘I remember. Vega said he had no reason to send McBride.’

‘He didn’t have a reason, not logically, but Ricardo Vega seems to work to his own logic,’ Gazzo said dryly.

I could believe that-the prince makes his own logic.

‘Now he admits he did send McBride to Anne Terry’s place that day,’ Gazzo said. ‘He’d read the newspaper, and we’d talked to him a little, so he sent McBride to find out what was up, and to keep him out of it. A little private investigation to cover himself just in case. He had McBride keep an eye on everyone just to know what was what. Then after you described ‘Emory Foster’ when we were at his place, he knew that Emory Foxx was involved, and sent McBride around to find out what Foxx was doing. All that he admits-but no bomb!’

‘Yeh,’ I said, thought in the bed. ‘If it’s true, Vega dug himself in deep by trying to be too smart, too arrogant.’

‘If it’s true,’ Gazzo said.

‘What’s Emory Foxx’s story?’

‘He admits to hating Vega. He says he knew Anne Terry was a Vega girl friend. When he read she was missing, he went to Sarah Wiggen and told her about Vega. After that he snooped around, watched Vega, watched Ted Marshall, talked to Boone Terrell. He hoped to prove that Vega handled the abortion. He thinks Vega found out, and sent McBride to kill him.’

‘Does he say why they’re enemies? So long?’

‘The D.A. won’t talk about that, not even to me. He says it’s a bombshell motive. The kind juries believe.’

‘Won’t Vega tell what it is?’

‘Not a word. Refuses to discuss Emory Foxx, except to say the man was framing him. The lawyers have Vega clammed up, too. They don’t want him denying things he won’t be charged with. Juries have a way of remembering denials.’

‘How does the D.A. see it all?’

In sunlight Gazzo seemed smaller, drier. Night was his life. ‘Vega paid the blackmail to Anne Terry, but just to lull her. With Ted Marshall’s help, he fixed the abortion. He murdered her with the wrong pills, probably by letting Marshall give them to her so she’d think it was okay. He had McBride kill Marshall to silence him. Emory Foxx was snooping too much, found out too much, so Vega sent McBride with the bomb.’

‘What did Foxx find out that was too much?’

‘He says he saw McBride at Mashall’s building just before Marshall took his dive, among other things. Mostly he backs up what we know-says he saw Marshall and Vega talking on Tuesday, saw McBride skulking around you, Marshall, Anne’s apartment. The money clip traced to Vega, by the way. He claims he lost the clip five or six years ago.’

I knew what the D.A. would do with a money clip lost six years ago that turned up in an abortion room where evidence already placed Ricardo Vega.

‘Version number two,’ Gazzo said. ‘Vega did it all the same, except that he didn’t murder Anne Terry. It was a bungled abortion. Once she was dead, Vega panicked and covered with two murders. The D.A. likes that better. With Marshall dead, unless we find the abortionist, we can’t tie Vega to the pills. A bungled abortion, covered by murder, is the kind of panic a jury understands. They can see themselves doing that.’

I let it all sink in for time. Gazzo seemed to be doing the same.

‘You don’t like either version, Dan?’ Gazzo said.

‘I’m sure that the note was a plant.’ I told him why. ‘Probably the money clip, too, but I can’t prove it.’

‘Maybe they were, especially the note,’ Gazzo said, ‘but that doesn’t clear Vega. Lieutenant Denniken is up for a commendation on Vega. Denniken points out that maybe the note is a plant, but that doesn’t make Boone Terrell a liar. Vega was the man, and Anne told Boone, but there wasn’t any proof. Emory Foxx talked to Terrell, heard what Anne had said, and made up the note to back it up.’

‘I think it was a frame-up all the way,’ I said. ‘That’s why Vega sent McBride with the bomb.’

He crushed out his cigarette. ‘Prove it, Dan. Maybe I see it the same, but I’m blocked. Chief McGuire says I have to give him one solid piece of proof it was a frame-up before he’ll let me put taxpayer’s time into busting a good case. I could work on my own time, but a Homicide Captain out of his own territory doesn’t blend into the background, and Denniken’s out to hog-tie me. The D.A.’s convinced, too-Vega’s guilty of the abortion. I think he’s guilty, too. Dan, but I want it to be the right crime. Go and get me the right crime.’

I thought about it for the rest of the night-alone. Sometimes lack of knowledge can help a man see better. An expert, like Denniken and the D.A. rarely see that things can be different than they are. An aura of inevitability hangs over the judgment of experts-what is, must be. They can’t see beyond their own experience. I can, sometimes.

Now I could see Boone Terrell in the Interrogation Room-too firm, too contained, too calm. Like a man holding in his grief because he had work to do. Money work, maybe-paid to tell a false story. Money work for his children.

Or maybe Boone Terrell just wanted to hurt Ricardo Vega. And maybe, in the end, he had-if he had lied, and that lie had made Vega send a bomb to Emory Foxx.