“In Chicago we know the difference between a Jap and a Chinaman, sure.”
I was watching Beatrice out of the corner of an eye, and she didn’t flinch at my racial crudity.
“Is that right?” Thalia said. “Does that hold true even when you’re being raped?”
Isabel looked very uncomfortable. She clearly didn’t like the way this was going.
I leaned in. “Thalia—Mrs. Massie—I’m playing a sort of devil’s advocate here, okay? Looking for the weak spots that the prosecution can kill us with. If you have any explanations besides knee-jerk defensive smartass remarks, I’d appreciate hearing them.”
Now Isabel leaned in—frowning. “Nate—that’s a little forward, don’t you think?”
“I didn’t go to finishing school,” I said. “I went to school on the West Side of Chicago where first graders carry knives and pistols. So you’ll have to pardon my lack of social graces…but when you’re in a jam, I’m the kind of roughneck you want to have around. And, Mrs. Massie—Thalia—you’re in a hell of a jam, or anyway, your husband and mother are. They can do twenty to life on this rap.”
There was silence—silence but for the chirping of caged birds out in the nearby lobby, and the gentle but ceaseless surge of the surf on the shore.
Thalia Massie, the black lenses of her glasses fixed upon me, said, “Ask your questions.”
I sighed; flipped a notebook page.
“In the hours after the rape,” I said, “you went through your story six times, and you consistently said you hadn’t been able to make out the license plate number of the car. You said as much to four different police investigators, and a doctor and a nurse.”
She shrugged.
“Then,” I said, “in Inspector Mcintosh’s office at police headquarters, on your seventh pass at the story, it suddenly came to you.”
“Actually,” she said, chin lifted, “I got it wrong by one number.”
“Horace Ida’s car was 58-895, you said it was 58-805. Close enough. Missing one number makes it more believable, somehow. But there are those who say you may have heard that number in the examining room at Queens Hospital.”
“Not true.”
My eyebrows went up. “A police car with its radio on, full blast, was parked right outside the windows of the examining room. An officer testified that he heard an alarm for car 58-895, in possible connection with your assault, broadcast three times.”
“I never heard it.”
I sat forward. “You do realize that the only reason that car was really being sought was its involvement in a minor accident and scuffle earlier that evening, which had also been classified an assault?”
“I’m aware of that, now.”
“You also said, on the night of the assault, that you thought the car you’d been pulled into was an old Ford or Dodge or maybe Chevrolet touring car, with a canvas top, an old ripped rag top that made a flapping noise as they drove you along?”
Another shrug. “I don’t remember saying that. I know it came up at the trial, but I don’t remember it.”
And then sometimes her memory wasn’t so hot.
“Thalia, Horace Ida’s car…actually, it was his sister’s car, I guess…. Anyway, Ida’s car was a 1929 Model A Phaeton. A fairly new car, and its rag top wasn’t torn. Yet you identified it.”
“It was the car, or one just like it. I knew it when I saw it.”
Breakfast arrived, our geisha accompanying a waiter who was delivering it on a well-arranged tray, and Thalia smiled faintly and said, “Is that all? Do you mind if we eat in peace?”
“Sure,” I said.
There was quite a bit of awkward silence as I dug into my eggs and bacon, and the two girls picked at a lavish plate of pineapples, grapes, papaya, figs, persimmons, bananas, cubed melon, and more. They small-talked as if I weren’t there, discussing (among other things) how Thalia’s father the major was recuperating from his illness, and how nice it was that Mrs. Fortescue’s mother—vacationing in Spain—had sent a supportive wire to her daughter.
“Grandmother said she was so convinced of Mother’s innocence,” Thalia said, “there was no need to come, really.”
We were all having a second (or in Thalia’s case, third) cup of coffee when I started in again.
“What can you tell me about Lt. Jimmy Bradford?”
“What do you want to know?” Thalia was holding her coffee cup in patrician style—pinkie extended. “He’s Tommie’s friend. Probably his best friend.”
“What was he doing stumbling around your neighborhood, the night of the rape, drunk and with his fly open?”
“Nathan!” Isabel blurted, her eyes wide and hurt.
“I would imagine,” Thalia said, “having had rather too much to drink, he found a bush to relieve himself behind.”
“Relieve himself in what way?”
“I won’t dignify that with a response.”
“Why did you say to him that everything would be all right, just before the cops hauled him in for questioning?”
“He was cleared,” she said. “Tommie vouched for him. Tommie had been with him every second all evening.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“Nate,” Isabel said, “I’m getting very perturbed with you….”
Perturbed. That was how rich people got pissed off.
I said to Thalia, “If you don’t want to answer the question—”
“He’s a friend,” she said. “I was reassuring him.”
She had just been beaten and raped by a bunch of wild-eyed natives, and she’s reassuring him.
“I think this charming breakfast has lasted quite long enough,” Thalia said, bringing her napkin up from her lap to the table, pushing her chair back.
“Please don’t go,” I said. “Not until we talk about the most crucial matter of all.”
“And what would that be?”
“The time discrepancy.”
Another flinch of the mouth. “There is no time discrepancy.”
“I’m afraid there is. The activities of the five rapists are fairly well charted—we know, for example, that at thirty-seven minutes past midnight, they were involved in the accident and scuffle that made them candidates for suspicion in the first place.”
“I left the Ala Wai Inn at eleven thirty-five, Mr. Heller.”
“That’s a pretty exact time. Did you look at your watch?”
“I wasn’t wearing a watch, but some friends of mine left the dance at eleven-thirty and I left about five minutes after they did. My friend told me later that she had looked at her watch and it’d been eleven-thirty when they left.”
“But your statement that night said you left between half past midnight and one.”
“I must have been mistaken.”
“And if you did leave between half past midnight and one, those boys didn’t have time to get from the intersection of North King Street and Dillingham Boulevard, where the minor accident and scuffle took place…”
“I told you,” she said, rising, “I must have been mistaken, at first.”
“Your memory improved, you mean.”
She whipped the sunglasses off; her grayish-blue eyes, normally protuberant, were tight and narrow. “Mr. Heller, when I was questioned that night, in those early morning hours, I was in a state of shock, and later, under sedation. Is it any wonder that I saw things more clearly, later on? Isabel—come along. Beatrice.”
And Thalia moved away from the table, as Isabel gave me a withering look—two parts disgust, one part disappointment—and Beatrice followed. I noticed the maid had left her little purse behind and I started to say something, but she signaled me not to with the slightest shake of the head.
When they were gone, I sat there wondering, waiting for Beatrice to tell her mistress that she had to go fetch something she’d forgotten.
And soon she was back, picking up the purse and whispering, “I have tonight off. Meet me at Waikiki Park at eight-thirty.”
Then she was gone.
Well. Hotcha.