He laughed bitterly, an inner rage. “British agents! To organize Frenchmen to fight. No wonder Dienbienphu; sent to die for a ghost. Algeria-and Vel d’Hiv. If it were only France, I could fight, but it is everywhere, everyone. Vel d’Hiv.”
“A Gestapo operation,” I said. “Why-?”
His head came up, his eyes black. “Gestapo? All the Jews arrested that night were arrested by French gendarmes! Petain agreed, Laval encouraged-they were only Jews, and non-French! The gendarmes were efficient, meticulous, even brutal. A few said no, a handful. The rest? Have you ever seen a policeman shrug, look away, while a child is dragged bewildered to death? Almost thirteen thousand were in Vel d’Hiv that night in 1942. Thirty adults came back after the war. Of four thousand children, none.”
His black eyes were open sockets. “I was a child that night, Paris was not. Laval, Petain were politicians like the corrupt in Hanoi, Saigon, Algiers. There are always monsters, they can be forgotten. The people cannot be forgotten. Paris. France. So few tried to stop it, fewer helped, still fewer cared as long as it wasn’t them. The Dutch hid their Jews. The Danish King wore a yellow star himself and rode the streets of Copenhagen every day. The French rounded up the victims!”
I said, “Paul Manet was one who helped, fought. Yet there’s something wrong about Manet. Something I think Eugene knew.”
“He trades on his heroics,” Claude Marais said, smoked. “Why not? If it was only France, only a few monsters, only that moment. But it isn’t. I learned that in Indo-China, Algeria. All greed, lies, self-interest and power. No honor and no glory. Heroes are only fools sent to kill other fools.”
“Claude,” I said, “what did Eugene know about Paul Manet? Was there something back there in Paris?”
“Eugene did not know Paul Manet then, only some of his family. His mother, brother, grand-”
“Brother?” I said. “Younger or older?”
“Younger. A year or so.”
“Was he in the Resistance too? The younger brother?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“What happened to him, the younger brother?”
Claude shrugged. “He died, I think. In the chaos of 1945, the end of the Occupation. Eugene said something about that. To Paul Manet.”
“The younger brother, not in the Resistance, died,” I said, “and the older brother, active against the Germans, survived?”
“It happened in those days. It was all chaos, no one knew what would happen to whom. I think Paul Manet was captured, came back a year or so later. It is hard to know about those days. People vanished, reappeared, died, survived; no one knew how, or why, or what went on minute to minute.”
“And papers were lost, destroyed,” I said. “Faces changed with scars and suffering. If a man was captured by the Gestapo, did they announce it? Did they announce executions? Deaths?”
“No, a man simply disappeared. The Nazis themselves did not always know what happened to whom or where. Not at the end.”
“Chaos,” I said. “Stay here. Wait.”
Claude Marais nodded. Li stood beside him.
23
Lieutenant Marx wasn’t in his office. I talked to one of the other detectives.
“Tell Marx to contact Paris right now. Check out a younger brother of Paul Manet. Find out what happened to him, what Paul Manet did at the end of World War Two, where Paul was and where the younger brother was. Have them check records, photos, fingerprints if there are any. Find out if Paul Manet lived in Paris after the war, if he returned to his family and old friends. Especially check all records on the younger brother.”
“You have something, Fortune?” the detective asked.
“I think so, a hunch. Tell Marx I’m going to try to find Charlie Burgos and Danielle Marais. A condemned building on Nineteenth Street, near the river. He’ll know it.”
The abandoned brownstone looked like any other building in the hot sun. No ghosts by day, only a shabby building with boards at the windows, people hurrying past on their important business, flowers on some of the weeds. No cars were in the alley.
Inside, the derelict building was dim and hot, and on the third floor there was no sound. In the room where I had been held, dark behind its blanketed windows, the mattresses were still there-but nothing else. Stripped, all the clothes and cheap possessions of the street boys gone. An empty room, as abandoned as the building itself.
Not quite.
Somewhere to the rear of the dark room there was a sound. A low sound-half like a whine, half a moan. I walked back, slowly and carefully.
She was kneeling on the bare floor-Danielle Marais. In tight blue jeans and an old shirt. She was crying, her head down, sitting back on her legs where she kneeled. She heard me behind her after a moment, looked back and up at me. Her heavy, petulant, juvenile face was anguished.
“He’s dead. Someone killed him.”
Charlie Burgos lay on his back, oddly flat like an animal with the meat sucked out. His sharp young face was etched in deep planes and furrows; somehow younger in the perpetual age of death. His wide eyes were shining as if he saw something very interesting on the ceiling of the barren room with its bare mattresses and blanket-covered windows. The handle of what looked like a hunting knife stuck up out of his chest like a cross, or the rifle of some soldier buried where he had fallen in an empty desert.
“I came to meet him,” Danielle Marais said. “We were all going to meet. They ran, the others. Grabbed what they had, and ran. No one would stay with him. No one.”
What else could they do, Charlie Burgos’s brothers of the street? Powerless in a vast city, they could only run and hide and hope no one would think about them. Mice in a burning field, afraid of the flames and of the hawks that would soon come to hover over the blackened field looking for something to eat, preying on the exposed because they needed a victim.
“We were going away, it was going to be fine now,” Danielle Marais said. “Fine, no more problems.”
I knelt down over the body. There was a lot of blood. It had only just started to congeal, blacken. The knife handle was some kind of wrapped material-leather or plastic or a treated canvas that would give no fingerprints. A straight, colorless knife with only a small guard and a narrowish blade, but heavy. I felt Charlie Burgos. He was soft and limp, still vaguely warm. No more than two hours, even in the heat of the city, but probably not less than an hour.
“How long have you been here?” I asked Danielle.
She shook her head, back and forth. “I don’t know. Maybe an hour, maybe more. I don’t know. They just ran. They didn’t even look at Charlie after they saw. Grabbed their dirty junk, and ran! His friends!”
“He’s got no friends, he’s dead,” I said harshly. “That’s the rules, Danielle. The law of the streets. He doesn’t exist, and he never did now. That’s the world you were going into, the world your father and mother wanted to save you from. You were going into it, and everyone in it wants only to escape into what you already have. You’re lucky, a second chance.”
She glared her hatred at me, but that would pass. To the young, poverty and clawing against an established world were exciting. But poverty is only pain, clawing only bleeds, and there is excitement and strength only when there is a choice.
“He’s dead, Danielle,” I said. “It’s over. Do you know who killed him?”
“No,” she said, stared down at Charlie Burgos dead in an empty building.
“But you know why, don’t you? What was he doing, Danielle? What were you both doing?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know! He never said-”
“Damn it, girl, you know, and whoever killed Charlie’ll have to kill you too! Tell me! You saw something that night, right? Blackmail?”
“Yes, yes, yes!” she cried, rocked on her knees. “But I don’t know who! Charlie didn’t tell me who. He said it was better that way, safer. He was protecting me.”
“Charlie Burgos? Nuts, he protected no one except himself. You
weren’t with him outside the pawn shop that night?”
“Not all the time,” she said, tears in her eyes now as if the mention of that night made her remember all her times with Charlie Burgos. Maybe she had really loved him in her child’s way-the worst, deepest way. “We’d gone to my father to borrow some money for an idea Charlie had. Dad wouldn’t give us any. He was nice, he was always nice, but he said that Charlie was wrong for me, he wouldn’t help Charlie to ruin me. We went out, we had nothing to do, you know, so we hung around. After the Chinaman came out, Charlie got restless waiting for Dad to come out. He sent-”
“Charlie was waiting for your father to come out? Why?”
She looked away. “I… I think he was going to rob the cash drawer. We knew there was money in it. I have a key.”
“That sounds like Charlie,” I agreed. “Why didn’t he?”
“He… he saw someone. I… I think he did go into the shop, he had my key. I think that’s why he sent me off.”
“Sent you where?”
“He told me to come back here to the room to see if any of the boys were around and maybe had some money. He said he was thirsty, wanted a drink. But I think he sent me really because he didn’t think I’d let him rob Dad’s shop.”
“What happened when you went back?”
“It took a while, you know? Over an hour. I waited here for one of the boys who was supposed to have money. Charlie got mad if he sent me for money and I didn’t get any.”
“I can believe that,” I said. “An hour? Between eleven and twelve that night?”
She shook her head. “More like eleven-thirty to one A.M. He didn’t send me right away after Jimmy Sung came out.”
“When you did go back, what was Charlie doing?”
“Nothing-he wasn’t there. I looked around, looked inside the shop. I… I found my Dad. He was in the chair-dead! I didn’t know what to do. I thought-”
“That Charlie had killed him?”
She nodded, stared down at the dead boy. “So I came back here. Charlie was here. He said he hadn’t killed Dad, but he knew who had! He said he’d seen who did it, seen him come out. We were going to be rich. He said we couldn’t do anything for my father now, why not get rich? What did it matter if Dad’s murderer was caught? It was better to be rich.”
“He never told you who the killer was?”
“No,” she said. “To protect me.”
“Or because he thought maybe you wouldn’t go along with the blackmail if you knew who the man was. Are you sure it was a man?”
“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.
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