Night of the Toads (18 page)

‘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.’

Chapter Twenty-Three

A wet night mist had moved in over the city as Lehman and I walked into Centre Street Headquarters. They told us Gazzo was in the Interrogation Room. Lehman had stopped talking soon after we left the subway. He walked like a man wrapped in years of silence.

Sarah Wiggen sat on a bench near Gazzo’s office, the two little girls, Sally Anne and Aggy, asleep on blankets on either side of her. One of her hands rested on each of them in the midnight corridor.

‘I wanted to be here,’ she said. ‘They’ll sleep.’

In the Interrogation Room where Boone Terrell had first told his paid-up story, and where some long ago loser would say how sorry he was as long as the walls lasted, Captain Gazzo and his silent team of shadows in shirts stood around in their casual poses. Boone Terrell sat under the light at the base table. Emory Foxx had been put in a chair just at the edge of the light facing Terrell, with two shirts-and-shoulder-holsters behind him. Gazzo looked at George Lehman as we came in.

‘Terrell’s just telling us an interesting story, isn’t he, Mr Foxx?’ Gazzo said.

Emory Foxx didn’t answer. He wore a pin-striped suit coat this time, with baggy corduroy trousers and another expensive checked wool shirt. Now that I knew, he looked like what he was—a man who had been high on the well-paid hog once, and who still wore the rag-tag remains of those big days. His buffalo-face was still florid, but his eyes were battered, and his heavy shoulders seemed to want to sag.

‘Okay, go on, Terrell,’ Gazzo said.

George Lehman stepped toward the Captain.

‘Hold it, Lehman,’ Gazzo said, waved Lehman off.

‘You’ll get your turn,’ Gazzo said, waved Lehman off.

‘I want you to know I’m here on my own,’ Lehman said.

‘You’ll get your turn,’ Gazzo said. ‘Terrell.’

Boone Terrell went on. He’d gotten to where Emory Foxx found him Tuesday morning. He handed Grazzo the money in an envlope, and then told what had really happened on Steiner Street the Friday Anne Terry came home early.

‘I guess what I done wasn’t so legal,’ Terrell said when he finished. ‘I guess I got somethin’ coming.’

‘We’ll talk about it,’ Gazzo said. ‘I think I want to hear what Mr Foxx has to say.’

Emory Foxx said, ‘He’s lying, that’s all.’

‘That’s the best you can do?’ Gazzo said.

Emory Foxx said, ‘His word, that’s all you have.’

Gazzo put his foot on a chair, leaned on his knee, stared straight at Emory Foxx. The thick writer didn’t blink, stared back. Gazzo rubbed the stubble on his acid-sensitive face.

‘No, we’ve got more than that, Foxx,’ he said. ‘The trouble with a frame-up is that it’s like propaganda. As long as you believe it, everything sounds fine. The first time you don’t believe it, everything falls apart. Fortune, there, he’s got it all down better than us right now.’

I moved into the light. I don’t like interrogation rooms; they are where men are broken to less than men, frightened and alone, but this time I didn’t feel too bad. Emory Foxx was another of those who think that only they matter, only his revenge counted. The unblinking toads on their dry rocks.

‘Sarah Wiggen will tell how you came to her, a stranger, to ‘help’ a woman you’d never met. She’ll say she told you where I was Monday night, and you left to follow me. You did out to Steiner Street. You called Sarah, and she told you Anne had died, and how. You tracked Terrell through The Pyramid bar.’

Gazzo said, ‘Terrell told us most of it before we got you, Foxx. Lieutenant Denniken already talked to the neighbours, to Matt Boyle. He says you wanted Terrell, you talked money. We check your bank tomorrow.’

‘That note,’ I said. ‘I saw you at Anne’s when you got the paper to type it on. I know that sheet was there on Monday. Anne Terry was orderly, she wouldn’t have used a page from her plans. That was clumsy, Foxx, too risky.’

‘With Terrell talking, and Fortune’s story, the note’s proof against you,’ Gazzo said. ‘It’s like that with a frame-up. A jury’ll believe Vega lost the money clip now, too. That Hudson Street room checked out: her blood type, her hair, one thumbprint. Prints all over, none Vega’s. How’d you know, Foxx?’