19

I was tired, but I didn’t want to go home or be alone. Sometimes it’s like that when a case ends.

Claude Marais said nothing more to anyone. It wasn’t the time to talk to Li, not about anything. I’m not sure I wanted to talk to her then. She went with Claude and the police, and Viviane Marais went home to Sheepshead Bay. When I asked the widow if she was satisfied, she looked at me for some time, then said we would talk tomorrow, or in a few days.

I went to the Black Lion where my old friend and bartender, Joe Harris, was working. I told him the whole story.

“Sounds like he did it,” Joe said. “Simple motive.”

An ex-soldier with a shadowy past sends a fortune in diamonds to his quiet brother. The brother wants him to settle down to normal work, so refuses to hand back the diamonds. There’s an argument, made desperate by Gerd Exner being around, and the quiet brother is killed. All the rest is Claude trying to make it look like simple robbery. Motive—the diamonds. Opportunity—Claude was expected at the shop, I proved he had been out that night late. But …?

“Who tipped the cops,” I said to Joe. “Why and how?”

“Someone who hated him, someone who was afraid of him, or maybe someone who just wanted to get rid of him. Who knows how the tipster knew the stuff was there?”

“The tipster could have planted the diamonds there for any of those reasons, too,” I said. “And that hat badge.”

Anyone would fit. Charlie Burgos? For Danielle, maybe? Had Charlie seen Claude that night, and that was his interest in the affair? Protecting someone—first by trying to stop me, then with a frame-up? Li Marais? The way Claude had looked at her. Maybe Claude had done it, and she had turned him in—for me? Maybe Claude knew that? His silence?

It was after midnight when I went home. I had a bad taste in my mouth. It all fitted, and yet …? I swore at myself as I opened my apartment door, and stopped. Listened.

Someone was in the apartment. I knew it, sensed it. I barely breathed just inside the door in my dark living room, and looked down at the outer door lock. It hadn’t been touched. Yet I knew someone was inside, waiting somewhere in my five rooms.

I breathed lightly, didn’t move. As my eyes became accustomed to the dark in the living room, I saw nothing. Except that my bedroom door was closed. I never closed it, not in the heat of a New York summer, and this morning it had not yet rained and cooled the city. I took off my shoes, laid them carefully down, stepped softly into the kitchen and found a butcher knife on the counter. I reached the bedroom door without a sound, and listened. There was a faint line of light under the door. Someone had my small bedside reading lamp on—the low bulb.

My lone hand shook, but I held the knife and opened the bedroom door at the same time. I opened the door fast, jumped inside and left.

“Hello, Dan,” Marty said.

She was in bed. The reading light on, shaded and turned low, but she wasn’t reading. She was watching me, the strange contrast of her almost boyish face and woman’s body never more sharp. The smile, and the soft, almost velvet eyes. I closed the door, put the knife on a table, went to her.

“I got back tonight,” she said. “Come to bed. Now.”

I didn’t kiss her, I don’t know why. Something about her, about her there waiting in my bed. A decision. I undressed, but I didn’t get into bed. I sat on the bed.

“How was the vacation?” I said.

“Fine,” she said. “Dan? We can talk later.”

“I’ve just finished the Marais killing. It was the brother,” I said. I told her all about it, step by step. The whole case, except Li Marais. I talked because her eyes told me she wasn’t interested. No, she didn’t want to hear the story, so I told all of it to keep from knowing what she had to talk about.

“Dan?” she said. “Don’t you want to?”

“I want to,” I said. “Tell me what it is, Marty.”

She looked down, but only for a second. “I’m getting married. Next week.”

I’d known, in a way, but knowing and being sure are not the same. To know a man is a murderer, and to be sure of it, aren’t the same at all.

“Who?” I said. We always want to know that, we men. Who? Is he better than I? Richer, nicer, gentler, better in bed? It isn’t going to be easy to liberate the men.

“Kurt Reston,” she said.

The director, the theater man. The other man who had long believed in her work, in her. But a man going places, who still believed in winning the same prize she wanted.

“I can’t go on drifting, Dan,” she said. “Day to day where the wind blows us. He can give me what I have to have.”

“We all drift. In the end, that’s all we really do.”

“No,” she said. “There has to be more. More than waking up each morning and wondering what’s going to happen today. I want to know what today’s going to be like. Real things, solid. A base to start from, no more empty space when I’m not working. An anchor to stop the drifting.”

“Marty, there isn’t any anchor except to fill our time with as much sun as we can. You know the old Coverdale Bible? ‘Let us leave some token of our pleasure in every place, for that is our portion, else we get nothing.’ Marty—”

“No!” She sat up in the bed. I looked away. She was near to crying. “Maybe you’re right, Dan, but I know now that I can’t leave pleasure in every place. I want one sure place, and the sure pleasures. I want the rewards of this life, here and now, the way it is. With you I’d drift on and on without tomorrow. Two castaways in a lifeboat.”

“And you want the ship, the ocean liner.”

“Yes. First class.”

“It’s a ghost, the ship. A Flying Dutchman.”

“Maybe, but you can see it. People know it’s there. They see it, wave to it. No one sees your lifeboat down in the high waves alone.”

She wanted to be seen, waved to. Wanted her existence testified to by the eyes of others. So that she’d know that maybe she did really exist after all. The normal need.

“They’ll see you, Marty,” I said. I smiled. After all, I’d been with this woman for a long time.

“Come to bed,” she said. “Once more, Dan. For us.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “No.”

I wanted to, yes, then why did I say no? Because it would make it harder? No. To hurt her, to attack her. Deny myself, refuse her, not let her be nice to me. Make her guilty so I could feel better. People are made of that irrationality.

She got up and dressed. When she was dressed, I wanted her back in bed even more. I’m as irrational as the next person.

“Will you be all right?” she said.

“I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll … I’ll call you.”

“Sure,” I said.

She went out of the bedroom, and out of the apartment. Out of my life. I lay down, and closed my eyes.

They began, the thoughts. The plans for revenge, the schemes of victory. The scenes where I stopped her, where I appeared at the wedding to stand between her and him, and she came to me. The dreams where she ran to me, and we were married, and lived in a big house and …

I was dressed, and on the cool night streets. Walking. Uptown, that’s where a Kurt Reston, director, would live. On my way to find his house, his pad, to show her how much more of a man I was. Take her away. All our years had to mean …

I was in a bar. Naturally. What else does a man do when his woman has gone? He gets drunk, of course. Very drunk. He gets drunk and laughs with strangers and watches late-night TV above the bar and tells war stories. Strangers are very nice people in bars, and they are interested in how I lost my arm. First the arm, then the woman, then …

Claude Marais was a drifter. Do drifters kill? Not their brothers. Drifters don’t have brothers. Of course they kill, especially their brothers. And wives …

Sun. Cool. Daytime taverns are oddly quiet and cool and dim. Lazy, a sense of endless time …

Dark. I’m glad you asked how I lost my arm. It’s a long story. The war, you know? We were up near the Meuse River, that’s in France, and this Tiger tank came. I saw its shadow in the fast water, the shadow of the Tiger. So, I had the shadow of a bazooka, and I shot that Flying Dutchman …

Roaches on a ceiling don’t like the sunlight, their thin feelers quiver uneasy …

She had a nice face above her glass, blonde and raped at fourteen by some uncle her father beat her for enticing. Old, at fourteen. Come on, Dan, honey, I’ve got a nice place and we can talk. Fourteen is getting old in Saigon. I don’t know anything about Saigon, I’m studying to be an artist. I never saw a man with one arm so close … honey …

Sure Claude Marais did it. What else? Only no one saw him, did they? No one saw Eugene Marais refuse to give him that package. No witnesses. She had a nice face, old and dark-haired, and where the hell was I now …?

The Oriental women are so small in the dark.