Marx spoke to the doorway into the suite bedroom. One of his detectives stood there. The detective held a shoe-box-sized package wrapped in brown paper and string.
“Inside the heat register, Lieutenant,” the detective said. “Cover taken off, the package shoved in, cover screwed back.”
“A tip?” I said.
“Anonymous, of course,” Marx said. “The package we wanted was here, it said. Disguised voice. We didn’t know about the package. We questioned. A package taken from the pawn shop, the tipster said, that night. Could have been man or woman. We sat on it, took it slow, then your call came about the trouble here, Dan. It fitted nicely.”
“I took no package,” Claude Marais said. “Put it nowhere.”
Jimmy Sung sat up on the couch. Li Marais was on her feet, took a step toward Claude. Viviane Marais swore.
“Eugene wouldn’t give you the package!” the widow cried.
Li Marais said, “Claude?”
“You were out that night, you came to me,” I said.
Lieutenant Marx had the package open. He poured a little mound of glittering, gem-cut diamonds onto a table.
“There’s a motive anyone understands,” Marx said.
Gerd Exner said, “You swine, Claude! Idiot!”
Exner laughed then, and Jimmy Sung stood in the doorway to the bedroom. He held a small metal object-metal and enamel.
“I looked into the register,” Jimmy Sung said. “This was back inside. He killed Mr. Marais.”
Jimmy Sung lunged toward Claude Marais, bandaged arm and all. Two patrolmen stopped him. Lieutenant Marx took the metal object. I looked at it. It was a military hat badge, the kind worn on berets. A French hat badge.
“Could it have just fallen into the register?” Marx said.
“No, too big,” the detective who had found the package said.
“Is it his?” Marx asked Li Marais.
Li Marais looked at it, and at Claude. “Oh, Claude!”
Claude Marais stared at his wife. Then he lit another cigarette.
19
I was tired, but I didn’t want to go home or be alone. Sometimes it’s like that when a case ends.
Claude Marais said nothing more to anyone. It wasn’t the time to talk to Li, not about anything. I’m not sure I wanted to talk to her then. She went with Claude and the police, and Viviane Marais went home to Sheepshead Bay. When I asked the widow if she was satisfied, she looked at me for some time, then said we would talk tomorrow, or in a few days.
I went to the Black Lion where my old friend and bartender, Joe Harris, was working. I told him the whole story.
“Sounds like he did it,” Joe said. “Simple motive.”
An ex-soldier with a shadowy past sends a fortune in diamonds to his quiet brother. The brother wants him to settle down to normal work, so refuses to hand back the diamonds. There’s an argument, made desperate by Gerd Exner being around, and the quiet brother is killed. All the rest is Claude trying to make it look like simple robbery. Motive-the diamonds. Opportunity-Claude was expected at the shop, I proved he had been out that night late. But…?
“Who tipped the cops,” I said to Joe. “Why and how?”
“Someone who hated him, someone who was afraid of him, or maybe someone who just wanted to get rid of him. Who knows how the tipster knew the stuff was there?”
“The tipster could have planted the diamonds there for any of those reasons, too,” I said. “And that hat badge.”
Anyone would fit. Charlie Burgos? For Danielle, maybe? Had Charlie seen Claude that night, and that was his interest in the affair? Protecting someone-first by trying to stop me, then with a frame-up? Li Marais? The way Claude had looked at her. Maybe Claude had done it, and she had turned him in-for me? Maybe Claude knew that? His silence?
It was after midnight when I went home. I had a bad taste in my mouth. It all fitted, and yet…? I swore at myself as I opened my apartment door, and stopped. Listened.
Someone was in the apartment. I knew it, sensed it. I barely breathed just inside the door in my dark living room, and looked down at the outer door lock. It hadn’t been touched. Yet I knew someone was inside, waiting somewhere in my five rooms.
I breathed lightly, didn’t move. As my eyes became accustomed to the dark in the living room, I saw nothing. Except that my bedroom door was closed. I never closed it, not in the heat of a New York summer, and this morning it had not yet rained and cooled the city. I took off my shoes, laid them carefully down, stepped softly into the kitchen and found a butcher knife on the counter. I reached the bedroom door without a sound, and listened. There was a faint line of light under the door. Someone had my small bedside reading lamp on-the low bulb.
My lone hand shook, but I held the knife and opened the bedroom door at the same time. I opened the door fast, jumped inside and left.
“Hello, Dan,” Marty said.
She was in bed. The reading light on, shaded and turned low, but she wasn’t reading. She was watching me, the strange contrast of her almost boyish face and woman’s body never more sharp. The smile, and the soft, almost velvet eyes. I closed the door, put the knife on a table, went to her.
“I got back tonight,” she said. “Come to bed. Now.”
I didn’t kiss her, I don’t know why. Something about her, about her there waiting in my bed. A decision. I undressed, but I didn’t get into bed. I sat on the bed.
“How was the vacation?” I said.
“Fine,” she said. “Dan? We can talk later.”
“I’ve just finished the Marais killing. It was the brother,” I said. I told her all about it, step by step. The whole case, except Li Marais. I talked because her eyes told me she wasn’t interested. No, she didn’t want to hear the story, so I told all of it to keep from knowing what she had to talk about.
“Dan?” she said. “Don’t you want to?”
“I want to,” I said. “Tell me what it is, Marty.”
She looked down, but only for a second. “I’m getting married. Next week.”
I’d known, in a way, but knowing and being sure are not the same. To know a man is a murderer, and to be sure of it, aren’t the same at all.
“Who?” I said. We always want to know that, we men. Who? Is he better than I? Richer, nicer, gentler, better in bed? It isn’t going to be easy to liberate the men.
“Kurt Reston,” she said.
The director, the theater man. The other man who had long believed in her work, in her. But a man going places, who still believed in winning the same prize she wanted.
“I can’t go on drifting, Dan,” she said. “Day to day where the wind blows us. He can give me what I have to have.”
“We all drift. In the end, that’s all we really do.”
“No,” she said. “There has to be more. More than waking up each morning and wondering what’s going to happen today. I want to know what today’s going to be like. Real things, solid. A base to start from, no more empty space when I’m not working. An anchor to stop the drifting.”
“Marty, there isn’t any anchor except to fill our time with as much sun as we can. You know the old Coverdale Bible? ‘Let us leave some token of our pleasure in every place, for that is our portion, else we get nothing.’ Marty-”
“No!” She sat up in the bed. I looked away. She was near to crying. “Maybe you’re right, Dan, but I know now that I can’t leave pleasure in every place. I want one sure place, and the sure pleasures. I want the rewards of this life, here and now, the way it is. With you I’d drift on and on without tomorrow. Two castaways in a lifeboat.”
“And you want the ship, the ocean liner.”
“Yes. First class.”
“It’s a ghost, the ship. A Flying Dutchman.”
“Maybe, but you can see it. People know it’s there. They see it, wave to it. No one sees your lifeboat down in the high waves alone.”