Shadow of a Tiger (7 page)

“Why?”

“Since Claude and I came to New York, Jimmy has been nice to me, always helping. Small things—favors, errands, services, company when I've been alone. Perhaps because I speak his old language, but the reason does not matter.”

“I thought you were Thai?”

“A Thai orphan adopted by a Chinese family in Vietnam. Life is a flux these last long years in Southeast Asia, death and change are what we know. The people who took me in were from North China. Saigon is a crossroad. I speak most Oriental languages now, as well as French and my little English.”

“You speak a lot of English.”

She smiled. It was her first smile, soft and warm. “Thank you, but I do not speak as well as even poor Jimmy. He helped my English, too. He seemed to like to talk to me, a memory of his forgotten past, perhaps.”

“Do you think he robbed the shop, killed Eugene?”

“My help does not depend on what he did or did not do. He helped me in a strange city. A lonely man who understands the loneliness in others.”

“Are you lonely, Mrs. Marais?”

Her expression didn't change, she had no outward mannerisms, but I sensed a faint change in her whole body. Something in her bright eyes that considered me, probed behind my face. She smoothed her skirt—the universal gesture of a woman aware of herself, of her body. Touched herself.

“My husband was a soldier, a patriot, a man of loyalty and courage and devotion,” she said slowly. “All of this he put into the cause of France, and France lost. That hurt him, but it was not the worst. He came to believe that France had deserved to lose, that the world of France and honor was dead, and now he has no world he can understand. He cannot believe in France, or America, or China, or any country or cause. No pride, no destiny, no purpose.”

“Is he a man who needs a purpose?”

“Most men are. Even you, I think, if only to do your work well. Claude has no work to do well. He works to keep us alive, no more. Sometimes I am sure he does not even know where he is—here or Saigon; Paris or the jungle.” Her eyes seemed to look into me from a hollow inside herself. “He is alone, Dan, can feel nothing. Not war or peace, hate or love.”

Her face told me that she knew she had called me Dan. My mouth was dry. Maybe because of Marty, but I wanted this woman, and in her own way she was saying that her loneliness needed help. What kind of help maybe she wasn't sure herself.

I said, “How long have you been married, Li?”

“Eighteen years.” She watched me. “I was twelve when I married Claude. A few months before Dienbien-phu. It is not uncommon in Vietnam, as your own soldiers have found. A child is a good wife for a soldier. Better than the brothels, or older women who want only his money and disappear when he goes to fight. A child will not leave him. Children die so easily in Asia, have no food, no medicine, no doctors, no homes. A child must work early, is easily lost in war. Vietnamese love children, and to be married is to be safe, fed, even happy. It is better for a child to be a wife than an ox.”

“Afterward? When you weren't twelve anymore? Now?”

“I was Madame Marais, I was content. We lived many places, and Claude fought and worked for France. Now he is wasted as the land is wasted, burned out like the villages of Vietnam.”

Her small hands lay flat on her thighs, squeezed.

“Why did you hire me to stop Gerd Exner that night?”

“I hoped you would make him go away, leave the country. He hates to be noticed, watched. I hoped you would scare him.”

“I scared him, but he stayed around. Why? Who is Exner? Is there something he wants from Claude?”

“He is an ex-Legionnaire. Claude worked with him in Vietnam and Africa—trading, arms smuggling, black market. I do not know why he stays. I only wanted to help Claude. Eugene once said that Claude must wipe the past away, forget and start over. I had hoped to make Exner go away, make Claude forget.”

What she had hoped was to have her man back. If it wasn't too late.

“Could Eugene have gotten in Exner's way somehow? Maybe gotten in Claude's way?”

I saw that the thought had occurred to her too. A shadow of possible motives she didn't want to think about. I saw more on her face—an awareness of me. But she said nothing, only sat like some earth-mother who could only wait, had always waited, silent and still, for what would be done to her.

After a time I got up and left.

8

In her black dress, Viviane Marais stood at the door of the old frame house in Sheepshead Bay with a glass of wine in her hand.

“So?” the widow said. “Come in, Mr. Fortune.”

She took me into the spotless living room where everything shined as if she'd spent each day since Eugene Marais had died cleaning. She offered me a glass of the wine—La Tache, a fine, heavy Burgundy. I didn't say no. I sat, sipped.

“You're not surprised to see me?” I said.

“No.”

“You don't believe Jimmy Sung killed Eugene?”

“One can tell a man who will steal. Jimmy Sung would not. Too much pride. If he did not steal, what reason is there?”

“Why didn't you say that when I told you Jimmy was accused?”

She drank her glass empty, poured a fresh glass. “Eugene always said that only a man's will counted—to do something for yourself, not for others or for gain. If I had told you to go on it would have been a job, for money. I wanted to see if you would come to me from your own doubts.”

“You know your sister-in-law hired a lawyer for Jimmy?”

“Li is a strong woman, she has her beliefs.”

“And her troubles?”

“Yes, and her troubles.”

“With Claude her main trouble?”

She tasted her wine as if it were thick enough to chew, savored it. “Eugene said once that Claude is like a man who has done some awful crime and now waits for his punishment—paralyzed. He treats Li like a sister, a daughter. What woman can live like that? Married eighteen years and not yet thirty-one?”

“She needs a husband again,” I said.

“So?” Viviane Marais said. “She has let you see that?”

“Doesn't she usually let anyone see that?”

“No,” the widow said, watched me. “Treat her well, Mr. Fortune. She is a warm woman, loyal. A man who finds her with him will be lucky.”

I thought so too, and Marty was off somewhere making her decision, but I changed the subject for now.

“Some crime Claude had on his mind, Eugene said,” I said. “Could Eugene have meant some real crime? In Claude's past?”

“I don't know,” Viviane Marais said. “At the time I thought Eugene meant it only as a metaphor, but now—?”

“Could Claude be involved in something illegal? Some deal Eugene might have discovered, maybe tried to stop?”

“What Claude might be doing I can't know,” the widow said. “But Eugene would not try to stop anything. He had seen too much of the horror caused by righteous men who think that they must stop other men for some abstract truth, for some principle.”

“What if he found that Claude was using
him
in some way?” I said. “Had involved him in some scheme?”

“Eugene would not have permitted that, but he would not have done anything against Claude, either.”

“Maybe Claude, or Gerd Exner, didn't know that,” I said.

She thought, sipped her good wine, shrugged. There were too many “ifs,” but the possibility hung in the room.

“This Paul Manet,” I said. “You said Eugene had known him in the past in Paris?”

“Eugene knew the Manet family. I do not know if he knew Paul or not, or how well. Paul Manet was active in the Resistance, Eugene was not.”

“What is Vel d'Hiv?” I said. “Why would Paul Manet not want to talk about it? Why would it make him jumpy?”

“How do you know Paul Manet did not want to talk about it?”

“Claude said that to Eugene the day he was killed.”

She finished her wine again, did not refill her glass this time. She watched the far wall. “On the night of July 16, 1942, the Gestapo and the Paris police rounded up twelve thousand or so Jews, imprisoned them like sheep in the sports stadium—the Velodrome d'Hiver; to us: Vel d'Hiv. Non-French Jews, mostly German and Polish refugees. They were there a week, a hell, before they were sent to the worst hell of Auschwitz. It is not an episode most Frenchmen over forty-five want to talk about.” She reached for the wine bottle. “Four thousand of those Jews were children.”

She poured her glass of wine. Not new, no, one of thousands of such episodes in those barbarian years of the Third Reich, and that was why the silence of the neat living room in Sheepshead Bay was so brutal—I could imagine the scene, visualize it from a million other stories, reports, pictures. I could see and hear the bewildered suffering of those refugee children.

“Were Paul Manet and Eugene involved somehow?” I said.

“Eugene was not himself. We are half-Jewish, Eugene was at least, but French Jews were not affected. Some … friends were.” she drank. “Paul Manet risked his own life to warn many of the refugees, and rescued some. He is not a Jew, and it was a great risk in those days.”

“Eugene did nothing? Took no part?”

“He did nothing,” the widow said.

“Paul Manet would have no hatred against him, blame him for anything? Eugene had nothing against Manet?”

“I cannot think what. Few ordinary Frenchmen were part of it that night. Eugene did nothing bad, and Paul Manet was a hero. What could there be?”

She had no reason to be lying. Eugene Marais was dead, if he had done anything on that long-ago night to cause his murder now, she would have no reason to hide it and protect his killer. Or would she? Some guilty secret so bad …? No, Eugene Marais had not been a man to evade his own guilt.

“Does Danielle think Jimmy Sung guilty?” I said.

“How can I say what Danielle thinks?” Viviane Marais said.

“Has she seemed to doubt Jimmy's guilt at all?”

“No, she has not. She has said nothing. Why?”

“I'm pretty sure Charlie Burgos tried to have me beaten up to get me off the case, and he's got Danielle up-tight about something. If he didn't rob the shop, kill Eugene, and you didn't try to stop Danielle seeing him, what interest does he have in it all? Could he have been the one Eugene was meeting that night?”

“I have no idea, Mr. Fortune.”

I rubbed at my stump, it was aching. “All right, you're sure Jimmy Sung isn't a thief, not the type. But what facts do we have to support that? Some concrete proof it wasn't Jimmy?”

“Jimmy cares nothing about money, really. Eugene paid him well, too much, and often Jimmy would leave on payday without his money. As long as he had money in his pocket for his bottle that night. Also, he worked in the shop,
hein
? He knew where any money was, how much there was in the shop. Would he not have gone straight to the money first? He had, too, the combination of the safe. Would he not have opened the safe at once?”

“Unless he knew Eugene was dead as soon as he hit him, and panicked at once,” I said, and answered my own question before she could. “No, then he would have just run, no point to taking anything at all. And the killer didn't know Eugene was dead, or he wouldn't have tied him to that chair.”

“No, Jimmy never needed money that much, Mr. Fortune,” Viviane Marais said.

“Everyone needs money that much, Mrs. Marais,” I said.

9

The six-story old-law tenement off Ninth Avenue wasn't a lot different from my building. No shabbier than most buildings in Chelsea, and in some ways a lot cleaner—the steps swept and washed, the outer door painted, even a few geraniums in sidewalk boxes now wilted in the heat.

Jimmy Sung lived on the fourth floor, the stairs swept and dusted. I knocked, expecting no answer. But I got one. A woman opened Jimmy Sung's door. A plain woman, almost ugly, and bone thin. A cheap print dress hung on her bones like a sack, and she wore old sneakers for shoes, but her skin was bright and clear for her age—maybe fifty—and there was a snap to her brown eyes that said she wasn't a woman who gave up on life easily. A vigor in her, tenacious, despite the fact that she had been crying.

“Yeh?” A wary voice, protective. She dabbed her eyes.

“This is Jimmy Sung's apartment?” I said.

She nodded. “He's in jail. No key. Go—”

“I know where he is,” I said. “My names Dan Fortune, a private detective working on the Marais murder.”

“What's to work on?” she said, but she left the door open as she walked back into the apartment.

I followed into a windowless living room smaller than my own—and a lot neater. An almost bare room, clean and scrubbed, like the cell of some ascetic monk. A day-bed couch without cushions, the wall for a back rest; two high-backed wooden armchairs of the kind they sell for rustic lawn furniture; one lamp from some junkyard; a wooden table and three kitchen chairs. The woman didn't sit, she leaned against a wall, lit a cigarette, one eye half closed against the smoke that drifted up.

“Nobodies like Jimmy are always guilty,” she said, her open eye fixed on my face. “Isn't it over? Sure it is.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Some of us aren't so sure.”

“Forget the forgotten,” she said. “Mentally homeless, the only world left is inside. They turn the key, the end.”

“You're his woman?”

“Marie Schmidt. Drunky Marie. I'm not even my own woman.” She took the cigarette from her lips, picked tobacco. “Yeh, I'm his woman. I told them about that Buddha. My big mouth. You really think he's got a chance?”

“If he didn't do it. I'll need help.”

“Help? What, witnesses to say he was somewhere else? All the people who remember a drunk Chinese on the street? His business partners, wife, children, friends, alumni brothers? How about a magician?”