Authors: Michael Collins
Dark. I'm glad you asked how I lost my arm. It's a long story. The war, you know? We were up near the Meuse River, that's in France, and this Tiger tank came. I saw its shadow in the fast water, the shadow of the Tiger. So, I had the shadow of a bazooka, and I shot that Flying Dutchman â¦
Roaches on a ceiling don't like the sunlight, their thin feelers quiver uneasy â¦
She had a nice face above her glass, blonde and raped at fourteen by some uncle her father beat her for enticing. Old, at fourteen. Come on, Dan, honey, I've got a nice place and we can talk. Fourteen is getting old in Saigon. I don't know anything about Saigon, I'm studying to be an artist. I never saw a man with one arm so close ⦠honey â¦
Sure Claude Marais did it. What else? Only no one saw him, did they? No one saw Eugene Marais refuse to give him that package. No witnesses. She had a nice face, old and dark-haired, and where the hell was I now �
The Oriental women are so small in the dark.
20
A familiar room, and hot. Too hot. The hot spell had broken, then why was it so hot? And if I was in my own familiar room with Marty in bed beside me, asleep and small, then � In bed with me? Marty? I touched her, kissed her.
Li Marais looked up at me, sleepy but waking fast, not smiling as I touched her. “How are you, Dan?”
I lay back on the pillow. “Tell me. How did I get here?”
A familiar room, but not my room. The bedroom of the suite in the Hotel Stratford. Soft sun, so morning, and too hot.
“How long have I been?” I said.
“Only since last night, Dan. You came here with me last night. I found you in a bar,” Li said, watched me.
“No, I mean how long sinceâ?” I was going to say since Marty left me. I said, “Since they arrested Claude?”
“A week,” Li said. “One more day.”
That explained the heatâanother hot spell on the city. I had missed the relief. A drunk binge. Booze, and how many strange women? The standard answer for a middle-aged roustabout. One week and a day, the exact time. She would be married, Marty. All over. My subconscious planned well, with precision. The next step: pack a bag and go. Or work?
“Claude's still in jail?” I said. “Nothing new?”
“He is in jail. There is nothing new. The French Consul, the Balzac Club, they are helping. I have engaged the lawyer, Kandinsky. They have not made a full charge, but he is in jail.”
“You found me in a bar? For me, or for him?”
“For him, and for me,” Li said. “Not for you. For myself, I was so alone. I found you.”
I sat up, lit a cigarette. “I make you happy, Li? Even drunk? Did I tell you why I was drunk?”
“You make me happy. You told me, yes. I am sorry.”
“If I make you happy, what do we care about Claude?” I made it brutal. To find out. Or was I feeling brutal?
She didn't flinch. “Eighteen years I have loved Claude. He does not love me now, loves nothing. But he is innocent. He could not kill Eugene. He did not want the diamonds. He would have given them to Gerd Exner, there was no hurry, he did not go back to the pawn shop that night. After all our years across the world we came here, and Claude found Eugene. He found for Eugene an admiration, yes. What in the past had been bad in Eugene, Claude now saw was good. A simple man who knew life and did what he could without need of credit, or glory, or purpose. An honest man enduring his obligation to live. That is what Claude said of Eugene. Would he kill Eugene for diamonds?”
“He was going to give Gerd Exner the diamonds? All of them? Break with Exner?”
“Yes, I know that. I was afraid of Exner, I hired you, but I was wrong. Claude was not returning to our past life.”
“How do you prove it, and did Exner know it?”
“I don't know.”
Under the thin sheet she was small, slim, but not thin. A full woman. Mine? Stay, pack no bag? How did I know?
“The police have all the circumstances against Claude. No more than that. But we have nothing, either. Empty time where Claude was alone. How do we prove him innocent, Li?”
“He did not go back that night. He was here, with me,” she said. “The police do not believe me.”
“What time, Li?”
“From nine-thirty until past three
A.M.
”
“Not good enough.”
“Eugene would not have waited until past three
A.M.
If he had been alive by then, he would have gone home.”
I believed that. Even the police would agree, but how did we know Claude had been with her until 3:00
A.M.
The wife? No, the police could not believe her. Did I?
“All right, say Claude is innocent. Who got the package from the shop after Jimmy Sung left, and who put it in this suite? Why? Not Exner, he wouldn't give up the diamonds. Who would give up a fortune just to frame Claude?”
“To escape capture for murder, Dan, what are diamonds?”
It was a good point. “What about that hat badge? How would someone get it? Was this room burglarized, broken into?”
I didn't add that one person could easily have gotten the badge and put it into the registerâher.
“No, no one came here that I know of. No signs of entry.”
She could have said yes, covered herself.
“Someone tipped the police to look here for the package,” I said. “Maybe Claude is innocent, maybe he's guilty. I'll try to find outâfor you. Don't use me, Li. Don't play with me.”
She was silent. Then she moved under the sheet, touched her own body. “We are we. I must save Claude, he did not hurt Eugene. I must free him, but he does not need me. In jail he does not care, he smiles. He is alone. I need you, Dan, but I must help him. Thenâ?”
She kissed me. It was a real kiss. But, of course, I was thinking of myself.
Lieutenant Marx watched us as we sat down. Li perched on the hard chair in the squad room office. I faced Marx. He must have known about Marty, the police don't miss much, but he said nothing.
“When do you charge Claude Marais?” I said.
“You too?” Marx scowled. “That lawyer, Kandinsky, is on our backs every hour. Not to mention the French people.” He looked at Li. “The little lady is persuasive.”
“She knows Claude didn't do it,” I said.
“I wish I did,” Mara said, angry and yet not. “Even if we believed her, the time doesn't help. He could have killed his brother any time between three
A.M.
and five A.M.”
“Would Eugene have waited until three
A.M.
in the shop?”
“We thought of that. But what kind of proof is it? Any man could have a million reasons for waiting, damn it.”
I heard an odd uneasiness in the Lieutenant's voice. That wasn't like the police. An obvious uncertainty, as if they weren't really convinced of their own case against Claude. That they would be uncertain wasn't so unusual, but that Marx would show it to me was. It had to mean trouble in holding Claude.
“If only Marais would say something we could work on,” Marx said, glared at Li. “He just denies it all, can't account for his time between three and when he went to you, Dan. He won't account for it. Walking around, he says, a habit. Gerd Exner had called him, and he was wondering who you were, deciding what to do about you.”
“But you haven't charged him?”
“No. We're holding him as a material witness for now.”
“For how long, Marx?”
“Not too long unless we get something more.”
“What can you get? All right, circumstantially he looks like it, but no one can place him at the shop, no one saw Eugene killed, no one can even say Eugene refused the package and that there was a fight.”
“We're looking,” Marx said.
“Are you looking for that tipster?”
“An anonymous phone call in this city? How?”
“It has to be someone connected, someone with a motive to expose Claude Marais, or to frame him.”
“We don't even know if it was a man or a woman.”
“Maybe we better find out,” I said.
Marx said nothing. He just looked gloomy.
21
I stopped at my office for my old gun, and walked with Li Marais to the condemned brownstone on Nineteenth Street where Charlie Burgos and his street kids had taken me. The yard was overgrown with sickly city weeds. The alley beside the house was deserted. Li Marais looked up at the dark, boarded windows.
“Someone lives here?”
“Street kids,” I said. “If they have homes, they hate them, and where else can they get a place of their own?”
“You think this Charlie Burgos can help us?”
“I think he knows something.”
We went up warily. As we reached the third floor, I had my pistol out. If Charlie Burgos could tell us anything, we weren't going to learn what this time. The third floor room where I had been held was empty. Not abandoned, the clothes, mattresses and blackened Sterno cans still there.
I searched the ragged belongings of the five adolescents. It took only a few minutes, they had so little. I didn't have much more of my own, but for me it had been a matter of choice to live without baggage. The street boys had never had a choice.
On the street I found a telephone booth. Li Marais waited on the hot sidewalk while I called Viviane Marais. People who are unaware of being observed reflect in their pose, their faces, the hidden skeleton of their feelings. Relaxed for an instant, they reveal the landscape where their minds are living. While the telephone rang out in Sheepshead Bay, I watched Li outside the booth. She watched the street and two children playing. Her Oriental face was blank, serene, as if she wasn't there at all.
“Yes?” Viviane Marais said from the other end.
“Dan Fortune, Mrs. Marais. Is Danielle there?”
“No.” A silence. “I owe you some money, Mr. Fortune.”
“Where is Danielle?”
“I do not know. She has not been home for two days. With that boy, I presume.” Another silence. “You still work?”
“Li thinks Claude didn't do it.”
“And what do you think?”
“I want to talk to Danielle and Charlie Burgos.”
“I have not seen them.”
“Do you still think Claude killed Eugene?”
“For a package of diamonds?” A third silence. “Or because Eugene interfered? What does it matter? I do not really care anymore. Send me your bill, Mr. Fortune.”
She hung up. I went out to Li Marais.
Paul Manet walked back into the sumptuous living room of his borrowed apartment. I closed the outer door, followed him across the yellow carpet. Li Marais was silent behind me. Manet held a drink. He drank, composed his face into a somber expression.
“So Claude killed his brother? A tragedy. Butâ?” He sighed, drank. “We knew that Claude was disturbed.”
“Li, there, doesn't think Claude did it.”
“Li?” Manet looked at her. I saw the appreciation in his eyes. He squared his shoulders ready to be charming, gallant, and, hopefully, something more?
“Claude's wife,” I said. “You didn't know that?”
“Ah, no,” Manet said, very sad. “My sympathies, Madame.”
The tall hero was out of his elegant, pseudo-military clothes. A dark shirt and tapered slacks like an officer at ease in his quarters. A looseness to his imperious manner, off-duty. Almost sluggish, but not relaxed. A tension in his face. Drinking. Was it that no one could keep the front up all the time? The need of a few drinks every afternoon before he went out to perform? I knew fifty salesmen like that. Yet with Manet it was something more. A pervading sense of need to have the drinks, a desperation.
“We're looking for Danielle Marais,” I said.
“I have not seen her for some days.”
“Charlie Burgos?”
“No, not him, either.”
His eyes flickered. He had realized that he had just told me something I hadn't known for sure. He did know Charlie Burgos. He drank.
“So you know Charlie Burgos?” I said.
“I have met him with Danielle, yes.”
“But you give Danielle dresses?”
“The daughter of a friend.”
“No romance?”
“At my age?” He smiled. A weak smile.
“She was here alone that day. Why?”
“Why not? I am a family friend.” He put down his drink. “Mr. Fortune, I am aware the police inquired into my history. I assume they told you what they found. I have nothing to hide. So, if you don't mind, I have an appointment.”
Smooth, controlled, even commandingâand yet there was the tension. Everything in the elegant living room was a hair off. As if just out of focus.
“Someone was supposed to meet Eugene Marais the night he died. It almost had to be you, Manet. Why?”
“You saw me leave at five. I did not return.”
“Why would you meet with a man from the past so late at night and alone? A man
you
hadn't really known at all before? A man who had known not you but your family in Paris.”
Manet put down his drink. “I am becoming annoyed.”
“Where do Charlie Burgos and Danielle fit in?” I pushed on. “They were there, so â¦
There
, sure! That's it. They
saw
you come out of the shop carrying a suitcaseâand the diamonds?”
“There are laws to stop you badgering aâ”
“Wait. You ditched the suitcase, but you kept the diamonds. You know where Claude Marais lives. You know the hat badge of the Thirteenth Half Brigadeâhis unit. But why? What did Eugene Marais do, or know, thatâ?”
“Get out! Now!”
His hands clenched into fists. Anger flushed his handsome face. He took a step toward me, powerful and commanding. I reacted by reflex.
I fell into a crouch with my lone fist raised. In a fight, I wouldn't have much chance with Manet, but a man reacts by instinct. To protect himself, or to attack.
I didn't do either. I didn't have to.