Shadow of a Tiger (3 page)

“Do not answer me with questions, Fortune. Gerd Exner says you claimed to be a policeman. That has alarmed him. Why did you scare him? For whom? What did you think you were doing?”

“Why does Exner want to kill you, Claude?”

“Kill me?” The surprise was genuine. Damn the woman.

“Your wife said Exner wanted to kill you.”

“My wife?” He stopped. “Ah, I see. Yes.” He lowered the pistol. “I have not given her very much. No home, no life, no rest. I understand now. Has she paid you?”

“Yes.” Too much. I hoped he wouldn't ask.

He pocketed the pistol. “All right, but I am in no danger. My wife made a mistake. I will explain to her. Finished, yes?”

He walked out. I lay back. I was home free. No more job, and I kept the money. I had some curiosity about Claude Marais and the German, but not enough to think about it very hard.

I decided to surprise Marty with the ring. I went out and ate a slow breakfast, and then walked to the pawn shop. It was open. Inside, I saw Eugene Marais sitting in the back room.

“Dig out my ring, Marais,” I said. “I got lucky.”

Then I saw the chessmen. A bishop, two pawns, and a knight on the floor in the back room doorway. I went into the back room. Eugene Marais was tied to his chair by a single strand of rope. Blood had trickled from his nose and right ear—black, dried blood. The crusted wound was on the back of his head. He had been hit hard once. I felt him. He was rigid as steel.

Dead at least four hours, at most twelve. Probably somewhere in between.

3

By 11:00
A.M.
it was ninety-two on Ninth Avenue, and Lieutenant Marx had rounded up Claude Marais and his wife, Li; the dead pawn shop owner's daughter Danielle; and Jimmy Sung. One of Marx's men had been sent to Brooklyn for Eugene Marais's wife, the others had been going over the shop for two hours.

The shop had been half ransacked—parts a jumble of debris, other parts not touched. As if someone had made a selective search—looking for something specific—or as if the job had been only half done. The cash drawer inside the broken cage was on the floor, but some three hundred dollars had been left, overlooked, and the safe hadn't been opened. A chess board was set up on the table, but the men had been scattered. The rope bound the dead man to the chair by only the one strand, as if the killer had realized he didn't have to tie the dead man after all.

I said, “He didn't know Marais was dead at first.”

“Maybe, Dan,” Lieutenant Marx said.

The assistant Medical Examiner talked as he washed his hands. A small, neat, nervous doctor.

“Complete rigor. So four to twelve hours, except that in this heat it gets speeded up. From other signs, I'd say anywhere from five this morning, to eleven last night. Maybe earlier, maybe later, but I'd have to doubt it in court. The autopsy may give us a closer guess.”

“What killed him, Doc?” Marx said.

“Fractured skull, pieces in the brain. That iron rod on the floor has blood on it. One blow. I'll tell you in detail after autopsy, but it looks simple to me.”

“Hit from behind,” Marx decided. “In this room, from that blood near the door. Any prints on the iron bar?”

“Nothing we could identify,” a detective said.

The M.E. signaled his men to put Eugene Marais into the morgue basket. For an instant everything stopped, all silent, as if the world was standing still. We all looked at the body and the basket. Then it was gone, and we all began to move. Life and work goes on, death forgotten after that one instant because it has to be.

The daughter, Danielle, looked at the basket as it went out, but her eyes were stiff, unseeing. It was the only time she had looked at her father since the police had brought her in. Her eyes dull, without tears, where she stood out in the shop out of sight of the body. Her whole young, ripe body oddly stiff in the same blouse and shorts she had worn last night. Her surly, adolescent face closed up like someone who waited for a blow.

Claude Marais had stood over the body since the moment he had arrived, his hand touching his dead brother as if to offer comfort, to sustain the dead man. He watched us all with a bruised, baleful glance. Intense and defiant, angry with death. Yet behind his eyes there was something like a question, as if he were trying to understand something only he knew.

“What did he do? Eugene?” the stocky brother had said to everyone and to no one, to the ransacked shop itself. “Nothing. He used to say that himself. He had done nothing, hurt no one, helped no one. No enemies, no comrades. Never accused, never honored. He never risked, and he's dead anyway. Stupid!”

The brother hunched over as if cold even in his tweed jacket and heavy trousers in the heat. Cold while we all sweated, like a man who lived with a perpetual chill, an icy wind blowing always through his mind. He watched the morgue basket go out not with sorrow, but with a kind of rage.

His wife, Li Marais, sat silent in a corner, as still as a stone cat from some Egyptian tomb, only her onyx eyes alive. Cat eyes, bright and fixed. Looking at no one, and everyone.

Under the single, barred, back room window, Jimmy Sung squatted on his heels. The inscrutable Oriental—with a very American cigarette dangling from his full lips, and a very American scowl. The watery red eyes of the drunk, annoyed at being bothered on the morning after. He had said nothing since being brought to the shop, sure, like all alcoholics, that if he kept quiet he would look normal, and his secret would be hidden from everyone.

While Marx's men went on working over the shop, the Lieutenant began to question them all about the time element. After a few moments I stopped listening—none of them could really prove where they had been for most of the night. That was normal, so I let their voices fade to a drone in my mind, and began to check all the windows and the two doors. I studied the odd way the shop had been searched—almost at random.

I was still thinking about the search, when Marx told us all to come to the precinct station with him.

In the Lieutenant's cubicle command office off the squad room, I told him my story again. In murder, I don't often hold back from the police. It doesn't pay in the long run. Then Marx took them one at a time. Jimmy Sung was first.

The gray-haired Chinese shrugged. “I don't know nothing about Mr. Marais. I work in the shop six months—noon to five. We get along fine, ask anyone. Some punk robber, I figure.”

He had no accent. Only an odd order of words showed that English had not been his first language. The words were pure American, a colloquial slum vocabulary; the manner flip, direct.

“You left about five last night?”

“Sure. Fortune saw me.”

“You didn't go back to the shop?”

“Noon to five, that's all I work.”

“Did Mr. Marais stay late often?”

“Not on your life. He ran home fast to Brooklyn.”

“Why did he stay last night?”

“Who knows, Lieutenant?”

“You can't tell us anything, Jimmy?”

Jimmy Sung shrugged. “I think he got something on his mind, he don't tell me what. Five o'clock, I go home.”

I said, “You play chess, Jimmy?”

His watery eyes looked at me, solemn. “Sometimes. Not last night, no sir.”

Claude Marais still looked cold in his heavy jacket. His wife, Li, still looked like a small, silent cat in her chair that faced Marx behind his littered desk.

“What was bothering your brother, Mr. Marais?” Marx said.

“Nothing that I know,” Claude Marais said.

I said, “What about that Gerd Exner? You seemed to think that Eugene might have hired me to stop Exner reaching you.”

“Who else would be interested in my affairs? A mistake.”

“You came back to the shop about eight-thirty last night?” Marx said.

“Eugene called me. Plans for a family weekend.”

“He called you?” Marx said. “Why was he at the store?”

“I don't know.”

“Why did your wife hire Fortune? Who is Gerd Exner?”

“An old business associate.”

“What business?”

“Buying and selling.” Claude Marais shrugged. “Trading, you see? Mostly in the Orient and Africa. It is past for me.”

“You usually carry guns? You and your associates?”

“I have not lived in a peaceful world, Lieutenant. Mostly remote areas, unsettled countries. I have a valid permit.”

“Why did your wife hire Fortune to stop this Exner?”

“A misunderstanding. She thought I was afraid of Exner. A simple error, that is all.”

Li Marais said nothing, but she gave a slow nod as if to agree. I wasn't sure I believed the nod.

I said, “You play chess, Claude?”

“I never learned peaceful games.”

“Was the chess game set up when you were there at nine?”

Claude thought. “I think it was. It often was.”

“It wasn't when I was there about five,” I said.

Lieutenant Marx said, “You left your brother alive about nine o'clock, Marais. You went back to your hotel with Danielle. About six
A.M.
you were in Fortune's apartment. Where were you in between those times?”

“In my room with my wife,” Claude Marais said.

“Anyone who can prove that?”

“Only my wife.”

Marx didn't even bother to ask Li Marais.

Danielle Marais didn't sit down. The heavy girl stood defiant in front of Lieutenant Marx's desk, glared at me, her oversize breasts like jelly under the tight blouse.

“I went to my father's store to borrow some money, that's all. I don't know why my father was working late. I left with Uncle Claude. My boy friend picked me up at Uncle Claude's hotel. We were together all night. I never saw my dad again. I don't know anything. Nothing!”

The words poured out, a torrent. Ready, as if she had a tape recording in her mind she only had to turn on. Memorized, defensive, defying before Marx had attacked.

“Did you get the money?” Marx said dryly.

“What?” she said, deflated. “No. He didn't have it.”

“Your boy friend is Charlie Burgos?”

She nodded. “We went to his pad. We were there all night. You know that, your men picked me up there.”

“But not Charlie. He wasn't there, was he? You're sure he was with you all night, and you never went home?”

“I'm not a kid,” the girl said scornfully. “And Charlie was with me all night—in bed! You can't say he wasn't!”

“I didn't try—yet,” Marx said.

She bit her full lips, glared at the Lieutenant like a child caught in some crime and rebuked.

Marx said, “Did Charlie have a key to the pawn shop? Your key, maybe?”

“You're crazy! I don't have a key!”

I said, “Charlie's a punk, Danielle, a schemer. Not his fault, maybe, but he'll drag you down. He's too smart to sink into the slums, but not smart enough to get out a straight way.”

“Charlie's smarter than any of you!” Danielle said hotly. “He's going places, big places, and I'm going with him!”

“Why, Danielle?” I said. “You're no street kid. You have a good home, plenty of chances. You don't belong in the slums.”

“You and my parents! I love Charlie, you hear? He's a real man. He's not a fat nothing who can't even make money out of a pawn shop!”

“What can Charlie make money out of?” Marx snapped.

“Anything!” she sneered. “Charlie's a leader.”

“A leader in a cheap sewer, Danielle,” I said. “You weren't surprised to find your father dead, were you? I think you knew he was dead before the police came. Was it an accident, Danielle? Charlie Burgos was robbing the store, and—”

“Charlie was in bed with me! All night! You can't make me say anything else! Some dumb robber, that's all! Or maybe ask Uncle Claude! He was supposed to go back to the shop. I heard my father tell him to come back!”

Claude Marais said, “I didn't go back. Eugene called it off.”

“I don't suppose you can prove it?” Marx said.

“The hotel switchboard took a call for me from Eugene around eleven. Maybe they listened.”

“It wouldn't prove anything anyway, would it?” Marx said. “You could have gone back anyway.”

“I could have,” Claude Marais agreed. “But I didn't.”

I sat with Marx in his office. “What do you think?”

“Robbery,” Marx said, “what else? Pawn shop. A prime target for small-timers, junkies, street kids.”

“Three hundred in cash left? The safe not touched?”

“Panic. Points even more to junkies or kids.”

“Maybe,” I said. “What was actually taken?”

“We're still checking. Marais kept lousy records. Jimmy Sung and the wife, Viviane, are helping us check.”

“Does the wife have an alibi?”

Marx sighed. “She was home all night—alone.”

“So no one has an alibi. Jimmy Sung was curled up alone with his bottle. When I tailed the brother to the shop, he had to knock. The door was locked. I checked all doors and windows. No marks of entry, and most windows barred. Either the killer had a key, or Eugene Marais let him in. Which makes it an inside job. But then more should have been taken. With Eugene Marais dead, the killer had plenty of time.”

“Except that he panicked when he saw Marais was dead.”

“If he panicked, he wouldn't have stopped to search.”

“Unless he hit Marais, started his search, decided to tie Marais up halfway, found him dead, and then ran.”

Marx had a good point. I could see some thief hit Eugene Marais, start to ransack the shop, maybe hear a groan or just realize Marais might come awake, go back to tie the owner up, find him dead, and panic. That would explain the half search.

“I still don't like the entry,” I said.

“All right, so maybe Marais left the door open by mistake later,” Marx said. “It's too sloppy for an inside job. I figure an open door, a small-time thief. We'll find the loot, talk to our stoolies, and we'll have our killer.”