‘She is gone, Teddy,’ the small super said. ‘You must talk about it, yes?’ Madero looked up at me. ‘Ask him what you got to, Mr Fortune.’
Ted Marshall turned his head away. Deep inside his stupor like a man under thick water. His whole body, slow movements, seeming to say: What does it matter? I’m finished.
I said, ‘Did you pay for the abortion, Ted?’
His head jerked around. ‘No! Damn you-’
‘Did you send her to the abortionist?’
‘No!’
‘Do you know who did pay, or where she went for it?’
‘No!’
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘now for your lies. You said you-’
His eyes widened. ‘It’s no lie! I don’t know-’
‘Vega,’ I broke in. ‘You said you knew nothing about Anne and Vega. That was a lie. You said you’d fallen off a ladder. That was a lie. Don’t try to squirm out. Vega already told us about the blackmail and the beating.’
He started to turn his head away again-what did any of it matter-but stopped, his empty gaze up toward the mirror on the ceiling. ‘Vega killed her. It was his kid, for real. After he tossed her over flat she busted up, and mad, too. I guess she really liked the bastard. Only she was going to make him pay, get something out of it. That’s when she got the blackmail idea.’
‘And you were part of it, the witness. You faked that tape to make him look very bad?’
‘I’m pretty good with electronic stuff,’ Marshall said. ‘She was sure it would work, we’d get plenty for our theatre. I guess she wasn’t too smart.’ He seemed to be seeing Anne in the ceiling mirror. ‘Then last week two of them came to me at the theatre. George Lehman and some blond muscleman. I was alone; they beat me pretty bad. I never could take pain. I was scared, too. I mean, if I didn’t-?’ He squirmed under his heavy, invisible ropes. ‘I gave them the tape, signed a paper saying I didn’t know anything.’
‘So then you had to arrange an abortion for her?’
‘No! I told you I don’t know about that! I never saw her after Thursday!’
‘You think she went through it on her own? After Vega wouldn’t pay?’
He was silent, a kind of deep fear in his eyes. ‘I don’t know. Maybe Vega did pay-something. After they beat on me, she was madder than ever. She said she’d still get him. Maybe she went on with the blackmail on her own. Maybe he paid, and arranged the abortion. Maybe he fixed the abortion so she’d die! He wanted her dead!’
Frank Madero sat in the corner, looked at the floor. Ted Marshall stared up at his own unshaven face in the ceiling mirror. Ricardo Vega a murderer?
‘Can you back that up at all, Ted?’ I asked.
‘The way she looked, what she said. She was tough.’
‘When you saw her on Friday?’
‘I didn’t see her Friday! I told you! I went like always, and she wasn’t home. I never saw her!’
‘Did you know she was planning to go home to North Carolina? Maybe to recover after an abortion?’
‘No. Why would she? She had her family in Queens.’
‘You knew she really went to Queens on weekends? You knew she had a husband and children?’
‘No! I swear I didn’t know!’ He came up on one elbow, his thick voice taking on urgency. Fervent that I knew he didn’t know. Guilt for making love to a married woman with children? A modern free swinger like Marshall? ‘Anne never told me about any of that!’
‘Ted did not know,’ Frank Madero said. ‘She keep it all very secret. She don’t tell.’
‘You knew Anne, Madero?’ I asked.
‘I have that honour, yes. A nice woman.’
I looked down at Marshall. ‘Just what did she say?’
His eyes closed up, flicked away. ‘If I was chicken, she wasn’t. Maybe I was scared green; she wasn’t. You got to take risks. Life wasn’t worth living without risk. You have to live your own way. Hold back and you’re dead. Like that.’
It was Marshall’s thick voice, but the words belonged to Anne Terry all right. I could hear her, ‘You got to take risks, Gunner. Hold back and you’re dead.’ The question was: had she acted on her words, gone on with the blackmail of Vega?
‘You have any real proof, Marshall?’
‘No.’
‘Are you going to tell the police about it?’
‘Why not? I’ve got nothing to hide.’
I looked at Frank Madero. ‘Nothing to hide?’
Madero’s eyes were flat. ‘We are not lovers, if you mean that. We are friends. It is possible, you see?’
‘Then get your ‘friend’ up to his apartment. Don’t make the police find him. You don’t have to mention me.’
Madero nodded; he understood. Gazzo wouldn’t be happy about going off on my own to Marshall. I guess I just wanted to nail Ricardo Vega myself, if I could. Ted Marshall said no more. He seemed almost paralyzed on the bed.
I went up to the street, and called Marty from a Sixth Avenue booth, but there was no answer. At her theatre they said she wasn’t on call until later. I wanted to talk to her over lunch, so decided to give her an hour.
Anne Terry’s apartment was near. Maybe I could find some evidence to show that she had gone on with her blackmail.
Chapter Eleven
A fat woman in a housedress with a cigarette hanging from her mouth was sweeping out the vestibule of Anne Terry’s building. She gave me a smile, hummed at her work. The smile faded when I showed an old badge and said I wanted Anne Terry’s apartment. It wasn’t me who faded the smile, it was the dead girl.
‘Awful. She was a fine girl. Straight and on the line. Maybe she liked men too much. Women are all born lonely and too eager. That’s nature’s way, I guess.’
‘I guess,’ I said. ‘Did you know her men?’
‘Some, not many: She didn’t broadcast.’
‘A Ricardo Vega? You saw him Friday or Saturday?’
‘Nope. The cops asked me that. He’s that big shot, right? What was she doing with a man like him?’
‘A little blackmail, maybe,’ I said, watched her.
‘Anne? I’d have to know more to know about that. Ain’t no one you know for sure what they are, but I got to hear reasons, and know who says what. All I know, she was nice.’
‘She was nice,’ I said. ‘Can I have the key?’
‘Don’t need it. A friend’s up there now.’
I went up carefully. The ‘friend’ could be Sean McBride again, or Ricardo Vega, or anyone. The door was open. I found him bending over the old desk, and recognized the hunting-lodge clothes: Emory Foster, the florid friend of Sarah Wiggen. An open suitcase was on the floor, filled mostly with photo albums and books. The heavy man heard me and turned.’
‘Mr Fortune. You’re still at work?’
‘I’d like to know more about what happened,’ I said.
‘So should I,’ Emory Foster said. ‘Poor Sarah is taking it quite hard. She asked me to get some things of hers Anne had.’
‘I didn’t think she cared much about Anne.’
‘They were sisters, Fortune.’
‘Not close,’ I said. ‘You said you never knew Anne?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘You’re an old friend of Sarah’s, though?’
‘A friend, not so old. She doesn’t have many friends.’
‘How’d you meet her?’
‘She’s interested in writing. I teach a class.’
‘You’re a writer, Mr Foster?’
He gave a small shrug. For a thick, florid man he was subdued, tentative. He looked like a man who should roar and slap backs, hold forth at some artistic party full of celebrities, be photographed kneeling beside a lion he had shot. That kind of man, but who had been cut open and hollowed out. A shell, isolated inside a floating bubble.
‘I write,’ he said. ‘Free-lance, teach a few classes. I do advertising copy, some stories. Small beer.’
‘For the theatre?’
‘No, not for the theatre.’
‘Is it much of a living?’
‘I survive, Mr Fortune. A serious writer who doesn’t find a clique of elite, or command an obvious market, hasn’t much chance. So I write my books which no one will publish, and make a living doing copy, teaching, and writing trash under pseudonyms.’ He shrugged, stepped away from the old desk. ‘That seems to be all that Sarah asked me to get. Can I help you with anything? You’re looking for who helped her?’