was late-he got there right after it blew, found you down on the third floor.’
‘Yeh,’ I said. ‘I remember seeing his face-vaguely.’
‘When McBride heard you coming up, he must have figured it was Foxx. He gave the package to Mrs Foxx, and went to open the door. That’s when it blew. It has to figure like that: the woman was in pieces, she had to be holding the bomb. McBride lived a couple of minutes and staggered out.’
‘Ricardo Vega sent him with the bomb? To get Foxx?’
Gazzo blew smoke. ‘McBride never met Emory Foxx. But Vega and Foxx have been enemies for maybe thirteen years.’
‘So you’re holding Vega. What does he say?’
‘He says Emory Foxx framed him for Anne Terry’s death, and maybe for Ted Marshall’s murder. He says he knows nothing about McBride and the bomb. Says he’d fired McBride.’
‘He had,’ I said. ‘I was there.’
‘Sure,’ Gazzo said. ‘Maybe he wanted you to hear him fire McBride. Or maybe he cooled down, kissed and made up. Vega’s got the reputation for blowing up fast, cooling down fast. Artistic temperament. Remember when he told us he hadn’t sent McBride to Anne Terry’s apartment the day you saw McBride there, and McBride got picked up by us?’
‘I remember. Vega said he had no reason to send McBride.’
‘He didn’t have a reason, not logically, but Ricardo Vega seems to work to his own logic,’ Gazzo said dryly.
I could believe that-the prince makes his own logic.
‘Now he admits he did send McBride to Anne Terry’s place that day,’ Gazzo said. ‘He’d read the newspaper, and we’d talked to him a little, so he sent McBride to find out what was up, and to keep him out of it. A little private investigation to cover himself just in case. He had McBride keep an eye on everyone just to know what was what. Then after you described ‘Emory Foster’ when we were at his place, he knew that Emory Foxx was involved, and sent McBride around to find out what Foxx was doing. All that he admits-but no bomb!’
‘Yeh,’ I said, thought in the bed. ‘If it’s true, Vega dug himself in deep by trying to be too smart, too arrogant.’
‘If it’s true,’ Gazzo said.
‘What’s Emory Foxx’s story?’
‘He admits to hating Vega. He says he knew Anne Terry was a Vega girl friend. When he read she was missing, he went to Sarah Wiggen and told her about Vega. After that he snooped around, watched Vega, watched Ted Marshall, talked to Boone Terrell. He hoped to prove that Vega handled the abortion. He thinks Vega found out, and sent McBride to kill him.’
‘Does he say why they’re enemies? So long?’
‘The D.A. won’t talk about that, not even to me. He says it’s a bombshell motive. The kind juries believe.’
‘Won’t Vega tell what it is?’
‘Not a word. Refuses to discuss Emory Foxx, except to say the man was framing him. The lawyers have Vega clammed up, too. They don’t want him denying things he won’t be charged with. Juries have a way of remembering denials.’
‘How does the D.A. see it all?’
In sunlight Gazzo seemed smaller, drier. Night was his life. ‘Vega paid the blackmail to Anne Terry, but just to lull her. With Ted Marshall’s help, he fixed the abortion. He murdered her with the wrong pills, probably by letting Marshall give them to her so she’d think it was okay. He had McBride kill Marshall to silence him. Emory Foxx was snooping too much, found out too much, so Vega sent McBride with the bomb.’
‘What did Foxx find out that was too much?’
‘He says he saw McBride at Mashall’s building just before Marshall took his dive, among other things. Mostly he backs up what we know-says he saw Marshall and Vega talking on Tuesday, saw McBride skulking around you, Marshall, Anne’s apartment. The money clip traced to Vega, by the way. He claims he lost the clip five or six years ago.’
I knew what the D.A. would do with a money clip lost six years ago that turned up in an abortion room where evidence already placed Ricardo Vega.
‘Version number two,’ Gazzo said. ‘Vega did it all the same, except that he didn’t murder Anne Terry. It was a bungled abortion. Once she was dead, Vega panicked and covered with two murders. The D.A. likes that better. With Marshall dead, unless we find the abortionist, we can’t tie Vega to the pills. A bungled abortion, covered by murder, is the kind of panic a jury understands. They can see themselves doing that.’
I let it all sink in for time. Gazzo seemed to be doing the same.
‘You don’t like either version, Dan?’ Gazzo said.
‘I’m sure that the note was a plant.’ I told him why. ‘Probably the money clip, too, but I can’t prove it.’
‘Maybe they were, especially the note,’ Gazzo said, ‘but that doesn’t clear Vega. Lieutenant Denniken is up for a commendation on Vega. Denniken points out that maybe the note is a plant, but that doesn’t make Boone Terrell a liar. Vega was the man, and Anne told Boone, but there wasn’t any proof. Emory Foxx talked to Terrell, heard what Anne had said, and made up the note to back it up.’
‘I think it was a frame-up all the way,’ I said. ‘That’s why Vega sent McBride with the bomb.’
He crushed out his cigarette. ‘Prove it, Dan. Maybe I see it the same, but I’m blocked. Chief McGuire says I have to give him one solid piece of proof it was a frame-up before he’ll let me put taxpayer’s time into busting a good case. I could work on my own time, but a Homicide Captain out of his own territory doesn’t blend into the background, and Denniken’s out to hog-tie me. The D.A.’s convinced, too-Vega’s guilty of the abortion. I think he’s guilty, too. Dan, but I want it to be the right crime. Go and get me the right crime.’
I thought about it for the rest of the night-alone. Sometimes lack of knowledge can help a man see better. An expert, like Denniken and the D.A. rarely see that things can be different than they are. An aura of inevitability hangs over the judgment of experts-what is, must be. They can’t see beyond their own experience. I can, sometimes.
Now I could see Boone Terrell in the Interrogation Room-too firm, too contained, too calm. Like a man holding in his grief because he had work to do. Money work, maybe-paid to tell a false story. Money work for his children.
Or maybe Boone Terrell just wanted to hurt Ricardo Vega. And maybe, in the end, he had-if he had lied, and that lie had made Vega send a bomb to Emory Foxx.
Chapter Twenty-One
The hospital let me out at 4:30 p.m. on Monday. My ribs ached, I limped, and my hat wouldn’t have fit if I’d worn a hat, but I could have been another victim. I felt good.
I cabbed home, got my old. 45 calibre revolver, my duffle coat for the night, and took the subway to Long Island City. I rode the same bus I had the night I found Anne Terry in the house on Steiner Street where the two smallest victims waited for her to wake up. This time I stopped first at The Pyramid bar. I had an Irish. It still tasted fine.
‘You know Boone Terrell?’ I asked the bartender.
‘Sure do,’ he said. ‘You a cop?’
‘Insurance adjuster,’ I said. People like to help other people get insurance money, beat the big company. ‘Terrell needs a man he says was in here looking for him on Monday night. Heavy man, red-faced,’ and I described Emory Foxx.
‘I remember, sure. He come in after the cops was here. Talked to Matt Boyle, a pal of Boone. You want Matt?’
‘Later, maybe,’ I said.
In the daylight the semi-detached houses on the quiet streets looked neither individual nor manipulated. Anonymous houses, unimportant, like the homes of all the faceless billions on earth at any given moment. At the
