Shadow of a Tiger Read Online Free PDF

night.”
    â€œNo, Dan! Marais?” Her eyes widened, and narrowed with a kind of pain. “Who? Why? He was such a … kind man. My God, half the people we know hung on because Marais paid too much, bought what he couldn’t really sell.”
    â€œA thief, it looks like. You know how pawn shops get hit.”
    â€œThat’s horrible.” She was silent. “He asked so little for himself. Chance, Dan? Just stupid, blind chance?”
    â€œI suppose so,” I said. “It’s all chance, Marty, all just accident. The good and the bad.”
    Her face went hard. “No, I can’t believe that. A person has to make life happen, act to have what he wants. Good or bad, you have to have the life you decide you want.”
    â€œMeaning?” I said.
    She didn’t answer. She found a cigarette, lit it, her small face closed. Not a beautiful face, but pretty enough, and very alive.
    I said, “I’m not sure Marais’s murder was an accident. A lot’s wrong. Call it a feeling, a theory. My hound nose.”
    â€œTheory?” she said. “Are you going to investigate?”
    â€œNo one’s asked me.”
    â€œWhen did that stop you, Dan?” Marty said. “The observer, the detached theorizer. Curiosity and the hunt. The interesting puzzle. So neutral, Dan?”
    I said, “What’s wrong, Marty?”
    She smoked in the hot living room. I waited, and out in the streets of the city twilight was turning to darkness. That sudden surge and fading of noise that comes in the city just at twilight.
    â€œI’m not sure, Dan,” she said.
    â€œWhen will you be sure?”
    She was silent again. “Dan? Don’t plan Fire Island just yet. I’m not sure I want to do it that way. May be I want to be alone for a while.”
    â€œAll right. Take my money. I’ll get the ring when—”
    â€œNo, give me the pawn money,” she said. “I have to think. I want to think, Dan. I can’t live and die like Eugene Marais. What did he have? What did he do? Nothing.”
    â€œHe had peace. Acceptance of what he was, and what the world is. And maybe his death wasn’t blind chance.”
    â€œThat’s not enough for me. Not for any woman.”
    â€œMaybe not,” I said.
    I gave her the five hundred for the ring. She sat silent. I didn’t want to leave then, but I left. A man is what he is.
    I wanted to stay with Marty, show her that she was mine, make her want to be mine. I wanted to do that, but I never would. That doesn’t make me much of a man, I know, but it makes me what I am. She had to shape her own life. All I could do was hope she would, in the end, want me. You owe every human being understanding, respect for their needs and wants. But that doesn’t mean that you will like the results. To accept, understand, another person’s needs, doesn’t change one iota of what you need yourself.
    I wanted to stay, but I left. Not much man. Not very strong. But a human being. At least, I like to think that’s what I am. Sometimes I wonder even about that. The observer, even of myself.
    So busy observing myself as I cut through the alley behind my five cheap rooms, that I never saw them until they had me trapped cold in the alley.
    Four shadows. Two at each end of the dark alley.
    Silent, they stood there.
    Four quick, alert shapes that appeared to block my way front and rear. Coming up from nowhere, silhouetted against the feeble street light at either end of the alley in the hot night. Each a distinct shadow, a person, yet all the same—thin and without faces. They made no sound or movement, looming like thin birds of prey in the night.
    I looked around the alley. Windowless walls on both sides, locked rear doors. No way out except past them. Nothing to help me except three ranks of garbage cans, and two cats that ran silently away as the four shadows began to move toward me.
    They came bent