“Mr. Fortune,” the stocky Claude Marais said. The brother had a low, taciturn voice. His manner was distant, even with his brother, as if he weren’t really in the room. “Is it interesting work, chasing the evildoer? Justice and retribution?”
“Mostly money and big dreams, Mr. Marais,” I said.
“Always money, yes,” the brother said. “Of course.”
Eugene Marais said, “Claude forgets his manners. This lady is his wife, Li, Mr. Fortune.”
I said, “Mrs. Marais.”
Li Marais moved her delicate head in the faintest of bows. She withdrew again to the wall, silent. It was my day for stereotypes-a Caucasian can’t guess the age of an Oriental. Maybe twenty-five, but I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t even sure what kind of Oriental she was-Chinese? Vietnamese? Burmese? No, thinner than a Burmese, and not Malaysian. She looked no more than twenty-five, yet she was very womanly, and Claude Marais had to be forty-five.
The brother walked past me. “Come, Li.”
She followed him out through the shop. Her walk was a glide. So was Claude Marais’s walk. As if he were a man trained to move lightly, but tired now, his heart not in the necessity to move anywhere. When they had both gone, Eugene Marais looked after them and sighed:
“He drifts, Claude. A sad thing.”
“I never knew you even had a brother,” I said.
He shrugged. “In eighteen years I have seen Claude three times. Only eight years between us, but what years. I am of the big war, the Occupation, the leaving of France. He was a child in the war, and he did not leave. The abyss between us. He became a hero to atone for my generation’s defeat. Then it was his turn for defeat-Dienbienphu, Algeria. Now there is no France for him, and nowhere else. Ah, this stupid world!” The Gallic shrug again. “But you are here for money?”
I gave him the ring. “Marty needs a vacation.”
He took the ring, unlocked his cash cage, went to the open safe. He had seen the ring before. He counted out five hundred dollars, pushed the bills through the grille to me.
“A vacation is better than diamonds,” he said, smiled. “I and Viviane must take one. Jimmy guards my business better than I do. He thinks I am much too soft, do not drive the good bargain. Claude could help him while I was gone.”
“It’s better to be soft. You can live with it.”
“Be the man who does nothing to anyone, eh? Sometimes even nothing can be too much. But you have your vacation to arrange, and I have work to do. Bien, eh?”
As I walked to Marty’s apartment with the money, the night hadn’t cooled a degree yet. Marty wasn’t at home. She should have been there. To make our plans. Where was she? Call it a feeling, but this morning I had sensed something in her, a decision. A choice. She had to “do” something.
The heat on the crowded streets was like thick syrup. I wasn’t hungry, but it was time to eat, so I stopped at the Acme Diner for the special roast beef.
The beef like a lump inside me, I called Marty. No answer. She knew I would have the money. So she wasn’t anxious. My stomach was heavy from more than undigested roast beef. I was nervous about the five hundred, too. I walked across town to my one-room office on Twenty-eighth Street to lock the money up for the night.
My corridor was dim as usual, the single bulb over the stairs feeble in the stifling air. All the offices were dark, even the two old pornographers had left their treasures to try for some air somewhere. I decided on an air-conditioned movie as I unlocked my door.
The woman stepped out of the shadows of the corridor.
“Mr. Fortune?”
It was the tiny, Oriental wife of Claude Marais.
She sat in my one extra chair, her smooth face as clear as marble, her passive eyes like obsidian or black jade. I had thought her too small for me, too childlike and fragile. But close now, I saw that her body filled the pale blue dress in solid curves. Good curves-a woman.
“Eugene has said you are a detective?” she said.
“Yes.” I was behind my desk, the money in a drawer.
“I would like to hire you, then.”
They didn’t look like they had money, she and the brother, but the straw floated through my mind to grasp at.
“I charge a hundred a day, one week minimum,” I said. I didn’t, not in Chelsea, but it was a try.
“I have only five hundred dollars,” she said.
Her English was flawless, only a faint accent and that probably French. A difference mainly in the diction, foreign. I thought about her English to keep from feeling a louse. I needed that five hundred dollars.
“Fine,” I said. I felt a louse. Talked to cover. “Where are you from, Mrs. Marais?”
“I am Thai. Siamese, perhaps you say.”
Soft, young, yet that dignity that suggested experience if not age. A mature manner-Madame.
“What do you want to hire me to do?” I said.
“My husband was a soldier. Many years, many places. He has enemies. Now one wishes to kill him, I think. I do not know his name. Claude does not tell me what is in his mind, but I know he is in danger. Another soldier, I think, one I have seen before in Saigon, Bangkok, Hong Kong. Tall, perhaps forty. A German, with a limp and scars here.” She touched her left cheek. “I have heard Claude speak on the telephone. This man comes to our hotel perhaps tonight, perhaps tomorrow. Claude is worried, I know that. He carries his pistol.”
“One man? This German?”
“Perhaps there are others, I am not sure.”
“What do you expect me to do?”
“Be at our hotel to stop this man before he comes to Claude. Do not tell Claude. I think that if this man sees that someone is watching Claude, he will go away. He, too, is an alien, such men are not foolhardy. He will go.”
“Such men as what, Mrs. Marais?”
“The men without countries, without simple work. The homeless men who live by their wits. He will go when he sees that Claude is not alone, that someone watches.”
I didn’t like the sound of it. She wanted someone there, but to do what, really? Scare this man? Why? Who was after whom? Did they need a demonstration of muscle, this woman and her husband, Claude? Or was it just her, some trick against the husband? But I watched her stand up now, lay five hundred dollars on my old desk, and what did I care what she really wanted? A risk? Maybe, but the money was there, and, somehow, I sensed that this time hocking a ring was not going to be good for me. This time, for Marty, I needed to have more to give. I picked up the money.
She said, “We are at the Stratford Hotel. It is on Ninth Street. Room 427. The man will come. You will tell him you watch Claude, send him away. Yes?”
“I’ll be there,” I said.
When she had gone I sat for a time. I didn’t like it at all-but I had five hundred dollars. I could get the ring back. Maybe that would help.
2
I called Marty, there was still no answer. The pawn shop would be closed. There was nothing to do but the job I had been paid to do. I stopped for three cold cans of beer on the way, carried them with me.
The Hotel Stratford was middle class, not expensive but not a flop, either. The lobby was small but clean, the floor carpeted, and greenery in the pots. The heavy chairs and couches weren’t too old. A solid hotel where they even cleaned the single elevator. The night clerk was just as solid, neither old nor young, neat and a friend.
“I’m going to wait for someone asking for room 427 or Claude Marais, George. I’ll be quiet, and I’d appreciate a high sign. Okay?”
“Any trouble involved, Dan?” George Jenkins asked.
“Just talk, I hope. It’s worth ten, okay?”
“Keep your money, Dan. Drink the beer out of sight, and put the cans in the bag. The manager’s touchy.”
I nodded thanks-ten saved is ten earned-and found an armchair where a rubber plant hid me. I could see the entrance, desk, elevator and stairs. There were no other ways up. The lobby wasn’t air-conditioned, and the chair was heavy and hot. It was going to be a bad night.