All of Hawaii seemed a comfy lagoon where old people, tourists and children relaxed in the sun. Everyone who tended to the visitors appeared as cheery as could be, putting on muu-muus, cooking pig luaus, driving pedi-cabs, carrying suitcases, selling nuts at the macadamia nut museum, working the army bases, frying McNuggets at McDonald's, dancing the hula, though a waiter at the Kahala Hilton restaurant did tell me that when Imelda Marcos came for lunch - she had her own personalized silver napkin ring - it was an awful lot of trouble. Security men had to be posted everywhere and local reporters came by to see what kind of shoes Imelda was wearing.
There were a lot of realtors, too, selling real estate to the Japanese, who were buying up the islands even faster than the native culture was disappearing. Every hotel had numerous courteous Japanese on the staff.
Much of the most desirable real estate the Japanese were buying was around Honolulu, within spitting distance of Pearl Harbor and the Arizona Monument. The sunken battleship, entombed in the waterborne shrine, preserved World War II in a plastic box; visitors, ferried out into the harbor to look at it, looked down fearfully and imagined the dead and dying, December 7, 1942, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Dean Reed was four years old.
I got out the police file Mrs. Brown had given me, along with the coroner's autopsy report. These were the banal summaries of officialdom - the police and the forensic experts in Berlin - their brutal expressionless accounts of what had happened to a human being. It was labeled "The Final Report Concerning the Death Under Suspicious Circumstances of United States Citizen Dean Cyril Reed."
Taking into account the autopsy and the criminal investigation, so called, the report stated that there was "no evidence of traumatic violence," "no evidentiary basis for suicide," that "the suspicion of crime has not been confirmed." Officials of the German Democratic Republic concluded: "It can be presumed that Dean Reed died by accidental drowning."
In the grim medical log that was the autopsy, the only anomaly was a reference to "so-called Canuto's trial cuts... in a typical place as can often be seen in cases of suicide." The cuts were very superficial, the report noted. Nothing conclusive.
Mrs. Brown was certain Dean's death was not a suicide. He had everything to live for: he was at the height of his career; he loved his wife; he was preparing his biggest movie role ever.
Before I left Hawaii, Ruth Anna Brown called to say that she wanted Leslie Woodhead to help her produce a television series about the Reed family; she had a sort of American Upstairs, Downstairs in mind. There wasn't much I could do in the way that she wanted me to, so I sent flowers by way of thanks for her time. She wrote to say that she had placed them on the Korean Peace Memorial in Hawaii in memory of her son, Dean Reed, the American singer who died in East Berlin.
She missed her son whose grave was on the other side of the world. So she made do by putting out flowers for him and communing with his spirit at a Korean shrine. But she failed to find the quarter he had won for racing a mule when he was seventeen.
4
"Dean did not kill himself," said Phil Everly when I met him in Burbank a week after I saw Ruth Anna Brown in Hawaii. "He was a good laugher and a guy that laughs does not kill himself," Everly added.
After Dean got to California in 1958, he not only got himself a recording contract, he got a screen test and a contract with Warner Brothers, where he studied to be a movie star. Among his new friends was Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers and, according to Ruth Anna Brown, they remained friends for life.
The day was bright and hot. Inside El Torito, a Mexican restaurant, it was dark and wonderfully cool. The maitre d' had a moustache and a red vest. I whispered that we were waiting for Phil Everly and he smiled. "Of course," he said, "we know Senor Everly."
Leslie Woodhead was there; he was in California on business and, as a serious rock and roll guy, he wasn't going to pass up a chance to meet Phil. We watched through the window as outside Everly disembarked from a long, low powder-blue Cadillac with tail fins, and sauntered across the parking lot to the restaurant.
A handsome man with a thick shock of brown hair and a baby face, he came through the door, removing his sunglasses as he walked slowly into the restaurant, ducking slightly to avoid the hanging plants. He looked around in a leisurely way, not because he expected anyone to pay particular attention to him, but because he was a man who moved slowly with that easy, hot-weather grace southerners often have. With him was a middle-aged man with a bald spot. They paused for a moment, conferring, squinting, canvassing the room.
Phil Everly took the center of the floor naturally and, star-struck, like teenagers, Leslie and I fumbled towards him.
Then Phil saw us. He smiled, walked forward, and stuck out his hand.
"Hi," he said, "I'm Phil Everly."
"Hi," said Leslie. "I'm Leslie Woodhead."
The nice man with the bald spot was Phil's friend, Joe. Once Joe had played bass for Phil. In Phil's company, he'd once met Dean Reed, which was why he was there, I guessed, or maybe he served as Phil's entourage. Joe sold real estate somewhere around Burbank.
Phil's had not been an easy phone number to come by, which had added to the anticipation. Getting it had required a couple of dozen phone calls back to London, to friends at the BBC, who once had made a documentary for Arena about the Everly Brothers and their reunion concert at the Albert Hall. On the phone, Phil Everly who had a sweet, southern wispy voice, had said he was seeing us just because he liked the guys from the BBC so much. He had had a nice time with them. He liked those English guys. But during the whole, long, boozy lunch that followed, Phil Everly never once mentioned the reunion concert. He never mentioned his brother, Don, either.
* * *
We settled, the four of us, in a booth towards the back and drank frozen margaritas out of huge glasses. Phil advised on certain dishes with the assurance and concern of an expert - this burrito or that quesadilla or whatever other fried, cheesy, spicy, tasty Mexican item that was a specialty of the house.
Phil was an easy talker, and he described how, in 1946, his folks, Ike and Margaret Everly, took their kids and left Tennessee for a better life, first in Chicago, then in California. Their two boys, Don and Phil, were already making records together. In the restaurant in Burbank, a song ran through my head: "Bye-bye, love. Bye-bye, happiness. Hello, loneliness."
As far back as 1957, the year they recorded "Wake Up Little Susie," Phil and Don were stars. But everyone wanted to be in movies. The studios, awed by the success of Elvis Presley on the big screen and terrified by television, which was a dirty word in Hollywood, grabbed at new talent wherever they could find it.
"We had signed with Warner Brothers Records," Phil said, blowing out smoke from a Marlboro. "And in the process, we also went to the Warner Brothers Drama School," he added and said it was where he met Dean. "Dean was a real all-rounder. He could sing, he could act. I was a lousy actor." Phil laughed. "The acting class was taught by a man named Paton Price, and to know Dean you had to know about Paton Price. Paton was a real important guy for all of us," Phil said. "He taught us it didn't so much matter what your politics were so long as you used your art to further what you believed in. He was what you might call a life teacher," Phil added, "He was also a surrogate father for Dean who lived with him and his wife, Tillie, for a while. Tillie still lives here in Burbank.