Night of the Toads Read Online Free PDF Page B

my missing arm.
    ‘Mr Theodore Marshall?’ I asked.
    ‘Theodore?’ She paused. ‘Is it about his theatre?’
    ‘About Anne Terry.’
    ‘Anne? Well, come in then.’
    Brisk, she led me into a square living room that looked as if it had been there a long time. Clean and pleasant, but with the dusty feeling that comes from age, wear and little change. She sat down, perched on a couch with her handbag on her lap.
    ‘Well, tell me’ she said. ‘You’ve found her? Where was the silly girl? You’re police?’
    She made me think of Ricardo Vega again, of his age. Five, maybe ten years older, the woman looked like Vega’s mother. The will inside a person again. This woman content, even insistent, to be old and comfortable like the heavy, styleless furniture of the room. Only the dyed hair struck a false note. From the hair, and the outdoor suit, I judged she worked.
    ‘A private detective,’ I said. ‘We haven’t found Anne as far as I know.’
    ‘Private detective? Then you’ve come to ask Theodore more questions? I assure you my son told all he knew.’
    ‘People remember later,’ I said. ‘New questions.’
    I had the feeling of being interrogated, screened before I could see some dignitary. My business was being analysed, and found not sufficiently urgent.
    ‘He’s tried to remember anything. We’re both worried, of course. Perhaps if you came back later?’
    ‘Time could be important, Mrs Marshall.’
    She accepted the name. So Theodore Marshall lived with his mother. It didn’t fit my image of him, but, then, what image could I have yet? All his clothes at Anne Terry’s apartment—a home away from Mother? The rent right in both places?
    ‘But he’s asleep, you see?’ Mrs Marshall said. ‘He’s hardly slept since he heard about Anne. He had an accident last week, quite serious. Now I must go to work.’
    I didn’t want to push too hard, but, ‘If I could—’
    An inner door opened in the kitchen beyond the living room where the windows overlooked a rear courtyard and the walls of tenements across the yards. Theodore Marshall came out, his fingers automatically straightening his thick hair. In person he was taller and thinner. He wore narrow black slacks custom-made to his slim hips, a silky blue-and-white cotton shirt Ricardo Vega would admire, a sky-blue silk tie, and cuff links of sky-blue stones. A man who liked good clothes—so much that he napped in them. Mrs Marshall’s eyes showed that Theodore Marshall admiration began at home. Maybe only love.
    ‘I heard, Ma,’ he said. He had a soft, pleasant voice, eager now. ‘You’re a private eye? Can you find Anne? I mean, like, you were hired? Mr—’
    ‘Dan Fortune. Sarah Wiggen hired me.’
    Suprise arched his pale face. He had an unhealthy pallor, and his eyes up close were very pale hazel—the impression of dark eyes coming from sunken eye sockets with dark circles. I had seen faces like his on gamblers who worked tensely in smoky rooms far from the sunlight, and who lay awake nights full of schemes. Like Anne Terry, Marshall had the look of a man who burned his candle at all ends. At least from what I could see of his normal face. I couldn’t see too much. One eye was badly bruised and puffed almost shut. His lips were split, swollen. His nose looked thick and scabbed, and a bandage covered his left ear and part of his cheek. There was a thickness under the silky shirt that had to be bandaged ribs. He saw me staring.
    ‘Stupid trick,’ he said wryly. ‘Doing the pipe lights at the theatre. Ladder went over, I landed off the stage in the pit. Damn near a hospital job.’
    ‘You’re surprised Sarah Wiggen hired me?’
    ‘Sure as hell I am. Not that it isn’t damned sweet of Sarah, but, Christ, I didn’t figure she’d care that much.’
    ‘Please, Theodore,’ Mrs Marshall said.
    He grinned, punched her lightly on the arm. ‘Come on, Ma, I’m a big boy.’
    She smiled like a girl. She liked it, her boy’s buddy charm. I