Michael Collins - Shadow of a Tiger

He stopped. I gave him a cigarette. He lit it. “Paul never came back. There are no records of what happened to him. I was a hero; admired and honored. Jewish companies who knew what Paul had done at Vel d’Hiv gave me good jobs. At last I hit on my present work-the hero representative abroad. No one would know Paul abroad. I do my work well. I earn my rewards.”

There was a faint hint of the fake aristocratic pride he had learned so well over the years. Perhaps his work was based on a lie, but he had done it well. He had his pride.

“But Eugene Marais did know you,” I said. “Not Paul Manet. He knew Fernand Manet.”

Manet nodded. “Yes, he guessed. We talked. I denied it, but there are small scars, a birthmark on my neck, some mannerisms I barely knew I have but Eugene remembered. He wasn’t absolutely sure, and I denied it, but what if he decided to raise the question back in France? A doubt would be enough to ruin me. I tried to pay him. He refused. I sensed that he was trying to decide what he should do. So I made the appointment to meet him that night. I took a gun. I might have killed him, I don’t know. But I didn’t kill him. When I got to the shop, the door was unlocked. He was in the back room in the chair, dead!”

“What time was it when you say you got there?”

“About midnight. A little after. I can’t be sure.”

“What did you do?”

“I… I panicked.” He licked at his lips again. “I mean, I might have gone to kill him. I had a gun. I was there, he was dead, and I had a gun! Maybe it was guilt in me, but I was in that shop alone with a gun and a dead man and I panicked. What if I had been seen? What if someone knew I had reason to want Marais dead? I decided to make it look like robbery. I grabbed objects at random, packed them in a suitcase. I left. I took the suitcase to that Salvation Army mission. Then I came home here.”

Now his ravaged eyes looked up. “Ten minutes after I got home, that Charlie Burgos called me. He had seen me. He had found Eugene dead in the shop. He knew who I was from Danielle earlier. I paid him a thousand dollars, three more thousand since. What else could I do? I would be accused of murder!”

I let him sit there in silence, sweating under that beautiful suit. Danielle was sitting on the raised step in the entrance archway to the sunken living room. Jules Rosenthal’s room, a man grateful for a hero’s help to the Jews. Down the corridor outside, the elevator stopped at the floor.

“You know,” I said, “I don’t think Eugene Marais would ever have exposed you. Not in the end. A kind man.”

“How could I know?” Manet said. “But I didn’t kill him.”

“Sure,” I said.

I heard them in the corridor just before the doorbell rang. Danielle opened the door. Lieutenant Marx and his two men came in. I waited for them standing over Manet.

“I figured you’d be here,” Marx said. “We found Charlie Burgos. What about Manet?”

“He didn’t kill Charlie, but he’s a fake, and I figure he killed Eugene Marais.”

I told him all Manet had told me. Marx listened while his men inspected the lush apartment, whistling with awe over it. When I finished, Marx looked down at Manet.

“He was dead when you got to the shop around midnight, maybe twelve-fifteen? You faked the robbery?”

Manet nodded. “I panicked, but he was dead.”

“How long had he been dead, would you say?”

“Not very long. He was… warm.”

“Did you see a package in the back room? Maybe took it?”

“I saw no package. There wasn’t a package, I’m sure.”

Marx nodded slowly. I swore.

“Damn it, he’s lying,” I said. “He has to be. He had the motive, he was there, he was paying Charlie Burgos. He killed Eugene Marais.”

“No!” Manet cried, stood up, swayed.

“No,” Lieutenant Marx said. “I believe him. We picked up the killer of Charlie Burgos ten minutes ago, Dan, and I figure the same killer for Eugene Marais.”

I said, “Who?”

“We identified the knife, Dan,” Marx said. “You never pulled it out, right? Touch nothing?”

“Damn it, Marx, who?”

“Claude Marais,” Marx said. “We knew he killed his brother. But with you, Kandinsky and the French making noise, and no direct evidence against him, we decided to let him go, give him rope, and watch him. We don’t apologize.”

“Claude?” I said. “No, I don’t believe it.”

“When we let him go, we put a tail on him, of course. He slipped our tail right after leaving jail. It looked like it could have been an accident-our man just missed a lucky subway train. I chewed our man out, he made a mistake. We never expected Claude would kill anyone else. We can’t cover every possibility. It was a risk.”

“Why did Claude kill Charlie Burgos?” I said.

“The way I see it,” Marx said, “Charlie Burgos saw two men that night at the shop. He saw Claude Marais go in first. He saw Claude come out about midnight carrying the package of diamonds. Minutes later, before Charlie had time to look in the shop, Manet showed up and went inside. After Manet came out with the suitcase, Charlie went inside the shop and found Eugene Marais dead. That gave Charlie two pigeons.”

“How did Charlie know which one killed Marais?”

“I don’t figure he did, not for sure. In fact, that can explain a lot of what else happened later,” Marx said. “Manet paid him, so Charlie must have figured Manet was the killer. I think Claude Marais held out, so Charlie figured Claude was innocent. Of the murder, anyway. But Claude had been there, had taken that package. Charlie didn’t know what was in the package, but he knew Claude was lying about being there at all. So Charlie phoned in the tip on the package to put pressure on Claude to pay him to keep quiet.

“Charlie had a beautiful double play. He figured Claude wasn’t a killer, we’d let Claude go, but Charlie would have proved to Claude it was better to pay him than have him talk. If we didn’t let Claude go, that would give Charlie an even tighter hold on Manet. With Claude accused, even convicted, Manet would be really safe-as long as Charlie said nothing. Only Charlie Burgos made one big mistake-he had the wrong killer. Claude killed Eugene, and Charlie Burgos was the one man who could prove it. So exit Charlie.”

It was good. Very good. Logical.

“How do you prove all that? Charlie Burgos is dead.”

“We don’t prove it, Dan, unless Claude Marais wants to tell us. Maybe he will now, we’ve got him cold for Charlie Burgos. If he won’t talk, we’ll convict him for Charlie only. But he killed Eugene too. It’s his only possible motive for killing Charlie Burgos.”

“What was on that knife that proves Claude killed Burgos?”

“French army stuff all over the blade-Thirteenth Half Brigade,” Marx said. “And Claude’s initials etched near the hilt. We already knew that Claude had a knife-a souvenir. It was in his bag the night we first arrested him, and it’s not there now. The sheath was in that condemned house, too.”

“He left a knife marked like that? Left it in the body? You can’t believe it, Marx!”

Marx shrugged. “Panic. We’ve both seen it too often, Dan. Charlie hadn’t been dead long when Danielle and those street kids found him. Claude heard them coming, panicked, and ran.”

“It takes seconds to pull out a knife. A trained man like Claude wouldn’t let go of a knife when he struck. He’d have stabbed, pulled it back out ready to hit again.”

Marx’s voice was quiet. “It was stuck hard in a rib, Dan. Took two of us to get it out. I can see him trying to pull it out when he heard someone coming. It wouldn’t come out. So then he had to leave it, run before he was discovered.”