“No, I’m not.”
“Why were you around Paul Manet, Danielle?”
“Charlie sent me to him a couple of times. I took kind of messages. Mr. Manet was going to help Charlie get a job.”
“A job? For Charlie?”
“That’s what Charlie said.”
“You never thought that Paul Manet could be the man Charlie was blackmailing? The killer he’d seen that night?”
“Mr. Manet? Why would he want to kill Dad? He was an old friend from Paris. He’d only just come to New York.”
“Who really gave you that expensive dress, Danielle?”
“Charlie did. From the blackmail money.”
“Then why would Paul Manet say he bought it?”
“I… I don’t know. I was glad he did. I mean, I knew I’d made a mistake when I told you Charlie had bought it. You’d guess Charlie was up to something if he had that kind of money, so I was glad when Mr. Manet said he bought it for me, but I don’t know why he said it.”
I said, “I do.”
24
Paul Manet was back in his work clothes-another expensive, pale blue suit with a hint of military epaulets and a slim, belted waist. I pushed him into the plush, sunken living room of Jules Rosenthal, a man only too glad to lend his palace to a hero of France.
“What are you doing!”
That was all, his whole protest. A man four inches taller, thirty pounds heavier, and with two arms. It was amazing he had gotten away with it so long. Smart and very careful. He backed away from me, looked toward Danielle, his fine face suddenly pale. It was Danielle being there that turned him pale, haggard.
“Charlie Burgos was blackmailing you,” I said. “That’s why you covered that slip Danielle made about the dress. You didn’t want me to know that Charlie Burgos had sudden money.”
“That is a lie.”
Part of the success of his masquerade was habit. The habit of a lot of years. Pale, he still acted out his role-the officer and gentleman defying the common herd.
“You met Eugene Marais that night. Between midnight and one A.M. Charlie Burgos saw you. He saw you go into the shop, and he saw you come out-after you killed Eugene Marais.”
“No!” His voice was strangled now.
“Yes,” I said, “and I know why. I know who you really are.”
I waited. He said nothing. Shook his head.
“The police are checking with Paris,” I said. “They’re asking what happened to Paul Manet in the war-end chaos of 1945, and what happened to Paul Manet’s younger brother. Not much younger; a year or two. What’s your real name, Manet? What was the name you abandoned when you took over the identity and history of your brother Paul? The real name that Eugene Marais knew?”
Whatever his real first name was, he shook his head in the gaudy living room of the luxury apartment. The kind of place he had become accustomed to living in, being given by grateful Frenchmen, in all the years since World War II.
“Eugene Marais knew you. Maybe not at once. In the Balzac Union he watched you, puzzled at first. He wasn’t sure what seemed wrong to him, was he? But you knew. Since the war you had avoided anyone who knew Paul well, and explained any facial differences by Nazi torture. I’ll bet you told a beautiful story. People like to know a hero, had no reason to doubt you. Eugene Marais hadn’t known Paul, but he had known you-the younger brother! You’d never thought of that. Who would remember the unknown brother of a national hero? An old friend of the family with a long memory, that’s who, and you saw at once that Eugene was puzzled. You’ve probably got a sixth sense by now, and you saw that Eugene had seen something.
“So you avoided him at the Balzac Union. Only, by accident, you met Eugene outside the Union. Talking to you up close, Eugene saw it. He realized that you weren’t Paul Manet, you were the younger brother. Eugene Marais wasn’t a man who acted rashly. He thought about it, talked around the subject to Claude, considered it all. He even talked to you about it, and sensed you’d like to see him silenced. ‘Even a man who has done nothing, there will be reasons for some to want him gone, nonexistent.’ He said that.
“You were in danger of losing all you had, because it’s all based on Paul Manet’s reputation. So you went to the pawn shop, but too many people were there at five. You made a date to meet Eugene that night-and you kept the date. You went to the shop, killed him, faked the robbery, and left. But Charlie Burgos saw you. You had to pay him to keep silent. Only paying a man isn’t as safe or sure as killing him. Not with me and the cops still looking. So today you killed Charlie Burgos.”
Manet flinched at each word as if I were slapping him on the face. He stood rigid, like a spy being interrogated. But when I said that he had killed Charlie Burgos, he moved.
“Charlie Burgos? Dead? No.”
“Stabbed in his rooms not two hours ago. I’d say he was killed right after Li Marais and I left here. After you saw that I was still looking for Eugene Marais’s killer.”
“Two hours?” Manet said, began to smile. “Two hours? Then… then I couldn’t have killed him! No. I could not have killed Burgos.” He laughed. “Just before you came here this morning I had been on the telephone to Paris for over an hour. You can verify that, I can name who I talked to. When you and that Oriental woman arrived, I had just hung up. After you left me earlier, four businessmen came here to discuss imports. All known men, above suspicion. They came immediately after you left, went away just before you and Danielle arrived this time. I’m surprised you did not meet them both times. I have not been from this apartment all day. There is no way I could have murdered Charlie Burgos!”
It had the sound of truth. It would be too easy to disprove if it wasn’t true. His smile had the truth in it too. The smile of a man who knew he was clear, safe. Someone else had killed Charlie Burgos. Maybe one of Charlie’s own street kids over the blackmail money.
“Maybe you didn’t kill Burgos,” I said, “but you did kill Eugene Marais.”
“No!” Manet was almost eager. “Someone who killed Burgos, also killed Eugene Marais. Don’t you see? Charlie Burgos must have been blackmailing someone else besides me! The murderer of Eugene Marais.”
He was excited, almost happy. Sure that he had just made me see his innocence. I saw, heard, something else.
“So,” I said, “you admit that Charlie Burgos was blackmailing you. Why? For spitting on the sidewalk?”
“I… I-” He licked at his lips.
I said, “The police will be here soon. They’ll have found Charlie Burgos, they’ll know I’m here. They’ll have the information from Paris. They’ll know what Eugene Marais knew, and why you killed him.”
For a moment more, he stood tall. Then he sat down. On a hard, narrow chair. It was too small for his size. He didn’t seem to notice that. He noticed his hands instead. Looked at them, turned them over, as if wondering who they really belonged to.
“Burgos was blackmailing me,” he said finally. “If you have asked about Paul Manet’s younger brother in Paris, it will all come out.” He looked up at me. “Yes, I was at the pawn shop that night. Yes, Burgos saw me. Yes, I have been posing as my brother for twenty-six years. I am Fernand Manet, the younger brother of Paul, and Eugene Marais did know me.”
He clasped his hands between his legs until the knuckles cracked. He touched the soft cloth of his pale blue trousers, the perfect crease. He touched the cloth almost lovingly.
“If you had been there in Paris at the end of the war, you would understand,” Manet said. “The confusion, the deaths, the disappearances, the miraculous escapes. In a way it was so simple to become Paul.”
He looked at me. “I was only a year younger than Paul. I could have joined the Resistance. My mother said that one son was enough for France. I let her think that I wanted to join the Resistance like Paul, but that she had convinced me not to for her sake. But that was a lie. I didn’t want to join, I was never brave. I could never have faced the Gestapo.”