okay.
Maybe they would be. Sarah could be a different woman if she had a purpose, and Terrell was a simple man. Sally Anne and Aggy could even get a better life out of it. Sarah might get some things of Anne’s after all. Good can come from bad, sometimes.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I called Marty from a tavern. There was no answer. I took the subway home. She was waiting in my bedroom, when I came in. She had the heat on to welcome me.
‘I called Gazzo’s office,’ she said, smiled. ‘They told me you were there, so I came to wait. Is it over, Dan?’
‘Over,’ I said.
I dropped my clothes on a chair. My broken ribs hurt, my leg ached, and I looked like a bandaged mummy, but I got into bed. I was shaken, drained. It was all over. Vega could walk tall, and Anne Terry was gone for good. She was no longer with me. She had ended like a fading note of music that slips into silence leaving only the memory of an echo.
I told Marty about it all. I needed to talk, and I needed Marty. Two people are always worlds apart no matter how close. Minute to minute you have to find each other again, before separate needs and weaknesses tear you apart. Everyone must have somewhere to rest. So I told her, talked it out of me.
‘Boone Terrell and Sarah Wiggen might even make it,’ I said. ‘Good for those kids, anyway. Anne Terry did what she had to do, and she was a good mother, but the kids are different people. They have to find their own way, and it might be easier for them in the end this way.’
She gave me a cigarette. ‘Vega comes out all free?’
‘Like a virgin,’ I said. ‘There we all were in that room clearing Ricardo Vega. All the little flies food for the toad. In our own trouble, or dead, yet saving the golden idol. We had to do it-for truth, justice, morality. But the result was all for Vega. It’s a lousy world.’
‘Not lousy, Dan, just not very fair. But who said that the world was supposed to be fair? Who said it could be fair?’
‘No one, I suppose,’ I said, and I held her. ‘Maybe it’s not such a bad world. I’ve got you. You and me, even if the abortionist goes free.’
‘A simple abortion after all? Vega not involved?’
‘Only Ted Marshall and some abortionist he knew. Marshall arranged it all. Anne told Boone Terrell that. Marshall fixed it, paid for it, and Anne-’
I stopped talking. Marty kissed me in the warm bed. I put out my cigarette. I sat up. Words marched around in my mind. Voices, words, phrases filling my head.
‘Dan?’ Marty said. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m not sure. All of a sudden I’m hearing voices, small pieces of conversation,’ I said. ‘Where did Ted Marshall get the money to pay a professional abortionist? That costs money, a lot of money. Marshall barely had beer money.’
‘You’re sure, Dan?’
‘He lived on his mother,’ I said. I got out of the warm bed, began to dress. ‘I’m sorry, baby; you go on home. This could take a while.’
‘I’ll stay here,’ she said.
I put on my old duffle coat, and the black beret this time to keep my bandaged head warm in the early morning hours. I reloaded my cannon, slipped it into a coat pocket, and kissed Marty before I left.
There was light under the apartment door. It was late for light. I rang the bell, put my hand back into my pocket. This time, no mistakes.
When he opened the door, he was fully dressed. The votive lights flickered behind him. It didn’t look like he’d been asleep much for some days. The skin of his dark, girlish face seemed drawn, like parchment over a skull. He tried for lightness.
‘So late, Mr Fortune? It got to be me you want this time, yes? I never know you swing like that.’
‘I don’t, but it doesn’t make me proud,’ I said. ‘Can I come in, Madero? The police have the case all solved. I thought you’d like to hear about it.’
‘They have who kill Ted?’
‘They have it worked out,’ I said.
He backed inside, bowed me in after him. The ascetic, medieval room hadn’t changed. Fresh votive lights burned under all the crucifixes. Madero sat down on the biggest throne-chair, his slender body lost in its massive back and arms. I took a smaller high-backed throne.
‘Who killed Ted?’ Madero asked. ‘Why?’
‘Sean McBride,’ I said. ‘We’re not so sure why. There’s a few things I can’t make fit. You knew Marshall better than anyone. Maybe you can help me.’
‘Ted was my friend,’ he said. ‘I try.’
I told him the whole story as it had worked out. He listened with his serious, public manner. He showed little reaction to any of it until I got to McBride. Then he leaned forward, and there was something like an angry hiss deep in his throat.
‘That Sean McBride! I hated him when he beat Ted.’
‘An animal,’ I said. ‘We should have known, I guess. You told me you saw him that night here.’
‘Yes, I see him.’
‘You talked to him in the lobby, threatened him.’
‘Yes, I see him hang around. I throw him out.’
‘He came back, it looks like,’ I said. ‘Ted Marshall had Anne’s abortion done for her, right? You knew, didn’t you? He was cracking all the way.’
Madero nodded sadly. ‘I know he do it. He try to help Anne. He don’t mean to kill.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘He paid for it, even. I wonder where he got the money?’
Madero shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘He didn’t have much money,’ I said. ‘The Medical Examiner said the abortion was a good job, professional. Real skill, and that costs money. A trained man did the work, her death was a small mistake, the wrong pills. A real doctor maybe.’
‘Just like a real doctor,’ Madero said. ‘Maybe some guy never got no real chance to be doctor, maybe.’
I nodded. ‘Just what I was thinking. A medical student, maybe. Maybe an army medical corpsman who worked a lot with doctors. The job was that good. Someone who should have been a doctor, maybe.’
‘Some guys never got no chance,’ he said, a little bitter. ‘No breaks. A man with skill no one will let him use, held down when he should have been using his talent.’
‘Nobody helps,’ he said. ‘Everybody laughs-look who wants to be doctor. I know.’
‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘you weren’t always a super, were you, Frank? What were you? a medical student? An army corps man helping out in operations? An operating room nurse?’
The tight skin seemed to stretch thinner over his girlish face, his dark eyes sank almost out of sight in the flickering light of the votive candles. He said nothing. Eyes on me.
‘In Cuba, maybe? Or here,’ I said. ‘George Lehman said you patched up Marshall after Lehman and McBride beat him. Marshall was pretty badly banged around: most people would have been afraid to touch him. You patched him up. What do you have, a bag of instruments stolen from a hospital?’
‘You got to be crazy,’ Madero said.
‘No, Frank, I don’t think so. Anne Terry told her husband that the abortionist was someone Ted Marshall knew. Emory Foxx spoke of ‘them’ when he reported Ted talking about what had happened, about where the operation was done. Ted spoke in the plural; two men in it together. Ted had no money, and Anne Terry had some two hundred dollars-which she didn’t spend; she made no big withdrawals recently. Yet the job was pretty good. That should have cost money, real money. It didn’t because it was done free, by a friend-you.’
