Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 09 (14 page)

“Only it was no laughing matter,” I said, “after she went to the cops, and reported it as an assault.”

Ida’s expression was confused, frustrated.
“She
hit
Joe.”

“And Joe hit her.” I decided to risk the following: “I hear he punched her in the face—like Thalia Massie got punched in the face.”

Behind me, Henry Chang snarled,
“Haole pi’ lau!”

Which I didn’t imagine was a term of endearment.

Ida looked at me, eyes steady. “He just push her, on side of head. If Joe punch her in face, are you kidding? He woulda break her damn jaw!”

I said nothing. I didn’t have to: Ida suddenly realized what he’d said, swallowed thickly, and put the Phaeton in gear and, with care, pulled back out onto King, heading back toward town. Before long he took a left on Nuuanu Street.

Ida didn’t say anything for a while; maybe he was wondering how different his life—and Joe Kahahawai’s—might have been if that little fender-bender with Agnes and Homer Peeples (that was the couple’s name) hadn’t seen epithets escalate into rough stuff.

Finally I asked, “Why did you lie, Shorty?”

He gave me a quick, startled glance. “What?”

“You lied to the cops, when they came around and rousted you out of bed, in the early morning hours after the rape.”

He was stopping, just beyond a lush park, where Nuuanu Street forked, a road off to the right labeled Pacific Heights.

“I didn’t know any
haole
woman got attack,” Ida said. “All I know was Joe hit that fat
wahine
bitch, and I didn’t wanna get mixed up in it.”

“So you told the cops you didn’t go out that night. And that you loaned the car to some Hawaiian pal of yours—a pal you knew by sight but not by name?”

Ida nodded glumly; his smirk had no humor in it. “Not very good lie, huh?”

“One of the worst I ever heard,” I said cheerfully.

“I told truth later same night….”

“Sure, after they grilled you—but you got off to a bad start with that whopper.” When the first thing out of a suspect’s mouth is a lie, a cop never believes another word.

“That cop McIntosh, he drag me into his office where Mrs. Massie sit, face banged up, and say to me in front of her, ‘Now look at your beautiful work!’
Then
he ask her if I am attacker!”

Christ, talk about prompting—why didn’t Mcintosh just stencil the word rapist on the poor bastard’s shirt? What happened to the standard practice of placing a suspect like Ida in a lineup?

“But she didn’t identify me,” Ida said. “Next afternoon, Sunday, coppers take Mack, Eau, Big Joe, and me to Massie house in Manoa Valley.”

“Why in hell?” I asked.

“So she could identify us.”

Not a lineup downtown where the real suspects were intermingled with bogus ones, under the watchful eye of the DA’s office—but home delivery of the coppers’ prime suspects!

“Sunday, cops ain’t picked Benny up yet,” Ida was saying. “So Benny, he wasn’t there. Funny thing, Mrs. Massie said to Big Joe—‘Don’t they call you Ben?’ But she say she recognize Eau and Joe. She don’t pick me out. Don’t even know me from the night before at police headquarters.”

For several miles now, we’d been gliding along the valley road with fabulous estates on either side, their lavish gardens lorded over by royal palms. It was as if we were passing through an immense open-air nursery.

“They take Mrs. Massie back to hospital,” Ida said, “later that same afternoon. And Benny, cops pick him up at the football field, where he practice, and take him to hospital and ask Mrs. Massie if he is one of attackers.”

From the backseat, Ahakuelo’s voice reeked frustration. “She said didn’t know me!”

Even with the cops tying these boys in red ribbons and depositing them in her lap, Thalia Massie had failed to identify them during that crucial forty-eight-hour period after the crime. Only later did she come to know them down to their shoe size.

“We innocent men,” Ida said proudly, as the Phaeton seemed to float past a cemetery.

“Maybe you did get railroaded on this one,” I said. “But don’t kid a kidder: your pal Joe was convicted on a robbery charge…” I looked over my shoulder and directed my next comment to Ahakuelo, who seemed to have warmed to me some; Henry Chang was still glowering. “And Benny, you and Eau here did time on a rape charge.”

“Attempted rape!” Chang spat.

“Sorry. That makes all the difference….”

“We got parole,” Ahakuelo said, “and the charge got dropped down to ‘fornication with a minor.’ I was eighteen, Eau just a kid, too—we was at a party and there was lots of
oke,
lots of fucking.”

“Some of the girls was under sixteen,” Ida further explained.

So the prior rape charges against Ahakuelo and Chang, which had produced such indignation on Admiral Stirling’s part, were
statutory
rape busts?

“And Joe wasn’t convicted on no robbery beef, either,” Ida was saying.

“He wasn’t?”

Ida shook his head, no; we were passing by another park—according to a wooden sign, Queen Emma Park. “Joe loaned some money to this friend of his, Toyoko Fukunaga. Fukunaga owe Joe this money too long, and wouldn’t pay. After time, Big Joe shake the cash outa Fukunaga, and Fukunaga file a complaint. They have trial, but jury can’t make up their mind.”

These guys seemed to inspire hung juries.

“DA say they skip ’nother trial if Joe plead guilty on assault and battery,” Ida continued. “He do thirty days.”

So Big Joe Kahahawai’s criminal record consisted of a disagreement between him and a friend over a debt.

A rambling country club clubhouse marked the spot where the streetcar line ended, and private residences began to thin out to nothing as the valley road began to wind. Ida took a fork to the right, about a mile past the country club, and we sailed along the bank of a stream, briefly, before the road plunged into a tunnel of trees, shutting out the moonlight.

I was getting uneasy again. “Where are you taking me, Shorty?”

“We see Pali,” he said, as if that meant anything to me.

The eucalyptus-tree forest gave way to sheer ridges of stone, and the sides of the valley seemed to gradually close in on us as we climbed. My ears were popping. The air had turned chill, the wind kicking up.

“Gettin’ a little cold, isn’t it?” I asked. “You wanna put the top up on this buggy?”

Ida shook his head no. “Pali might rip canvas top right off.”

What was Pali, a goddamn Cyclops?

“Who the hell is Pali?” I growled.

“Pali is cliff,” Ida said, “where Kamehameha and warriors drive Kalanikupule’s warriors back over edge. Long drop.”

From the backseat came Henry Chang’s helpful voice: “Two-
thousand
-foot drop,
haole”

“It’s thoughtful of you fellas to try to make me feel at home,” I said. “But maybe any more sight-seeing oughta wait till daylight…”

We had rounded a final curve and now a breathtaking panorama stretched out before us; the golden glow of the moon had been replaced by silver, and it was with this gleaming paintbrush that the greens and blues of the vista were touched, muted into an unreality like that of a hand-painted postcard, mountains, cliffs, bays, strands of coral, ivory endless sea under a starry black-blue dome. God, it was lovely. Christ, it was far down.

And shit, the wind! It was a cold howling gale up here, whipping hair, flapping clothing, flapping
skin,
it was a goddamn hurricane, formed, I supposed, by wind funneling through the ridges of these cliffs. My body was immediately overtaken by a flu-like chill.

“Get off car!” Ida yelled at me. These guys seemed to say “off” where a normal person would say “out”; but somehow it didn’t seem like the time for a semantic discussion.

And we all piled out, that nasty air current making fluttering human semaphore signals out of all our clothing, the dark flowered silk shirts flying like the absurd flags of several silly nations. My tie was a waggling tattletale tongue.

Suddenly Henry Chang was on one side of me, and Benny Ahakuelo on the other, and each gripped me just above either elbow. Ida was facing me, his pudgy face set in a stern fearsome mask, his black hair waving, whipping. David Takai stood just behind him, his slicked-back hair having more success against the wind than the rest of us, his flat face blank, dark stone eyes unreadable.

“Last December,” Ida shouted, “big buncha sailors grab me, haul my ass up here, wanna make me confess I rape that white woman.”

Ida began unbuttoning the shirt even as the silk flapped around his hands.

I glanced out at the view: rolling hills, the even lines of a pineapple plantation, cattle fields, rice paddies, banana-tree groves, and the seas striking, curling, foaming over the distant reef. All of it, silver in the moonlight. Lovely. I wondered how lovely it would look as I was windmilling through the air on my way to the rocks two thousand feet below.

Or was Henry Chang exaggerating? Was it only fifteen hundred feet?

Ida had the shirt off and he handed the fluttering garment to Takahi, who was attending him like a servant. Was Ida freeing himself up to administer me a beating? And I would have to take it; the other three could hold onto me and I’d just have to fucking take it….

But now, in the ivory bath of the moonlight, Ida’s surprisingly lean body revealed streaks of white scars, a sea of them, slashing his flesh, and he turned like a model showing off a new frock, and revealed a back that was even more brutally striped with welts that had graduated to scar tissue. He had been brutally whipped—front and back.

Then Ida wheeled, and he came very close to me, as Henry Chang and Benny Ahakuelo held me. Yelling to be heard over the gale, he said, “They work me over pretty good, whaddya think?”

“Not bad,” I managed.

“And I not confess. Bleed like hell, pass out after while, but goddamn,
not
confess! Nothin’
to
confess!”

Chin high, his proud point made, Ida held his hand out to his attendant Takai and took back his flapping garment, got it on, and buttoned up, despite the wind.

“You tell Clarence Darrow,” Ida said. “You tell him we innocent men. Joe was innocent, too. You tell him he’s on wrong side of courtroom. Wrong side!”

“I’ll tell him,” I said. No smart talk or disagreement from these quarters: Henry Chang and Ahakuelo were still holding onto me; I was still seconds away from being a flung rag doll bouncing my way down to a rocky death.

“He supposed to help
little
people!” Ida shouted indignantly. “He supposed to be colored man’s defender! Not rich goddamn murderers! You tell him we wanna talk to him. We want his ear! You
tell
him!”

I nodded numbly.

And then they dragged me back into the car and took off.

It was a six-, seven-mile drive, but not another word was spoken, not until they dropped me by my car in the Waikiki Park parking lot, where Beatrice was sitting on the running board, her legs stretched out; she was smoking, a bunch of butts scattered on the gravel near her pretty red-painted toenails. When she saw us pull in, she got to her feet, tossed me the keys without a word or expression, and climbed in the front seat with Ida, where I’d been sitting.

“Tell Darrow,” Ida said.

And the Phaeton was gone.

Clarence Darrow, wrapped in a white towel like a plump Gandhi, his comma of gray hair turned into wispy exclamation marks by the wind, his smile as gleeful as a kid Christmas morning, was seated in the outrigger canoe, positioned midway, like ballast, two berry-brown beach boys in front of him, three behind. They paddled the boat and their joyful passenger over an easy crest of surf as news photographers on the beach—invaders in suit and tie amongst the swimming-attired tourists—snapped pictures.

One of Darrow’s tanned escorts—the one paddling right at the front of the boat—was the king of the beach boys himself: Duke Kahanamoku, a “boy” in his early forties. An infectious white smile flashed in the long dark handsome face, and sinewy muscles rippled as the Duke stroked the water.

“Took Tarzan to beat him,” Clarence Crabbe said.

We were sitting under a beach umbrella at a little white table on the sand with the pink castle of the Royal Hawaiian looming beautifully behind us. The young Olympic hopeful looked like a bronze god in his black trunks with matching athletic T-shirt. I was in tourist mode—white slacks with sandals and one of those colorful silk shirts like my kidnappers of the night before had worn: a red print with yellow and black parrots, short-sleeve and sporty and loud enough to attract attention back in Chicago’s Bronzeville. This wardrobe—which also included a wide-brimmed Panama hat and round-lensed sunglasses that turned the world a soothing green—was courtesy of various shops in the hotel, and charged to my room. If there’s anything a detective knows how to find, it’s ways to pad an expense account.

Crabbe had called this morning; I didn’t place him at first, but when he offered to buy us lunch with his silver dollar, it came to me: the kid who dived from the
Malolo
deck! We’d had lunch on the
lanai
(that’s “porch” for you mainlanders) outside the hotel lounge, the Coconut Grove, only I didn’t let him pay for the tab, which the buck wouldn’t have covered, anyway—I signed it to my room.

Now we were spending the early part of the afternoon watching Darrow caper on the beach for the press, giving them plenty of frivolous photos and the occasional questionable tidbit (“There is no racial problem whatsoever in Hawaii”), while along the way paying the Royal Hawaiian back for my room with the publicity his famous presence attracted.

“Huh?” I asked, in response to Crabbe’s statement about Tarzan beating Duke Kahanamoku.

“Johnny Weismuller,” Crabbe explained. He was watching Kahanamoku wistfully. “He’s the guy who finally took Duke’s title away, as world’s fastest swimmer. In Paris, in ’24.”

“And ’32’s gonna be your year?”

“That’s the plan.”

Though the Royal Hawaiian was way under capacity, its beachfront was aswarm with sunbathers, swimmers, and would-be surf riders. Here and there, a muscular Hawaiian in a bathing suit was attending a female—either conducting a friendly class in surfing, or sitting on the beach beside her, rubbing coconut oil on pale flesh.

“These beach boys,” I said to Crabbe, “do they work here?”

“Some do. But all the beaches in Hawaii are public—the boys can come and go as they like. Hey, I used to be one of them.”

“A
haole
like you?”

He flashed me a grin as white as Kahanamoku’s. “You’re picking up on the lingo, Nate. Yeah, there are a few white boys out there hustling surfing lessons.”

“And hustling the women?”

His grin turned sly. “Since I never pay for sex, I make a general of policy of not charging for it, either.”

“But some beach boys do charge for their stud services?”

He shrugged. “It’s a point of pride. Say, what’s Clarence Darrow foolin’ around with Duke and the boys for? Shouldn’t he be waist-deep in the case?”

Right now Darrow was ankle-deep in surf. Kahanamoku was helping Darrow out of the boat and onto the sand, the reporters and photographers scuttling in like crabs, snapping shots, hurling questions.

“He
is
working on the case,” I said. “On the public relations front, anyway—not to mention race relations. Hanging out with Duke Kahanamoku, he’s sending a message that he doesn’t think all the beach boys are rapists.”

“Those Ala Moana defendants,” Crabbe said, “aren’t beach boys. Just typical restless Honolulu kids, drifting through life.”

He said this with a certain sympathy.

“Guys in their late teens, early twenties,” I said, “are restless everywhere, not just Hawaii.”

“Yeah, but a lot of kids here are
really
adrift. All these different races tossed together here, their cultures, their traditions, in tatters.”

“Then you don’t think the Ala Moana boys are ‘gangsters’?”

“No, and I don’t think they’re rapists, either.”

“Why’s that?”

Crabbe sighed. The cool wind was cutting through the warmth of the afternoon, making his dark blond hair dance; handsome damn kid—if he wasn’t so affable, I’d have hated his guts.

His gaze was steady. “There’s an old Island saying—‘Hawaiians will talk.’ But the cops couldn’t get anything out of the boys.”

“So what? Lots of suspects in all kinds of cases keep their traps shut.”

He shook his head. “Not Hawaiian suspects. If the cops and their billy clubs and blacksnake whips didn’t get the story out of ’em,
oke
and curious friends and relatives would. And the word would spread across the Island like the surf rolling over that beach.”

“And it hasn’t?”

“Nope. Why do you think support among the colored population is so overwhelmingly on the side of the ‘rapists’? Besides, you don’t have to rape a woman on Oahu. There’s too much good stuff ready for the asking.”

Maybe if you looked like this kid, there was.

“That area Thalia Massie was walking along when she got grabbed,” I said, “was a red-light district. Maybe Horace Ida and his pals were riding along and mistook her for a chippie and decided to tear off a free piece.”

He thought about that. “That’s the best case anybody’s made for the prosecution so far. That’s certainly the way it could’ ve happened. But not by the Ala Moana boys.”

“Why?”

“Because Hawaiians will talk! Word around town, among the colored population, is it was
another
gang of boys. How many dozen convertibles full of Island boys looking for a party d’you suppose are prowling around on a given Saturday night?”

This kid would’ve made a good lawyer. Maybe after he got this Olympic stuff out of his system, he’d finish up law school.

“You got the time, Nate?”

I checked my watch. I told him it was getting close to two.

He stood; his musculature had the same sinewy rippling quality as the Duke’s. “Guess I better scoot. I’m supposed to be over at the Natatorium by two.”

“The what?”

“Natatorium. It’s a saltwater pool over near Diamond Head. It’s where I’m training.”

“Good luck to you,” I said and offered my hand.

He shook it and was gathering his towel to go when I asked casually, “Why’d you wanna have lunch with me today, Buster?”

That was his nickname, wasn’t it? Isn’t that what he told me on the pier after the
Malolo
docked?

Must’ve been, because he answered, “Why, I just wanted to repay your kindness on the ship the other day—”

“You ever met any of the Ala Moana boys?”

He blinked. “Yeah, uh…I knew Joe Kahahawai. I know Benny Ahakuelo, too.”

“Local athletes, like you.”

“Yeah.” Now he gave me an embarrassed grin. “And you caught me at it—trying to put in a good word for my friends, without letting you know they are my friends….”

“I’m a detective. They pay me for catching people at things.”

“I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to mislead you—”

“Don’t apologize for trying to help out your friends. Listen, Buster—you didn’t tell me any lies, did you?”

“No. Just that one little sin of omission….”

I grinned at him. “That makes you a hell of a lot more reliable than most people I talk to. Thanks for the information. Good luck in Los Angeles.”

That was the upcoming Olympics site.

“Thanks, Nate.” He flashed another embarrassed grin, waved, and was gone.

Darrow was moving up onto the beach. Duke Kahanamoku was heading back out with his pals in the outrigger, probably to duck the reporters. Before, the sound of Darrow’s voice had been muffled in the gentle roar of the waves and the happy chatter of the sunbathers and swimmers, running in and out of the surf, or sprawled on the white sand on towels to broil like lobsters. But now, as C.D. and the reporters moved toward the hotel and the row of tables with beach umbrellas, where we sat, I could pretty well make out what they were saying….

“Worried you’re gonna get a racially mixed jury, Judge?” one reporter asked. The newshounds tended to call Darrow “Judge,” even though he’d never been one; it was a way to kid and compliment him at the same time.

“Oh, I’ve no doubt we’ll have a racially mixed jury, and no misgivings about it, either. I would embrace that as an opportunity in establishing a bridge between white and brown and yellow.”

“I don’t think you can use the same tactics you usually use, Judge,” another reporter chimed in. “If the court tells a Hawaiian jury that shooting a man is against the law, and the jury thinks your clients did the shooting, well that’s all there is to it: they’ll find ’em guilty.”

“That’s the damned trouble with trials,” Darrow growled. “Everybody thinks about the law and nobody thinks about people! Now if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, that’s all for today….”

Darrow answered a few parting questions as the reporters and their photographers slowly withdrew, and he sent me a tiny glance that said “Stick around” as he went to the table down a ways from me, where Ruby, Mrs. Leisure, and Isabel were sitting. He joined them and began chatting amiably.

No doubt in anticipation of possible press pictures, Mrs. Darrow’s pleasantly stout frame was decked out in a sporty white-trimmed blue dress and hat, Mrs. Leisure attractively casual in belted beach pajamas—beige blouse and blue trousers—and blindingly blond Isabel a knockout in her white skirt with blue polka dots and a matching hat; her blouse was actually the nicely filled upper half of her white swimming suit. Isabel wasn’t speaking to me, but I intended to mend that fence—when I got around to it.

George Leisure wasn’t present—somebody had to prepare for the coming court case.

“Excuse me, suh.”

The voice was mellow, male, not quite a drawl, but nonetheless touched by Southern inflection.

I turned. Straw fedora in hand, his white linen suit immaculate, a pleasant-featured man in his thirties, his brown hair touched lightly with gray at the temples, sharp eyes under lazy lids behind wire-framed glasses, half-bowed to me. His manner was almost courtly.

“You are Nathan Hellah?”

“Yes,” I said, somewhat warily; despite the cordial, civilized bearing, this guy could after all be a reporter.

“Mr. Darrow requested ah speak with you. I’m Lt. Commander John E. Porter. I’ve been assigned by Admiral Stirlin’ to be at Mr. Darrow’s disposal. May ah sit down?”

Half-standing, I gestured to the chair Crabbe had vacated. “Of course, Doctor. C.D.’s mentioned you. You two seem to have hit it off.”

“Clarence is easy to like.” He placed his hat on the little table as he sat. “And it’s an honor bein’ associated with such a great man.”

“I notice you’re out of uniform, Doctor.”

“Since ah’m spendin’ so much time, bein’ Mr. Darrow’s personal physician, Admiral Stirlin’ decided it might not be wise.”

Might not be the best press relations, at that, Mr. Darrow being seen in the ongoing company of a naval officer.

“If we’re going to discuss the case, Doctor,” I said, “do you mind if I take notes?”

“Not at all.”

But before turning to a fresh page in my little notebook, I was first checking to see if a memory the doctor’s name had jogged was correct: yes. Here he was in my notes from the
Alton
interview with Mrs. Fortescue and Tommie Massie: Porter was the doctor who, before the first trial, had advised Tommie to take Thalia and leave the Island.

“What’s your normal duty, Doctor?”

“I’m a gynecologist, Mr. Hellah, assigned to the care of dependent wives.”

“Gynecologist—isn’t that a doc that gets paid by women to look at what they won’t show just any ol’ man?”

“Quaintly but accurately put, yes.”

“So you were Thalia’s doctor, before the rape? For female problems?”

“Yes, suh, and general health concerns. And after the incident, Admiral Stirlin’ asked to look after Lt. Massie, as well, suh.”

This pleasant-looking professional man had tight, troubled eyes. It was the look of somebody who knew things he’d rather not.

“I attended Mrs. Massie the night of the incident, as well. I can give you the details if you like, suh.”

I noticed he never quite used the word “rape.”

“Please,” I said.

He didn’t have to consult his notes: “I found a double fracture of the lower jaw so severe her jaw had been displaced and her upper and lower jaws could not meet. Three molars on the right side of her jaw were in such proximity to the fracture, extraction was necessary. Both her upper and lower lips were swollen, discolored, and her nose was swollen. I also found small cuts and bruises about her body.”

“All of this supports Thalia’s story that she was beaten and raped, wouldn’t you say, Doctor?”

The raising of one eyebrow was barely perceptible; his gentle Southern-tinged voice was hardly audible above the rolling surf and beach noise.

“Mistah Hellah, that is the fact. However, it is also a fact that her clothes were not torn, nor was there any trace of semen on her dress or undah-garments. And my examination of her pelvic area indicated no abrasions or contusions. She had douched when she arrived home, which could be the reason there was no indication that she had been raped.”

I sat forward. “Is there some doubt that she was raped at all?”