Night of the Toads

Chapter Eight

A Lieutenant Denniken was in charge. I didn’t know him, Queens isn’t my beat, but I saw the kind he was. A ‘cop’ who lay awake nights hating the Supreme Court for coddling ‘evil’. Law and order; but order before law. Injustice better than disorder.

‘You talk when we ask, Fortune. Go sit down.’

Yet he was human. He found a neighbour woman, not next door where it was still dark, but three houses down. He sent Sally Anne and Aggy with the neighbour before the assistant Medical Examiner arrived. She agreed to keep them until something was decided, if it wasn’t too long, she had her own affairs. She knew nothing about the husband except that he was a bum.

‘There’s a sister,’ I said. ‘Sarah Wiggen. She doesn’t seem to know about kids. Mrs Terrell lived a double life.’ I could have added that Anne Terry had really lived a triple life, but Denniken wasn’t going to care about my abstractions.

‘Shamski, get the sister’s address from Fortune here, and give him the spiel,’ Denniken ordered.

The ‘spiel’ was the recitation of my constitutional rights. Denniken couldn’t even bring himself to say them.

‘Okay, Mister Fortune, now tell your yarn,’ he said.

I told him the whole story except that I left Ricardo Vega out. He scowled when I had finished.

‘Missing Persons and her Village Precinct are looking for her? You’re sure?’ He didn’t like anyone in on his cases, especially not the Centre Street brass.

‘I’m sure, Lieutenant.’

‘How come you followed up on your own? You didn’t report the lead brought you out here?’

‘A hunch, not a lead. I’ll report now.’

‘No, mister. I’ll report. You’ll answer questions.’

The assistant Medical Examiner came out of the bedroom wiping his hands with distaste. It suddenly brought home the fact to me: Anne Terry was dead. The beautiful body, the hard work, the dedication and the ambition, the strong self-reliance, were all gone. The good actress, the struggling girl, and the mother. I could hear her bony voice, ‘So long, Gunner.’ I had liked her. To the M.E. she was only decay, unpleasant.

‘We’ll have to autopsy before I can tell you, Denni-ken,’ the M.E. said. ‘A tough one. She had-’

‘Hold it, Doc,’ Denniken snapped. ‘Fortune here doesn’t need to know.’

‘I’ve got a client, Lieutenant.’

‘To find the girl. You found her. Take him in, Shamski.’

‘For what?’ I said.

‘Material witness. We need your statement-tomorrow.’

‘Like that?’

‘You want to argue?’ Denniken didn’t smile.

I walked to the door without answering. I waited there for Detective Shamski. Denniken didn’t seem to like my attitude, but that didn’t bother me. Anne Terry could have died of natural causes. Most people do, even at twenty-two. There were no signs of violence, and the whole thing could be over for me. What bothered me was the little girls, the toys on the floor. Children make me feel sad, vulnerable, as I get older.

Detective Shamski walked me out to the squad car. He was silent, embarrassed. I didn’t try to make him feel better. He had to get used to working with the Denni-kens. We drove to the station, and he marched me inside. He huddled with the desk sergeant. Neither of them seemed happy. The sergeant nodded me to the desk. Shamski left looking relieved.

‘I need your personal junk, Fortune,’ the sergeant half apologized. ‘Lieutenant says hold you. Material witness, your own protection. I guess he can justify it, and the Captain keeps his hands off the squad room if he can.’

‘Don’t make waves, I understand. Can I make one call?’

Now he looked embarrassed. ‘Denniken said no lawyer yet. I got to work here.’

‘My girl,’ I said. ‘She expects me. You can listen.’

‘I guess that’s okay.’

He pushed a telephone at me. I was lucky, Marty was home. I told her I was stuck with Lieutenant Denniken, I didn’t like it, and she better call The Preacher. When I hung up, the desk sergeant looked grateful. It’s a mean world most of the time. ‘The Preacher’ was a nickname for Captain Gazzo at Centre Street. My call was a message to Gazzo. So much for the sergeant’s trust.

They put me in a cell. Gazzo would work man-to-man, nothing official. It took about three hours. Denniken himself came to the cell for me. He walked me to the street.

‘Anything I can tell my client?’ I asked.

‘She’s been told.’

‘You find the husband yet?’

‘Stay out of my area, Fortune,’ Denniken said. ‘You had to get word over my head. Very clever. You know, you wouldn’t like that yourself if you were me.’

He walked back inside. He wasn’t going to tell me anything. Maybe I’d made a mistake. On the dark Queens street I was too tired to worry about it.

I rode a slow subway into Manhattan, and called Marty. I didn’t want to go home, and I didn’t want to go to her place. I wanted a public place, with voices and lights. Marty said she’d meet me at The Jumble Shop bar. She was waiting when I got there. In her old clothes, her hair in a kerchief. She looked as if she’d been asleep, but I knew better.

‘Studying,’ she said. ‘What happened, Dan?’

I told her.

‘Oh, damn!’ she said. ‘Those children were with her?’ ‘Since Saturday. Aged maybe seven and five. Their mother wouldn’t wake up. The father gone. The older one took care of the younger. Nice kids, happy.’ When the drinks came, I drank. ‘That’s what she did on her weekends; went to be with two little kids she had hidden in a house in Queens. Kids and a husband. Took fifty dollars out there every Friday.’

‘At least she went to them, was with them,’ Marty said.

‘She lived one hell of a busy life. Mother, actress, and hustler. No wonder she was tired-looking. But she had them near her. They were a family. Now what do they do?’

‘How did she die, Dan?’

‘Don’t know. There were some pills near her.’

‘Suicide? No, Dan. She was trying to be a mother even in her life, with her ambitions. She worked too hard.’

‘Who knows?’ I said. ‘Maybe I never will know now. Let’s just drink.’

We drank. We talked about other things. After all, she had been a girl we hardly knew, Anne Terry, and we had our own lives like everyone else. When even I knew I’d had enough to drink, and had begun to talk again about Anne Terry and her hidden life. I took Marty home. Somehow, we both needed each other, needed something to hold to.

Marty had an early appointment, so I went home. I went to bed. All at once I wanted to curl into a ball and sleep without thinking. How many show-biz hustlers, or even dedicated actresses of twenty-two, struggling to advance an inch, take fifty dollars every week and go to be a mother to two little girls? Most of us are half dead all the time. Anne Terry had been very alive.

So I slept, but not well. The two little girls seemed to mix in my dreams with a lost arm. An arm is part of a man, and so is a child. Even lost, they can’t be escaped. Faces in my dreams. All the faces, but always the faces of the little girls turned up to Anne Terry. They smiled as she told them that a great prince would help them all live in a castle where they would be busy and happy working every day. Ricardo Vega’s face appeared with a laugh that echoed and echoed.

Then the unshaven face of Captain Gazzo, the sleepy grey eyes. Gazzo sat astride a chair with his arms folded on the high back, his chin on his arms, and watched me like an owl as he asked, over and over, how had Anne Terry died?