Free Shadow of a Tiger by Michael Collins

drifted up.
    â€œNobodies like Jimmy are always guilty,” she said, her open eye fixed on my face. “Isn’t it over? Sure it is.”
    â€œMaybe,” I said. “Some of us aren’t so sure.”
    â€œForget the forgotten,” she said. “Mentally homeless, the only world left is inside. They turn the key, the end.”
    â€œYou’re his woman?”
    â€œMarie Schmidt. Drunky Marie. I’m not even my own woman.” She took the cigarette from her lips, picked tobacco. “Yeh, I’m his woman. I told them about that Buddha. My big mouth. You really think he’s got a chance?”
    â€œIf he didn’t do it. I’ll need help.”
    â€œHelp? What, witnesses to say he was somewhere else? All the people who remember a drunk Chinese on the street? His business partners, wife, children, friends, alumni brothers? How about a magician?”
    â€œDid anyone see him that night?”
    She laughed. “Nobody ever sees him. Just a Chink. Six years in a damned insane asylum because he couldn’t speak—”
    â€œI know about that,” I said.
    â€œOkay, you know. It was never much different for Jimmy outside that booby hatch. Who knows him? Who talks to him? The neighborhood Chink. Most people act like he’s got no real right to speak English or be alive here. No big discrimination, you know, no real bigotry. Just that he doesn’t really exist, they don’t even see him. All except Mr. Marais, he was nice, a friend. So it got to be him they say Jimmy killed!”
    She stopped, sighed, found an ashtray for her cigarette. “That Buddha, you know? He put it back there in the bedroom the day after Mr. Marais was killed—to honor Mr. Marais, he said. He said Mr. Marais gave it to him, and he put it in the bookcase and lighted incense in front of it. He sat down on the floor looking at it for an hour without saying anything.”
    She was silent as if seeing Jimmy Sung silent in front of the small Buddha. “I never saw it before, and I told the cops. I don’t know how long Jimmy had it, but the cops say it proves he just got it from the shop the night of the murder. If he got it that way, you’d think he’d hide it, not bring it out.”
    â€œYou would,” I said, “if he’s sane. Is he sane?”
    â€œWho is?” she said. “He’s not crazy, Fortune. Not perfect, but not crazy more than anyone. He gets moody, who doesn’t? Sometimes when he’s drunk he gets mad and says I got the wrong eyes, I’m not a Chink. Hell, I get mad and call him a Chink. That doesn’t make me crazy or a murderer.”
    â€œYou live here, Marie?”
    â€œHere? Hell no!” She looked for another cigarette, lit one. “Like I said, who’s perfect? He’s a Chink, I couldn’t live with him, you know? Maybe I’m ashamed, but he’s all I’ve got, and I want him back.”
    As she’d said, no one is perfect, and no one can escape their past, their culture, completely. She’d gone a long way, she had her Chinese man, but the past dies hard and slow.
    â€œI’ll do my best,” I said. “You said he left here at nine-fifty that night. Did he say where he was going?”
    â€œNo, he never says. That’s his hang-up—tell no woman. A man does what he feels like, okay?”
    â€œDid anyone see him anywhere after eleven o’clock that night? He says he left the pawn shop at eleven o’clock, Marais was alive.”
    â€œIf anyone saw him, no one’s told me.”
    â€œYou weren’t here after ten o’clock anyway?”
    â€œNo, not until next morning. He was asleep when I came.”
    It was no help at all. “Can I look over the apartment?”
    â€œWhy not?” Marie Schmidt said.
    There were three other railroad rooms—a bedroom with windows at the front as clean and bare as the living room: a double bed with