‘I’ll bring down two glasses,’ the wife said.
‘That’s fine, Florrie,’ Lehman said.
He nodded me from the dining room. Not even the wife had asked who or what I was, or why I was there. In this house George Lehman was the patriarch, benign and respected, never questioned. He led me down into the basement. It was a finished basement-playroom with pool table, refrigerator, television, record player, posters, the trimmings of young people; and an office with desk and leather chairs.
‘Okay, Fortune, sit down,’ Lehman said.
He sat behind the desk, I took a chair. I still wore my duffle coat. He hadn’t asked me to take it off. He had closed the office door. Upstairs, the patriarch with his family in his home. Down here, alone with me, the visitor from another world, he was Ricardo Vega’s business manager.
He took off the yamalke. ‘We say prayers at meals.’
‘A nice family,’ I said. ‘Does Vega come here much?’
‘Rey never comes here.’
I heard a tone is his voice-Rey Vega didn’t come here; Rey would pollute this house, this family. The split identity so many of us live with today. Anne Terry had not been alone in living two lives, but where she had been one person in two, even three, sub-worlds, Lehman was two people in one big world. Anne was unique, to herself. Lehman was all too common these days. The work identity, and the private identity: separate, lost from each other. The private standards left at home, the public man with different values. The kind patriarch tall at home, moral, and the narrow servant of Rey Vega at work, flexible.
‘You were hurt,’ he said, looking at my head.
‘I was hurt,’ I said. ‘Sean McBride was hurt more, and Vega’s in jail.’
‘A mistake. Rey didn’t kill anyone.’
‘I know,’ I said, ‘Emory Foxx framed him good.’
I watched his heavy face. His wary eyes, like thin shell, showed nothing, but his heavy eyebrows went up.
‘You know that?’ he said.
‘I can prove it now, Lehman. I’ve got the proof.’
‘You? What proof? Foxx hasn’t talked, I know him.’
‘First tell me about Emory Foxx. Why does he hate Vega? Fifteen years of hating, Captain Gazzo says.’
‘Nothing much to tell,’ Lehman said. ‘Just an old feud. Started before I was business manager. I was Rey’s accountant then.’
‘The D.A. thinks a jury’ll lap it up,’ I said. ‘You don’t want to tell me?’
He mopped at his face with a handkerchief, shrugged. ‘They worked together out in Hollywood then. Emory Foxx was a pretty big writer at the studio. Rey was called out to do his first picture after dazzling them with those two big hits on Broadway. They worked together on the picture. They couldn’t get along; it was Rey’s picture, from one of the plays on Broadway. Foxx was running dry, played out, I guess, and Rey was the new King. Foxx got fired, or shifted to another picture, actually. Pretty soon after that everyone got called up by one of those Congressional investigations.’
I could see the sweat circles spreading under his arms in his shirt sleeves. He mopped at his hands. ‘It was happening all over in those days. Everyone hauled to Washington, or before a junketing committee on a witchhunt. They called Rey. He told them straight: he’d been a kid Communist in Cuba, joined left-wing fronts later in New York-everyone had at the time. He’d busted years before, and he proved it. Emory Foxx clammed up, refused to talk. He got cited, went to jail for over a year, and got blacklisted from movies and Broadway. He said Rey ‘got’ him to ruin him, climb over him. That was crazy, everyone knew it. Rey was already in solid, on his way up, and Foxx had been dropped from the picture six months before. Rey didn’t have any reason to hurt Foxx, none.’
‘How did he say Vega ‘got’ him?’ I said.
‘He never did say straight out, because he had nothing to say,’ Lehman said, angry. ‘The guy was a Communist, that’s all. He was one then, and they knew he was lying, and he’s still a Communist! Maybe that’s why he’s after Rey, because Rey’s been against the Communists for years. Or maybe he just cracked crazy. I don’t know, but he’s been hounding Rey ever since he got out of jail-thirteen years, more! Hounding him!’
‘No one seems to know much about it?’
‘Because Foxx never come out in the open with it. All behind-the-scenes, private sniping, lying to people! He’s too scared to try it in the open. Years ago Rey had to send lawyers to threaten slander suits, or libel. Foxx was on parole a while, and Rey warned him he’d charge him and send him back. No newspaper or magazine’ll touch Foxx, they know Rey would ruin them. Maybe he’s had it hard. I guess he finally cracked open.’
When he finished, he sat for a moment as if seeing those old days. His face didn’t look like the memory was beautiful. He moved, lighted a cigarette, waited for me to speak.
I said, ‘I guess he finally ‘got’ Vega, too.’
He dropped the barely smoked cigarette into an ash tray, leaned across the desk toward me.
‘You said you could prove it was a frame-up?’
‘I can prove Foxx framed Vega for Anne Terry’s death, maybe for Marshall’s killing, but Vega had to try to murder Emory Foxx, and kill Mrs Foxx by mistake.’
I slipped my hand into my pocket, gripped my old pistol. I didn’t think I’d need it, not really, but I like to be careful. A one-armed man needs help in a fight.
I said, ‘Vega sent Sean McBride. You know he did, Lehman.’
I had my cannon on its way out. I never did see where his gun came from. A small automatic, maybe a 7.65mm. Mauser, in his right hand. He held it at me. I brought my hand out empty.
‘You saw me at Foxx’s place,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t sure.’
A mistake, that’s what I’d made. No, two mistakes. I had been sure George Lehman didn’t use guns, few people do. I had been sure he wouldn’t defend Ricardo Vega so far. Too many mistakes for my work. Inside, I was jelly, but I talked.
‘I won’t move anywhere, Lehman. You’ll have to shoot here with your family upstairs, or nowhere. I’m tied to this case, Gazzo’ll trace me to you easy. For what, Lehman? For Rey Vega? You and McBride were tools. You weren’t even in the actual bombing. Turn witness for the state, you’ll get off light. Vega’s the killer. Kill me, you’ll get caught, rot in-’
‘What if Rey never sent us?’ he said. ‘On our own.’
We all make too many mistakes, every day. Most of them don’t kill us. A third mistake-because all along I’d wanted Vega to be guilty of a crime? Lehman was saving that Ricardo Vega had killed no one, and he had a gun, and deep down I knew he was telling the truth. I was cold. I felt the chill down to my feet. My mouth as dry as caked mud inside.
Lehman said, ‘An ex-con’s nightmare is going back. So I waited. If they were going to convict Rey for Anne Terry, why hang myself? But you tell me you can prove Rey’s been framed, and you saw me on that street, so now I have to move. You’re sure you can prove Rey was framed for Anne Terry?’
I managed a nod.
‘And Ted Marshall?’
I nodded again.
‘You’ll swear you saw me-across the street? Outside?’
Somehow, maybe it was his calm eyes, I sensed what he wanted me to say. The truth. ‘I saw you. Outside.’
He nodded. ‘I could shoot you, keep quiet, maybe be safe, maybe not,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. If I kill you, tell nothing, Rey Vega’s going to jail. No jury could see it any way except Vega at least sent McBride to kill Foxx, any more than you and the police did. If I let you go and don’t tell my story, it’s even worse for Rey he sent both of us. Maybe if you hadn’t seen me-’ He thought about that, shook his head as if wondering about himself. ‘Give me the pistol, Fortune.’
He emptied my old gun one-handed, put the bullets in his pocket, the gun in his belt. He laid his automatic on the desk.
‘I couldn’t let you take me in,’ he said. ‘I go on my own. That way maybe they believe it all, maybe I get a break.’
The saliva began to flow in my mouth again.
