Night of the Toads

Chapter Twenty-Two

Manhasset is on the North Shore of Long Island just outside the city limits. I took a cab from Steiner Street to Flushing Main Street, and caught the Long Island Railroad. From there it was twenty minutes on a slow train. Most of the trains are slow, and I had time to look out of the window at the neat suburban houses on their manicured plots of small land. I had time to think of Boone Terrell who had been sustained by the need to act for his children, but who had now lost that need to act, and so had only Anne Terry to think about-his loss and his emptiness. Any life was better than no life, and a weekend wife better than no wife at all.

I had time on the slow train to think of Anne Terry, too. Somehow, she was fading in the inexorable twists of events. Her death usurped by the stronger hates of Emory Foxx and Ricardo Vega, as her life had been ruled by their power. She was fading among the neat houses outside the train window-the homes of people she had not known, and who did not want to know her.

Manhasset was exclusive once, a place of the rich. It’s middle-class now, but still a nice place to live. Part of the exodus from the cities, the middle-class migration to a narrow safety that is not particularly Protestant, and not necessarily Anglo-Saxon, but that is very much white. A sterile landscape behind an invisible stockade of fear and power and advantage, built to keep out the poor and crude, the dirty and disadvantaged, the communal and bleeding. In these homes of the comfortable, the people want no intrusion, no competition. They want to keep the advantages they have, and Anne Terry could count for nothing here-alive or dead.

Anne Terry had had no dream of privilege, but only of work, of finding somewhere a reason to live. In this dark landscape they could only hate her for the wind she brought to shake their comfort, and she was fading from me among the Vegas and Foxxes and manicured lawns. I didn’t want to lose her. I needed her with me among these houses that sat like impervious toads. I needed her honesty and her laugh: ‘I wanted something big, Gunner, you believe it. I made a bad play, a mistake, but I wanted it alive, Gunner man, not small and wrinkled and flat.’

She was my reason, Anne Terry, and at Manhasset station I took a mini-bus taxi that dropped me at a red brick house with a lawn and lighted windows. The lawn wasn’t especially large, and the backyard was fenced. A middleclass house on a well-behaved street in the quiet suburbs. If there were private quirks, they were firmly inside. Not even a careless gardening tool marred the proper order.

George Lehman opened the door himself. His suit coat was off, but he still wore his tie. A napkin in his belt, a black yamalke skullcap on his bald head that gave his fleshy face a kind of ancient dignity. He nodded to me before I could speak.

‘Fortune, sure,’ he said. ‘Come in.’

A small entrance hall was crowded, spotless, and smelled of rich food. The living room had that mixture of German and Russian heaviness of the New York Yiddish culture-dark, thick furniture; ornate silver menorahs, faintly oriental tapestries like ikons. In the dining room six people sat silent around a long oak table that gleamed white and silver, and an ornate samovar steamed on a side table. The six people were three male, three female. The males wore the same black yamalkes.

‘My family,’ George Lehman said.

His fleshy hand moved a few inches. As if that was a command, all six people at the table stood and formed a kind of line in front of the table. The three males stood stiffly, the women with more diffidence. Lehman looked at me with what I could only call a soft pride.

‘Mr Fortune came to see me on business,’ Lehman said. It was a statement and an explanation, as if in this house George Lehman made the decisions, but everyone was entitled to know the basis of those decisions.

He indicated the family ranged in front of me one at a time with his thick hand. His voice different here, that gentle pride, firm but kind.

‘My son Saul, he goes to Brandeis University.’

A tall, thin youth with a dark beard, who bowed his neck.

‘My son David. David is at Colombia University.’

Fatter and shorter, like his father, David grinned.

‘My daughter Sylvia. Soon she marries her rabbi.’

The girl was petulant, but she hid it carefully. Her father not all she wanted, but she didn’t say that in this house.

‘My brother Maurice.’

An older man, short, who smiled from a friendly face.

‘My sister-in-law Sophie, who lives with us.’

The poor relation, grateful, and admiring Lehman.

‘And my wife Florrie. My best luck.’

The wife blushed. ‘George, you embarrass your friend.’

Lehman smiled, and I nodded to them all, managed a mumble. Only the oldest boy stared at my arm. Lehman dropped his napkin onto the table.

‘You all finish dinner,’ he said. ‘Save some tea.’

‘I’ll bring down two glasses,’ the wife said.

‘That’s fine, Florrie,’ Lehman said.

He nodded me from the dining room. Not even the wife had asked who or what I was, or why I was there. In this house George Lehman was the patriarch, benign and respected, never questioned. He led me down into the basement. It was a finished basement-playroom with pool table, refrigerator, television, record player, posters, the trimmings of young people; and an office with desk and leather chairs.

‘Okay, Fortune, sit down,’ Lehman said.

He sat behind the desk, I took a chair. I still wore my duffle coat. He hadn’t asked me to take it off. He had closed the office door. Upstairs, the patriarch with his family in his home. Down here, alone with me, the visitor from another world, he was Ricardo Vega’s business manager.

He took off the yamalke. ‘We say prayers at meals.’

‘A nice family,’ I said. ‘Does Vega come here much?’

‘Rey never comes here.’

I heard a tone is his voice-Rey Vega didn’t come here; Rey would pollute this house, this family. The split identity so many of us live with today. Anne Terry had not been alone in living two lives, but where she had been one person in two, even three, sub-worlds, Lehman was two people in one big world. Anne was unique, to herself. Lehman was all too common these days. The work identity, and the private identity: separate, lost from each other. The private standards left at home, the public man with different values. The kind patriarch tall at home, moral, and the narrow servant of Rey Vega at work, flexible.

‘You were hurt,’ he said, looking at my head.

‘I was hurt,’ I said. ‘Sean McBride was hurt more, and Vega’s in jail.’

‘A mistake. Rey didn’t kill anyone.’

‘I know,’ I said, ‘Emory Foxx framed him good.’

I watched his heavy face. His wary eyes, like thin shell, showed nothing, but his heavy eyebrows went up.

‘You know that?’ he said.

‘I can prove it now, Lehman. I’ve got the proof.’

‘You? What proof? Foxx hasn’t talked, I know him.’

‘First tell me about Emory Foxx. Why does he hate Vega? Fifteen years of hating, Captain Gazzo says.’

‘Nothing much to tell,’ Lehman said. ‘Just an old feud. Started before I was business manager. I was Rey’s accountant then.’

‘The D.A. thinks a jury’ll lap it up,’ I said. ‘You don’t want to tell me?’

He mopped at his face with a handkerchief, shrugged. ‘They worked together out in Hollywood then. Emory Foxx was a pretty big writer at the studio. Rey was called out to do his first picture after dazzling them with those two big hits on Broadway. They worked together on the picture. They couldn’t get along; it was Rey’s picture, from one of the plays on Broadway. Foxx was running dry, played out, I guess, and Rey was the new King. Foxx got fired, or shifted to another picture, actually. Pretty soon after that everyone got called up by one of those Congressional investigations.’

I could see the sweat circles spreading under his arms in his shirt sleeves. He mopped at his hands. ‘It was happening all over in those days. Everyone hauled to Washington, or before a junketing committee on a witchhunt. They called Rey. He told them straight: he’d been a kid Communist in Cuba, joined left-wing fronts later in New York-everyone had at the time. He’d busted years before, and he proved it. Emory Foxx clammed up, refused to talk. He got cited, went to jail for over a year, and got blacklisted from movies and Broadway. He said Rey ‘got’ him to ruin him, climb over him. That was crazy, everyone knew it. Rey was already in solid, on his way up, and Foxx had been dropped from the picture six months before. Rey didn’t have any reason to hurt Foxx, none.’

‘How did he say Vega ‘got’ him?’ I said.

‘He never did say straight out, because he had nothing to say,’ Lehman said, angry. ‘The guy was a Communist, that’s all. He was one then, and they knew he was lying, and he’s still a Communist! Maybe that’s why he’s after Rey, because Rey’s been against the Communists for years. Or maybe he just cracked crazy. I don’t know, but he’s been hounding Rey ever since he got out of jail-thirteen years, more! Hounding him!’

‘No one seems to know much about it?’

‘Because Foxx never come out in the open with it. All behind-the-scenes, private sniping, lying to people! He’s too scared to try it in the open. Years ago Rey had to send lawyers to threaten slander suits, or libel. Foxx was on parole a while, and Rey warned him he’d charge him and send him back. No newspaper or magazine’ll touch Foxx, they know Rey would ruin them. Maybe he’s had it hard. I guess he finally cracked open.’

When he finished, he sat for a moment as if seeing those old days. His face didn’t look like the memory was beautiful. He moved, lighted a cigarette, waited for me to speak.

I said, ‘I guess he finally ‘got’ Vega, too.’

He dropped the barely smoked cigarette into an ash tray, leaned across the desk toward me.

‘You said you could prove it was a frame-up?’

‘I can prove Foxx framed Vega for Anne Terry’s death, maybe for Marshall’s killing, but Vega had to try to murder Emory Foxx, and kill Mrs Foxx by mistake.’

I slipped my hand into my pocket, gripped my old pistol. I didn’t think I’d need it, not really, but I like to be careful. A one-armed man needs help in a fight.

I said, ‘Vega sent Sean McBride. You know he did, Lehman.’

I had my cannon on its way out. I never did see where his gun came from. A small automatic, maybe a 7.65mm. Mauser, in his right hand. He held it at me. I brought my hand out empty.

‘You saw me at Foxx’s place,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t sure.’

A mistake, that’s what I’d made. No, two mistakes. I had been sure George Lehman didn’t use guns, few people do. I had been sure he wouldn’t defend Ricardo Vega so far. Too many mistakes for my work. Inside, I was jelly, but I talked.

‘I won’t move anywhere, Lehman. You’ll have to shoot here with your family upstairs, or nowhere. I’m tied to this case, Gazzo’ll trace me to you easy. For what, Lehman? For Rey Vega? You and McBride were tools. You weren’t even in the actual bombing. Turn witness for the state, you’ll get off light. Vega’s the killer. Kill me, you’ll get caught, rot in-’

‘What if Rey never sent us?’ he said. ‘On our own.’

We all make too many mistakes, every day. Most of them don’t kill us. A third mistake-because all along I’d wanted Vega to be guilty of a crime? Lehman was saving that Ricardo Vega had killed no one, and he had a gun, and deep down I knew he was telling the truth. I was cold. I felt the chill down to my feet. My mouth as dry as caked mud inside.

Lehman said, ‘An ex-con’s nightmare is going back. So I waited. If they were going to convict Rey for Anne Terry, why hang myself? But you tell me you can prove Rey’s been framed, and you saw me on that street, so now I have to move. You’re sure you can prove Rey was framed for Anne Terry?’

I managed a nod.

‘And Ted Marshall?’

I nodded again.

‘You’ll swear you saw me-across the street? Outside?’

Somehow, maybe it was his calm eyes, I sensed what he wanted me to say. The truth. ‘I saw you. Outside.’

He nodded. ‘I could shoot you, keep quiet, maybe be safe, maybe not,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. If I kill you, tell nothing, Rey Vega’s going to jail. No jury could see it any way except Vega at least sent McBride to kill Foxx, any more than you and the police did. If I let you go and don’t tell my story, it’s even worse for Rey he sent both of us. Maybe if you hadn’t seen me-’ He thought about that, shook his head as if wondering about himself. ‘Give me the pistol, Fortune.’

He emptied my old gun one-handed, put the bullets in his pocket, the gun in his belt. He laid his automatic on the desk.

‘I couldn’t let you take me in,’ he said. ‘I go on my own. That way maybe they believe it all, maybe I get a break.’

The saliva began to flow in my mouth again.

‘Funny,’ Lehman said. ‘Right now I don’t care a damn about Rey Vega. I’ll lose all he gave me, anyway.’

‘What happened at Emory Foxx’s place, Lehman?’

He had more on his mind. ‘I’ve been thinking all week. I’ll never be important-no leader, no boss. I’m not hard enough to put my mistakes on the shoulders of another guy, let him take the punishment for me. Vega can. Big man. He’ll wash his hands of me. I still have to tell it. A born loser, Fortune. Soft, scared to hurt another man. Hang myself first, and hope for a pat on the back.’

He was right, but, somehow, his face didn’t seem so flabby to me anymore. We’d both never be big men in this world. We didn’t have the gall, the narrow ego to think that only we really mattered, counted for anything.

I called Gazzo’s office. The night sergeant said that Gazzo was out picking up Emory Foxx. Boone Terrell was there. When I hung up, Lehman had his coats on.

‘Why would you kill Foxx on your own, Lehman?’ I asked.

‘Not me,’ he said, ‘McBride. Let’s go, get it over.’