Shadow of a Tiger

8

In her black dress, Viviane Marais stood at the door of the old frame house in Sheepshead Bay with a glass of wine in her hand.

“So?” the widow said. “Come in, Mr. Fortune.”

She took me into the spotless living room where everything shined as if she’d spent each day since Eugene Marais had died cleaning. She offered me a glass of the wine-La Tache, a fine, heavy Burgundy. I didn’t say no. I sat, sipped.

“You’re not surprised to see me?” I said.

“No.”

“You don’t believe Jimmy Sung killed Eugene?”

“One can tell a man who will steal. Jimmy Sung would not. Too much pride. If he did not steal, what reason is there?”

“Why didn’t you say that when I told you Jimmy was accused?”

She drank her glass empty, poured a fresh glass. “Eugene always said that only a man’s will counted-to do something for yourself, not for others or for gain. If I had told you to go on it would have been a job, for money. I wanted to see if you would come to me from your own doubts.”

“You know your sister-in-law hired a lawyer for Jimmy?”

“Li is a strong woman, she has her beliefs.”

“And her troubles?”

“Yes, and her troubles.”

“With Claude her main trouble?”

She tasted her wine as if it were thick enough to chew, savored it. “Eugene said once that Claude is like a man who has done some awful crime and now waits for his punishment-paralyzed. He treats Li like a sister, a daughter. What woman can live like that? Married eighteen years and not yet thirty-one?”

“She needs a husband again,” I said.

“So?” Viviane Marais said. “She has let you see that?”

“Doesn’t she usually let anyone see that?”

“No,” the widow said, watched me. “Treat her well, Mr. Fortune. She is a warm woman, loyal. A man who finds her with him will be lucky.”

I thought so too, and Marty was off somewhere making her decision, but I changed the subject for now.

“Some crime Claude had on his mind, Eugene said,” I said. “Could Eugene have meant some real crime? In Claude’s past?”

“I don’t know,” Viviane Marais said. “At the time I thought Eugene meant it only as a metaphor, but now-?”

“Could Claude be involved in something illegal? Some deal Eugene might have discovered, maybe tried to stop?”

“What Claude might be doing I can’t know,” the widow said. “But Eugene would not try to stop anything. He had seen too much of the horror caused by righteous men who think that they must stop other men for some abstract truth, for some principle.”

“What if he found that Claude was using him in some way?” I said. “Had involved him in some scheme?”

“Eugene would not have permitted that, but he would not have done anything against Claude, either.”

“Maybe Claude, or Gerd Exner, didn’t know that,” I said.

She thought, sipped her good wine, shrugged. There were too many “ifs,” but the possibility hung in the room.

“This Paul Manet,” I said. “You said Eugene had known him in the past in Paris?”

“Eugene knew the Manet family. I do not know if he knew Paul or not, or how well. Paul Manet was active in the Resistance, Eugene was not.”

“What is Vel d’Hiv?” I said. “Why would Paul Manet not want to talk about it? Why would it make him jumpy?”

“How do you know Paul Manet did not want to talk about it?”

“Claude said that to Eugene the day he was killed.”

She finished her wine again, did not refill her glass this time. She watched the far wall. “On the night of July 16, 1942, the Gestapo and the Paris police rounded up twelve thousand or so Jews, imprisoned them like sheep in the sports stadium-the Velodrome d’Hiver; to us: Vel d’Hiv. Non-French Jews, mostly German and Polish refugees. They were there a week, a hell, before they were sent to the worst hell of Auschwitz. It is not an episode most Frenchmen over forty-five want to talk about.” She reached for the wine bottle. “Four thousand of those Jews were children.”

She poured her glass of wine. Not new, no, one of thousands of such episodes in those barbarian years of the Third Reich, and that was why the silence of the neat living room in Sheepshead Bay was so brutal-I could imagine the scene, visualize it from a million other stories, reports, pictures. I could see and hear the bewildered suffering of those refugee children.

“Were Paul Manet and Eugene involved somehow?” I said.

“Eugene was not himself. We are half-Jewish, Eugene was at least, but French Jews were not affected. Some… friends were.” she drank. “Paul Manet risked his own life to warn many of the refugees, and rescued some. He is not a Jew, and it was a great risk in those days.”

“Eugene did nothing? Took no part?”

“He did nothing,” the widow said.

“Paul Manet would have no hatred against him, blame him for anything? Eugene had nothing against Manet?”

“I cannot think what. Few ordinary Frenchmen were part of it that night. Eugene did nothing bad, and Paul Manet was a hero. What could there be?”

She had no reason to be lying. Eugene Marais was dead, if he had done anything on that long-ago night to cause his murder now, she would have no reason to hide it and protect his killer. Or would she? Some guilty secret so bad…? No, Eugene Marais had not been a man to evade his own guilt.

“Does Danielle think Jimmy Sung guilty?” I said.

“How can I say what Danielle thinks?” Viviane Marais said.

“Has she seemed to doubt Jimmy’s guilt at all?”

“No, she has not. She has said nothing. Why?”

“I’m pretty sure Charlie Burgos tried to have me beaten up to get me off the case, and he’s got Danielle up-tight about something. If he didn’t rob the shop, kill Eugene, and you didn’t try to stop Danielle seeing him, what interest does he have in it all? Could he have been the one Eugene was meeting that night?”

“I have no idea, Mr. Fortune.”

I rubbed at my stump, it was aching. “All right, you’re sure Jimmy Sung isn’t a thief, not the type. But what facts do we have to support that? Some concrete proof it wasn’t Jimmy?”

“Jimmy cares nothing about money, really. Eugene paid him well, too much, and often Jimmy would leave on payday without his money. As long as he had money in his pocket for his bottle that night. Also, he worked in the shop, hein? He knew where any money was, how much there was in the shop. Would he not have gone straight to the money first? He had, too, the combination of the safe. Would he not have opened the safe at once?”

“Unless he knew Eugene was dead as soon as he hit him, and panicked at once,” I said, and answered my own question before she could. “No, then he would have just run, no point to taking anything at all. And the killer didn’t know Eugene was dead, or he wouldn’t have tied him to that chair.”

“No, Jimmy never needed money that much, Mr. Fortune,” Viviane Marais said.

“Everyone needs money that much, Mrs. Marais,” I said.