The Night People (15 page)

“Mrs. Cone?”

“Yes.” Hard eyes, lips a bit too red, spelled a long time in a business meant for a man.

“Could I speak to you about one of your customers?”

“You a cop?”

“No.”

She slid onto the barstool next to him. “You can speak to me about any damn thing you want. I don’t have to answer.”

“Ken Su?”

“Never heard the name.”

He unfolded the clipping once more from his pocket. “This man.”

“Who told you to come here?”

“The other fellow—the barber. His name’s in the caption. He said the picture was taken here last October.”

He ordered another drink while she thought about it. Finally she said, “Sure, he’s a customer. He’s got a blonde wife and a big house in the city. But his name’s not Ken Su or whatever you said.”

“What is it?”

“That’s all you get out of me until you do a little talking, mister. Who are you? What do you want him for? You don’t look like a federal cop.”

“I’m no sort of cop. This is personal.”

She glanced around. “Bring your drink and come on into my office.”

The place was a plush room with a view of Diamond Head, and a foam rubber sofa that almost swallowed him when he sat on it. It was a room for a man. “Is your husband …”

“My husband is dead,” Mrs. Cone replied to his unfinished question. “This was his club. He was killed in an auto accident a year ago and it’s been my place since then.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why? You didn’t know him. Now what about this Ken Su?”

Gent sipped his drink. “I asked you first.”

“I can give you his name if I know what you’re planning to do.”

He liked the woman. Perhaps he could trust her. Perhaps he could tell her what he’d never told anyone else. “It happened in the war,” he said. “In North Borneo.”

“The war’s been over nearly six years. They’re fighting another war now, in Korea.”

“The last one will never be over for me,” Gent said. “I’ve been looking for Ken Su for all these years, and now suddenly I see his picture in an old newspaper and track him here, to Hawaii. This is the closest I’ve been.”

“What are you going to do when you find him?” she asked.

“Kill him,” Gent answered simply.

“It was that bad?”

“It was that bad, yes. Let me tell you a story, Mrs. Cone.” He knew now why he was telling her all this. The hunt was almost over. Ken Su was trapped with him on this island. He could afford to talk about it now. “My wife Rhonda and I went out to North Borneo just before the war, to manage a rubber plantation. We were young, and in love, and very happy. The happiness lasted until just after Pearl Harbor, when the Japanese swept down over everything. Suddenly we were prisoners of war, though we’d never fought. The men were interned at one camp, and the women at another. That was the last I ever saw of Rhonda, though we managed to exchange notes a few times after that.”

“How long were you in the prison camp?”

“Three and a half years, all told. There and elsewhere. Rhonda ended up at a women’s camp on the shore of the Celebes Sea. A Japanese officer named Ken Su was in charge.”

“I didn’t know he was Japanese.”

“He wasn’t, really. I think he was Mongolian or Korean. But he was a colonel in the Japanese army. I saw him just once, on the day when they separated us from our wives. I remember he was taller than the other Japanese, and younger than I’d expected. There was something about his eyes that bothered me even then.”

Mrs. Cone lit another cigarette. She seemed sorry now that she’d asked about Ken Su. “You’re sure you want to tell me all this?” she asked nervously.

“I want to tell you. I want somebody else to know how it was, to know the hate that’s kept me alive for six years, searching for the murderer of my wife.” He was silent for a moment and then he hurried on, wanting to be finished. “The camp—my camp—was liberated by British paratroopers. The Japanese guards surrendered without firing a shot when they heard the war was over. I went with the troops down to Rhonda’s camp. I wanted to be there when she was freed. But …”

“Go on,” Mrs. Cone told him, looking away.

“When Ken Su heard the war was over and liberation was near, he marched the fifty-seven women prisoners who were still alive out into the exercise yard and ordered the guards to machine-gun them. Then the bodies were dragged into a single pile, doused with gasoline and set afire.” He dropped his head into his hands. “The fire was almost out when we arrived,” he mumbled. “Ken Su and the guards had fled into the jungle. Some of the guards were captured later and told what had happened, but Ken Su was never found. The authorities suspected he disguised himself as a native refugee and made it to the Philippines in the postwar confusion.”

“Why would he do such a horrible thing when the war was over?”

Gent sighed into his hands, remembering every detail of it, remembering the blackened, smoking bodies and the stench of roasted flesh. “The guards said there had been atrocities at the camp. He was simply removing the witnesses against him. He knew if he stayed there he’d be tried as a war criminal, so he killed them all and took his chances of escaping. He didn’t look like a Japanese, and he apparently had enough luck to get him through the screening of refugees.”

“How can you be sure this man in the picture is Ken Su? You only saw him once.”

“I’m sure. I’ve tracked down other pictures of him, taken during the war. I’m sure.”

“Will what you’re doing bring her back to life? Will it change anything?”

“No. It won’t change anything, except that I’ll be able to sleep again. I’ll be able to look at another woman without seeing Rhonda every time.”

“What do you want from me?”

“His name and address, that’s all. I’ll do the rest.”

“If this is Ken Su, then he now goes by the name of Walter Thou. He claims to be Hawaiian, and he’s an importer of frozen foods from the mainland. Quite successful. He has a Canadian wife and no children. They live in a big stucco house on Ala Moana Boulevard, down near the yacht harbor.”

Gent got to his feet. “Thank you,” he said. “I suppose now you’ll get on the phone and warn him I’m coming.”

“I won’t have to do that,” she said quietly. “He already knows.”

“What?”

“That barber is Walter Thou’s nephew.”

Gent found the house without any trouble. It sat back from Ala Moana’s steady traffic, with a stand of bushy tropical plants screening it almost completely from the street. He parked his car around the corner and sat there for a moment, waiting. The time was just after eleven.

It started to rain a few drops, and they splashed against the windshield with patternless abandon. He watched them, thinking about Rhonda. Then he unzipped the briefcase on the seat next to him and took out the blue steel revolver that waited there. The chase was almost over.

He rang the bell and waited, and presently an overhead hall light snipped on. A young Oriental with a twisted lip opened the door. “Yes?”

“Walter Thou, please.”

“What is your business?”

“I have a personal message for him.”

“Mr. Thou is not at home.”

Gent hadn’t come this far to walk away empty-handed. “I’ll wait. It’s important.”

“He will not be back tonight.”

“Where can I find him?”

The man shrugged his shoulders. “You could call at his office in the morning.”

No. No more waiting. Not even a few hours. The door was starting to close and Gent hit it with his shoulder. “Where is he?”

The Oriental toppled back, startled. “Lanny!” he shouted.

Gent glanced to his right, in time to see the kid barber coming at him. He had the razor out again. There was no time for the revolver, and Gent sidestepped to send the boy crashing into the glass of the door. Then he slammed into the Oriental, using his fists. The man went down with something like a sob.

Gent turned his attention again to Lanny, the barber. By now he had the gun out, and he showed he meant to use it. “Any more tricks and you’re a dead man. Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

Gent slashed him across the cheek with the gun barrel, leaving a thin red line. “Where? I’m not kidding.”

Lanny twisted away and tried to run, but Gent brought him down with a flying tackle on the polished oak floor of the hallway. “Where … where … where … where is …?”

“You’re mad!”

“Where … is … he?”

“They … they’ve got a yacht … down in the harbor. Don’t …”

Gent left him sprawled on the floor and hurried out. He’d studied the maps and guidebooks of Hawaii on the flight from the mainland, and he knew the yacht harbor was only a few blocks down Ala Moana. It was a large place by moonlight, and he could see the waves of Mamala Bay splashing against the coral reef that formed it into a perfect docking place for the vessels of the wealthy. He glanced at the twinkling sky and decided there’d be no more rain that night. Then he pondered the half-hundred or more yachts that lay before him.

On the dock there was a little shed, with a light in it. Some sort of a guard’s shack, he decided. Inside he found a sleepy man in dungarees and a sailing cap. “Which one is Walter Thou’s yacht?” he asked quietly.

“Who are you?”

Gent slipped the revolver from his pocket. “I’ll kill you,” he told the man in a level tone of voice. “I’ve come a long way to find him and I’ll stop at nothing now.”

“Mister! Put that damned thing away!”

“Walter Thou’s yacht.”

“The big one down at the end. The
Sibu.
”

Gent hit him with the gun and watched him go down. He knew it was the truth—Sibu had been the name of a town near the prison camp—but he didn’t want the man calling the police; not just yet.

Then he was out of the shed and hurrying silently along the wooden dock, hearing nothing but the slap of the waves and the occasional squeaking of a board. The odor of the sea was in his nostrils, and he remembered another day, when they’d come to the prison camp and the sea smell had mingled with a stench of burning flesh and finally had been smothered by it.

It was almost over now. Almost.

The
Sibu.
Resting in the harbor calm, her mooring lines were slack.

Gent lifted his revolver and stepped on board.

The man was waiting for him, standing half in the shadows of the cabin. He was tall and dark, and the moonlight caught his eyes. “What do you want?” he asked quietly, with a rasping sort of accent. “Your business, please.”

“Hello, Ken Su.” Gent held the revolver steady, but he didn’t fire immediately. He wanted the other to know why he was dying like this.

“My name is Walter Thou. I am Hawaiian.”

“Like hell! I met you just once, but I remember. How I remember! You’re Colonel Ken Su, late of the Imperial Japanese Army, commander of a prison camp for women near Sibu in North Borneo.”

“You are wrong. My name is Walter Thou. I import frozen food.”

“Then why did you run away and hide here? Why is your yacht named the
Sibu
?”

The man stepped forward a bit, but his hands were still shadowed by the night. “Quietly, please. My wife is dozing below deck. I am not hiding from anything as you put it. I am a native Hawaiian.”

“I’m through talking, Ken Su. I want you to know why you’re dying. One of those fifty-seven women you murdered and burned—one of them was my wife. Her name was Rhonda Gent. She was blonde and very beautiful. We came out from Chicago to work for a Dutch rubber company, just before the war. I never saw her after that day you took her, but my hate has kept me alive all these years. I never thought I’d find you, until I saw that picture in an old newspaper. I found the barber and then Mrs. Cone and then you.”

“I was never in the Japanese army,” he said. “I grew up here in Hawaii.”

“You think I could forget a face like that? Your memory is short.”

“Do I look Japanese?”

“No, but you look like a murderer. You look like the man I’ve been searching for.”

“You’d kill me without evidence, without being certain?”

Gent hesitated, his finger white on the trigger. He remembered something he’d read in the guidebook. “You say you grew up here, in Honolulu?”

“Yes.” The eyes sparkled, full of the hard hatred Gent had carried in his memory.

“Then as a boy you would have gone to the zoo many times. Tell me about it.”

“What? Are you crazy?”

“No. Tell me about the animals at the zoo. How many snakes are there?”

“I … How should I know? The number changes.”

“How many, Ken Su? How many snakes?”

“There were three or four then, I suppose. How can I remember the exact number?”

Gent shook his head. “Wrong answer, Ken Su. Any Hawaiian child would know there are no snakes in the islands. Their importation is forbidden by law, even for the zoo. No snakes, Ken Su.”

“All right,” the voice said, rasping now. “But can’t we make a deal?”

“I’ve come too far for any deals.”

The tall man seemed to shudder with a sudden chill. “I’ve come too far, too. I’m no longer Ken Su. I’m no longer the man you seek. Put down your gun.”

“You’re going to die, Ken Su.”

“I did not survive the Borneo jungles to die here, my friend. Of that I assure you.” And with his final word he fired a sudden shot from the tiny revolver in his shadowed right hand.

Gent felt the bullet nick his cheek, and then he was pulling the trigger, once, twice, before Ken Su could fire again. “Rhonda Gent!” he shouted. “Rhonda Gent! Remember her name, you devil!”

Three, four, five shots, and the tall man sagged at last to the deck. Gent’s heart was pounding as he stepped over the body. But it was not quite over. The thirst for vengeance was too strong within him. He had one bullet left, and he would use it on Ken Su’s wife. He only wished the devil was still alive to see her die, as Rhonda had died.

Holding the revolver tightly, he stepped through the spreading pool of blood, went down the steps to the cabin below and pushed open the door. Gent felt the life drain from his body, as he faced the greatest horror of all, faced Ken Su’s blonde wife—Rhonda.

“B
UT THAT WAS IN
another war,” Mason argued, pausing to light his cigar. “You simply can’t compare the use of tanks in North Africa with that in Korea. The terrain was different, the weather conditions …”