Shadow of a Tiger

27

I said I thought I knew what Li Marais expected her death to do. That was all I said.

Marx swore at me. But if I’d said any more, Marx would have ruined it. Ruined her death, what she had done it for.

“I’ll explain when I’m sure,” I said to Marx.

If I was right, what she had done it for would take a little time. The major reason she had ended her life.

I didn’t kid myself that another reason hadn’t been guilt, maybe shame. For what she and I had done. She had betrayed Claude Marais, he was in real trouble, and she had to help him. Help and atone. I had to face it. I had bad nights while I waited for what I was sure she had expected to happen next.

I waited three days.

My flame will light the truth. Had she made a mistake? Her flaming death a tragic miscalculation? I had the sick feeling that it had been. A straw she had grasped at, almost hopeless, and maybe she hadn’t really cared if her death was useless.

But I cared.

After three days, I had to act.

The woman, Marie Schmidt, opened the door of the tenement apartment. Her ugly face had lost its snap and vigor.

“He’s in the back room. It’s not locked,” she said. “Three days in and out of back there. No sleep. Like a crazy tiger in a cage. I can’t take no more. He scares me now.”

I went through the spartan living room. I had my old gun in my pocket. The outer door closed behind me. Marie Schmidt hurried away down the stairs Jimmy Sung kept so clean.

I opened the door of the empty back room. It wasn’t empty now.

Flags hung on the walls-Chinese Communist flags, Viet Cong flags, flags I didn’t even recognize. Giant photos of Mao Tse-tung. Modern Chinese rifles, and ancient muskets. Swords and curved knives. Portraits of Confucius and Genghis Khan. Mongol helmets with horsehair hanging. A map of China. A painted Buddha. An ancient map of the Mongol Empire stretching far into Europe. A photo of the Chinese H-bomb test. Parades of Chinese youths. Headlines from New York newspapers during the Korean War-all of Chinese victories.

The room a hymn to China. Powerful-and yet confused. Not all China, and irrational. Madame Chiang was there, and photos of the rich Soongs. Ho Chi Minh, and some Chinese emperors. The Burmese U Thant, Japanese soldiers in a banzai celebration of some victory over America. A samurai sword beside an ancient Mongol lance. A twisted celebration of Asian glory that filled the room, hidden perhaps for years in an open trunk that stood in a corner of the room.

Among it all, Jimmy Sung kneeled before the small jade Buddha. Incense burned, and a half-empty quart of vodka was on the floor beside Jimmy Sung. He drank as I watched, shivered. He wore the padded blue uniform of a Chinese soldier, and another samurai sword was near his hand.

“How long have you had all this, Jimmy?” I said.

He turned to look at me. His face was like the hundred-year-old woman in Shangri-La who had never aged, and who then aged the whole hundred years in a single moment. Wasted, ravaged.

“Long time,” Jimmy said, slurred. “Long damn time.”

He was drunk. But how drunk? On that plateau where he functioned, or over the edge? A manic shine to his dark eyes.

“Where did it all come from, Jimmy?” I said.

“All over. Junk shops, Chinamen shops, sailors,” he said, nodded as if agreeing with himself. A sudden cunning grin. “I get from dumb soldiers back from Korea, Vietnam. I make them think we all friends, buy the souvenirs, and inside I’m cheerin’ for China, Viet Cong-the ‘gooks’!”

“You’ve lived in America all your life, Jimmy.”

He spat on the floor. “Lousy Chinaman! Chink!” He hunched where he still kneeled. “We are great people, great culture. In time of the Khans we ruled the world. Great teachers, wise men.”

“You should have gone back, Jimmy.”

“No way. I dream, but no way. Only here, spit on.”

I watched him drink the vodka. He dreamed of China, but somewhere inside him he knew it was an insane dream. America was the only real world he knew. China would be an alien place. In his small, rational core, he didn’t really want to go back. But alone in an America that ignored him, he had to dream. He had to believe in his hidden dream, and now he was tortured, confused. Three days tortured in this dream room because Li Marais had immolated herself to reach him.

“My flame will light the truth,” I said. “Li Marais knew her suicide wouldn’t touch the police. That wasn’t why she did it. She did it to make you tell the truth. A Buddhist way to force another Buddhist. She knew that you killed Eugene Marais and Charlie Burgos.”

Jimmy Sung thrashed at an invisible stake, tried to deny it even to himself. “Crazy woman! Liar.”

“She told me the day they arrested Claude Marais the second time,” I said, “but I didn’t understand her. She didn’t want me to understand. Not then. She said she had seen the hat badge on Claude’s bureau, had seen the knife in his suitcase. She meant that she remembered that she had seen both the badge and the knife in the suite on that day the police first arrested Claude. They had been there in sight. The hat badge had not been in the register with the package. That evening when you were so brave against Gerd Exner.”

“Chinese are brave,” Jimmy Sung said. “Strong. Yeh.”

“You had put that package of diamonds into the register, you went to the suite to talk to Li Marais a lot. After the detective found the package, while we all looked at the diamonds, you just walked into the bedroom, got the hat badge, and said you’d found it in the register. Who thought of doubting that you had? How could Claude Marais have denied it, even if he had remembered where he’d last seen his badge? You took the knife then, too. No one was going to search you. No reason to. You’d been cleared of any robbery, and what other motive did you have to kill Eugene Marais or anyone?”

“My friend, Mr. Marais,” Jimmy Sung said, nodded to himself.

“But when Claude was arrested for killing Charlie Burgos, Li Marais began to think. She was sure Claude was innocent. She knew Manet couldn’t have killed Burgos. So who was framing Claude? Why? That was when she realized it had to be you, Jimmy. She realized what the motive was, and killed herself to make you tell the truth and save Claude.”

I talked, but in that hot room I felt unreal. A room that was a museum to an illusion. An illusion that battled with the real world where Jimmy Sung had lived his bleak life. A battle that had gone on inside him now for three days. A struggle, started by Li Marais in her death, that moved Jimmy Sung between the real world of America, and the illusion world of China.

“Li knew,” I said, “because she realized that, in part, you had killed for her. It wasn’t Eugene Marais you wanted dead, it was Claude Marais. Eugene was an accident. It was Claude you wanted to kill.”

“That Claude!” Jimmy Sung drank, drank again. “Medals. French hero. Steal women, steal everything. Steal countries, murder babies, kill my people, get medals.”

I had heard almost the same words before, but I hadn’t been listening. I had been thinking of other things that day in the bar when Jimmy Sung had been released from jail.

“Claude Marais,” I said. “The enemy. In the pawn shop in full uniform. The enemy who stole a child bride.”

Jimmy Sung shook where he kneeled in the room of his secret world. More than half drunk. Scared in one world, proud in the other. Hate for Claude Marais and his uniform, and more than a little in love with Li Marais. A dream of Li Marais, too. That had to be part of it. An illusion of China, and of a woman, and of Buddha. Of a religion that demanded the truth now.

“All lies,” Jimmy said. “That Claude. Steal a kid.”

He was balanced on a hair. Half of him lived in America, and a man did not convict himself of murder because a woman burned herself to death in a yellow robe. But the other half lived in the illusion of China, of Buddha, where he was better, stronger and prouder than the white men who looked at him but never saw him. Balanced on the edge between.

“Lies,” he said. “No one knows. Who will know?”

He talked to himself, his shadow inside. Ripped up between his empty real world of America, and his glorious illusion world of China. Aware of the danger to him in the real world if he acted by his illusion, but aware, deep inside him, that if he did not act according to his illusion he would lose his dream forever. If he denied the reality of China and Buddha now, he could never believe in it again. A drunken zero with no name in a world that ignored him. All he needed was a push.

“I’ll know, Jimmy,” I said. “And Claude Marais will know. Claude Marais will know the truth about you. No Buddhist, no believer, no man of China. Claude will know, and Li.”

“That Claude!” Jimmy glared his hate.

“A man of China would have to tell the truth,” I said.

Silent, he kneeled there. In his padded blue uniform, under his flags, and maps, and guns. He shook, but a little less now. He stared at the small, jade Buddha in front of him.

“Truth?” he said. “I have to tell the truth. To Buddha.”

“Yes,” I said. “The only way. For Li Marais.”

“Yes,” he said.

He said it, and he shook, and after a time I saw that he was crying. A crying jag. Self pity? Or maybe he cried for something else.

I found his telephone, called Lieutenant Marx.

No matter how it begins, or why, it ends in a windowless room with the pencil scrape of a stenographer. Marx nodded in the interrogation room. Jimmy began to talk:

“That Claude! Colonial bastard. I know about the French. I am Chinese, a great people. In the time of the Khans, we rule the world. We do it again. We finish all you white men never see no one. Real free, you know? For everyone. Not laugh at no one. We don’t put someone in a crazy house just ’cause he don’t talk English, is scared, got no friends. We don’t tell lies, spit on people!

“A long time I hear soldiers tell about what they do in Korea, in Vietnam. White soldiers kill yellow men-gooks! All the time I cheer inside for China, for Vietnam. The stupid white soldiers never know. They get killed over there. Good!

“That Claude! He comes to the shop in that uniform. Enemy killer of my people. Slave wife, child he steal. Big, French hero got to steal kid-bride. His money, his lies. Then he hurts her, makes her suffer. Makes her unhappy, I sec. We talk, I know. I hate that Claude, long time. I want to kill him, help her. She can go home, be happy. Only it ain’t easy.

“That night I play chess with Mr. Marais. I’m drunk, not too bad. He tell me Claude will come for that package. Then he gets telephone call, says I better go home. I figure it got to be Claude coming, and I see my chance. Only Mr. Marais and Claude gonna be in the shop. Mr. Marais he’ll say later I left before Claude got there. My chance, you know?

“I unbolt the back door, go out the front, circle ’round to the alley and in the back way. Mr. Marais’s got that package on the table, he don’t hear me. I grab the iron bar to tap him a little. He hears me, starts to turn. So I jump and hit him fast. I hit too hard! He goes down. I put him in the chair, start to tie him. I see he looks funny. He’s dead! I killed Mr. Marais. That Claude, it’s his fault! I wait for him, but he don’t come. I hear that Manet coming in the front, so I run out the back. I take the package, maybe it’ll look like robbery.

“In the alley I hide. No one comes out. I hear a lot of noise inside, then the front door closes. I go to the back door again-and I hear the bell on the front door again. I look and see it’s that Charlie Burgos punk. He sees Mr. Marais in the chair, runs out the front. I go in, lock the back door, and go out the front. No one sees me. I get drunk in bars, go home.

“That Manet fixed it like a robbery, I figure I’m safe. Only I’m picked up on account of the Buddha I got from Mr. Marais, and the bottle I forgot. If I tell about Manet, you know I was there after Mr. Marais was dead. You all got it wrong, only I did kill Mr. Marais, so I keep quiet, wait. Fortune finds the loot, and you let me go! Charlie Burgos ain’t talked, so I know he’s blackmailing Manet. No one will tell. I’m home free. So I get the idea-I’ll use that package I got to frame Claude. Cover myself for sure, and get that Claude, too.

“I put the package in the register in the hotel when I’m visiting Li. I tell Fortune about the package, and I tip you cops. When you found the package in the register, I went into the bedroom, picked up the hat badge, said I’d found it in the register. Simple. I took the knife then, too. I got a hunch I got to kill that Burgos to frame Claude, and maybe Burgos will try to get Claude free to keep his squeeze on Manet going.

“When you let Claude out, I saw him lose your tail, but he didn’t lose me. I watched him just walking around. I went and killed Burgos, left the knife. It all worked! Claude couldn’t say where he was when Burgos was killed. Everyone figured Burgos seen Claude that night. No way out for Claude, and me safe.

“Then she had to do it! Li. I’m a Chinese man, a Buddhist. I got to tell the truth. She made me. I got to. For China. She die to save my karma, save me. I am a man of China, I got to tell the truth.”

He sat there then in silence, erect and proud. Or was it just the release of confession? Li Marais would have said that a Buddhist could do nothing else. Marx would say that it was the same old story he had seen before-the man driven by the weight of guilt and fear to confess and find some peace. Or I could say it was the work of a sick, confused mind. Take your choice.

“Type it up,” Marx said. “He signs it, then book him.”