‘You go out of here now!’ Madero said.
I produced my big pistol. He looked at it, licked his lips. I wasn’t being surprised this time.
‘That first day I met you, you came in like a man with a problem. You were both nervous. Something going on between you and Marshall; I saw it. You covered, and I thought it was sexual, but Marshall wasn’t your lover. What was between you was the abortion, the danger you were both in. You’re a super, that room is close. You’re in the best position to have known, and used, that empty room. You admitted knowing Anne Terry.’
‘It is all lies!’
‘The police will find your medical background, and they’ll find your instruments, unless you got rid of them, which I doubt. Those instruments are your dream-the medical man. The super on Hudson Street will talk now. There were fingerprints all over that room; some will be yours.’
His long lashes flicked at each point I made as if they were blows. He had stopped looking at my pistol.
He said, ‘In Cuba I want to be medical student. A doctor where I live, the slum, he like me. He say I am a bright boy, he teach me many things. With Batista I have no chance to be student. The doctor, my friends, helps me to be medical soldier, I learn very much. When revolution came I am Batista soldier, so I must run. I come here, work in hospital. Only orderly, but I watch, listen, read books. There is Cuban doctor who lets me watch operations. I take instruments. I get laid off. I start to help people have little money, need medical help.’
‘Abortions, Frank? Before Anne?’
‘All kinds of medicine help,’ he said. ‘Some girls want help, so I do. I think if I can make enough money maybe I can go to medical school even now, but-’
‘Tell me about Anne?’
The pain in his dark eyes was almost physical. ‘Ted ask I help. No money. I do to help Ted, and the girl! A friend! I have seen doctors use those pills. I don’t know that they are bad with so much pentothal! She is sick, I don’t know.’
‘I believe you,’ I said. ‘An accident. Was killing Ted Marshall an accident, too?’
Chapter Twenty-Six
He was up. ‘No!’
I waved my big cannon. ‘Sit down, Frank.’
He sat, his eyes sunk into his parchment face. ‘You say McBride kill Ted! Yes! You say police know!’
‘I said they had it worked out as McBride,’ I said. ‘I didn’t say they were right. You killed Marshall, Frank.’
He shook his head, back and forth, no and no and no! His eyes looked at his votive lights, a slender moth devoted to the flickering light that was going to somehow help him.
‘You’ve already told me,’ I said. ‘You admit seeing Sean McBride that night. You admit being in the lobby telling him to get out. But that night, Frank, before I found Marshall’s body, you’d told me only that you’d seen McBride maybe three hours earlier! You didn’t mention that you’d seen McBride in the lobby at eight-thirty. You implied that you’d just come home around nine-forty. You hadn’t; you’d been in the building all along.’
‘So I was there. It don’t mean nothing.’
‘You wanted to hide it,’ I said. ‘And if you were there, then you had to have heard me yelling in the cellar! You heard me, and you didn’t come to free me. You didn’t come to roe, because you wanted me out of the way, too. Emory Foxx saw you there that night, and you saw him. You probably saw Foxx and Marshall talk in Marshall’s apartment. You heard Marshall spill his guts to Foxx, tell him everything, even where the abortion was done.’
I stopped to let it sink in, but Madero didn’t speak. He just sat there now with his sunken eyes lost, his dark face so taut I thought it would split open.
I said, ‘Ted Marshall was stupid enough to try to help Foxx frame Ricardo Vega, but you’re not so stupid. You knew Marshall had become dangerous. He’d told Foxx enough to hang himself, and he was ready to tell the whole world. He was about to break, you couldn’t trust him any longer. No one could have in his state. So you went in after Foxx left, and you killed him then.’
In day-to-day life you can’t see people change, not usually. Change is too slow, too imperceptible. But now, as I watched, Frank Madero changed before my eyes like those flowers you see opening in stop-time photography. He had been taut, sunken, lost, shrinking into oblivion in that enormous medieval chair. By some trick of my mind, and the flickering votive lights, he seemed to grow again, swell, blossom like a chrysalis emerging from a dried shell. His face relaxed, his eyes came out of their shadow, a look of sudden peace over him.
‘I go in,’ he said. ‘Ted he shake. I tell him I hear what he say to Foxx. He fall to pieces, sit down, hide his face, say he can’t take no more. I have hammer with me. I hit him. I drag him to window. It is hard, but I get him up on window. I am more strong than you know. I push him out. I close window, come back down to here.’
‘Your friend,’ I said, ‘but he would have ruined you.’
I stood, the pistol ready. ‘We better go, Frank.’
He smiled that soft, girlish smile. His hand went into a pocket. Some sixth sense told me-that sudden relaxation, that peace on his face. The change a moment before because he had made his decision. His hand came out of his pocket.
I dove, swung the pistol at his arm.
He screamed as the pistol hit, the small capsule flying out of his hand to the floor. He didn’t try to attack me. He slid to the floor, scrambled toward the capsule. I stumbed against the chair, swore, recovered. His groping hand reached the capsule on the floor. I hit him with the pistol. He fell flat on his face, groaned where he lay on the floor. I got the capsule, dropped it into the kitchen sink, ran the water, and leaned on the sink breathing hard.
He lay prone on the floor, his arms spread out, unmoving. He began to cry.
Captain Gazzo was still in his office, finishing the paper work this night had handed him. He listened to me, and to Frank Madero. His nostrils flared-he liked a complete case; he so rarely got one. He had his abortionist.
As Frank Madero finished his story, Ricardo Vega strode into the office. Vega was rumpled and unshaven, just released and angry. He had some words for Gazzo.
‘I’m talking to my lawyers, Gazzo. An official statement to the newspapers about your stupidity might make me-’
‘We had a case. You were framed,’ Gazzo said. ‘We worked and cleared you. We might make something of coercion of McBride; don’t push it. Foxx goes to jail, that’s all. Go on, Madero.’
Vega’s face darkened. He didn’t go on, but he didn’t leave. He stood waiting.
Frank Madero said, ‘That’s all. I kill my friend. I just want to be a doctor. No chance. I don’t mean the girl to die. I do a good job, have one mistake. I would be good doctor. When I come here, you know how I come? I hide in wheels of airplane. I almost freeze. My brother, too, but he don’t make it. He fall out of wheels of plane over ocean. No one know except me. My mother in Cuba have twelve kids. What is one?’
Vega looked at Madero at the mention of Cuba. Curiosity, an idea to use in a play. Madero saw Vega watching him.
‘I know him,’ Madero said. ‘You know something? We come from same slum in Havana. We both want to be much, to do much. He get help at start, I get nothing. That is the difference.’
‘You are nothing, amigo,’ Vega said; ‘that’s the difference. I got out of that slum because I was more than the others, and because I had guts. Don’t cry to me.’
‘Gazzo said, ‘Get the hell out of here, Vega.’
Ricardo Vega hesitated, ready to battle. Then he flashed that bantering grin, bowed to Gazzo, and walked out.
I signed my formal statement, and so did Frank Madero. They took Madero out. Gazzo leaned back in his chair.
‘Thanks, Dan. I’ll sleep better.’
‘You’d have found him. Sean McBride didn’t quite fit when you thought about it. Not for Ted Marshall. Too soon. He only went crazy after Vega fired him, his chance gone.’
‘Maybe,’ Gazzo agreed. ‘And maybe not. McBride fitted good enough for Marshall’s killing. We’ve got too many cases to dig into the reasonably solved ones.’
