Night of the Toads

Chapter Five

I walked down Fifth Avenue, and across Washington Square, among the spring hordes of a sunny Village afternoon. The well-dressed men and their women, the outsiders from ‘real’ life, wandered giggling and pointing, having one hell of a time gawking at the bizarre flora and fauna of this year’s Village population. The bright-coloured local birds-of-passage themselves-all shapes, sexes and skins, each in the plumage of his choice-stared at no one and nothing, all going somewhere, intent on their purpose. That makes you wonder.

On Third Street The New Theatre was tucked between an open pizza stand and a psychedelic poetry-reading club. A tiny marquee, with pictures of the players in action outside. There was a padlock on the inner doors. A sign indicated that tickets for the next production wouldn’t go on sale for three weeks. The photos outside were from an earlier production.

Anne Terry was in most of the photos, and I had another view of her: the actress. Good or bad I couldn’t know from the pictures, but they told me one thing-Anne Terry wasn’t just a pretty face with her good side to the camera, or her breasts stuck into your eye. She had been caught in action; neck cords stretched like ropes, mouth twisted, body in powerful motion. An intensity that came over even in still shots. Intense: the one word I could fit to all I had seen of her so far, and I didn’t see her abandoning all she was doing. But if she had chucked it all, that intensity would make it hard to find her.

There was a portrait of Theodore Marshall, and he was easy to spot in the action shots. Intense wasn’t a word for Marshall. Tall, slender, handsome in a juvenile way, with a brooding face and thick, black hair. No actor-posed, stiff, mugging emotion; all surface, all conscious attitude, the eyes uninvolved and even a little scared. Maybe a lover of theatre, but no actor. Yet the man I had to find next. The first drugstore gave me his address from the telephone book.

It was only a few blocks away across Sixth Avenue. A red brick apartment house. The best, semi-new building on a block of tenement brownstones. It had gone to seed, the bare lobby shabby with streaks on the stone floor where a wet mop had been swished around in a feeble show of cleaning. A solid, middle-class New York apartment house, neither good nor slum: respectable. Theodore Marshall lived on the fifth floor. I rode up.

An older woman answered my ring. ‘Yes?’

She was small and motherly, thickened by years of routine daily round in a simple, accepted world. She was dressed now in a suit, on her way out, and her hair was dyed dark. She looked at my missing arm.

‘Mr Theodore Marshall?’ I asked.

‘Theodore?’ She paused. ‘Is it about his theatre?’

‘About Anne Terry.’

‘Anne? Well, come in then.’

Brisk, she led me into a square living room that looked as if it had been there a long time. Clean and pleasant, but with the dusty feeling that comes from age, wear and little change. She sat down, perched on a couch with her handbag on her lap.

‘Well, tell me’ she said. ‘You’ve found her? Where was the silly girl? You’re police?’

She made me think of Ricardo Vega again, of his age. Five, maybe ten years older, the woman looked like Vega’s mother. The will inside a person again. This woman content, even insistent, to be old and comfortable like the heavy, styleless furniture of the room. Only the dyed hair struck a false note. From the hair, and the outdoor suit, I judged she worked.

‘A private detective,’ I said. ‘We haven’t found Anne as far as I know.’

‘Private detective? Then you’ve come to ask Theodore more questions? I assure you my son told all he knew.’

‘People remember later,’ I said. ‘New questions.’

I had the feeling of being interrogated, screened before I could see some dignitary. My business was being analysed, and found not sufficiently urgent.

‘He’s tried to remember anything. We’re both worried, of course. Perhaps if you came back later?’

‘Time could be important, Mrs Marshall.’

She accepted the name. So Theodore Marshall lived with his mother. It didn’t fit my image of him, but, then, what image could I have yet? All his clothes at Anne Terry’s apartment-a home away from Mother? The rent right in both places?

‘But he’s asleep, you see?’ Mrs Marshall said. ‘He’s hardly slept since he heard about Anne. He had an accident last week, quite serious. Now I must go to work.’

I didn’t want to push too hard, but, ‘If I could-’

An inner door opened in the kitchen beyond the living room where the windows overlooked a rear courtyard and the walls of tenements across the yards. Theodore Marshall came out, his fingers automatically straightening his thick hair. In person he was taller and thinner. He wore narrow black slacks custom-made to his slim hips, a silky blue-and-white cotton shirt Ricardo Vega would admire, a sky-blue silk tie, and cuff links of sky-blue stones. A man who liked good clothes-so much that he napped in them. Mrs Marshall’s eyes showed that Theodore Marshall admiration began at home. Maybe only love.

‘I heard, Ma,’ he said. He had a soft, pleasant voice, eager now. ‘You’re a private eye? Can you find Anne? I mean, like, you were hired? Mr-’

‘Dan Fortune. Sarah Wiggen hired me.’

Suprise arched his pale face. He had an unhealthy pallor, and his eyes up close were very pale hazel-the impression of dark eyes coming from sunken eye sockets with dark circles. I had seen faces like his on gamblers who worked tensely in smoky rooms far from the sunlight, and who lay awake nights full of schemes. Like Anne Terry, Marshall had the look of a man who burned his candle at all ends. At least from what I could see of his normal face. I couldn’t see too much. One eye was badly bruised and puffed almost shut. His lips were split, swollen. His nose looked thick and scabbed, and a bandage covered his left ear and part of his cheek. There was a thickness under the silky shirt that had to be bandaged ribs. He saw me staring.

‘Stupid trick,’ he said wryly. ‘Doing the pipe lights at the theatre. Ladder went over, I landed off the stage in the pit. Damn near a hospital job.’

‘You’re surprised Sarah Wiggen hired me?’

‘Sure as hell I am. Not that it isn’t damned sweet of Sarah, but, Christ, I didn’t figure she’d care that much.’

‘Please, Theodore,’ Mrs Marshall said.

He grinned, punched her lightly on the arm. ‘Come on, Ma, I’m a big boy.’

She smiled like a girl. She liked it, her boy’s buddy charm. I realized that it was his swearing she was clucking over, and that it was a standard game with them. They seemed to have a nice relationship. I wondered what Mr Marshall had been like-dull and solid, probably, a quiet man.

‘Sarah and Anne didn’t get along?’ I asked. Sarah Wiggen had hinted at the same thing, but had at least implied that the aloofness was all on Anne’s side.

‘Well,’ Marshall grinned, even blushed. ‘Sarah and me, I, we had a thing for a while. Before I met Anne, you know? We were in the same class a while, me and Sarah. Scene class.’

‘Sarah’s an actress, too?’

‘Was, not now. Quit it. Got some mother-hen job in some kind of residence hall for females.’

‘You and Sarah?’ I said. ‘Then Anne came along?’

‘Bingo, that’s it. We had the same ideas, you know?’

His voice, still soft and pleasant, jerked and jumped like a spastic. Nervous: voice and body. His strange, light eyes were hard to really see, elusive. I saw in them, vaguely, that same self-awareness I had seen in the action pictures of him at the theatre, a small fear that seemed part of him. Not for now, always; as if he lived every day a little afraid. I remembered a very young second mate on a Liberty ship during the war whose eyes had been like that when we entered the war zone. Not afraid of the submarines in themselves, but afraid every day that something would happen to the skipper and first mate, leaving him. A man in over his head on nerve he didn’t really have.

‘You’re nervous,’ I said. ‘Worried about Anne?’

‘That,’ he said, nodded. ‘Maybe more worried without her, you know? She’s cut out, ditched the theatre and all?’

‘You know any reasons she would ditch it?’

‘Not a one.’

‘Nothing? Friends, plans, troubles?’

‘Who knows, you know? I went over on Friday like usual. She wasn’t home. No word before or since. I never see her on weekends, of course. That’s her time with the big sports, money work. Sarah says she talked about going down home, but not to me she didn’t.’

‘You had big plans for your theatre,’ I said. ‘Plans that cost money. Could that be part of her disappearance?’

‘Plans? Hell, we’re not even sure of the next show.’

Mrs Marshall objected, ‘Perhaps you didn’t have big plans, Theodore, but I know Anne did. Why, I’ve heard her talking about them here. It worried me for you. She’s too ambitious.’

‘Knock it off, Ma,’ Marshall said. His voice was curt. ‘Pipe dreams; pie-in-the-sky. Anne and her big dreams. All fog, you know?’

‘Dreams can be trouble,’ I said. ‘Money and influence, is that what she was after?’

Marshall nodded. Mrs Marshall wan’t even listening to me. Her eyes were for her boy.

‘She’s too old for you, Theodore,’ she said.

His pale eyes looked to the ceiling for help. ‘For Christ sake, Ma, I’m four years older than Anne.’

‘She’s a mature woman. You’re still a boy,’ she said.

‘That’s swell, thanks. A boy who lives off his mother, right? Go to work for me, Ma. Work your ass off!’

She flinced, but her voice was calm. ‘That’s hardly called for in front of a stranger.’ She looked at me. ‘Theodore doesn’t like me to work, especially not at night. I’m not fond of it, but the theatre is demanding. He works much too hard, really. He has his odd-hour job, though I’m against that. He shouldn’t waste time on money work without future. Still, the job pays for his clothes, and appearance is vital in the theatre. Of course, I wish Theodore wanted a more solid career, but a career is useless if it isn’t what a man wants. Theodore must have his chance, and you get nowhere with half measures. Now is the time he has to think only of his goal. I’m really quite selfish, you see. Investing for my old age when he’s rich.’

Her smile was a little mocking of herself. A mother who was justifying her son, but who was also pushing him to face his own goals more seriously. Forcing him to really think of the theatre, and not of the girls, the good times, the swagger of being a man of the theatre. Trying to make a man of a boy, and what the hell else would a mother do?

Ted Marshall laughed. ‘A real selfish old hard nut, yes she is.’ He sat on the arm of the couch, put his arm around her. ‘Sorry, Ma, you know? I’ll get rich for you. Okay?’

‘You’re all blarney, Theodore,’ she said, smiled up at him. ‘Now I must go to work. Try to get some sleep, Theodore.’ And to me, ‘Not too long, Mr Fortune, please.’

She got up only a little slowly, and went out without waiting for an answer. I heard her walking toward the elevator. Ted Marshall stared at the closed door.

‘I do live on her. Thanks, Ma, maybe you can take it easy when you’re a hundred. Damn, I will make it up to her. Now all my loot is for the theatre, the big front.’

‘Where do you work?’

‘Nat Brown, the agent. Four days ’til three.’

‘Tell me about Ricardo Vega?’

‘Vega? What about Vega?’

‘Anne was having an affair with him, right?’

‘Not that I know. She’s in his class, that’s all.’

‘You’re a boyfriend?’

‘We make it. No strings, she got to live, and our theatre needs money. I never see her weekends, I don’t ask about it.’

‘You don’t know of any trouble with Vega?’

‘Trouble? No, I don’t.’

I thought. ‘She said to me once that Vega was the power, the action. She wanted to talk to him about something private. Did she ever talk about him backing your theatre, helping, or maybe about getting money from him?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘You know Anne?’

‘A battlefield meeting once,’ I said.

He puzzled me. Was he so naive, or jealous, that she hadn’t told him? Because if he knew about Vega, why hide it? If he had nothing to do with her disappearance, he should want Vega’s possible role investigated. If he was part of whatever had happened to her, if anything, why not jump at the chance to put suspicion on Ricardo Vega? He wasn’t putting suspicion on anyone.

‘Hell,’ he said, ‘she’ll come back soon, you see.’

‘Come back? You know she’s gone somewhere?’

‘Just an expression. I mean, she has to be somewhere, right? I don’t have a clue, believe me.’

‘Do you know a tall, gaunt man?’ I asked, and I described the man I had seen with her in the cafeteria.

‘No one like that. He doesn’t sound her type.’

A key turned in the door. It meant nothing to me, but it did to Ted Marshall. He got up with a grunt, clutched at his ribs. A short, dark man in army fatigues came in. The newcomer took three quick steps into the room.

‘Ted, I-’

He saw me, gave a small gasp, almost rose up on his toes, and his hand flew to his mouth. A girlish gesture, startled and automatic. He looked like a girl, a delicate face, a slender body. Yet he was no boy. Over thirty, his face lined, his bare forearms muscled. His hands were stained, had broken nails. He tried to recover, smiled coyly, wagged his hips-girlish.

‘You mother,’ he said, ‘she leave. I think now is good time… well… So introduce me to your friend.’

A woman’s phrase, coy. The tone, the manner-one of the boys. Ted Marshall. His pallor was flushed pink. He ground his teeth as he spoke.

‘Dan Fortune, Frank Madero-our night super. Mr Fortune’s a detective, Frank. Private.’

His voice was tight. It was there all right, a ‘thing’ between them. Both of them vibrated like nerve ends. Ted Marshall had been quick to tell Madero that I was a private cop, no threat from the vice squad. Oh, hell.

‘Francisco,’ Madero said, bowed. ‘I am from Cuba. I come later, Ted, of no importance. The leak of the faucet. A pleasure to know you, Mr Fortune. I am not always the janitor. Maybe I see you sometime.’

He went as fast as he had come. Here to fix a leak, okay, but he had expected to find Ted Marshall here, and alone. I let Marshall break the freeze.

‘He’s… a friend, too. Nice guy. Not like most supers,’ he said lamely.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘If you remember anything, call me.’

In the corridor I lit a cigarette, and swore. I didn’t care if Ted Marshall liked orangutans, but if he swung both ways, and wanted to hide it, the mess could be complicated. If he did swing two ways, and wanted to hide it, he wasn’t going to be much help. He would stay far away from the heavy boots of the police.