‘But you’ll tell everything yourself,’ I said. ‘If Lehman goes to trial, it’ll go better for him if you tell the jury everything that made him do what he did. How you used him, and for what.’
‘Lehman acted on his own, just like that crazy McBride. He gets no help from me, Fortune. Why should he?’
‘Funny. That’s what he said you’d do.’
‘Did he?’ Vega said, less friendly.
I said, ‘Don’t pay me anything, Vega. I’m going to get it all into the record at Foxx’s trial. All I can about Anne Terry, Lehman, McBride, Foxx, myself and even Marty. Marty’s how I started on the case, so I’ll get her in. I’m going to crucify you as far as I can.’
His dark eyes glittered. ‘I can still hurt Marty.’
‘No, we know too much now. We know your weaknesses. You’ll stay far away from us.’
I turned to walk away. I was tired of him. He spoke behind me.
‘You know, I really liked her, Fortune. Anne Terry, I mean. She had beauty, talent, strength. I got closer to her than to any girl in a long time. I already told you that. We were good together. Maybe I should even have married her.’
I turned back. ‘You’re telling me something?’
‘I’m telling you that I didn’t try to do all of it, that I didn’t want to do it. She was just too much. I am what I am. I won’t be pushed, and I can’t share what I am. I can’t share Ricardo Vega. With no one.’
I heard what Anne Terry had said on that rainy night, and what Emory Foxx had said tonight-Vega would never be sure. The difference between a born prince and a success-prince. A born prince knew he would always be a prince. Rey Vega would never be sure what tomorrow would make him. So he worked for himself alone, his talent directed inward, his work unrelated to anything but his own victory. He could only use people, and nothing connected him inside to Frank Madero from the same Havana slum. But work must go outward, not inward, and Rey Vega would stand isolated, afraid of the next ‘Vega’ behind him.
‘They say you’re a genius,’ I said to him. ‘I always believed them. Maybe you could be a genius: you’ve got skill and talent. But you’re not a genius. You need to many flies to feed you. You haven’t had a moment of daring since you put your own money into your work. You’re dancing for the public now, and you’re going to fade before more original artists. You don’t have the vision or the courage to be great. You can’t want women; you can only chase skirts. A life of one-night stands. Sideshow genius.’
His handsome face had been framed in the open car window as I talked. Now his head turned as if to give orders to the new man behind the wheel of his car. I braced, thought: here we go again? But he didn’t speak. Not to the driver, and not to me. He gave a faint shrug, a half-smile, and vanished back inside his Cadillac. The big car slipped silently away. I watched until it turned a corner, and then I began to walk.
When I reached an avenue, I looked through the mist for a taxi. I wanted Marty now: my place, my haven. One more fly with desperate hopes and no hope. Other times, other places, Francisco Madero might have been a hero, needed. He might have saved lives and been honoured, instead of losing a life and being forever damned. A moment of error, and then the fear that had killed Ted Marshall. I wasn’t going to be the one who had to look at Mrs Marshall’s eyes when she heard the reason for her son’s death.
I was going home to Marty where it would be warm and we could smile close in the dark. I had a woman, not just a skirt to hang in my closet overnight. Ricardo Vega could have had a woman, but he was afraid to lose himself. A rich man who was, of course, a better man, so could live only for himself, afraid to touch.
A solitary taxi came far down the deserted avenue. I watched its top light distant in the mist. Ricardo Vega could have had a real woman. If he had been a little more man, and a little less prince of success, Anne Terry could have had her chance and none of it would have happened. I felt sad, even bitter, but she would never stand still for that. Not Anne Terry. She would cheer me up: ‘Forget it Gunner; we all die. You got to take risks. At least the kids’ll be okay.’ A girl no better and no worse than most.
No! That was a lie, an insult. I heard her scorn: ‘Get away from me with that cheap crap, Gunner!’
No. She had been much worse than most, and a lot better than most. She hadn’t made the conditions of her life, so she had refused to accept the conditions. For her own needs she should have left her kids in Arkansas, but she hadn’t. For the small pleasures she should have made the best of what she had, but she wouldn’t. Her life had given her little to battle with, so she faced the weapons she had to use, and used them. A woman who shaped her own life if it killed her.
The taxi reached me still empty. I sat back, and I didn’t feel good. She was slipping away forever, Anne Terry. In a few days, weeks, I would forget her like a puddle that dried and vanished after a rainy night. A vague memory, and I realized as I looked at the dark night city outside the taxi that I had been working all along for a miracle. Not to solve a case, or catch a killer. Not for justice or truth. I had been working to make her live again, to bring her back, to let her win this time. I had been working to give her another chance. This isn’t a world of miracles, yet I felt that I had failed her, too.
After a time the cab passed a big Cadillac in the mist. It could have been Ricardo Vega’s Cadillac. I stared at it. I felt a sudden surge of wolfish joy. I was going to ‘get’ Vega at the trail. I felt better. At least revenge. I’m human, too.