‘I wasn’t always on top, mister. I did my time with tramps. I wouldn’t spit on any of them. If it ain’t Rey today, it’s someone else tomorrow. Believe me. I know them all.’
‘You’re on top now, Lehman?’
‘That’s right. Money, a home, a decent woman. Get a decent woman, Fortune, the kind you know what they’re thinking when you’re in bed with them. I’ve got two boys in college, a girl marrying a rabbi. My old man was a pushcart peddler in Brownsville. Rey did it for me. Leave him alone.’
‘All you have to do is eat his dirt,’ I said.
His thin-shell eyes were neither angry nor surprised. He had heard that charge before. He lived with it. All he did was mop the sweat from his hands.
‘Brownsville is a bad place,’ he said. ‘Most guys never get out. They die in the gutter. I had my gutter, ran with a Jew gang worse than you could know. I took five-to-ten for armed robbery. I learned. You got to have money and respect. For ten years my kids wore patches and ate potatoes. Who wants an ex-con? Rey hired me. I’d learned accounting in prison, and for Rey I worked hard. My house is in Manhasset now, North Shore, right? You think I’ll let tramps or their studs kick Rey? Stay out of this, Fortune. Find something else to play detective on.’
‘Stay out of it? Out of what, Lehman? You don’t mean Marty. What’s Vega mixed in I should stay out of?’
His face and eyes gave away nothing, but he was worried. He was tight inside. He mopped at his face. He seemed to be trying to decide just how much to say.
‘If Rey lays off your woman, will that get you to stay out? Just walk away, forget it?’
‘Forget what?’
‘Just lay off! We can play rough, too. Be nice.’
‘What’s so important now, Lehman? Maybe Ted Marshall?’
‘A cheap punk who got what he deserved.’
‘Didn’t the beating do the job? What more was there, Lehman? Did Marshall know more, do more, and Vega had to-’
A burst of loud music drowned me out. Lehman stopped listening, mopped at his face as the scene on stage ended, and the performers trooped off. Everyone grim, as only performers at late rehearsals can be grim, the girls half naked in their exercise tights, but somehow sexless. Marty came off, saw me, and came to take my arm, hold tight. Ricardo Vega was behind her.
‘Well now, the gumshoe lover again,’ he said in his bantering tone, but his heart wasn’t in it. His voice was strained, his eyes abstracted, the witty prince lying flat.
‘I saw your scene,’ I said. ‘The song-and-dance, too.’
Everything about him seemed to be far off, at a distance. Sean McBride appeared from somewhere, found a chair in the dressing room, straddled it. His limp eyes watched only Vega. He whistled between his teeth, made a paper bird with his big hands-a folded paper bird with wings and head that moved.
Vega said, ‘Everyone has to be George M. Cohan today. The voice of the people. You’re a dance critic now, Fortune?’
‘Ted Marshall was killed tonight,’ I said.
He paused, shrugged. ‘You play with blackmail, you get hurt. You expect me to care?’
‘Is that a statement, Vega? Blackmailers get hurt?’
‘Call it a proverb. Was there evidence I killed him, too?’
‘You expected there would be?’
George Lehman said, ‘Rey was working here all night. I was with him. So were fifty other people.’
‘I only kill people between shows,’ Vega said. There was a strange bitterness in his voice. Odd, out of place.
‘Lehman wants me to forget the case. I wonder why?’
‘Look, Fortune, I’m tired. Take your girl and go, okay?’
‘Where was McBride all night, Vega?’
Sean McBride worked his paper bird, watched only, the bird and his hands. ‘Ask the lady, mister. Little Marty there.’
I looked down at Marty. ‘He was with you, Mart?’
She dropped my arm. ‘When was Marshall killed?’
‘Somewhere from 9–9:45 p.m.,’ I said.
‘McBride left my place before nine. That’s only a few blocks from where Marshall lives,’ Marty said.
Sean McBride shrugged. ‘I got me some drinks.’
‘Maybe he did,’ Marty said, a lightness in her voice that maybe only I recognized. A warning of trouble. ‘You’ve been sending him around to keep the pressure on me, right, Rey? Hints that you really like me, could send me places. Today I was busy-pictures, costumes, all that-but when I got home around seven tonight, Sean boy was waiting. Not for you, Rey, for himself. He wanted my precious body, the one I should hand around to show what fire I’ve got inside. He didn’t offer me anything, no sir. He’s a real man, not a tired old creep like you, Rey. He was doing me a favour. He doesn’t have to buy a woman. He was sorry for me, stuck with a cripple and an old man. He doesn’t think you can cut the mustard, Rey. He can, yes sir! An ox, and about as smart. I got him out short of being raped. That was a surprise. Maybe he went for drinks. Maybe he stops short of murder, but I wouldn’t count on it.’
She had drawn a crowd by now. The performers. Silent and uneasy, they didn’t know where to look. I watched Marty. Lehman watched McBride. McBride watched only Vega. Vega stared at the floor, and I sensed something-he no longer cared about Marty. Something had pushed her from his mind. He raised his head.
‘Pay McBride off, George.’
McBride stood up. ‘Rey, I’m sorry, you know? She pushed-’
‘Get him out of here!’ Vega said. ‘I want him gone.’
‘I didn’t say none of that, Rey! She’s lying. A break, huh? Anything you want me to do.’
Vega exploded in the dim backstage. ‘How much do I have to take? Hounded! It’s got to stop! Christ, do I have to handle everything myself?’
He was in his dressing room, the door slammed shut, before anyone knew what he was doing. George Lehman blocked the way to the door. Sean McBride looked at Lehman, his face blank. Then he walked away out the stage door. Everyone drifted away, and Marty went for her mink.
McBride wasn’t in sight when Marty and I left. We took a taxi to her apartment. McBride wasn’t there either, and I breathed easier. Marty tossed her mink on a chair.
‘Make me a drink,’ she said. ‘Triple martini.’
She kicked off her shoes and vanished into the bedroom. I made the drinks. I stood with my whisky at the window. A cold night wind had come up, and the shadowy citizens hurried home. I thought of Paris five centuries ago, of Francois Villon scurrying through the night looking for a safe lodging in a city as wild as any savage land. Every man clawing for his needs.
Marty came out in her long, green robe. She curled with her drink at one end of her long couch. I took the other end.
She drank, shivered. ‘That animal McBride told me about the abortion, between grabs at me. He was sure Marshall had fixed the abortion. Now Marshall’s dead. Suicide. Dan?’
‘No. Ted Marshall maybe didn’t do it all alone.’
‘Rey Vega?’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking, it doesn’t seem right for Vega to do such a stupid thing, take such a risk.’
‘Important men, rich men, kill people. Not often in our world, they can get what they want easier ways. But it happens. Some intolerable pressure, some half-rational motive.’
She drank. ‘McBride said someone was trying to involve Vega in it. Someone who wants to cause Vega trouble.’
‘Involve Vega? How, baby?’
‘Just mix him in it publicly, I think. McBride said he might have to beat someone else. He was proud, thought it would make me swoon. Could it have been Marshall? McBride killed him?’
‘Some new blackmail? Did he mention any name?’
‘I had my mind on his hands. The pig!’
Her eyes were wide with a kind of pain. I moved to her, touched her arm. She shrank away.
‘Don’t, Dan! Not tonight. No man. I don’t want the smell of a man. You understand, Dan.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I just don’t want any man near me tonight.’
‘I’m not just any man, Mart. I’m me, Dan, and I don’t understand, no. I shouldn’t be “any man” to you.’