Michael Collins - Night of the Toads

‘I don’t guess so. Mind your own henhouse?

‘Who minded Ricardo Vega’s henhouse?’

‘I really dig the guy, too, except he’ll never be sure enough to relax. Too bad.’

Too bad? How? For her? No, she wasn’t a woman who worried about ‘Too bad’ for herself, tougher. Too bad for Vega that he wasn’t man enough to be her man, so had to be something else for her? Too bad, what she had to do?

‘You better fade out, Gunner.’

‘Maybe I’d better fade out. Me, another loser for her? Probably. If I found her, what? Nothing. For my needs there had to be trouble for Ricardo Vega and that meant there had to be trouble for Anne Terry. Another scavenger.

From the telephone booth I called Marty at her theatre uptown. She was busy; maybe an hour, they said. I left a message-the back booth at Black’s Tavern. I needed that friend now, and a drink. Because what did I do next?

I got the first free Irish whisky at Black’s, but not the friend. Joe Harris was busy, the long bar packed with the office refugees staving off tomorrow with the perpetual present of booze. With my second good Irish, I carried a hamburger to the back booth. All right, what did I do next?

I’d spent the afternoon establishing that Anne Terry did look missing, and learning that she was a free bird who flew over the whole city, who moved quickly among strangers, who drank and played in the big, anonymous places where no one was going to remember her too well. My informers would do me no good with her. I couldn’t track her through familiar haunts. There was her job, but I didn’t think she would have let those she worked with into her private life. Anyway, the police would have checked there; they would have done all the routine. No, all I could do was go around the track again, and add Sean McBride-was he working for Ricardo Vega, or on his own?

The prospects didn’t inspire me, and I was turning them over glumly, when I saw Marty come in. Her face drove all prospects from my mind. It was tight and angry, with the hunted, violent eyes I knew too well on her bad days. She had ‘bad day’ written all over her. When she sat down in the booth, she didn’t say hello. She ordered a martini, and her small body trembled. I waited until she’d had her first gulp.

‘Want to talk about it?’

‘No!’ She drank. ‘Yes, all right. We did my scene today, twice. When we finished, Kurt took me aside. Kurt Reston, the director-when Vega lets him direct. He told me how good I was. He wanted me to know how good he thought I was, what a future I had!’ She drained her glass.

‘The ease-out? Preparing you?’

‘What the hell else? Get me another martini.’

I waved to Joe. ‘Maybe no. It sounds like this Kurt Reston will fight for you.’

‘And lose! Unless he wants to be looking for a new job, too.’ Joe brought the martini, winked, patted Marty, and went back to his post. She drank, suddenly smiled. ‘Ah, what the hell. Kurt said I’m good.’

‘That’s my girl.’ I took her hand. ‘Vega doing anything?’

‘Looking muscular. Dazzling me with distant smiles.’

‘No new direct passes?’

‘Just George Lehman’s leering hints, and that new toad hanging around. You know, that Sean McBride. He’s weird.’

‘Weird? How?’

‘He seems to think that what he did to you ought to make me pant for him. He’s proud of it. I’m too much for a one-arm.’

‘McBride’s after you? For himself?’

‘That’s what I mean, Dan. First he comes after me for Rey Vega. He knows about you and me, too, and what I think of his beating you. Yet the next I know he’s after me like a bull. He’s got to be a little insane. Vega’s his big chance, but Rey hates competition, and McBride could be out on his saddle.’

‘He likes risky games, maybe? For the kicks?’

‘And he’s violent, Dan. He went all tight when I called him Vega’s boy. He said he was no one’s boy.’

‘Vega could have a tiger in his fist,’ I said. I told her about McBride today, and what I’d been doing. ‘You did say earlier that you didn’t really know Anne Terry?’

‘She’s just in Vega’s acting class with me. Don’t you think the police can find her?’

‘They get a hundred a day like her, Marty. They can’t move fast or deep on such a small thing. Routine.’

She drank. ‘You think Vega’s mixed up with her?’

‘I started with that in mind. Only now-’

‘Now you want to help her? That’s good, Dan.’

‘Maybe not good for her. Maybe she doesn’t want to be found. She’s a complex girl. You look at her, at how she lives, and she’s a standard show-biz hustler. Hard at twenty-two; cool and calculating. Snubs her sister, sleeps around, sponges off men, has a ‘good’ address she can’t afford, poses nude to draw attention. The main chance. Standard hustling.’

Marty nodded. ‘From the little I know of her.’

‘No.’ I drank some Irish. ‘The girl I met wasn’t hard; just direct, honest. Not calculating, but realistic. She didn’t have to stop McBride, risk trouble, but she did. With that thin man in the cafeteria she was gentle, warm. Her apartment is warm, real; no front inside. She works like a dog for The New Player’s Theatre. It looks bigger than anything else in her life. A real theatre company, and that’s not a standard hustler. They work only for themselves, number one, onward and upward. Anne Terry has dreams of art, Marty, not silk sheets.’

Marty finished her martini. ‘Add that she’s good, too, Dan. Very good, not just a body on display. I’ve seen her.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Two faces. In Vega’s apartment she was like any hustler out to use Vega. On the street she said she really liked him, and I believed her. She said it was ‘too bad’ that she really liked him. As if she was saying she couldn’t afford to be real! As if the face she shows the public is manufactured-a product to sell herself!’

I hunched forward in the booth. ‘A girl married at fourteen to some Carolina dirt farmer. She grows up, and somewhere she gets a dream-theatre. She comes to New York. So she manufactures an Anne Terry to sell for any buck, short term; and behind that facade the other Anne Terry works hard for the real long term. Two worlds: the high-life hustler, and the dedicated actress.’

‘Not so rare,’ Marty said, ‘and not so split, Dan. She probably likes both worlds a little. Does it help find her?’

I sat back. ‘Makes it damn near impossible. What world do I look in for an answer? I don’t know, but I’ve got a hunch the gaunt guy in the cafeteria is a key. He doesn’t fit.’

Marty thought about it. I waved to Joe for another drink. Marty wanted one, too. At least I’d made her forget her own troubles for now. She sipped her drink this time, thoughtful.

‘He sounds like a farmer, Dan. Maybe her husband?’

‘A man she married at fourteen? He didn’t act like he’d come looking for her, and there’s no sign of a husband around. No one even hinted at a husband. She lives alone. She-’

It slid into place. Just like that. The answer. She took her pay by the week. She turned every dollar, worked too much, but had no bank balance. No income tax forms at her place. Gone every weekend, even from Ted Marshall. Every Friday she drew cash-fifty dollars, always the same.

‘She’s got another place,’ I said. ‘Marty! Another place, and she supports it! Every Friday she goes somewhere with cash. She doesn’t miss often. It even takes her away from The New Players’. It has to be damned important to her.’

‘Actresses work weekends, Dan. We have to.’

‘Maybe it hasn’t come up. Has she had an acting job? The New Player’s, okay-maybe the few times she missed were when The New Player’s were performing weekends! It’s important, and she pays. Always fifty dollars-rent, maybe, or food money?’