Movement on a creaking couch, and Marshall’s voice lower. ‘I shouldn’t even have come. I just… had to talk. What could I do? She forced me… damned pills… what do I do now?… finished, that’s me…’
Silence. Sarah again, ‘I reported it to hurt you, both of you. I guess that means I still wanted you.’
‘God, Sarah, if we could, maybe I could…’
A soft thud and a rustle of clothing. I rang the doorbell. Time seemed to hang in the silent hall, and inside the room behind the door. Time suspended. I rang again. I could see them in my mind-close together, staring at the door.
‘Open up,’ I called. ‘It’s Dan Fortune.
Another silence, a whisper, and then she came and opened the door. Her hair was dishevelled, her blouse open, her eyes smoky with the feel of a man’s hands on her. I pushed past her. Ted Marshall sat on the couch, his shirt open at the collar, the shirt pulled out of his pants. He struggled into his jacket.
I stood facing him. ‘You never went to Anne’s apartment on Friday. You were seen with her on Friday. You handled the abortion. I was listening at the door.’
He was up and running at me. Like a blind bull charging. His weight caught me, his arm under my chin. I went over like a poleaxed steer. My head hit hard. For a moment I lay stunned. All black and green and red. When I struggled up, I could hear him running down the stairs. Sarah Wiggen stood pale, her hand in her mouth, her teeth biting her own hand. As I ran past her, her eyes were a battlefield of fear, desire, confusion.
In the street Marshall was half a block ahead and running. He was younger and faster. He reached the subway at Seventy-second Street a full block ahead. I plunged down the stairs, fumbled for a token, as the train came in. I made the door with a lunge. I chased through the cars. Once I had a glimpse of him far ahead, moving on through the cars. People sat in lethargy and stared at me as I ran past. Their eyes were curious, but not even their hands moved. The train pulled into Columbus Circle.
I had to decide-stay on, or get off? I got off. It was the wrong choice. The train was long gone before I gave up hope of finding him on the platform.
Chapter Fifteen
Where does a man run from his own guilt and panic? Unless he has planned an escape, he is inexorably pulled home, and I didn’t think Ted Marshall had planned much for days. I could be wrong, but I had nowhere else to look anyway.
I went up and grabbed a taxi on Broadway. I watched the night city pass on the way downtown, and thought about Ted Marshall. The gaudy, sparkling blaze of Times Square with its masses of people mocked Ted Marshall in my mind. This was where he dreamed of finding his name emblazoned, but he had arranged an abortion, a girl had died, and now he was running. A man caught in a drama with no future for his name.
He had arranged the abortion, alone or not I didn’t know. He had not known of Boone Terrell, or the house in Queens, so if he was alone in guilt, then her death had not been murder. Before I could know, I had to find him, talk to him.
A blind man running through the night city. No one lives in a smaller world than a city man. For a rural man his home is a whole town, an entire countryside. For a city man home is a neighbourhood, a narrow world of a few blocks, a few friends. The rest of the giant city is as alien as a foreign country. All doors are closed, any stranger can be an enemy. There is nowhere to go, and a man in panic runs to what he knows. It was a theory, anyway. Terror seeks the familiar.
The taxi dropped me at Marshall’s apartment house. I went to the rear. There was no light in Marshall’s windows. I went down into the basement. Frank Madero’s rooms were silent, no light under the door. I used my keys. Madero’s apartment was empty, votive lights guttering eerily. I rode up to the Marshall apartment. I heard nothing inside, and opened the door.
The four rooms were dark; as still as a lunar landscape. Light from other buildings cast pools of faint light near the windows. I bumped into the overcrowded furniture, and found no sign of Ted Marshall in his own room. I went back out into the hall to see if there was a place to stake out. There wasn’t. I was considering that a stake-out in the street would be better, when I heard an elevator coming up.
I ducked back into the dark apartment, and closed the door. I heard the movement behind me. I had time to see a large, dim shape, nothing more. I had come in from the light, and my eyes had not adjusted to the dark. His had. I took a slashing blow of something hard and metal. Only time to see the motion, try to evade, fail… on my knees, down but not out. My head split pain. I tried to get up. My brain told me I had to fall and roll away. Caught between the two commands, I did nothing. I kneeled like a prisoner about to put his head on the block.
A thick arm came around my throat. I tried to reach back with my lone hand. The arm tightened… squeezed… black…
I had two arms, a fine figure of a whole man. Two fine arms, and still couldn’t evade her blows. She hit hard for a woman, Anne Terry: ‘I’m a good mother, Gunner. I love my kids, Gunner. I just want a chance.’ Why didn’t she love me with my two fine arms? Sarah Wiggen’s eyes smoked at the touch of hands on her breasts: ‘I saw him first. I love him. Hate her.’
I opened my eyes. I saw nothing. God, I was blind! Doc, you never told me I’d be blind, blind…
Shapes emerged from a black pit. A ghostly furnace. Some… washtubs? Thick, square pipes over my head. The sound of traffic somewhere. People walking. The night sounds of the city. Where I sat nothing moved. Silence, dust.
My head ached, not badly. A small wound burned hot on my temple. My throat was bruised. My feet were tied, I saw them in the dim light where I sat against a wall. My hand was tied behind me: to my belt, and then to some kind of pipe. The furnace said I was in some cellar. If I had been unconscious for very long I would have felt much worse. So-I had not been carried far. The basement of Ted Marshall’s building.
I tried my bonds. They wouldn’t give. I couldn’t move to find a way to cut them. I had no miracle escape tools.
I yelled.
I got an echo, and a pounding head. No one came.
I considered time: hit about 7:15, out for maybe ten minutes, so nearly 7:30 p.m. now. All at dinner, early TV.
I yelled anyway.
I began to know how a prisoner in solitary confinement feels. Time motionless.
Later, I decided to identify my attacker. Strong, quick, muscular-big? Run down the list, Fortune. Nuts. What did I remember? Maybe he was weak, slow and skinny. Surprise did it.
I yelled.
I dozed in the dim dust. Hours now, or a few minutes? What had he wanted? Not to be found in Ted Marshall’s apartment? Urgent business with Ted Marshall, no outsiders wanted? Someone who had known about Queens, and knew what the right pills would do to Anne Terry?
I yelled.
A door opened above. ‘Hello? Someone down there?’
‘Behind the furnace,’ I called.
He found me, stared. A round little man with vest and a watch chain. ‘What happened to you?’
‘Practical joke. Get my hand loose.’
He was nervous, shocked by the unusual, and his hands fumbled, but he made it. After he helped me untie my feet, he looked around for monsters in the shadows.
‘Just a joke,’ I said, ‘but thanks.’
‘Sure,’ he said. He retreated quickly up the stairs.
I looked at my watch 9:32. Two hours at least. I walked through the cellar toward the stairs, and saw a broad shaft of light from the direction of the superintendent’s apartments. Frank Madero stood in his open doorway, peering in my direction. I walked to him.
‘I hear someone yell,’ he said. ‘Just now. You?’
‘Someone hit me, tied me down here. You didn’t hear my yelling before?’
‘I just come home.’