Shadow of a Tiger (2 page)

Soft, young, yet that dignity that suggested experience if not age. A mature manner—Madame.

“What do you want to hire me to do?” I said.

“My husband was a soldier. Many years, many places. He has enemies. Now one wishes to kill him, I think. I do not know his name. Claude does not tell me what is in his mind, but I know he is in danger. Another soldier, I think, one I have seen before in Saigon, Bangkok, Hong Kong. Tall, perhaps forty. A German, with a limp and scars here.” She touched her left cheek. “I have heard Claude speak on the telephone. This man comes to our hotel perhaps tonight, perhaps tomorrow. Claude is worried, I know that. He carries his pistol.”

“One man? This German?”

“Perhaps there are others, I am not sure.”

“What do you expect me to do?”

“Be at our hotel to stop this man before he comes to Claude. Do not tell Claude. I think that if this man sees that someone is watching Claude, he will go away. He, too, is an alien, such men are not foolhardy. He will go.”

“Such men as what, Mrs. Marais?”

“The men without countries, without simple work. The homeless men who live by their wits. He will go when he sees that Claude is not alone, that someone watches.”

I didn't like the sound of it. She wanted someone there, but to do what, really? Scare this man? Why? Who was after whom? Did they need a demonstration of muscle, this woman and her husband, Claude? Or was it just her, some trick
against
the husband? But I watched her stand up now, lay five hundred dollars on my old desk, and what did I care what she really wanted? A risk? Maybe, but the money was there, and, somehow, I sensed that this time hocking a ring was not going to be good for me. This time, for Marty, I needed to have more to give. I picked up the money.

She said, “We are at the Stratford Hotel. It is on Ninth Street. Room 427. The man will come. You will tell him you watch Claude, send him away. Yes?”

“I'll be there,” I said.

When she had gone I sat for a time. I didn't like it at all—but I had five hundred dollars. I could get the ring back. Maybe that would help.

2

I called Marty, there was still no answer. The pawn shop would be closed. There was nothing to do but the job I had been paid to do. I stopped for three cold cans of beer on the way, carried them with me.

The Hotel Stratford was middle class, not expensive but not a flop, either. The lobby was small but clean, the floor carpeted, and greenery in the pots. The heavy chairs and couches weren't too old. A solid hotel where they even cleaned the single elevator. The night clerk was just as solid, neither old nor young, neat and a friend.

“I'm going to wait for someone asking for room 427 or Claude Marais, George. I'll be quiet, and I'd appreciate a high sign. Okay?”

“Any trouble involved, Dan?” George Jenkins asked.

“Just talk, I hope. It's worth ten, okay?”

“Keep your money, Dan. Drink the beer out of sight, and put the cans in the bag. The manager's touchy.”

I nodded thanks—ten saved is ten earned—and found an armchair where a rubber plant hid me. I could see the entrance, desk, elevator and stairs. There were no other ways up. The lobby wasn't air-conditioned, and the chair was heavy and hot. It was going to be a bad night.

For money and nothing else. I felt like a fool, a tool, or worse. A job I really knew nothing about, and didn't care a damn about—because I had to have money. Work I should have turned down because it was work in the dark, but a desperate man can't afford that luxury. The story of most men.

I had just finished my first beer when the stocky younger brother came out of the elevator and headed for the street. I had been paid to keep anyone away from Claude Marais, so I went out after him. In the stifling night, he turned uptown on Ninth Avenue. He didn't act like a man with someone out to kill him. He just walked uptown in that slow, gliding walk as if he had a weight dragging him back. When he crossed Nineteenth Street, I guessed where he was going.

There was a light inside the pawn shop of Eugene Marais as Claude turned into it. He had to wait for the door to be opened. After he had gone in, I took up a station across the street, lit a cigarette, and waited. The whole city was out in shirtsleeves, walking aimlessly in a vain attempt to find, or make, a breeze.

It was just past nine when Claude Marais came out of the pawn shop again. He wasn't alone. A short young girl was with him—heavy-bodied and big-breasted, her dark hair long on her bare shoulders, her face full-lipped and petulant. She wore a loose blouse off her shoulders, and tight shorts, and I recognized her—Danielle Marais, Eugene's daughter. Nineteen, her heavy body was full and sensual.

I followed them back to the Stratford. They went up together. I wondered if the wife, Li, was up in the room? After all, what did I really know about why I had been hired? Or who I was really staked out to watch for?

Somewhere around ten, a big puff of cooler air ran around the lobby for a time, and I finished my second beer. I was about to open the third before it boiled, and almost missed the night clerk's high sign.

The youth at the desk wasn't middle-aged, scarred or German, but he had asked for Claude Marais or his room, and I cornered him at the elevator. I knew him—a twenty-year-old street kid from south of Houston Street: Charlie Burgos.

“Visiting friends, Charlie?”

He curled his lip. “What's it to you, Fortune?”

Defensive and aggressive—both together, and immediately. Defensive, because like all street kids of the slums he knew his powerlessness. Aggressive, because aggression, immediate and animal, was the only hope of power any street kid had. Strike before you're struck. The street kids of poor, dirty, tough, abandoned streets that didn't exist to the daylight world of affluent America.

“I'm going to check you out, Charlie,” I said.

He had been checked for weapons all his young life, Charlie Burgos, whenever he ventured beyond his own streets and alleys. Guilty, until reluctantly found innocent by cops who knew that crime
did
live in the slums.

“Check,” Charlie Burgos said, indifferent.

My right to check him was power, nothing more. Physical power because I was older, social power because I had at least some standing in the proper community. Not like Charlie Burgos or his parents—they had no power, so no rights. Parents who had never escaped the same streets—uneducated, unskilled, without hope of a human joy beyond the bottle, the needle, the bookie, the street woman, and some joyless job with nowhere to go except down. No today, no tomorrow, beyond what they could steal, for a moment, from each other's flesh.

He had no weapon. “Okay, Charlie. What's up?”

He showed no resentment to being searched. Abstract anger and pride was a luxury street kids don't have. Kids put down and ignored forever because they were young, and poor, and powerless. Lost to disease and drugs, but lost mostly to defeat. There are few fair ways out of the defeat of the slums, so they learn early to lie, cheat, steal, mug and scheme every minute. An angle, a scheme of profit, that is what they live with, and that was what was on Charlie Burgos's mind.

“You on a job, Fortune? Stake out? Buck an hour, I'll help, okay?”

“What's your business with Claude Marais, Charlie?”

“Nothin'. It's hot, take a break. I'll spell you.”

“Never mind, Charlie.”

“I'll go for a beer. Buck for goin' to the store.”

I went back to my chair behind the rubber plant. The third beer was hot, damn! At the elevator, Charlie Burgos was gone. The wife, Li Marais, had said others might be involved, but Charlie wasn't armed, and if he had anything on his mind he wasn't going to tell me without more pressure.

I got my answer anyway. At ten-forty, my last beer gone, Charlie Burgos came out of the elevator—with Danielle Marais. The ripe pawn-shop owner's daughter held the tall, skinny street kid's arm. In his dark-eyed animal way, Charlie Burgos was handsome enough. He gave me a wink as they passed—“Look what I'm going to get, mister. I howl tonight!” the wink said. It's the only relation to a woman a street kid knows.

He came into the lobby at 11:02
P.M.
Taller than I had expected, the limp barely noticeable, but the scars clear on his left cheek.

He walked straight through the lobby to the desk, seemed to look at nothing and no one. Yet he saw everything and everyone. He seemed to look straight ahead, intent on where he was going, yet I saw his eyes on me. German eyes under thin blond hair—pale blue, smooth, self-contained.

Forty-plus, I guessed, but the stride of an athlete in shape. Not furtive, but calling no attention, either. Polite and reserved in a brown tropical suit he wasn't quite at home in. He wore the suit casually, but somehow seemed restricted by it. He belonged in safari clothes in some jungle, or running guns in a fast boat. The kind of man who would sell both sides if he could, and would be wanted in many countries for a little official talk. A man who would live high, hard and well, until he ended in front of a firing squad in some remote capital, or, worse, slowly ran out of countries where he could go, people he could live off.

The clerk gave me the high sign, but I was already on my way to the elevator. When he came, I was in his path. I could see the gun under his right arm. He stopped. Surprised to see me in his path, but not scared.

“You're looking for Claude Marais?” I said.

He thought about it. “Yes, I visit Claude.”

“For what reason?”

He thought about me. He considered my one arm. I sounded tough, and he had no way of knowing if I was or wasn't.

“It is your affair?”

“It is now,” I said, and flashed an old private guard badge.

His blond eyebrows went up an inch. He looked at my arm.

“Special detective,” I said, before he could ask about a cop with one arm. “You're an alien, you have a permit for that gun you're carrying?”

His left hand moved to his thin blond hair, combed through. A mannerism. I imagined him doing that when deciding if he should shoot a prisoner or not.

“Claude, he is in some trouble?” he said.

“Let's say I'm watching him. I want to know your business.”

“A private matter. Personal. I wish no trouble.”

“Good,” I said. “Maybe I better take the gun.”

I held out my hand, and he reacted. Like a snake. He jerked back, took two steps away. I could see him thinking. Somehow, though, he wasn't acting like a man out to kill anyone. More like a man with a plan on his mind, weighing how important it was that he see Claude Marais. He decided.

“I wish no trouble,” he said again as if his mind could hold only limited thoughts in English. “Claude is not important to me that much.
Bitte
.”

He backed away, didn't turn until he was past the desk. Then he strode out of the lobby. I wiped the sweat from my face. Killer or not, he was a man I wouldn't want to cross where he had the advantage. I followed him out. Across the street I saw him climb into a blue Ford and drive away.

I waited an hour hidden outside the hotel entrance. The German didn't return. I had a pretty good certainty that he wouldn't, not tonight, at least. It was twelve-ten, I had done my job, and I was tired. I went home to bed.

I didn't sleep much, not in the oven of my five shabby rooms. Not until just before dawn when a faint coolness seemed to wash in through the open windows. A gray dawn light, cooler …

Then he was there. He had a gun.

“Who are you, Mr. Fortune?” he said, a shape beside my bed in the dawn. “What do you want with me? With Exner?”

I rolled onto my back under the sheet, blinked at him. He stood over the bed: Claude Marais.

“How'd you get in here, Marais?” I said.

He waved the pistol. I was changing the subject. “A man learns to open doors. I want to know who you really are, what you were doing at my hotel last night?”

His pistol was steady—an odd pistol. An unusually long barrel for a light gun—7.65-mm. A French Starr.

“Can I get a cigarette?” I said.

He hesitated. I realized that my empty sleeve was hidden under the sheet. Last night he hadn't even noticed I had only one arm. A man busy with his own thoughts.

“I've only got one arm,” I said, showed him.

“All right, get a cigarette,” he said. “A war injury?”

“No.” I smoked. “You know who I am. Your brother—”

“My brother said you are a detective. That doesn't tell me of your past, of who you work for, or why you are mixed in my affairs. It doesn't tell me why you were waiting for Gerd Exner, or how you knew Exner was coming to me last night.”

“Why was Exner coming to you?” I said.

“My business,” Claude snapped. “Did my brother send you?”

“Eugene? Why would Eugene send me? Does he know—”