Shadow of a Tiger by Michael Collins Page A

week after Jimmy’s arrest, watching a gang of overage and hairy kids making music in the circle, when the man sat down beside me. Anyone can sit on a bench, for any reason, but this man I watched. Maybe because he was another Oriental. He watched the singers.
    â€œYou know Jimmy Sung didn’t rob that shop, or kill Mr. Marais,” he said.
    He was small, slender, in a light brown tropical suit and a hat. Japanese, I decided, but American-Japanese. His English was pure, unaccented American; his voice quiet, even humble. A meditative manner, and no hair came from under his hat as if his head was shaved.
    â€œWhy do I know that?” I said.
    â€œBecause Jimmy Sung would not steal. Our people do not steal, and Jimmy had no need, anyway. He is hard-working, an industrious man, and has enough money for his needs—all needs.”
    â€œOur people?” I said. “Just who are you, Mr.—?”
    â€œNoyoda,” the small man said. “I am a Buddhist priest, Mr. Fortune. We have our temple in Chinatown. Jimmy is one of our members. Not very religious, but devoted. He comes to us often, is also paid a small wage as custodian. He would not steal, and if he did not steal, why then would he murder Mr. Marais?”
    â€œJimmy’s a Buddhist?”
    â€œYou are surprised?”
    â€œI figured Jimmy as an all-American Chinese.”
    â€œIn most ways he is,” Noyoda said. “Perhaps he felt a certain isolation when he joined us five years ago, I can’t say for sure. His life has not been easy or even pleasant, which, I imagine, is why he drinks.”
    Noyoda seemed to watch the hairy singers in the circle. His face showed no disapproval, nor any approval, only a kind of understanding, as if his meditations embraced all things alive.
    â€œJimmy was brought from China as a boy. He talks little, but from things he has said I think he was almost a slave of the man who brought him to America. It seems there was some trouble in his late teens with this employer’s daughter. Some drinking, a fight, and Jimmy was locked in a mental hospital for six years. He was alone, without friends or visitors, the entire six years because no one could communicate with him. Schizophrenic was the diagnosis because Jimmy was silent or seemed to babble in gibberish. You see, at that time, Jimmy spoke only a Manchurian dialect, and no one understood a word of it!
    â€œHe would probably still be there, as has happened to others, if a new doctor at the hospital hadn’t happened to have worked in North China and recognized a few words Jimmy mumbled at rare times. The doctor found a man who spoke Jimmy’s language, and at last Jimmy could tell his story. He recovered his speech rapidly then, and they released him—with a few dollars, one suit, no skills and no friends anywhere. That was when he began to be an alcoholic.”
    I watched the singers and guitar players in the circle. Some of them were dancing now. Some were grabbing each other, getting together for the night to come, and maybe even longer.
    â€œIt’s enough to do it,” I said. “Alkie or worse.”
    â€œSince then,” Noyoda said, “he supported himself, taught himself English, took nothing from anyone. A strict, austere, frugal life. Hard-working and never in trouble, not even drunk. Such a man does not steal, and certainly never for pennies. He is not stupid, Mr. Fortune. If he had robbed that shop he would have taken more and not been so clumsy.”
    Two policemen had appeared under the arch of the square, and in the circle the ragged youth-sing was breaking up.
    â€œCould he have faked a clumsy robbery to cover murder?”
    â€œWhat possible reason could Jimmy have? Mr. Marais was his friend and employer. Jimmy liked the job at the shop.”
    â€œWhat motives does anyone have?” I said morosely.
    â€œI thought that perhaps you could find that out.”
    Everyone wanted to hire