Michael Collins - Shadow of a Tiger

“I came to meet him,” Danielle Marais said. “We were all going to meet. They ran, the others. Grabbed what they had, and ran. No one would stay with him. No one.”

What else could they do, Charlie Burgos’s brothers of the street? Powerless in a vast city, they could only run and hide and hope no one would think about them. Mice in a burning field, afraid of the flames and of the hawks that would soon come to hover over the blackened field looking for something to eat, preying on the exposed because they needed a victim.

“We were going away, it was going to be fine now,” Danielle Marais said. “Fine, no more problems.”

I knelt down over the body. There was a lot of blood. It had only just started to congeal, blacken. The knife handle was some kind of wrapped material-leather or plastic or a treated canvas that would give no fingerprints. A straight, colorless knife with only a small guard and a narrowish blade, but heavy. I felt Charlie Burgos. He was soft and limp, still vaguely warm. No more than two hours, even in the heat of the city, but probably not less than an hour.

“How long have you been here?” I asked Danielle.

She shook her head, back and forth. “I don’t know. Maybe an hour, maybe more. I don’t know. They just ran. They didn’t even look at Charlie after they saw. Grabbed their dirty junk, and ran! His friends!”

“He’s got no friends, he’s dead,” I said harshly. “That’s the rules, Danielle. The law of the streets. He doesn’t exist, and he never did now. That’s the world you were going into, the world your father and mother wanted to save you from. You were going into it, and everyone in it wants only to escape into what you already have. You’re lucky, a second chance.”

She glared her hatred at me, but that would pass. To the young, poverty and clawing against an established world were exciting. But poverty is only pain, clawing only bleeds, and there is excitement and strength only when there is a choice.

“He’s dead, Danielle,” I said. “It’s over. Do you know who killed him?”

“No,” she said, stared down at Charlie Burgos dead in an empty building.

“But you know why, don’t you? What was he doing, Danielle? What were you both doing?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know! He never said-”

“Damn it, girl, you know, and whoever killed Charlie’ll have to kill you too! Tell me! You saw something that night, right? Blackmail?”

“Yes, yes, yes!” she cried, rocked on her knees. “But I don’t know who! Charlie didn’t tell me who. He said it was better that way, safer. He was protecting me.”

“Charlie Burgos? Nuts, he protected no one except himself. You weren’t with him outside the pawn shop that night?”

“Not all the time,” she said, tears in her eyes now as if the mention of that night made her remember all her times with Charlie Burgos. Maybe she had really loved him in her child’s way-the worst, deepest way. “We’d gone to my father to borrow some money for an idea Charlie had. Dad wouldn’t give us any. He was nice, he was always nice, but he said that Charlie was wrong for me, he wouldn’t help Charlie to ruin me. We went out, we had nothing to do, you know, so we hung around. After the Chinaman came out, Charlie got restless waiting for Dad to come out. He sent-”

“Charlie was waiting for your father to come out? Why?”

She looked away. “I… I think he was going to rob the cash drawer. We knew there was money in it. I have a key.”

“That sounds like Charlie,” I agreed. “Why didn’t he?”

“He… he saw someone. I… I think he did go into the shop, he had my key. I think that’s why he sent me off.”

“Sent you where?”

“He told me to come back here to the room to see if any of the boys were around and maybe had some money. He said he was thirsty, wanted a drink. But I think he sent me really because he didn’t think I’d let him rob Dad’s shop.”

“What happened when you went back?”

“It took a while, you know? Over an hour. I waited here for one of the boys who was supposed to have money. Charlie got mad if he sent me for money and I didn’t get any.”

“I can believe that,” I said. “An hour? Between eleven and twelve that night?”

She shook her head. “More like eleven-thirty to one A.M. He didn’t send me right away after Jimmy Sung came out.”

“When you did go back, what was Charlie doing?”

“Nothing-he wasn’t there. I looked around, looked inside the shop. I… I found my Dad. He was in the chair-dead! I didn’t know what to do. I thought-”

“That Charlie had killed him?”

She nodded, stared down at the dead boy. “So I came back here. Charlie was here. He said he hadn’t killed Dad, but he knew who had! He said he’d seen who did it, seen him come out. We were going to be rich. He said we couldn’t do anything for my father now, why not get rich? What did it matter if Dad’s murderer was caught? It was better to be rich.”

“He never told you who the killer was?”

“No,” she said. “To protect me.”

“Or because he thought maybe you wouldn’t go along with the blackmail if you knew who the man was. Are you sure it was a man?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Why were you around Paul Manet, Danielle?”

“Charlie sent me to him a couple of times. I took kind of messages. Mr. Manet was going to help Charlie get a job.”

“A job? For Charlie?”

“That’s what Charlie said.”

“You never thought that Paul Manet could be the man Charlie was blackmailing? The killer he’d seen that night?”

“Mr. Manet? Why would he want to kill Dad? He was an old friend from Paris. He’d only just come to New York.”

“Who really gave you that expensive dress, Danielle?”

“Charlie did. From the blackmail money.”

“Then why would Paul Manet say he bought it?”

“I… I don’t know. I was glad he did. I mean, I knew I’d made a mistake when I told you Charlie had bought it. You’d guess Charlie was up to something if he had that kind of money, so I was glad when Mr. Manet said he bought it for me, but I don’t know why he said it.”

I said, “I do.”

Paul Manet was back in his work clothes-another expensive, pale blue suit with a hint of military epaulets and a slim, belted waist. I pushed him into the plush, sunken living room of Jules Rosenthal, a man only too glad to lend his palace to a hero of France.

“What are you doing!”

That was all, his whole protest. A man four inches taller, thirty pounds heavier, and with two arms. It was amazing he had gotten away with it so long. Smart and very careful. He backed away from me, looked toward Danielle, his fine face suddenly pale. It was Danielle being there that turned him pale, haggard.

“Charlie Burgos was blackmailing you,” I said. “That’s why you covered that slip Danielle made about the dress. You didn’t want me to know that Charlie Burgos had sudden money.”

“That is a lie.”

Part of the success of his masquerade was habit. The habit of a lot of years. Pale, he still acted out his role-the officer and gentleman defying the common herd.

“You met Eugene Marais that night. Between midnight and one A.M. Charlie Burgos saw you. He saw you go into the shop, and he saw you come out-after you killed Eugene Marais.”

“No!” His voice was strangled now.

“Yes,” I said, “and I know why. I know who you really are.”

I waited. He said nothing. Shook his head.

“The police are checking with Paris,” I said. “They’re asking what happened to Paul Manet in the war-end chaos of 1945, and what happened to Paul Manet’s younger brother. Not much younger; a year or two. What’s your real name, Manet? What was the name you abandoned when you took over the identity and history of your brother Paul? The real name that Eugene Marais knew?”