“I want you to find that reason,” Viviane Marais said. “I have here a hundred dollars. You will bill me for more.”
She was a middle-class French housewife, and no one is more practical. I took the money, asked the address of the Balzac Union, and left.
I had a job, and I was beginning to want to know more about the death of Eugene Marais myself. The chaser of theories and puzzles. Maybe Marty was right about me.
6
The Balzac Union was in a brownstone on East Seventeenth Street. A small, quiet lobby with a bust of Napoleon and a portrait of De Gaulle. An old man in some uniform with medals stood behind the desk. There was a bar to the right, a large reading room ahead where affluent-looking men read, played cards, or talked. The events board listed a lot of lectures and discussions.
The director, a tall older man named M. De Lange, met me in his second floor office. His rimless glasses reflected the midday sun through his window, but the office was cool-air-conditioned and pleasant.
“A nice club,” I said, as I sat down facing his desk.
“Thank you, Mr. Fortune.” His slight accent was English rather than French. “A social club, no politics. The culture of France, and we keep the older people in touch, try to help new arrivals if we can. Kinship and company, shall we say.”
“Everyone likes a home,” I said.
“If you like,” M. De Lange said, his eyes smaller behind the rimless glasses. “But what is it I can do for you?”
“Tell me what you know about Eugene Marais.”
He swiveled. “You are a policeman?”
“Private. Mrs. Marais hired me.”
“I see.” His face became grave. “Very sad. Eugene Marais was not our most active member, although he came often. Not a gregarious man, rather aloof, a watcher of others.”
“He wasn’t liked much?”
M. De Lange considered. “He was withdrawn, cynical toward our love of things French, a critic of history.” The director smiled. “That is not unusual, we French are not a compliant, docile people. Still, many wondered why Eugene joined us.”
“Why did he?”
“I suspect to provide an opposition, to prick our bubbles. Eugene admired Balzac, lost no opportunity to remind us that our hero had been a cynic and critic himself. A gadfly, in a way. Most of us associate outside the club, Eugene never did. I don’t think he ever invited one of us to his home, for example.”
“Any idea why?”
The director removed his rimless glasses, polished them. “He was a psychological hermit, I think. Some past trauma.”
“The war? The Occupation? That far back, maybe?”
“Perhaps, but he wasn’t a man who talked about himself. So little, one had the feeling he had never done anything at all.”
There it was again. As if Eugene Marais somehow made everyone know he had been a man who had done nothing. As if that was important in his mind.
“Is there a Paul Manet in your club, M. De Lange?”
The director almost beamed now. “Indeed. A new member, but not new to us by reputation. How do you know Paul Manet?”
“Eugene Marais mentioned him.”
“So? I am surprised. Then, it was the brother who brought Manet to us from San Francisco. They knew each other there.”
“Who is Manet that you knew him by reputation?”
“A hero of the Occupation, one who saved many people from the Germans. His name is well known to Frenchmen of that time, as most of us here are.”
“What does he do now?”
“A representative of French businesses abroad. A journalist, too, I believe. An imposing man, and a welcome addition here.”
“You said he knows Claude Marais. Is Claude a member?”
“No.” The director’s face clamped shut. He put his glasses back on. “Claude Marais served France well, a hero also, but he is a bitter man turned against all he once fought for. We asked him to join us, of course, but he sneered at us, cursed France to our faces. A misanthrope, unpleasant. Perhaps he has suffered much, is disillusioned, but other men have suffered in defeat and not turned against their country.”
“Were Claude and Eugene close? Eugene agreed with Claude?”
“I am not sure. Eugene apologized for Claude, the only time I ever saw Eugene upset, and yet…?” De Lange shrugged. “Eugene said something rather cryptic, then. He said, ‘It seems there are different roads to the same end.’ And that perhaps there was only one end, life a circle that always came to the same point no matter what road. What he meant, who can say?”
“But Claude Marais rejected your club?”
“And we him. There was an incident. With Paul Manet, in fact. Some of us were discussing Indo-China again, Claude was here, so we asked him to comment, of course. He refused, made remarks about stupidity and cowardice. Manet became angry. There were actual blows, I’m afraid.”
“Who won the fight?”
“It was brief,” De Lange said uncomfortably. “Claude Marais knocked Paul Manet down.”
“Manet’s a lot bigger than Claude, looks in good shape.”
“Paul Manet is older, and a gentleman.”
“Maybe that explains it,” I agreed dryly. “Why are you surprised that Eugene Marais mentioned Paul Manet?”
“I did not know they had met. Somehow, Paul Manet was never introduced to Eugene here. Of course, Claude Marais and Manet knew each other in San Francisco, so Eugene must have met Manet on the outside.”
On the outside, and a long time ago, maybe, and at least once at the pawn shop-with Claude there even after the fight at this club. Paul Manet had known the Marais brothers better than the Balzac Union members realized. As if someone wanted the association to remain private.
“You know a man named Gerd Exner?” I asked.
“No. We know few Germans. Stupid, perhaps, but true.”
“Where do I find Paul Manet?”
“I believe he sublet an apartment from a member, or was loaned it.” De Lange checked a box of file cards. “Here it is: Jules Rosenthal’s apartment, 120 Fifth Avenue.”
I thanked the director, and left. I walked down. As I passed the desk, the old soldier on duty called to me:
“Monsieur Fortune? Telephone. You take it in the booth.”
In the booth I picked up the receiver. “Fortune.”
Viviane Marais’s voice said, “I thought you would go to the club. A Lieutenant Marx has just called me. He has arrested Jimmy Sung for the robbery and my husband’s murder.”
Jimmy Sung sat in a straight chair under an overhead light in the hot, dark, windowless interrogation room.
It was bright daylight outside, but in the interrogation room it was always night. A timeless room that could be anywhere. Colorless, bare, with nothing to give it identity, nothing to place it in space, nothing human. A room without a sense of name, and after a time no one in it had a name. In it, as victim or bystander, I felt reduced, stripped. That was the way it was planned.
