“When do you charge Claude Marais?” I said.
“You too?” Marx scowled. “That lawyer, Kandinsky, is on our backs every hour. Not to mention the French people.” He looked at Li. “The little lady is persuasive.”
“She knows Claude didn’t do it,” I said.
“I wish I did,” Mara said, angry and yet not. “Even if we believed her, the time doesn’t help. He could have killed his brother any time between three A.M. and five A.M.”
“Would Eugene have waited until three A.M. in the shop?”
“We thought of that. But what kind of proof is it? Any man could have a million reasons for waiting, damn it.”
I heard an odd uneasiness in the Lieutenant’s voice. That wasn’t like the police. An obvious uncertainty, as if they weren’t really convinced of their own case against Claude. That they would be uncertain wasn’t so unusual, but that Marx would show it to me was. It had to mean trouble in holding Claude.
“If only Marais would say something we could work on,” Marx said, glared at Li. “He just denies it all, can’t account for his time between three and when he went to you, Dan. He won’t account for it. Walking around, he says, a habit. Gerd Exner had called him, and he was wondering who you were, deciding what to do about you.”
“But you haven’t charged him?”
“No. We’re holding him as a material witness for now.”
“For how long, Marx?”
“Not too long unless we get something more.”
“What can you get? All right, circumstantially he looks like it, but no one can place him at the shop, no one saw Eugene killed, no one can even say Eugene refused the package and that there was a fight.”
“We’re looking,” Marx said.
“Are you looking for that tipster?”
“An anonymous phone call in this city? How?”
“It has to be someone connected, someone with a motive to expose Claude Marais, or to frame him.”
“We don’t even know if it was a man or a woman.”
“Maybe we better find out,” I said.
Marx said nothing. He just looked gloomy.
21
I stopped at my office for my old gun, and walked with Li Marais to the condemned brownstone on Nineteenth Street where Charlie Burgos and his street kids had taken me. The yard was overgrown with sickly city weeds. The alley beside the house was deserted. Li Marais looked up at the dark, boarded windows.
“Someone lives here?”
“Street kids,” I said. “If they have homes, they hate them, and where else can they get a place of their own?”
“You think this Charlie Burgos can help us?”
“I think he knows something.”
We went up warily. As we reached the third floor, I had my pistol out. If Charlie Burgos could tell us anything, we weren’t going to learn what this time. The third floor room where I had been held was empty. Not abandoned, the clothes, mattresses and blackened Sterno cans still there.
I searched the ragged belongings of the five adolescents. It took only a few minutes, they had so little. I didn’t have much more of my own, but for me it had been a matter of choice to live without baggage. The street boys had never had a choice.
On the street I found a telephone booth. Li Marais waited on the hot sidewalk while I called Viviane Marais. People who are unaware of being observed reflect in their pose, their faces, the hidden skeleton of their feelings. Relaxed for an instant, they reveal the landscape where their minds are living. While the telephone rang out in Sheepshead Bay, I watched Li outside the booth. She watched the street and two children playing. Her Oriental face was blank, serene, as if she wasn’t there at all.
“Yes?” Viviane Marais said from the other end.
“Dan Fortune, Mrs. Marais. Is Danielle there?”
“No.” A silence. “I owe you some money, Mr. Fortune.”
“Where is Danielle?”
“I do not know. She has not been home for two days. With that boy, I presume.” Another silence. “You still work?”
“Li thinks Claude didn’t do it.”
“And what do you think?”
“I want to talk to Danielle and Charlie Burgos.”
“I have not seen them.”
“Do you still think Claude killed Eugene?”
“For a package of diamonds?” A third silence. “Or because Eugene interfered? What does it matter? I do not really care anymore. Send me your bill, Mr. Fortune.”
She hung up. I went out to Li Marais.
Paul Manet walked back into the sumptuous living room of his borrowed apartment. I closed the outer door, followed him across the yellow carpet. Li Marais was silent behind me. Manet held a drink. He drank, composed his face into a somber expression.
“So Claude killed his brother? A tragedy. But-?” He sighed, drank. “We knew that Claude was disturbed.”
“Li, there, doesn’t think Claude did it.”
“Li?” Manet looked at her. I saw the appreciation in his eyes. He squared his shoulders ready to be charming, gallant, and, hopefully, something more?
“Claude’s wife,” I said. “You didn’t know that?”
“Ah, no,” Manet said, very sad. “My sympathies, Madame.”
The tall hero was out of his elegant, pseudo-military clothes. A dark shirt and tapered slacks like an officer at ease in his quarters. A looseness to his imperious manner, off-duty. Almost sluggish, but not relaxed. A tension in his face. Drinking. Was it that no one could keep the front up all the time? The need of a few drinks every afternoon before he went out to perform? I knew fifty salesmen like that. Yet with Manet it was something more. A pervading sense of need to have the drinks, a desperation.
“We’re looking for Danielle Marais,” I said.
“I have not seen her for some days.”
“Charlie Burgos?”
“No, not him, either.”
His eyes flickered. He had realized that he had just told me something I hadn’t known for sure. He did know Charlie Burgos. He drank.
“So you know Charlie Burgos?” I said.
“I have met him with Danielle, yes.”
“But you give Danielle dresses?”
“The daughter of a friend.”
“No romance?”
“At my age?” He smiled. A weak smile.
“She was here alone that day. Why?”
“Why not? I am a family friend.” He put down his drink. “Mr. Fortune, I am aware the police inquired into my history. I assume they told you what they found. I have nothing to hide. So, if you don’t mind, I have an appointment.”
Smooth, controlled, even commanding-and yet there was the tension. Everything in the elegant living room was a hair off. As if just out of focus.
“Someone was supposed to meet Eugene Marais the night he died. It almost had to be you, Manet. Why?”
“You saw me leave at five. I did not return.”
“Why would you meet with a man from the past so late at night and alone? A man you hadn’t really known at all before? A man who had known not you but your family in Paris.”
Manet put down his drink. “I am becoming annoyed.”
“Where do Charlie Burgos and Danielle fit in?” I pushed on. “They were there, so… There, sure! That’s it. They saw you come out of the shop carrying a suitcase-and the diamonds?”
“There are laws to stop you badgering a-”
“Wait. You ditched the suitcase, but you kept the diamonds. You know where Claude Marais lives. You know the hat badge of the Thirteenth Half Brigade-his unit. But why? What did Eugene Marais do, or know, that-?”
“Get out! Now!”
His hands clenched into fists. Anger flushed his handsome face. He took a step toward me, powerful and commanding. I reacted by reflex.
I fell into a crouch with my lone fist raised. In a fight, I wouldn’t have much chance with Manet, but a man reacts by instinct. To protect himself, or to attack.
I didn’t do either. I didn’t have to.
Paul Manet stopped. Instantly. He jerked back from my crouch and one fist. His reflex-the flinch again. When opposed, challenged, he broke. The haughty, belligerent manner broke apart. For the blink of an eye Manet almost cringed.