Michael Collins - Night of the Toads

Her smile was a little mocking of herself. A mother who was justifying her son, but who was also pushing him to face his own goals more seriously. Forcing him to really think of the theatre, and not of the girls, the good times, the swagger of being a man of the theatre. Trying to make a man of a boy, and what the hell else would a mother do?

Ted Marshall laughed. ‘A real selfish old hard nut, yes she is.’ He sat on the arm of the couch, put his arm around her. ‘Sorry, Ma, you know? I’ll get rich for you. Okay?’

‘You’re all blarney, Theodore,’ she said, smiled up at him. ‘Now I must go to work. Try to get some sleep, Theodore.’ And to me, ‘Not too long, Mr Fortune, please.’

She got up only a little slowly, and went out without waiting for an answer. I heard her walking toward the elevator. Ted Marshall stared at the closed door.

‘I do live on her. Thanks, Ma, maybe you can take it easy when you’re a hundred. Damn, I will make it up to her. Now all my loot is for the theatre, the big front.’

‘Where do you work?’

‘Nat Brown, the agent. Four days ’til three.’

‘Tell me about Ricardo Vega?’

‘Vega? What about Vega?’

‘Anne was having an affair with him, right?’

‘Not that I know. She’s in his class, that’s all.’

‘You’re a boyfriend?’

‘We make it. No strings, she got to live, and our theatre needs money. I never see her weekends, I don’t ask about it.’

‘You don’t know of any trouble with Vega?’

‘Trouble? No, I don’t.’

I thought. ‘She said to me once that Vega was the power, the action. She wanted to talk to him about something private. Did she ever talk about him backing your theatre, helping, or maybe about getting money from him?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘You know Anne?’

‘A battlefield meeting once,’ I said.

He puzzled me. Was he so naive, or jealous, that she hadn’t told him? Because if he knew about Vega, why hide it? If he had nothing to do with her disappearance, he should want Vega’s possible role investigated. If he was part of whatever had happened to her, if anything, why not jump at the chance to put suspicion on Ricardo Vega? He wasn’t putting suspicion on anyone.

‘Hell,’ he said, ‘she’ll come back soon, you see.’

‘Come back? You know she’s gone somewhere?’

‘Just an expression. I mean, she has to be somewhere, right? I don’t have a clue, believe me.’

‘Do you know a tall, gaunt man?’ I asked, and I described the man I had seen with her in the cafeteria.

‘No one like that. He doesn’t sound her type.’

A key turned in the door. It meant nothing to me, but it did to Ted Marshall. He got up with a grunt, clutched at his ribs. A short, dark man in army fatigues came in. The newcomer took three quick steps into the room.

‘Ted, I-’

He saw me, gave a small gasp, almost rose up on his toes, and his hand flew to his mouth. A girlish gesture, startled and automatic. He looked like a girl, a delicate face, a slender body. Yet he was no boy. Over thirty, his face lined, his bare forearms muscled. His hands were stained, had broken nails. He tried to recover, smiled coyly, wagged his hips-girlish.

‘You mother,’ he said, ‘she leave. I think now is good time… well… So introduce me to your friend.’

A woman’s phrase, coy. The tone, the manner-one of the boys. Ted Marshall. His pallor was flushed pink. He ground his teeth as he spoke.

‘Dan Fortune, Frank Madero-our night super. Mr Fortune’s a detective, Frank. Private.’

His voice was tight. It was there all right, a ‘thing’ between them. Both of them vibrated like nerve ends. Ted Marshall had been quick to tell Madero that I was a private cop, no threat from the vice squad. Oh, hell.

‘Francisco,’ Madero said, bowed. ‘I am from Cuba. I come later, Ted, of no importance. The leak of the faucet. A pleasure to know you, Mr Fortune. I am not always the janitor. Maybe I see you sometime.’

He went as fast as he had come. Here to fix a leak, okay, but he had expected to find Ted Marshall here, and alone. I let Marshall break the freeze.

‘He’s… a friend, too. Nice guy. Not like most supers,’ he said lamely.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘If you remember anything, call me.’

In the corridor I lit a cigarette, and swore. I didn’t care if Ted Marshall liked orangutans, but if he swung both ways, and wanted to hide it, the mess could be complicated. If he did swing two ways, and wanted to hide it, he wasn’t going to be much help. He would stay far away from the heavy boots of the police.

I called Sarah Wiggen from a booth on Sixth Avenue. She sounded alone, and nervous.

‘No, I haven’t heard anything from her, Mr Fortune.’

‘No news? The police? Ricardo Vega been around?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I know the police still think she just went away. Perhaps she did. She does things that way.’

‘When she asked you to go home? You believe that?’

A silence. ‘No, I don’t believe that.’

‘Sit tight. I’ll call back. Maybe she’ll show.’

Maybe she would show, Anne Terry. I was tired, my missing arm was aching. You’d think I’d been walking on the stump. Nuts! The lost arm didn’t hurt when I was tired, it hurt when I was upset, low. It’s my monkey, that missing wing, where the nerves are raw. Anne Terry was still missing. In a way, I’d been with her all day. I was getting to know her, and what I knew so far, I liked, and I didn’t think she was going to show up now-not on her own.

All around me the mobs of people were on their way home from the offices, stores, the work-services, the small factories-stepping on each other’s feet like refugees fleeing. Five-thirty p.m. Some brisk and hurrying, some dragging themselves, but hurrying or dragging to what? To tomorrow. Never more than one dimension at a time: ciphers at work, TV at home. Flat men in a flat world, or who could know for sure what we are? Work and perish for the sake of a copper penny. A quote? Yes, a quote. From Isaak Babel, a writer who had died the victim of a different future, but a future just as one-dimensional.

(There we go again, the malady of the sailor at sea, the dweller in solitary cafes-reading. Worse: reading and remembering. Isaak Babel’s words, and my thoughts. ‘A worthy labourer who perished for the sake of a copper penny… Ladies and gentlemen! What did our dear Joseph get out of life? Nothing worth mentioning. How did he spend his time? Counting other people’s cash. What did he perish for…?’

Tired thoughts on a street corner with the hordes of people pushing around me. Missing arm thoughts. Anne Terry thoughts. Was she dead somewhere for the sake of a copper penny? Had she gotten much from her life beyond Ted Marshall and Ricardo Vega? She had wanted a lot, and where the hell was she, and was Vega part of where she was? What the hell was I doing anyway? Out to get Ricardo Vega, sure. No, not now. Trying to find a girl who might not be doing anything but enjoying herself. A girl I had come to like in half a day. No liked her that first night in the rain; the beautiful, direct, bony face; the gentle touch in a bare cafeteria; the realistic voice:

‘You better fade out, Gunner.’

Direct and simple-and surrounded by parasites, scavengers? Sarah Wiggen who resented not being in her life all the way, who hated her verve, spark, and who had lost Ted Marshall? Not that Anne would have had to ‘take’ Ted Marshall.

‘I don’t need losers, Gunner. Bring me the winner.’

A world of nothing worth mentioning for Anne Terry who only wanted to work hard for what she knew was inside her? Integrated, full, needing no hlp.