Shadow of a Tiger by Michael Collins

out, small and silent between them, Marx and I sat alone in the interrogation room. I lit a cigarette.
    â€œThe rest of the stuff?” I said.
    â€œIn the river. In some sewer. We’ll look, maybe Jimmy’ll tell us now, but it doesn’t matter. He’s a drunk, Dan, and maybe half crazy, too. When a drunk needs booze money he gets desperate and stupid. We found out that he was in a mental hospital out in California for six years about twenty years ago. It fits, Dan.”
    It fitted. I went out to call Viviane Marais to tell her the reason her husband had died. She wouldn’t like it. Chance, a stupid act of a half-crazy alcoholic. Marty wouldn’t like it, either. It would depress her more. Damn!

7
    Most men are guilty of the weak hope that if something isn’t talked about it will, somehow, go away. I’m no exception, so I didn’t tell Marty about Jimmy Sung and how Eugene Marais had died. She heard anyway.
    Two days after Jimmy had been booked, the oven-night of the city outside, we were in my bed talking about our vacation plans. I was talking. Marty had been silent for some time. Then she sat up, leaned down over me, and kissed me. She held my shoulders hard—too hard, and a moment too long. It was a kiss that had a lot of years in it, and a decision.
    She got out of bed, began to dress. It wasn’t quite midnight, not even time to sleep. I lit a cigarette.
    â€œI have to go away, Dan, alone,” Marty said. “I have to.”
    â€œI have the money, Marty,” I said.
    â€œOne job. No plan, no growth. You live in space, Dan, not in time. Now is always. Maybe you’re right, I don’t know.”
    â€œWhen will you know?”
    â€œProbably too late. I’ll call you when I get back.”
    So she went. She would think, but in the end …? A woman doesn’t go off alone to think about her relationship to a man unless she has some alternative to think about too.
    What Viviane Marais was thinking about I wasn’t sure, either. I called her on the phone to tell her about Jimmy Sung the afternoon he was booked. She was silent on the other end for a time.
    â€œThen there is nothing for you to do,” she said at last. “Unless you have some doubt, Mr. Fortune?”
    Did I have a doubt? Yes and no. Jimmy Sung fitted, and yet there was still the bulk of the stolen goods, Jimmy’s weak lying I couldn’t understand, and the clumsiness of it all. But all of that could be answered by the confused thinking of an unbalanced drunk, and the police would try to answer it all. They had no axe to grind over Jimmy Sung.
    â€œI don’t think I can do much, Mrs. Marais,” I said. “So I worked one day. You want fifty dollars back?”
    â€œNo, I think not,” Viviane Marais said. “So, Jimmy it was? An accident after all? Chance? It would have pleased Eugene.”
    â€œBut not you?”
    â€œNo, but I cannot order the world.” She was silent again on the other end of the line. “Keep the money, Mr. Fortune, and if there is some news, call me again.”
    Everyone was being generous with money. That makes me uneasy. After Marty had gone, I checked to see if Jimmy Sung needed a decent lawyer, or if anything new had happened. Nothing had, and Jimmy had a good lawyer—private, not court appointed. More money from somewhere.
    The next few days I spent tracking down a skipped husband for a woman who owned four tenements. The husband had managed the properties, a paid hand. He had vanished without taking any of the cash. That puzzled the woman. The trail ended at Kennedy Airport—tickets for two to Montreal. The second ticket had been used by a dumpy brunette who had hung on the rabbit-husband’s arm. The woman-landlord called me off, and even paid me. That gave me over six hundred dollars, rich for me. The money didn’t seem very important, somehow.
    I was sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park a