He made a fluid motion until his weight all rested on his left leg, his left hip thrust sideways-the way a woman stands to challenge a male with her body. A posture of assessment, of provocation. It was unnerving how a small, thin, hipless male could seem so female with a few gestures, phrases.
‘No, Frank. I want Ted Marshall.’
‘You don’t want me?’ He pouted.
I had no doubt he was homosexual, or bi-sexual-he wasn’t effeminate; a man, not a woman. The phrases, the mannerisms, were too natural to be an act. But there was tension in his dark eyes, and he wasn’t really interested in me. He was putting on an act-now, for me. His mind wasn’t on my body, it was on my reason for being there. ‘I want to talk to him, Frank,’ I said.
‘I tell him when I see him. Okay?’
‘There’s another detective upstairs. He’s going to have to talk. Why not practice on me? He might learn something.’
‘More policemen?’ He glanced back into his apartment. A concerned gesture, protective of something inside his rooms.
‘Ted better get used to it,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ Madero said, serious, ‘I guess maybe.’
His act slipped away leaving almost a new face: firm, even strong. We all live various acts, have public faces to tell other people what we are, and what we are feeling, at any given moment. We have friendly faces for friends, loving faces for our lovers, responsible faces for business. We have a real face, too, more complex because aimed at no one special, for ourselves. A homosexual doesn’t think all the time of his sex, any more than a sailor thinks always of the sea. His homosexuality isn’t all of him. Frank Madero’s real face was like that of any other man concerned with serious demands.
‘Okay, you come in, Mr Fortune.’
His living room was as austere as a monastery cell on a Greek mountaintop no one had visited since the Crusades. All the furniture had a medieval look-the dark, massive pieces you see in cathedrals, bare and hard as if there was merit in discomfort. There were religious pictures on the walls, and giant crucifixes with dead Christs bloody on them.
‘He is there,’ Madero said. ‘In the bedroom.’
The bedroom hit me like a blow-sensual, gaudy, with a giant bed, mirrors, purple hangings and a thick rug, all perfume like a steaming boudoir. The contrast made the living room seem like a penitent cell, an atonement for the bedroom.
‘Teddy,’ Madero said, ‘Mr Fortune wants he should talk.’
Ted Marshall lay flat on the bed wrapped in the slow music from a record player. He needed a shave. His tie and jacket were off, and his shirt was open far enough to show the top of the bandage around his rib cage. The scars and bruises on his face stood out livid, and his shirt was dirty. He wasn’t smoking. He wasn’t doing anything. I didn’t think he even heard the music.
‘Leave me alone.’ His soft voice was thick, not pleasant now, like a man sunk in a stupor.
‘Can’t be done,’ I said. ‘You know it.’
Marshall moved against invisible ropes. ‘I already told the police. How much more? Anne’s dead. She’s dead.’
His shoulders and legs moved in an aimless motion, slowly as if movement was painful. His cool manner, the swinger with no strings between him and Anne Terry, was far gone. It looked like he had been tied to Anne Terry not with string but with thick rope. Frank Madero bent down to him.
‘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.’
