Shadow of a Tiger df-5

by Michael Collins

  Shadow of a Tiger

  ( Dan Fortune - 5 )

  Michael Collins

  Michael Collins

  Shadow of a Tiger

  1

  You never see a Chinese drunk. Not in public. So I noticed the middle-aged Chinese man carrying his bottle in a paper bag down Ninth Avenue near Marais’s pawn shop. Maybe I should have seen an omen, a break in the natural order of things, but I was thinking about Marty, and the ring I was taking to the pawn shop.

  Marty is my girl-at my age, a woman. Martine Adair, who understands me. The ring was the only good present I’d ever given her. It had been to the pawn shop before, but this time I was uneasy about it. Because of this morning.

  “I’ve got to get away, Dan,” Marty said this morning. “Do something, anything. This awful heat.”

  It was the end of July, hot enough to melt brass, but it wasn’t the heat on Marty’s mind. Something else. I heard it in those words-“Do something, anything.” Her show had just closed suddenly, she had no summer stock work. In three weeks the only work she had found was back taking off her clothes in one of the Third Street tourist clubs. She hadn’t had to do that in over two years. I had to understand her, too.

  “Fire Island?” I said. “Rent a house for a while?”

  We were in her apartment on West Fourth Street, even the sheets on the bed limp from the heat. I knew how much she liked Fire Island, a house among the successful theater people.

  “Yes!” she said, kissed me. “Sun and some peace.”

  “I couldn’t even pay the ferry fare, Marty,” I said.

  She sat up in the bed beside me. She lit a cigarette.

  “All right. Hock the damned ring.”

  “It’s that important?” I said.

  “Marais will give you five hundred for it. With that we can pay for a month. I won’t go back to the G-string.”

  So it was just after five that evening, the tar melting on Ninth Avenue, that I was outside Marais’s pawn shop and saw the Chinese drunk. The omen. Not that it would have made any difference in the end if I had sensed it was an omen.

  Most stereotypes are true. The Chinese don’t drink in public; the Irish are drinkers; the Germans do tend to arrogance; the English are conceited; the French do think a lot about women. The trouble is that they are general truths, none of them can be trusted in any single case. Eugene Marais, owner of the pawn shop, was French, but all Chelsea knew that Marais had never looked at another woman since he had married Viviane under the guns of the Germans in 1942, and Jimmy Sung was a drunk. Then, Jimmy Sung was more American than Chinese anyway. Chinese only in his silence and his smile.

  They always smile, the Chinese in America. Maybe because they are few, and vulnerable, and a long way from home. Small people, and I don’t mean in size. Small people you never really saw. Like Jimmy Sung. Night clerk, store clerk, odd-job man; an anonymous smile in the background. Except when he was drunk, the brown paper bag clutched in front of him the way it was now. No smile, his broad face and almond eyes unseeing under thin gray hair. The face of a man who sees a distant goal, is thinking of nothing else. His eyes glazed, his stocky body bent sideways on its crabwise course for home and the bottle.

  I had my own troubles. I turned into Marais’s pawn shop without looking at Jimmy Sung again. A tall man was coming out of the pawn shop. He was looking backwards into the shop. I stopped, he didn’t. He bumped hard into me. He had weight and muscles. I grabbed him with my lone arm to keep from being knocked over.

  “Ahhhhh!”

  With the sharp, surprised cry, the tall man pulled back. As if my touch were contaminated. He brushed my hand away. His eyes were angry. Icy and belligerent. He was tall, imperious.

  “Take care, please!”

  It was a snapping rebuke, too strong. An excessive reaction startled out of him by bumping into me. A kind of reflex, like an old western hero reaching for his gun. Six-feet-two or more, he was ramrod straight as he looked down at me. An expensive, tailored dark blue jacket with pocket flaps, brass buttons, a suggestion of epaulets, and a shade too long for current fashion. Lighter blue slacks, a light blue shirt of heavier military cloth, and a blue and red regimental tie. Custom-made, the clothes, and a strong suggestion of a uniform. Some foreign uniform. A soldier temporarily out of wars, but military and assured, in command, stepping back and waiting for my salute.

  I didn’t salute. “Try looking where you’re going!”

  “You-”

  The change was in his eyes, his whole manner. A flinch as if I’d slapped his face-as excessive as his first reaction in reverse. Quick, and then gone as fast as it had come. His smile back, the handsome face bending toward me in a return salute as if I had saluted. The hint of superiority and power, but controlled and courteous to inferiors.

  “Pardon, then, of course. Stupid of me. My apology.”

  Smooth, the generous apology that somehow forgave me. Like the Archduke who stood aside to let the ill-mannered Beethoven pass. Proving that he, the Archduke, was the gentleman, and Beethoven the common slob. With his apology the tall man left me, somehow, in the wrong, and strode to the curb and a small, elegant foreign car. With a last smile, another faint bow of his handsome, blond head from the open car, he drove away, leaving no doubt who was the officer and gentleman.

  The pawn shop bell tinkled as I closed the door and stood in the hot, cluttered shop with its locked grilles. No one was in the shop. The back room door was open. I walked to the rear, to where I could see into the back room.

  Eugene Marais sat inside the room behind a battered table in his perpetual open-necked white shirt and baggy gray trousers. He wasn’t alone. A short, broad man in a worn tweed jacket despite the heat stood talking to the pawn shop owner. They hadn’t heard me, or, for some reason, the tinkle of the bell.

  “… he doesn’t usually like to talk about Vel d’Hiv,” the stocky stranger was saying. “He’s not often that jumpy.”

  “You know Manet long, Claude?” Eugene Marais said.

  “He was sent to me on business. I’m not interested.”

  “So?” Eugene Marais said. “Well, Paul Manet does not concern me, but you do, Claude. You are not interested in his business. What are you interested in, hein?”

  “Very little, Eugene. Does that bother you so much?”

  “When does the defeat end, Claude? When do you forget, decide that today is not yesterday? Settle, plan?”

  “Everything is yesterday. For you too, Eugene.”

  “No,” Eugene Marais said. “Everything is today. You are bad for my daughter, Claude. An empty man.”

  “Then I had better leave the city, yes?”

  “I did not say that you had-”

  In the shop I moved and made a noise. The two men didn’t hear me, but the woman did. A woman who had been in the back room all the time, in full view, but who was so silent and immobile that I hadn’t seen her. Like part of the room, a decoration on the walls. A tiny woman in a high-necked silk dress of pale blue brocade. An Oriental face, soft and childlike. Yet with the mature expression and bearing of an older woman. She heard me, stepped forward and touched the stocky stranger. Eugene Marais saw me through the doorway. He stood, smiled.

  “Mr. Fortune? Is Jimmy not out there to serve you?”

  “He’s gone home,” I said. “No hurry.”

  The pawn shop owner looked at his watch. “Ah, five-thirty already? Of course Jimmy has gone. I am so sorry.”

  Marais was a small man of fifty-two with a square, lined face and thick black hair. Above the open white shirt, his face was quiet and pleasant, with calm, light blue eyes. A man known to give the best deal on a pawn for ten blocks around. Only the perpetual cigarette, wet and loose in t
he center of his mouth, showed that he was not all calm inside.

  “Family talk, one forgets time,” Marais said. “You have not met my brother Claude. This is Mr. Daniel Fortune, Claude, a private detective.” Marais smiled. “A hard policeman, as I am a ruthless moneylender, yes?”

  “Mr. Fortune,” the stocky Claude Marais said. The brother had a low, taciturn voice. His manner was distant, even with his brother, as if he weren’t really in the room. “Is it interesting work, chasing the evildoer? Justice and retribution?”

  “Mostly money and big dreams, Mr. Marais,” I said.

  “Always money, yes,” the brother said. “Of course.”

  Eugene Marais said, “Claude forgets his manners. This lady is his wife, Li, Mr. Fortune.”

  I said, “Mrs. Marais.”

  Li Marais moved her delicate head in the faintest of bows. She withdrew again to the wall, silent. It was my day for stereotypes-a Caucasian can’t guess the age of an Oriental. Maybe twenty-five, but I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t even sure what kind of Oriental she was-Chinese? Vietnamese? Burmese? No, thinner than a Burmese, and not Malaysian. She looked no more than twenty-five, yet she was very womanly, and Claude Marais had to be forty-five.

  The brother walked past me. “Come, Li.”

  She followed him out through the shop. Her walk was a glide. So was Claude Marais’s walk. As if he were a man trained to move lightly, but tired now, his heart not in the necessity to move anywhere. When they had both gone, Eugene Marais looked after them and sighed:

  “He drifts, Claude. A sad thing.”

  “I never knew you even had a brother,” I said.

  He shrugged. “In eighteen years I have seen Claude three times. Only eight years between us, but what years. I am of the big war, the Occupation, the leaving of France. He was a child in the war, and he did not leave. The abyss between us. He became a hero to atone for my generation’s defeat. Then it was his turn for defeat-Dienbienphu, Algeria. Now there is no France for him, and nowhere else. Ah, this stupid world!” The Gallic shrug again. “But you are here for money?”

  I gave him the ring. “Marty needs a vacation.”

  He took the ring, unlocked his cash cage, went to the open safe. He had seen the ring before. He counted out five hundred dollars, pushed the bills through the grille to me.

  “A vacation is better than diamonds,” he said, smiled. “I and Viviane must take one. Jimmy guards my business better than I do. He thinks I am much too soft, do not drive the good bargain. Claude could help him while I was gone.”

  “It’s better to be soft. You can live with it.”

  “Be the man who does nothing to anyone, eh? Sometimes even nothing can be too much. But you have your vacation to arrange, and I have work to do. Bien, eh?”

  As I walked to Marty’s apartment with the money, the night hadn’t cooled a degree yet. Marty wasn’t at home. She should have been there. To make our plans. Where was she? Call it a feeling, but this morning I had sensed something in her, a decision. A choice. She had to “do” something.

  The heat on the crowded streets was like thick syrup. I wasn’t hungry, but it was time to eat, so I stopped at the Acme Diner for the special roast beef.

  The beef like a lump inside me, I called Marty. No answer. She knew I would have the money. So she wasn’t anxious. My stomach was heavy from more than undigested roast beef. I was nervous about the five hundred, too. I walked across town to my one-room office on Twenty-eighth Street to lock the money up for the night.

  My corridor was dim as usual, the single bulb over the stairs feeble in the stifling air. All the offices were dark, even the two old pornographers had left their treasures to try for some air somewhere. I decided on an air-conditioned movie as I unlocked my door.

  The woman stepped out of the shadows of the corridor.

  “Mr. Fortune?”

  It was the tiny, Oriental wife of Claude Marais.

  She sat in my one extra chair, her smooth face as clear as marble, her passive eyes like obsidian or black jade. I had thought her too small for me, too childlike and fragile. But close now, I saw that her body filled the pale blue dress in solid curves. Good curves-a woman.

  “Eugene has said you are a detective?” she said.

  “Yes.” I was behind my desk, the money in a drawer.

  “I would like to hire you, then.”

  They didn’t look like they had money, she and the brother, but the straw floated through my mind to grasp at.

  “I charge a hundred a day, one week minimum,” I said. I didn’t, not in Chelsea, but it was a try.

  “I have only five hundred dollars,” she said.

  Her English was flawless, only a faint accent and that probably French. A difference mainly in the diction, foreign. I thought about her English to keep from feeling a louse. I needed that five hundred dollars.

  “Fine,” I said. I felt a louse. Talked to cover. “Where are you from, Mrs. Marais?”

  “I am Thai. Siamese, perhaps you say.”

  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 c
ans 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.