Shadow of a Tiger

by Michael Collins

  “You beat me up, grab me, just because Mrs. Marais is paying me and that’s lost money to you?”

  “You’re gettin’ in the way.” His voice was angry now. “Why the hell don’t you leave town, take a vacation.”

  Was he needling me about Marty?

  “I’ve got a job, I need money to eat, too.”

  “Okay, how much? How much to drop it, fade out?”

  “I thought you figured I was taking money out of your pocket already.”

  One of the others said, “He’s a hardhead, Charlie. Let’s get rid of him.”

  “Yeh,” one said.

  “Permanent,” a third added from the shadows.

  It scared me. They were imitation tough guys, playing at an illusion, but they believed their own script, and if they followed it through all the way I’d be as dead as if they were a real gang of musclemen. They’d be caught, they weren’t really strong, but that wouldn’t help me. That they might kill me, I didn’t doubt a second. They believed themselves. They had to. Alone in a big country that ignored their existence, alienated and forgotten, they had no chance and less hope. These boys had been given no hope, so they invented it—the hope of schemes, and plans, and big dreams of power and triumph.

  I said, “Charlie, tell me what you know. I’ll help you. Whatever you’re doing, you’ll get hurt unless—”

  He broke in, cold. “I won’t get hurt, mister. I’m on my way. Maybe you’ll get hurt. Maybe the boys are—”

  Only when I heard the car door slam below the dim room did I realize that the rain had stopped. The street boys heard the car door too. One of them went out of the room. He came back almost at once.

  “Some guy parked in the alley. He’s got a gun out!”

  Charlie Burgos lifted the corner of the blanket covering a window, peered down. “It’s that Kraut hanging around Danielle’s uncle. What the hell does he want?”

  They all crowded around Charlie Burgos at the window, whispering urgently. Like a pack of curious puppies. They were, after all, kids, most of them younger than Charlie Burgos. That had saved me in the alley when they attacked me, and it gave me my chance now. I walked to the door of the room, quick but softly, watching them. They didn’t see me. I made the door and out.

  I was almost down to the second floor when I heard them howl up in the room. Then I ran.

  16

  I came out of the building—an abandoned, crumbling, condemned brownstone, I saw now. I did not know where I was. The only unboarded door opened at the side of the brownstone into a narrow alley slick and cool with the rain. A narrow front yard was tall with brown weeds, wet in the night after the rain.

  They would expect me to run to the street—the safety of a city man. So I ran left up the narrow alley and past a parked black car. At the rear corner of the condemned building I saw a shape, a face white in the night, a hand with a pistol.

  “You, Fortune!”

  I ran on into an open space behind the abandoned brownstone where two buildings had already been demolished leaving an emptiness in the city like a scar. I scrambled over the wet mounds of debris in the open space. The voice behind the pistol in the alley had been the ex-Legionnaire “associate” of Claude Marais—Gerd Exner.

  I reached the far street. It was dark and deserted, the people not yet out again after the summer storm. I trotted left toward the wider avenue, no sound of running behind me. I didn’t think they would come after me in the open when I was ready for them, but I watched the corner ahead in case they tried to head me off. There was no one at the corner. They probably didn’t even know which way I had run. I looked back down the dark street toward the open space and the alley to be sure, and saw the black car turn out of the alley toward me.

  I jumped into the cover of a doorway as the black car came to the corner, but the ex-Legionnaire, Gerd Exner, saw me. The car skidded to a stop, began to back up. Exner had a gun, I didn’t, and I couldn’t know what he wanted with me, or which side he was on. I ran up the wide avenue. The black car ground gears to come after me, the traffic on the avenue light in the dark after the storm.

  I reached the next corner. The street sign high on its lamppost read: 10th Avenue—19th Street. I knew where I was. I ran left again down Nineteenth Street toward the condemned building where Charlie Burgos and his boys had taken me. Before the black car and Gerd Exner could follow, I jumped down into a sunken areaway in front of an Italian market. With any luck, Exner would think I was going back to the condemned building, and drive past me.

  He did. The black car went on down the street toward the condemned building. It was all the break I needed. I knew where I was now, I’d gained a few moments, and Exner had lost sight of me.

  I slipped along the dark streets back to my office.

  This time no one was waiting for me in my office. I locked my door, just in case. Gerd Exner would know by now where my office was. All right, what did the ex-Legionnaire want? With me, or with Charlie Burgos, or both? What did Charlie Burgos want? With Charlie Burgos it was probably money. It was probably money with Gerd Exner too. Or was one of them a man who had killed, and who wanted me silent?

  I heard the man coming up the stairs outside my office. He wasn’t trying to be quiet. I got out my old cannon anyway, put it on my desk in plain sight. The man in the corridor could be going to some other office on my floor. A shuffling walk, like the furtive customers of the old men across the corridor with their funny pictures. But the old men wouldn’t be open this late, so I watched my door.

  The knob turned. I waited. A voice called out: “Mr. Fortune?”

  Jimmy Sung’s voice—sober, as far as I could tell. I got up and unlocked the door. Jimmy Sung came in. I checked the corridor. Jimmy seemed to be alone. I sat down at my desk. Jimmy Sung stood and looked at my big gun. He wasn’t drunk the way he had been this morning, but he wasn’t sober, either. A liquor shine to his eyes, a faint swagger to his stance, but not swaying or shaking. The alcoholic plateau, where, with a drink every so often, the alkie can function for hours as if perfectly sober. Maybe better.

  “I went to the shop,” Jimmy said, not slurring. “There was a package, you know? Like I said, maybe Mr. Marais was holding something for that Claude, and I remembered the package. In the safe. I remembered seeing it out the night Mr. Marais got killed. On a shelf in the back room.”

  “As if he was planning to give it to someone that night?”

  “I don’t know, but it ain’t around the shop now.”

  “It wasn’t on the list of what the robber took.”

  “It wasn’t on no inventory, see? Just holding it.”

  “No idea what might have been in it, Jimmy?”

  “Mr. Marais never said. I ain’t even sure it was Claude’s.”

  “Can you describe it?”

  “Brown paper, waxed black string, about the shape of a shoe box. Mr. Marais’s name was on the outside in black ink.”

  “It was addressed? You mean someone had mailed it to Mr. Marais? From where?”

  “No, not mailed. No stamps. Hand-delivered, I guess. Kind of a label on it from some place in Africa, I think.”

  I reached for my telephone, dialed the number of the Hotel Stratford, asked for room 427. Li Marais’s soft voice answered.

  “Li? It’s Dan.”

  A silence. Then her voice again, low, “Dan, no. I’ll—”

  “I have to talk to you now, Li.”

  “No, Dan, I cannot. Later, I will call you.”

  “Sorry, it’s business, you understand. I’ll come there.”

  “Claude is here!”

  “Yeh,” I said. “Don’t run away on me, Li.”

  I hung up. “Let’s go, Jimmy.”

  I didn’t wait for the elevator. My clerk-friend said something I didn’t hear as I went past, and Jimmy Sung was puffing when we reached the fourth floor and room 427. Claude Marais opened the suite door.

  “Mr. Fortune?”

  I went in past him, with Jimmy silent
behind me. Claude Marais looked at Jimmy, then at me. Those slow, deliberate movements of his, as if even to bother to breathe was a wearying effort. For a moment, I wondered if he knew—about me, and Li, and the afternoon. There was something about his eyes. He said nothing, and I had more important matters to worry about.

  Li was sitting in a far corner near the windows, almost hiding. She saw Jimmy, and smiled. It was a weak smile. She didn’t smile at me. She and Claude weren’t alone. Viviane Marais sat on a couch. It had all the look of an urgent family conference. The murdered Eugene’s widow was out of her black, in a wine red dress that took ten years off her age. She was smoking, didn’t rush to welcome me.

  “You have something to talk about, Mr. Fortune?” Viviane Marais said.

  “A lot. Jimmy’s been cleared.”

  The widow nodded toward Jimmy Sung. “So I see. That was good work. You must give me your bill.”

  “When the work is finished,” I said.

  “Of course,” she said. That was all. She smoked.

  Claude Marais had come to stand near the widow. Somehow, they fitted better than Claude did with Li, small and Oriental in her corner. Or maybe that was my reflex prejudice.

  I said, “You sent a package to Eugene, right, Claude?”

  “No, I sent nothing.”

  “From the Congo. Size of a shoe box, brown paper. Eugene had it in his safe, I know that. You sent it, I know that.”

  Claude looked at me, and then, slowly, toward his wife in the far corner. Li Marais lowered her eyes. Claude shrugged.

  “It was nothing important, African trinkets,” he said. “A small present for Eugene.”

  “He wasn’t holding it for you? You gave it to him?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “But he never opened it, right? You sent a small present all the way from the Congo, months ago, and Eugene just kept it in the safe unopened?”

  Claude Marais said nothing. Li was still studying the floor under her tiny feet. I remembered those feet, small and bare. Viviane Marais watched us all like a perched hawk.

  “Where’s that package now, Claude?” I said. “It’s not in the shop. It wasn’t in the stolen loot.”

  “I don’t know,” Claude Marais said. “I don’t care. I said, it is nothing of any importance.”

  “Maybe Gerd Exner knows where it is now,” I said.

  “No, Gerd has no interest in the package.”

  “He’s got an interest in something,” I said. “Something connected to you, Claude. He’s still around. He’s looking with a gun in his hand. He wants something, and he wants it bad. I think you have what he wants. I think your wife was right all along. Exner is dangerous, and you know it.”

  “No. Gerd is an old comrade, no problem. My wife made an error, nothing more,” Claude Marais said. He seemed to think, sighed. “Gerd wishes me to join him in some work again, that is all. He attempts to persuade me. I am not interested.”

  True or a lie, Claude Marais was going to stick to his story. Without the package, or some other proof that he was lying, there wasn’t much more I could say. There was nothing left to do but search this suite, turn it inside out, and if that uncovered nothing, look other places. I turned to Jimmy Sung to tell him to start searching. Viviane Marais was staring at her brother-in-law. Her sharp, alert eyes watched Claude. Her cigarette burned forgotten in her fingers.

  “Mrs. Marais?” I said.

  “That night,” she said, still watching Claude. “The night Eugene died. He said Claude had been in the shop, Claude was supposed to come back. Eugene said Claude had to come back—to get something. Eugene had something of Claude’s. Eugene said he was not sure Claude should have it. I remember. The last time Eugene called, I was half asleep. I forgot, thought only of the man he was waiting to meet, but now I remember.”

  Claude Marais said, “I was supposed to go back, but I didn’t. We were going to talk about me going away from New York, going somewhere better for me. Getting the package wasn’t necessary. I couldn’t think of anywhere I wanted to go, so I didn’t go to the shop. I went to bed, right, Li?”

  “Yes,” Li Marais said.

  “You didn’t stay in bed,” I said. “You went to Gerd Exner, or called him, and you came to me. Where else did you go that night? What time did you leave the hotel again that night?”

  “Exner called me. I went to you. Nowhere else,” Claude said calmly. “I did not go to the shop.”

  I said, “Did Gerd Exner go to the shop?”

  The outer door opened. We all heard it. One of those things. Someone, the last one in or Claude himself, had left it unlocked. Gerd Exner came into the suite. He had his gun out.

  “No,” Exner said. “I didn’t go to the pawn shop.”

  17

  Gerd Exner said, “Do I kill them, Claude?”

  My gun was still in my office, not that it would have done me any good. He had his, I would have had to get mine out, and he was a soldier, a Legionnaire. He had the skill and the nerve, the experience of killing. He would be better, which is why I don’t carry a gun unless I’m sure I need it for some specific reason. Someone, I’ve said before, is always better.

  “No,” Claude Marais said. “Put the gun away, Gerd.”

  “I came up unseen,” Exner said. “You and Li can leave, be seen. I kill the three of them, no trace, we go back to our work. Yes?”

  “We don’t have any work to do anymore,” Claude Marais said. “Hang up the guns, Gerd. The wars are over.”

  “The wars are never over,” Gerd Exner said. His scarred face under the thin blond hair was like ivory. “You see it now? What do you do, Claude? How do you live? Like this, useless and rusting? It will not work, not for us. There is no way for us but what we know.”

  “There is no way for us at all,” Claude Marais said. “All we can be is bandits. There is no purpose for us, nothing we can fight for anymore.”

  The tall ex-Legionnaire moved closer to Claude Marais, his limp more obvious now as if he had been running too hard. The gun in his hand remained steady, but there was a kind of anger in his pale blue German eyes. He spoke only to Claude, but he did not relax his watch.

  “Purpose?” Exner said. “What do we wish with purposes, Claude? Causes? Patriotics? Those things are for amateurs and fools. We are soldiers, nothing else. We fought for nations and purposes, for France, and France failed us. All nations fail their soldiers. A man cannot put his trust in nations or politicians. We must trust only ourselves, fight only for ourselves. Mercenaries, Claude. Both of us.”

  Claude Marais shrugged. “Perhaps for you, Gerd, but it is not so for me. I do not want to fight. I told you so.”

  In her corner, Li Marais stood up suddenly. Her small, full body was shaking under the Chinese dress. I found myself wondering if she had anything on underneath the dress now. Her gentle, rigid face was agitated, no longer calm.

  “Go away,” she said to Gerd Exner. “Go away from Claude, please. Leave us alone, Exner!”

  The German mercenary seemed to think about it, watched Li Marais speculatively. “You hired this detective here to scare me away, told him lies. Now you ask me to leave Claude alone. You like him as he now is? A shadow man?”

  “No,” Li Marais said, “but I do not want him like you, a jackal preying on everyone.”

  “So? I see what has been done to Claude,” Gerd Exner said. “Women can ruin a man. You have destroyed a good soldier. I have seen it before. Aryan women are strong, they inspire a man to conquer, but you gook women are weak, you do not understand a white man. You weaken him, ruin him.”

  Claude Marais moved, stepped at Exner. The tall German with the scarred face backed away, his gun up and aimed at Claude. The quick, animal reaction of a wary professional gunman in his blue eyes. He would shoot on an instant, as much from fear as from intent. To shoot at any possible threat was how a mercenary survived. Claude Marais knew this, stopped.

  “No more, Gerd. Get out of here now. Get out of this city, th
is country. We have nothing together. You’re nothing more now than a hired killer!”

  “So?” Exner said again, considered Claude Marais. “Very well, you are useless now, anyway. I’ll go, but first I think I will take that package the detective there is looking so hard for, eh? It is half mine, but now I think it should be all mine, yes. Where is it, Claude?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Exner smiled. “Come, this is Gerd you talk to, eh? It is not found, I know that from the detective. Who else would have a package of Claude Marais’s? ”

  “I don’t know who has it, or where it is,” Claude Marais said. “If I find it, I’ll send it to you. If there is anywhere you can stay long enough to receive mail, Gerd.”

  The click was like a slap in all our faces. Gerd Exner had cocked his pistol. It was aimed at Claude Marais.

  “You’re lying, Claude. I think I will have to kill you too. All of you. I—”

  The shape, figure, man, seemed to come from nowhere. Out of the air of the hotel room. Suddenly there, a shape jumping at Gerd Exner with a wild, unintelligible cry of rage. Exner half turned to face the shock—a shock as much psychological as physical. Surprised, stunned, his gun slow in turning.

  Perhaps it was that Exner was getting older. Maybe that he was in New York, and not as alert, wary, as normal. Perhaps only the arrogance of years of sneering at the “gooks,” ignoring them as human beings, despising them as weak. After a time, not even seeing them at all.

  Exner had forgotten Jimmy Sung. I suppose we all had. Away against a wall, silent, taking no part, everyone had forgotten that Jimmy Sung was even in the room. Until, wildly, Jimmy Sung charged, and Exner turned too slowly.