Twilight was a clear, cool, dying pink over the spring city, and he was standing on the corner not looking at anyone. Just standing. He wore the same chino levis and black boots, but his shirt was black and Cossack now, and his jacket was faded denim. He was talking to himself-literally. His lips moved in his lean, boyish face.
‘Waiting for someone, McBride?’ I said.
He looked at me. ‘Yeh.’
Just ‘Yeh,’ and looked away. I didn’t seem to worry him. He stood lithe and easy, relaxed on the street corner as if his body was resting, his brain in repose. I wondered if he’d forgotten our rainy alley, but it wasn’t that. I just didn’t scare him. He wasn’t a man who worried about the possible. He looked vaguely bored.
‘It’s a cute name, Sean. Vega going to adopt you?’ I said.
‘You got to have the right name.’
‘You here for Vega?’
He didn’t answer.
‘You wouldn’t be looking for a contract and some money? What Vega gave to Anne Terry?’
He snickered. ‘That ain’t what he gave her.’
‘Watching someone? Me, maybe?’
He moved his head in circles as if his neck hurt. After the first moment he hadn’t looked at me again. He looked right, left, up, down; talked to me, but looked everywhere else. Marlon Brando. Yet not an act. McBride was himself, and Brando, at the same time. I was seeing life reborn through art. Brando, to communicate the essence of a type of uneducated, inarticulate American male, created his brilliant projection of their explosive, caged anguish through a series of external mannerisms. Those same males, instinctively recognizing themselves in Brando’s masterpiece, adopted the mannerisms. Brando had portrayed the McBrides of America, and now McBride played Brando.’
‘You like being an errand boy?’ I said. ‘A pimp?’
‘Go away, man.’
‘You’re rough in a dark alley from behind.’
He looked at me from under his brows-Brando again. His eyes were violet yet uncertain; that caged pacing inside again. Sure of his needs, but not sure of himself in having those needs. I realized that McBride could never really think straight enough to act in his own best interest for very long. A man who would see only the moment and the need, like a lion who sees meat.
‘Man, I got two arms, forty pounds, and maybe fifteen years on you. Go on away.’
‘Tell me what a famous movie star you’ll be,’ I said.
‘Man, you talk for a cripple.’
He was right. I was no match for him, yet I had to be the brave bull, the loud rooster. Someday the mindless roosters, all hormones and square jaws, will destroy the world. There’s no merit to challenging a stronger man on his terms, with his weapons. Losing with pride isn’t something to build your life on. Dying bravely in battle may be noble, but it’s not what you build a world on. No, I don’t feel good when I talk big. I know it’s only my missing arm that makes me do it.
‘There’s more than one kind of cripple,’ I said.
He went through his look-everywhere-except-at-me act. As if he didn’t know what he would do with me. I had the sudden realization that he didn’t know. Behind his uncertain eyes his brain was too busy-filled with dreams, hopes, and notions that remained random, uncontrolled. He literally didn’t know what he wanted to do with me: fight, ignore, sneer or talk. Then he decided.
He walked away. Without another word or glance. Neither afraid of me, nor hating me anymore. He had decided to walk away, and I no longer concerned him. The instant his back was turned to me, I ceased to exist for him.
I watched him until he turned the next corner. I wasn’t sure I envied Ricardo Vega his services.
Chapter Fourteen
I ate my paella at the window table in The Sevilla. Marty hadn’t shown by the time the coffee came. I hate Spanish desserts, so I settled for Irish in the coffee. Cognac is better, but I can afford only so much indulgent spending. I didn’t see where I was going to make money in this affair.
It wasn’t money I was after. Face it, I was after only one reward-Ricardo Vega skewered. I faced it. Sure, I had gotten to like Anne Terry, her hard days had deserved better than a cheap funeral. If her work hadn’t been what a solemn D.D., or even an upright card shark, would have approved, we don’t often choose what we work at. The options open can be pretty narrow. Sure, I burned for the kids who didn’t even have a weekend mother now, but collaring someone for her death wasn’t going to help them.
There are moments when a man has to look at himself. Alone is best. I was a hound on a scent. I wanted Ricardo Vega to be guilty. If I had wanted him innocent, what would I be thinking? That Vega had no motive big enough I could see.
Without Ricardo Vega, what was there?
A common abortion. A girl who had enough complications in her life, who wasn’t too bright, and who was tough enough to take a hard risk. Accidental death.
A common abortion, but arranged by Ted Marshall. He seemed to be number one stud in her life at the moment. If Marshall confessed he was the arranger, the police would believe him instantly-standard and logical, no matter what anyone said about Ricardo Vega. Murder? I didn’t think Marshall was the type, but there are dark places in ambitious young men.
Boone Terrell? His own story said he was a man who would do just about anything for Anne, who accepted anything she did if she let him stay around. His story was also the kind of dog-like love that could turn fast to hate. A small straw; the straw of another man’s baby? Love turned to hate, a rage in heaven that could become murder in a breath. His story an attempt to protect himself, get revenge on Vega, or both? Terrell was too quiet, too alert, too calm.
Or was there an unknown motive for Ricardo Vega, big enough? There were too many small hints. They kept coming up. Boone Terrell couldn’t have arranged them all. Hints that the payoff might have been made after all: from Sarah Wiggen, Ted Marshall, Terrell himself again. Emory Foster wondering who had the money and influence for a good abortion. Terrell with his story, and Marshall indicating maybe Vega arranged it all. Sean McBride skulking around. All coincidence? I didn’t think so, and where there was smoke, something had to be burning.
Gazzo said it-something was missing.
Then, too, did we limit it to men? Sarah Wiggen had known Anne was pregnant, and had more than a few reasons to hate her. Some sisterly pills? Or Mrs Marshall with her boy to mother? That’s the trouble with murder, the motive doesn’t have to be rational, concrete, An urge will do, a momentary need rational only to the killer. And murder itself was only a thin possibility; simple chance bad luck more probable.
Like a scientist, you make an assumption and go on from there. An assumption from the facts you have. I had made an assumption at the start-Ricardo Vega, and something was missing. I decided on another assumption, the most simple after Anne Terry herself-Ted Marshall. The most logical man in the case. Maybe it would lead me somewhere new.
I walked down Fourth Street in the crisp spring dusk. I got no answer to my ring at Marshall’s apartment, and there was no light in the windows above. I tried Frank Madero. He was home. I went down through the basement. He stood aside to let me walk into his ascetic living room. He had been sitting in the dark, votive lights burning under all his crucifixes. He turned on the light for me. He was alone.
‘Where’s Ted Marshall, Frank?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. Maybe he go to the sister.’
‘Sarah Wiggen?’
‘I think maybe. He say maybe he go.’
He perched on the edge of one of his hard chairs like a woman in a tight skirt, alert and birdlike, but that was all. His act was way down. No, not an act. No more than a woman arching out her breasts with a man is an act, or a man being strong and gallant with a woman is an act. The overt mannerisms need the proper stimulus, and so did
