“Charlie had a beautiful double play. He figured Claude wasn’t a killer, we’d let Claude go, but Charlie would have proved to Claude it was better to pay him than have him talk. If we didn’t let Claude go, that would give Charlie an even tighter hold on Manet. With Claude accused, even convicted, Manet would be really safe-as long as Charlie said nothing. Only Charlie Burgos made one big mistake-he had the wrong killer. Claude killed Eugene, and Charlie Burgos was the one man who could prove it. So exit Charlie.”
It was good. Very good. Logical.
“How do you prove all that? Charlie Burgos is dead.”
“We don’t prove it, Dan, unless Claude Marais wants to tell us. Maybe he will now, we’ve got him cold for Charlie Burgos. If he won’t talk, we’ll convict him for Charlie only. But he killed Eugene too. It’s his only possible motive for killing Charlie Burgos.”
“What was on that knife that proves Claude killed Burgos?”
“French army stuff all over the blade-Thirteenth Half Brigade,” Marx said. “And Claude’s initials etched near the hilt. We already knew that Claude had a knife-a souvenir. It was in his bag the night we first arrested him, and it’s not there now. The sheath was in that condemned house, too.”
“He left a knife marked like that? Left it in the body? You can’t believe it, Marx!”
Marx shrugged. “Panic. We’ve both seen it too often, Dan. Charlie hadn’t been dead long when Danielle and those street kids found him. Claude heard them coming, panicked, and ran.”
“It takes seconds to pull out a knife. A trained man like Claude wouldn’t let go of a knife when he struck. He’d have stabbed, pulled it back out ready to hit again.”
Marx’s voice was quiet. “It was stuck hard in a rib, Dan. Took two of us to get it out. I can see him trying to pull it out when he heard someone coming. It wouldn’t come out. So then he had to leave it, run before he was discovered.”
“No,” I said. “He’s too cool, too trained.”
“Maybe,” Marx said, “but he’s a strange one. Mixed up. Maybe he wanted to be caught. We’ll ask the psychiatrists. He wanted Burgos dead, didn’t care if he was caught. To hell with the world. He’s got to be half crazy, Dan.”
“You said that about Jimmy Sung.”
“Sometimes we’re wrong, sometimes we’re right. Maybe Claude just doesn’t care what happens to him anymore, has a reason not to care. You might even know the reason, Dan.”
As I’ve said before, the police don’t miss much. Did I know a reason for Claude Marais not to give a damn anymore? Yes, I did, didn’t I? Li Marais. If he knew about us? Maybe if I’d been Claude, I’d want to be locked up too-after I’d killed a rat that had been chewing at me.
“What does Claude have to say this time?”
“Denies it,” Marx said. “But he admits the knife is his, and after he lost our man following him, he says he just went walking around. He even admits that as far as he knows, no one could have taken his knife.”
I had nothing more to say. What could I say? If it was a frame-up, I had no ideas about who. As far as Lieutenant Marx was concerned, he had his man this time. He took Paul (Fernand) Manet when he left. There was a technical charge of robbery, and a real charge of failing to report a murder. Manet’s masquerade was over.
It was late afternoon now, the sun bright on the hot city. But in her hotel suite, Li Marais sat in the dark behind the drawn shades. I sat facing her.
“Are you all right?” I said.
“Yes.”
Her smooth face was like stone again. I moved in my chair. Her eyes flickered toward me.
“No, not now,” she said. “Not this time.”
“I didn’t come for that,” I said.
She nodded faintly. “This time they will not let him go.” A light breeze stirred the drawn shades, but not her face. Motionless in the shadows, she could have been a statue in some ancient temple. “Perhaps this time he does not want them to let him go.”
“Did he do it, Li? Both murders?”
The traffic down in the street was heavy and distant. In the hotel room the city seemed far away. When she spoke, her lips hardly moved, like a graven image with a tape recorder inside.
“When they came he did not protest. He could not say what he had done since he was released this morning. He had taken money from our bank, he will not say why. When could someone have taken his knife? Since he was first arrested, I left this suite very little. I am sure no one has been here except you. He is accomplished with his knife.”
“An expert,” I said. “He shouldn’t have hit a rib.”
“He has not used his knife in many years.”
“Li?” I said, “could he have killed Eugene? We know the exact time now: between eleven P.M. when Jimmy Sung left, and about twelve-twenty when Charlie Burgos must have found him dead. You said that Claude was here with you the night Eugene was killed-from before ten P.M., until he left about three A.M. Were you lying? The police have to think you lied. If you were telling the truth, we’ll go on fighting.”
“I did not lie. I did not tell the truth.”
“Not both, no. Li, I’ve got to know-”
She stopped me without moving. A silent force that filled the dim room. “To me he was here all the time that night. He was here when I went to sleep at eleven-thirty. He was here when I woke up at three A.M. to find him dressed and ready to go out. I did not question that he had not left. But we are not husband and wife, you understand? I was in bed in the bedroom. Claude was here in the living room on the couch. The door between us was closed. I was asleep.”
I understood the police now. Had Claude left this suite for very long, Li might have awakened and missed him. But he could easily have slipped out briefly. Ten minutes to the pawn shop at a fast walk, ten minutes back. I had been gone from the lobby by eleven-thirty that night. Claude could have gone to the pawn shop, killed Eugene, and been back in his suite by twelve-thirty or so. Easily, and Li not waking up at all.
“Is he sick, Li?”
“Yes. Of many things.”
“Then you think he did it? Killed them?”
“No, he did not kill them.”
“How do we prove that? How do we even know?”
“You cannot prove it.”
“Can you know, Li? Can you really be sure?”
“I am sure,” she said. She was the way I had first seen her that day in the pawn shop with Claude and Eugene-small, hardly there at all, almost translucent. “I remember the knife the evening we were here when he was first arrested. It was in his suitcase as it always was. I saw it. I do not remember seeing it again. I remember the hat badge that was found in the register. I remember it on his bureau among loose cuff links and old keys. I remember I saw it.”
“On what bureau did you see it? When?”
“In the bedroom. Earlier that same day it was found in the register. His hat badge.”
“That’s bad for him, Li.”
“Yes, bad.”
“What can we do, Li? They have the circumstances for Eugene, the knife for Charlie Burgos. Motive for both, and one killing proves the other.”
“You can do nothing, Dan.”
I heard something in her voice? What? Her voice that dismissed all effort to help Claude. Why?
“If Claude didn’t kill them, Li, he’s being framed. Who by, and why?”
For a moment she didn’t answer me. Then, “His uniform is in our closet. The image of France. I do not know why he kept it. For me, perhaps. I married him in it. Soon after we came here, Viviane asked him to wear it to the shop for Danielle. Once. With its medals, its boots, its beret, its elan. I remember how all the people stared. A French soldier.”
I waited, but that was all. I sensed that she was telling me something. What? I sensed that she was going to do something. What?