Shadow of a Tiger (8 page)

“Did anyone see him that night?”

She laughed. “Nobody ever sees him. Just a Chink. Six years in a damned insane asylum because he couldn't speak—”

“I know about that,” I said.

“Okay, you know. It was never much different for Jimmy outside that booby hatch. Who knows him? Who talks to him? The neighborhood Chink. Most people act like he's got no real right to speak English or be alive here. No big discrimination, you know, no real bigotry. Just that he doesn't really exist, they don't even see him. All except Mr. Marais, he was nice, a friend. So it got to be him they say Jimmy killed!”

She stopped, sighed, found an ashtray for her cigarette. “That Buddha, you know? He put it back there in the bedroom the day after Mr. Marais was killed—to honor Mr. Marais, he said. He said Mr. Marais gave it to him, and he put it in the bookcase and lighted incense in front of it. He sat down on the floor looking at it for an hour without saying anything.”

She was silent as if seeing Jimmy Sung silent in front of the small Buddha. “I never saw it before, and I told the cops. I don't know how long Jimmy had it, but the cops say it proves he just got it from the shop the night of the murder. If he got it that way, you'd think he'd hide it, not bring it out.”

“You would,” I said, “if he's sane. Is he sane?”

“Who is?” she said. “He's not crazy, Fortune. Not perfect, but not crazy more than anyone. He gets moody, who doesn't? Sometimes when he's drunk he gets mad and says I got the wrong eyes, I'm not a Chink. Hell, I get mad and call him a Chink. That doesn't make me crazy or a murderer.”

“You live here, Marie?”

“Here? Hell no!” She looked for another cigarette, lit one. “Like I said, who's perfect? He's a Chink, I couldn't live with him, you know? Maybe I'm ashamed, but he's all I've got, and I want him back.”

As she'd said, no one is perfect, and no one can escape their past, their culture, completely. She'd gone a long way, she had her Chinese man, but the past dies hard and slow.

“I'll do my best,” I said. “You said he left here at nine-fifty that night. Did he say where he was going?”

“No, he never says. That's his hang-up—tell no woman. A man does what he feels like, okay?”

“Did anyone see him anywhere after eleven o'clock that night? He says he left the pawn shop at eleven o'clock, Marais was alive.”

“If anyone saw him, no one's told me.”

“You weren't here after ten o'clock anyway?”

“No, not until next morning. He was asleep when I came.”

It was no help at all. “Can I look over the apartment?”

“Why not?” Marie Schmidt said.

There were three other railroad rooms—a bedroom with windows at the front as clean and bare as the living room: a double bed with sheets but no cover, and no blanket in a New York summer; two wooden chairs; a stained bureau; and a large bookcase with books in English and Chinese. On the third shelf of the bookcase there was an open niche that was empty except for a small, bronze saucer with incense ash in it—where the Buddha that sent Jimmy to jail had been.

A windowless middle room set up with a mattress on the floor, two low, Oriental chairs, and a television set.

A rear room bright with the late afternoon sun through backyard windows. A totally empty room. Some shelves, hooks on the walls, and nothing else.

“He usually keeps this room locked,” Marie Schmidt said behind me. “Burglars. The fire escape's out there, and Jimmy was afraid of burglars. They might steal his treasures.”

She looked behind her at the bare, cheap furniture. She shook her head as if she would never understand people or life. She wasn't alone in that feeling.

“Even here, four rooms don't cost peanuts,” I said. “Did Jimmy make enough money for this and his booze?”

“Not money,” Marie Schmidt said. “Work. He helps the super, gets free rent. That's why this building is clean, painted. He doesn't pay for much except booze, he works for it. He likes work. See what it's gotten him?”

10

I called Lieutenant Marx before I went down to the prison, and when I got there they were expecting me. Marx had said I could see Jimmy Sung—with Jimmy's lawyer.

The lawyer was a big, energetic-looking man with a heavy briefcase and eyes sunk deep in the heavy black sockets of a man who rarely got enough sleep. His name was Kandinsky. He wanted to know what I had. I told him. It wasn't much, but Kandinsky hadn't expected much.

“The wife too?” the lawyer said. “The sister-in-law hires me, the wife hires you. Good, I can use that.”

“His priest hired me too, swears by Jimmy,” I said.

“A Buddhist kook won't carry much weight with a jury sure to be half-Catholic, half-Jewish,” Kandinsky said se riously, “but the wife thinking he didn't do it is good. I can deal with that. With no real motive, a shaky case on the robbery, that bad deal out in the California nut house, and the victim's wife and sister-in-law on our side, the D.A.'ll have to deal. I can get delays and rulings forever. He'll settle for a minimum charge, and a guilty plea. Clear the calendar. Five years tops.”

“How about if I prove him innocent?”

“Well, that's the hard way, but go ahead and try,” Kandinsky said. “That all you have?”

“That's all.”

The lawyer nodded, and when Jimmy was brought into the visitors room, gave the stocky Chinese a reassuring smile.

“It's good, Jimmy. I'm sure I can deal for you. Behave yourself, get some sleep. I've got four more clients to see today, okay?”

The lawyer's smile seemed to still be in the room after he had gone. I watched Jimmy. The stocky man's broad, pale-brown face revealed nothing, not even the alcoholic's torture inside without his liquor. His dark eyes blinked at the door where Kandinsky had left. His work-gnarled fingers ran through his thinning gray hair—the only sign of any nerves.

“He's a good lawyer?” Jimmy said.

“I'd say so,” I said. “He must be costing Li Marais a lot.”

Jimmy nodded, didn't smile. “She's a good woman, sure. I know. We understand.”

“Kandinsky'll deal for you, Jimmy. I'd like to get the truth. Tell me the whole story, okay?”

“Truth?” Jimmy Sung's dark eyes were immobile. “What truth you mean, Mr. Fortune? I told the cops all I know.”

“And a lot of lies,” I said. “You were there that night?”

“Okay, yeh. I got there maybe ten o'clock. For chess. We played some. I left around eleven o'clock. Mr. Marais was okay.”

“The game was over? With the chess set still up?”

Jimmy licked at his lips. “Mr. Marais got a call. Some guy coming to see him. No time to finish the game. I left.”

“What man was coming to see him?”

“I don't know.”

“His brother? Claude Marais?”

“He was there before I got there.”

“He was supposed to come back.”

“No one told me about it. Mr. Marais he expected someone, he didn't tell me who. The call was the guy he expected.”

The stocky Chinese spoke short and flat, each statement without overtones. No tone of question, no fervor of innocence. Not uninterested, but saying that he was telling all he could, and that was all. His normal manner, flat and brief, but now his left hand had begun to twitch, clench.

“Did you see the man Eugene Marais expected, Jimmy?”

“I was gone.”

“Were you drunk, Jimmy?”

“Maybe some.”

“By ten o'clock? When do you usually start drinking? Maybe five-thirty? Six o'clock? Four and a half hours?”

“My woman was with me, Marie. She holds me down. I took it slow. The chess game, you know? That's how come I took a bottle with me to the shop. I was drunk some, not bad.”

The middle-aged Chinese's left hand went on with its nervous jumping. He didn't hold it, or try to stop it. He didn't seem to notice it. I had the feeling that no matter where or when I talked to Jimmy Sung he would be the same—locked deep inside some thick shell where only he lived. Even the drab prison clothes looked much the same as his day-to-day clothes.

“Where did you go after eleven or so, Jimmy?”

“Some bars. I told the cops. They don't believe me. No one says they saw me.”

“Did anyone see you who knew you?”

“No one knows me much. I drink in a booth. A lot of bars.”

“No regular tavern?”

“No. Except where I work sweeping. I don't go to those.”

“Tell me the bars,” I said.

“Fugazy's Tavern, Packy's Pub, the Tugboat. The cops been there already.”

“You never know when you'll get lucky,” I said. “You saw no one else at the pawn shop that night?”

“The girl come in, Danielle. With her kid, that Charlie Burgos. Mr. Marais tossed them out before I left.”

“What did they want?”

“I don't know. They was always bugging Mr. Marais. No good punk kids. No respect. Too damned weak, Mr. Marais.”

I heard the change in his voice before it showed on his broad face. A crack in the flat monotone, a catch like some liquid in his throat, and then the wet dark eyes. His jumping left hand brushed at his eyes. Whatever it was, it was no act. An edge of tears.

“This city, I got no friends. No one. I got no name, but he was my friend, Mr. Marais. He gave me work, paid me good. I work good for him, now he got to die. He ain't like most of them. French, too, but he treats me good. That Buddha he give me, free, so when he's dead I pray to it, burn incense. For him. He'll be okay. He was my friend.”

What did it mean? I've seen killers cry for their victims before. Too many times, the murderous moment gone. I've even seen them forget who did the killing. Yet, Eugene Marais had been Jimmy Sung's friend, and where was a motive for murder?

“You've got friends, Jimmy. Li Marais. Claude. The widow. Me, I hope. Marie Schmidt. She's a strong woman, I think.”

“A drunk. Like me,” Jimmy Sung said, the moment of tears past. “She got no one else but me. A Chink sweeps floors.”

“She's waiting for you,” I said.

“Yeh, Marie's okay.”

“She wasn't there when you got home that night? What time?”

“Who knows. By then I'm drunk. I sleep late.”

“You're sure no one saw you after eleven o'clock?”

Jimmy Sung only shrugged. Who would remember him?

11

The police had combed the three bars before me, as Jimmy Sung had said. At Fugazy's they had been crowded that night, no one remembered seeing Jimmy Sung, or any Chinaman—only in Fugazy's, where the bar-men did know Jimmy, they didn't think of Jimmy as a Chinaman. You can lose all ways. I know. When I want my missing arm noticed, no one seems to have thought about it.

At Packy's Pub they had been slow enough the murder night, and everyone who'd been there was
sure
Jimmy hadn't been in. Of course, they all said they didn't know Jimmy Sung hardly.

A “Chink” had maybe been in the Tugboat Grill, but in the Tugboat all Chinks looked alike, okay?

Maybe someone had seen Jimmy Sung that night in one of the bars, but it could take years to dig one witness out of the nameless regulars and faceless transients who fill Chelsea bars. Even then, it would prove only that part of Jimmy Sung's story was true. Eugene Marais could have been dead by eleven that night. What I needed was someone to say Eugene had been alive at eleven o'clock. Someone other than Jimmy Sung.

There was no more police seal on the pawn shop door. With Jimmy Sung in jail, the police had all they wanted from the shop—at least, officially. As I took out my ring of keys to open the shop door, a black car glided to a stop at the curb.

“Something on your mind, Fortune?” a voice said from the back seat of the car.

Captain Olsen, the Narcotics chief filling in at Homicide for Gazzo. He was slouched in the back seat, a big shadow with a pale, massive face half hidden. His small eyes caught random light from the busy avenue. His driver looked straight ahead.

“Fishing, Captain. Everybody seems to want to pay me, but I've got my doubts anyway. That Buddha is just too dumb.”

“It was dumb,” Olsen agreed. “We haven't found any of the rest of the loot. You can skip the alleys around here, we've vacuumed them all.”

“Jimmy could have dumped the loot ten miles away, kept the Buddha by accident,” I said.

“Sure he could have,” Captain Olsen said. But I heard it; Olsen had doubts too. If you don't run head-on into their prejudices, the cops can do very good work.

“You've checked everywhere he went the day after?”

“Ten times.”

“You know, Captain,” I said, “it's an awful funny bag of loot for a burglary. Junk, and no real pattern to it.”

“It's a funny bag,” Olsen said. “Tell us what you find.”