Michael Collins - Shadow of a Tiger

“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?

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.”

The bulky Captain tapped his window. The driver started the car, eased away heading downtown. Olsen had other work, but now I knew this case was bothering him. They were still at work, arrest or no arrest. It was hopeful. If I found anything at all, the police would at least listen.

Two hours later I sat down at Eugene Marais’s silent desk and lit a cigarette. The desk was exactly as it had been the morning we found the pawn shop owner dead. So was the whole shop. Viviane Marais had not been in, it was too soon.

It hadn’t helped me. In the two hours I had found nothing at all to back Jimmy Sung’s story, or to show that anyone else had been in the shop. A pawn shop is a hard place to find clues. Too much junk. Anything could be meaningful or meaningless.

The back door locked with a bolt. It had been locked that morning, it was still locked. The alley cobbles showed nothing. The locked safe and overlooked cash drawer still stared at me. Eugene Marais’s papers and account books didn’t show he had given a Buddha to Jimmy Sung, but they didn’t show he hadn’t, either. Nothing had been written down about Paul Manet, or Claude Marais and his wife, or Charlie Burgos, or anyone.