pleased Eugene.”
“But not you?”
“No, 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 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.
“You 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.
“Why do I know that?” I said.
“Because 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.”
“Our people?” I said. “Just who are you, Mr.-?”
“Noyoda,” 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?”
“Jimmy’s a Buddhist?”
“You are surprised?”
“I figured Jimmy as an all-American Chinese.”
“In 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.
“Jimmy 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!
“He 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.
“It’s enough to do it,” I said. “Alkie or worse.”
“Since 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.
“Could he have faked a clumsy robbery to cover murder?”
“What possible reason could Jimmy have? Mr. Marais was his friend and employer. Jimmy liked the job at the shop.”
“What motives does anyone have?” I said morosely.
“I thought that perhaps you could find that out.”
Everyone wanted to hire me. Maybe I could make a career out of Eugene Marais’s death. One small pawn shop owner.
Noyoda said, “The members of our temple have contributed what they can. We wish to help Jimmy. We planned to hire a lawyer for him, but he has one, and we thought that we could use the money to hire you to prove his innocence.”
“Jimmy paid for his own lawyer? How?”
“No, someone else hired the lawyer. I heard it was Claude Marais, the brother. Perhaps he thinks Jimmy innocent too.”
That made me sit up. “All right, but one thing still bothers me-the way Jimmy kept on lying even when Lieutenant Marx had him cold. The way he lied about being there at all that night.”
“Given his life, Mr. Fortune, it is understandable that he is somewhat paranoid, isn’t it? Wary and silent.”
“Maybe it is,” I said. “You can pay me fifty dollars now.”
Money is money, and, with Marty gone, what else did I have to do?
I rode the Hotel Stratford elevator straight up to the fourth floor and room 427. Li Marais opened the door.
“Mr. Fortune?”
She wore a western mini-skirt and blouse now, and I saw again how wrong I had been about her fragility. Her legs were far from fragile.
“Can I talk to your husband?”
“Come in, please.”
The room was a small living room with the usual anonymous furniture of a second-rank but respectable hotel. There was a bedroom and a tiny kitchenette. A suite for more permanent residence. A lot of people in New York lived in residential hotels like the Stratford.
“Claude is not here, but perhaps I can help,” she said.
She sat down, crossed her legs. Her thighs were smooth and full. I sat on a couch.
“Why did Claude hire a lawyer for Jimmy Sung? Doesn’t he think Jimmy killed Eugene after all?”
“Claude did not hire the lawyer, I did,” she said, her dark eyes bright and on my face. “I sold some jewels, Claude gave me some money. It was something I felt I must do.”
“Why?”
“Since Claude and I came to New York, Jimmy has been nice to me, always helping. Small things-favors, errands, services, company when I’ve been alone. Perhaps because I speak his old language, but the reason does not matter.”
“I thought you were Thai?”
“A Thai orphan adopted by a Chinese family in Vietnam. Life is a flux these last long years in Southeast Asia, death and change are what we know. The people who took me in were from North China. Saigon is a crossroad. I speak most Oriental languages now, as well as French and my little English.”
“You speak a lot of English.”
She smiled. It was her first smile, soft and warm. “Thank you, but I do not speak as well as even poor Jimmy. He helped my English, too. He seemed to like to talk to me, a memory of his forgotten past, perhaps.”
“Do you think he robbed the shop, killed Eugene?”
