Night of the Toads

Chapter Twenty-Four

Emory Foxx laughed at us. ‘That’s quite a story. Lehman should write TV scripts. Beautiful! You notice how it makes Vega pure as snow, and Mr Lehman a poor duped lamb? Everything done by Sean McBride-who happens to be conveniently dead and very silent. A really perfect story-for Ricardo Vega.

Gazzo said, ‘An ex-con? He lies, risks going back to prison, loses everything he’s made for a lot of years?’

‘Lehman would do anything for Vega,’ Foxx snorted. ‘He’s grateful. I’ve watched him bowing and scraping for years. Vega would pay him a fortune to save his yellow skin, and what does Lehman risk? That you don’t believe the part about him now knowing McBride had a bomb. It’s a risk, yes, but Vega would pay big, and if you believe Lehman, he gets a slapped wrist.’

I said, ‘I believe him, Foxx. In thirteen years neither Vega or Lehman tried to kill you. McBride is with Vega a few weeks, and he takes a bomb to you. It fits McBride alone.’

‘Vega never found an animal to do his killing before!’

Gazzo said, ‘That note McBride wrote, you have it, Lehman?’

Lehman took the note from his inner pocket. Gazzo read it. ‘It’s handwritten, Foxx. It says what Lehman told us: McBride wanted to do Vega a favour by handling you, he wanted Lehman’s help. We’ll prove it’s McBride’s writing. Lehman’s secretary is a witness. McBride alone bought the bomb materials; we checked. He made it in his room, all night like a crazy man, alone. No, McBride had the idea by himself.’

‘Ted Marshall, then!’ Foxx said. ‘McBride hadn’t been fired then. He was working for Vega. Maybe Vega found out that Marshall was helping to frame him. I saw McBride there-twice that night. I’m not lying, the superintendent saw him.’

‘He already told me he saw McBride,’ I admitted.

George Lehman said, ‘I don’t know. Rey was pretty mad at Marshall, yeh. Before he found out about you, Foxx, he had the idea Marshall was working against him. He sent McBride to watch Marshall, and Fortune, and Fortune’s girl-off and on. Rey blows a lot of steam, that’s how he is. Maybe he said something about wanting Marshall off his back, and McBride did the same thing he tried with Foxx.’

‘It’s a pattern,’ Gazzo said. ‘Men usually work, and kill in a pattern.’

‘McBride went crazy when he beat a man,’ Lehman recalled. ‘When that friend of Marshall’s was patching Marshall up after we beat him, he said McBride had almost killed him then. Maybe McBride thought Rey wanted Marshall ‘handled’ again, went and beat him around some more, and killed him. That could be where he got the idea to use the bomb next-nothing to lose.’

I said, ‘My woman can tell things about McBride’s violence, and impulse action. You’re blinded by hate, Foxx. You want to hurt Vega any way you can. I know about that, believe me. Too much hate in you, Foxx.’

‘Too much?’ Foxx said. ‘Too much hate? There isn’t any hate too much for Vega, Fortune.’

‘What was it, Foxx?’ Gazzo said. ‘Your reason? The D.A. never has told me the motive would shake a jury so hard.’

Foxx seemed to shrink where he stood, said nothing.

‘Lehman told me,’ I said. I told them everything Lehman had told me about Hollywood, and Congressional investigation, the blacklisting. ‘It’s a sad story, but not enough for all Foxx has done for thirteen years. An obsession, magnified.’

Emory Foxx sat down as if the memory of those years I had told about was too much weight. He looked at George Lehman. Lehman met his stare. Foxx licked at his lips, the heavy face twisted, the words he wanted to say somehow unable to come out. He looked at me, his voice hoarse when it came.

‘Broke with Communism? Vega told them he’d broken with the Party, and he proved it?’ Foxx said, looked around at all of us. ‘Did Lehman tell you how Vega proved he’d broken with Communism? Did he tell you that? No, he didn’t tell you, he wouldn’t.’

All at once my neck began to crawl. A faint sensation, somehow aware of what was to come. ‘How, Foxx?’

Foxx watched Lehman. ‘He says Vega had no reason to want me out of his way. He’s right. Vega was the new genius then. I wasn’t in his way. He had it all going, a brilliant future. He has his brilliant future now, but at that moment back then he was afraid he’d lose it at the start. Down inside he’s always been a coward, fearful, he won’t be on top someday.’

‘What did he do, Foxx?’ Gazzo said.

Foxx laughed the coldest laugh I’d ever heard. ‘He proved he wasn’t a Communist anymore, he was clean.’ His voice was almost light, amused in a macabre way. ‘He proved it to those Congressmen by giving them every name of everyone who’d been Communists with him! He crawled on his belly to make them forgive him, let him go. He confessed everything about himself-and everything he knew about everyone else! His friends! He talked, and talked, and I was one of the names he talked about. They called me back. I wouldn’t talk. So I went to jail, I was blacklisted for thirteen years, and Ricardo Vega went on to the top.’

Lehman said, ‘He was scared, a kid from the slums of Havana. One slip, Foxx. He’s a genius. One mistake.’

‘One mistake? Forgive him?’ Foxx said. ‘He destroyed twenty men one way or the other, to save himself. He wasn’t even really in danger, a small risk, but he wouldn’t even take the risk. He volunteered to talk, babbled. To please that committee! And since then? He’s been safe, but he kept me on the blacklist, used lawyers to keep me quiet, threatened everyone who might listen to me, or hire me! He’s got the power. I was a convicted Communist, so he’s kept me silent for thirteen years. One mistake?’

Lehman had no more to say. It was a long time ago, and those had been frightened days for a lot of people, but how many had volunteered to destroy others to save themselves? Vega a little more scared-a kid from the Havana slums, to be understood? Would I have understood? Forgive? I don’t know. Maybe Foxx could be understood, forgiven.

‘I’ll go to jail?’ Foxx said. ‘For framing Vega?’

‘You’ll go to jail,’ Gazzo said.

‘Good.’ Foxx smiled, and it was a toad smile now. ‘A trial, right? A jury, newspaper, TV, magazines. I can tell my story at the trial. They’ll print it now. No danger to print it when I tell it all in court. Vega is news. They’ll do it big; magazine stories, the works. My story, Anne Terry’s story, all about McBride. It all comes out. I’ll get him after all!’

Thirteen years is a long time to hate, and to be frustrated. An obsession big enough to make him grasp at a frail staw to commit legal murder on Vega had to be fed.

‘I guess you will,’ Gazzo said, ‘if anyone cares by now. You paid a hell of a price. Prison, and a dead wife.’

Emory Foxx was pale for a moment. ‘We all die, Captain. She hadn’t had much life since I went to prison anyway.’

Gazzo waved an arm. ‘Take him and book him. Lehman, too.’

Dectectives took Foxx and Lehman out. The rest of the detectives left. Boone Terrell waited. After his own story had been told, Terrell had listened in silence. His impassive farmer’s face had reacted only once-when Foxx told what Vega had done to him so long ago. Then Terrell had set his gaunt face in hard judgment on a man who betrayed his friends.

Gazzo said in the vacuum that seemed to hang over the dim room now, ‘The D.A. doesn’t take to frame-ups. He won’t go gentle on Foxx. The trial should be a circus all right. Vega’ll find enemies he never even heard of.’

‘Lehman?’ I said.

‘He came in on his own. If the D.A. believes him, we might settle for a low guilty plea, suspend it.’

‘If he goes to trial, I can help. A jury should believe my story about him.’

‘Yeh, a patsy for Sean McBride and Vega,’ Gazzo said, and he looked at Boone Terrell. ‘You helped Foxx. You signed a false statement. Maybe your wife’s death had you all mixed up. Go on home now, but stay close. I’ll talk with the D.A. If he won’t drop charges, we should get probation at least.’

Terrell unwound his gaunt frame from the chair.

‘I thank you, Captain,’ he said, and walked erect from the room.

I had a momentary vision of seeing him through the cafeteria window on the rainy night when it had all started for me. A vision of Anne Terry’s face, gentle as she had looked at Terrell.

‘She meant a lot to him,’ I said. ‘And she tried to give him something.’

Gazzo watched the door, and scowled into the room.

‘I wish I’d met her. I’ve wished that since about halfway,’ Gazzo said. ‘A blackmailer, and a crazy fool!’

‘You have a drink,’ I said, ‘and you wonder.’

Gazzo’s been a policeman for a long time. ‘They go through here like a parade, Dan. Sometimes the guilty, sometimes the victims, and the difference is a push one way or the other. She was born poor in a rich world; lived poor in a country that still believes in its Puritan lousy soul that the poor deserve to be poor! We gave her a crazy dream and no way to get it. I see that, too-every damned day. Most just dream, but some got to try. What did we give her to try with? A Senator who uses his power to squeeze a better deal than his neighbours: big companies that spend millions to con the public, and thousands to silence critics; blackmail in high places-except we call it influence, the payoff. She’s tough, and strong, and never got past seventh grade, and she uses the weapon she finds! What the hell else do we expect with what we’ve given her?’

‘Expect, Captain?’ I said. ‘We expect her to be a good little girl, accept that she was supposed to be poor.’

‘Let the Ricardo Vegas use her, power her. Yeh.’

‘Not Anne Terry,’ I said. ‘Never passive, no. She had to act, shape her own life, even if it meant the end of her.’

‘You clear the smoke away, it’s a common abortion, Foxx muddying it up, and a nut named Sean McBride,’ Gazzo said. ‘You know what gives me bad dreams, Dan? We get them all, the weak ones caught by circumstances, and the really dangerous one gets away.’

‘The abortionist,’ I said. ‘He was a professional, Gazzo; you’ll get him someday.’

‘Yeh, after he maybe kills how many poor kids got nowhere else to turn the way our very moral citizens make it?’

‘The rich can go to Japan, Denmark,’ I said.

‘Swell,’ Gazzo said.

There was nothing more to say. Gazzo gave me my old gun with its bullets and I left. Boone Terrell was still in the corridor. He sat on the bench with Sarah Wiggen, and the two sleeping little girls. Sarah’s face was flushed and smiling. She thanked me, and Terrell nodded his thanks.

‘Gazzo’ll go to bat for you,’ I said.

‘I appreciate it,’ Terrell said.

‘What do you do now? ‘I said.

Sarah said, ‘I’m going to move out with Boone. We’re going to try, raise the children. I need something more than the job I settled for. Boone’s going to try to work.’

I didn’t ask the obvious question, I didn’t have to. Sarah had a bright glow to her face. She had come to like Boone Terrell over the last week. It was harder to tell with him. His face showed little. He had Anne Terry to forget; a very special woman, and he had loved her maybe too much.

‘Sarah’s a fine woman,’ Terrell said.

I saw Sarah wince. Just a little. It wasn’t a ‘fine woman’ she wanted to be to Terrell. She wanted to be what Anne had been, she probably always would. But she couldn’t be and a ‘fine woman’ was at least a start.

‘Can you find work up here, Boone?’ I said.

‘I reckon I can try,’ he said. ‘Last couple days I been thinkin’. Annie, she was a woman shook a man-like a head o’ real powerful liquor. Like I was drunk on her. Annie was a strong female, and I never wanted to chance losin’ her. If I don’t need her, if the kids don’t need her, maybe she leaves me, see? Maybe I knew that, you know, and didn’t want to find work. Could be all this time I plain wanted to depend on Annie so she’d stay around. Could be my leg ain’t so bad, I could find work don’t pain it much.’

We all seemed to think about that for a time. Sarah stood and began to wrap the little girls in their blankets to carry them out. I said my good-byes, told Boone I was sure he’d find work, told both of them they’d be okay.

Maybe they would be. Sarah could be a different woman if she had a purpose, and Terrell was a simple man. Sally Anne and Aggy could even get a better life out of it. Sarah might get some things of Anne’s after all. Good can come from bad, sometimes.