14
Number 120 Fifth Avenue was a tall, older apartment house, its white stone facade gray with years of city grime. The apartment of Mr. Jules Rosenthal was on the tenth floor. The doorman told me that Mr. Rosenthal was away for the summer. I said I knew that, and took the elevator up. The doorman, after a good look at my clothes and missing arm, went to his house telephone.
The tall, military-looking man who had bumped me the night of Eugene Marais’s murder was in the doorway of the apartment as I stepped off the elevator. He had that same haughty belligerence, and he recognized me. I saw that by a faint wavering in his stern eyes. He knew me, but I realized as I walked up to him that he wasn’t quite sure where he knew me from.
“Hello,” he said. He smiled.
The “hello,” and the smile, told me a lot. He really couldn’t place me, but he wasn’t going to let me know that if he could help it. The style of a diplomat, or the trick of a salesman. The technique of a man who lived on contacts, sold his service not his skill, rose or fell not on what he knew, but on who he knew.
“Hello again, Mr. Manet,” I said, not helping him.
His imperious bearing stiffened. I knew his name, and that gave me a big edge. He wasn’t sure how I knew his name. It made him uneasy in his tailored dark blue suit. Blue was his color, it seemed-the color of the French military. The suit had the same military impression, as if he didn’t want people to forget his martial reputation. In his lapel he wore a ribbon that I didn’t know, but I was certain it was something better than the Legion of Honor.
“Well,” he said, “come in, please.”
Still trying not to reveal that he hadn’t placed me in his mind. We went into a sumptous sunken living room of deep yellow carpet and vast chairs, couches, tables and view of the city outside. I finally came to his rescue. After all, I wanted him to relax, to talk to me.
“My name’s Dan Fortune, Mr. Manet. A private detective working on the Eugene Marais murder and robbery. The Balzac Union gave me your address. We bumped outside Marais’s pawn shop a week or so ago, remember?”
His eyes remembered me now.
“Of course, I wasn’t looking where I went,” he said, regally taking the blame again. He looked solemn. “A tragic affair, poor Eugene. A stupid way to die. A cheap robbery.”
“How do you know it was cheap?”
“The police have been to me, of course. Almost a week ago. I had not expected any further interrogation.”
The police had dug Manet out after Jimmy had been arrested then. Part of their doubts.
“Things have changed,” I said. “You knew Eugene Marais in Paris?”
“Our families were acquainted a long time ago. I, myself, did not know Eugene or Claude in those days.”
“The hero days?”
“One did one’s best, Mr. Fortune.”
“Did Eugene Marais do his best then? In the Occupation?”
“In his way.” He sat down now in a mammoth red womb chair, crossed his legs like a general being interviewed, indicated a chair for me to sit in. “Eugene was a quiet man, a shopkeeper. He was not a man to do much in action. Most men are like that, eh? The vast bulk of the world, the citizens.”
“You met Eugene here through Claude Marais?”
“Yes.”
“How did you meet Claude?”
“On business in San Francisco, Mr. Fortune. I represent many French companies abroad, public relations I suppose you would say. Claude Marais is quite different from Eugene, is well known in French circles. I considered that we would have mutual business interests, could cooperate.”
“What business?”
“Wines, gourmet foods, perfumes, clothes.”
“Two heroes for France?”
“If you like. I thought Claude could be an asset to some companies I represent. Unfortunately, when we met again here in New York, Claude thought otherwise.”
“So you had a fight? At the Balzac Union?”
“He hit me, I do not brawl,” Paul Manet said coldly. “Claude is a sick man, bitter against his own country, denying its truth and glory. He is no true Frenchman now. A shame.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t a business fight? Some other business than wines or foods or perfumes?”
“I’m sure, Mr. Fortune.”
“What did you talk to Eugene Marais about?”
“Paris, the past, the old times. Nostalgia, I suppose.”
“Vel d’Hiv?”
“Perhaps it was mentioned.”
“But you didn’t like to talk about it?”
He thought a moment or two. “Do you know about Vel d’Hiv?”
“Yes. July 16, 1942. The roundup of Jews.”
“Then you know why we don’t like to talk about it. As a Frenchman, I am not proud of that night, or of what came after.”
“But you were a hero, a fighter.”
“I saved a few poor people, helped, resisted the Gestapo. To fight the Nazis then was not special heroism, a duty. No risk was too great, one did not have to decide much. All who could fought, helped. If I did more than many, I am happy, but it was long ago. Do you talk often of your past record, Mr. Fortune?”
“Not often,” I said, “but I don’t trade on it, either. I don’t live off my reputation from the past.”
I saw his anger again, quick and belligerent. Taller in the mammoth modern chair, menacing.
“Meaning that I do that?”
“You ‘represent’ French companies-only French, right? And ‘represent’ means you’re a front man, a glad- hander, someone who gets respect for his employers not for how good their wares are, but for who and what he is. Did they hire you for your business knowledge, Manet, or for your heroic name? I’ll bet you always live in apartments as plush as this one, and you never pay rent, right? A Jules Rosenthal everywhere to lend you his pad because you’re a hero. A Balzac Union to roll out the red carpet for you. Not because you’re really important, but because you were once a hero of France. A monument. A legend. I wonder what you’d be doing if you hadn’t been a Resistance hero? Selling salami in some Paris shop? A factory hand?”
“You insult me, Mr. Fortune.”
“Your military honor, Manet? When were you ever a soldier? You were a Resistance hero, a Maquis. Why the soldier act?”
Manet said, “Leave, Mr. Fortune, please. You are a cripple, I do not want to hurt you.”
“Like you hurt Claude Marais? Maybe he didn’t think you were a real soldier either. He was, right? Maybe that’s what the fight was about. Or maybe he just didn’t think much of a man still trading on his heroics of thirty years ago.” I lit a cigarette, blew smoke into the palatial room. “If there were any heroics thirty years ago.”
The silence that came down over the vast, expensive room was like the heavy, airless, yawning silence that comes in the hour before a hurricane explodes in all its fury.
“Did Eugene Marais know something about your past you never wanted anyone to know, Manet?” I said, smoked. “Facts about Paul Manet that would ruin his nice, soft existence?”
He took a deep breath, let it out. “You can check into the record of Paul Manet as far and as wide as you want, Fortune. You will find nothing hidden there.”
“Maybe I’ll have to do just that,” I said. “Where were you the murder night, Manet? You left the pawn shop around five-fifteen in your car, where did you go the rest of the night?”
“For a drive, dinner at Le Cheval Blanc with businessmen, drinks with another businessman, and to bed
