“This is the joint where the rapists went dancing,” I said, making myself my own rum and Coke, “before they snatched Thalia.”
She looked at me carefully. “You really think that?”
I slipped my flask away. “What do you mean?”
“Why do you think I ask you here?”
“My blue eyes?”
She didn’t smile at that. “You were giving Mrs. Massie hard time today.”
“That’s my job.”
“Giving her hard time?”
I shook my head, no. “Trying to shake the truth out of her.”
“You think she lying?”
“No.”
“You think she telling truth?”
“No.”
She frowned. “What, then?”
“I don’t think anything—yet. I’m just starting to sort through things. I’m a detective. That’s what I do.”
“You haven’t made mind up?”
“No. But somebody did do something to your boss lady. I mean, she didn’t break her own jaw. She didn’t rape herself.”
She thought about that. Sipped her drink. “Crimes like that don’t happen here. Violence—it not Hawaiian. They a gentle race. Tame like dog or cat in house.”
“Well, only two of these dogs were Hawaiians. One cat was Japanese.”
Something flickered in her eyes, like a fire that momentarily flared up. “Two are Hawaiian. The Chinese boy, he half-Hawaiian. This not a crime that make sense, here. Rape.”
“Why not?”
“Because girls here…” She shrugged. “…you don’t have to force them.”
“You mean, all you have to do is buy ’em a Coke? Maybe put a little rum in it? And you’re home free?”
That made her smile, a little; like I’d tickled her feet.
But then, like the flare-up in her eyes, it disappeared. “No, Nate. That not it…hard to explain to mainlander.”
“I’m a quick learner.”
“Before missionaries come, this friendly place. Even now, only rape you hear of is…what do you call it when the girl is underage?”
“Statutory rape?”
She nodded. “Young girls give in to older boys, then parents find out, or baby is on way…then you hear about ‘rape.’ Colored man forcing himself—on a white woman? Not happen here.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” I said. “Besides, are you telling me the racial line doesn’t get crossed under the sheets?” I nodded toward the polyglot parade of lust out on the dance floor. “What’s that, a mirage?”
“It get crossed,” she said. “Beach boys—Hawaiian boys who teach surf at hotel beach? Their pupils usually female tourists, sometimes lonely Navy wives…but this sex is, what’s word?”
“Consenting.”
She nodded.
“Is that what you think? Your boss lady had a fling with a beach boy and it got out of hand? And she concocted a story that—”
“Didn’t say that. You must…you must think I’m terrible.”
“I think you’re a livin’ doll.”
She avoided my fond gaze. “But terrible person. Traitor to employer.”
I shrugged my eyebrows, sipped my spiked Coke. “I don’t think a rich person paying a servant a few bucks a week buys any great sort of loyalty. If it did, guys like me couldn’t ever get the dirt on anybody.”
“You honest man.”
I almost choked on the Coke. “What?”
“You say what you think. You don’t hide nothing.”
Often I hid everything, but I said, “That’s right.”
“Will you dance with me?”
“Sure.”
The Happy Farmers had just begun “Love Letters in the Sand,” and the steel guitar was pretty heavy on this one, and as I held Beatrice near to me, the fragrance of the flower in her hair made me giddy—or was it the rum?
“I thought you might not come,” she said, “because of Miss Bell.”
“We’re just friends, Isabel and me.”
“She told her cousin you sweethearts.”
“That’s an, uh…exaggeration. We just met on the ship. Besides, she’s mad at me.”
“Because you hard on Mrs. Massie today.”
“That’s right.”
I held her close.
“Nate.”
“Yes.”
“You at your full growth now?”
“Damn near.”
The next tune was fast. I adjusted my trousers, as best as possible, and we headed back to the table. But before we sat, Beatrice said, “You have a car?”
“Of course.”
“We can’t go my place. I live with my mother and two sister and two brother. Over Kapalama way.”
“I’m at the Royal Hawaiian.”
“No. Not there. Miss Bell might see.”
Good point.
She touched my hand. Softly, slyly, she said, “I know place where couples go. Down beach road. To park?”
“Lead the way,” I said.
Soon we were pulling out of the Waikiki Park parking lot.
“See that barbershop?” she asked, pointing across the way to the line of dingy shops. “See that saimin wagon?”
I glanced: a somewhat ramshackle two-story building (living quarters above) was given over to a barbershop with a traditional pole and a window that said ENA ROAD BARBERSHOP; through the window could be seen a woman barber snipping at a white male customer’s locks; next door, in the direction of the beach, was a vacant lot with a food cart (SUKIYAKI DINNER, SAIMIN, HOT DOGS) and some picnic tables scattered around, couples eating noodles out of bowls; a few cars were parked up on the lot, getting served by white-aproned Orientals, drive-in style.
“That where Mrs. Massie seen by witnesses,” Beatrice said. “Walking along with white man trailing after.”
“And that,” I said, nodding toward the big white two-story Store—GROCERIES—COLD DRINKS AND TOBACCO—that sat just ahead, on the corner of Hobron Lane and Ena, “is the building that obscured the witnesses’ view, when Thalia was grabbed.”
“If that true,” Beatrice asked, “what happen to the white man following after? Did he disappear around that corner?”
I looked over at her. “Beatrice—what’s your stake in this, anyway?”
“Before he die last year, my father work at the same cannery as Shorty’s father,” she said.
“Shorty?”
“Shimitsu Ida. Horace Ida. Turn here.”
“Huh?”
“Turn right. If you still wanna go lovers’ lane.”
I still wanted to go to lovers’ lane. Just as I was turning onto the beach road, the landscape of Ena Road had shifted somewhat: the eating joints and other small shops gave way to bungalows—little more than wooden shacks—and two-story ramshackle apartment houses clustered together.
She noticed my giving the area the once-over. “Bachelor officer from Fort De Russey rent those.”
I snorted a laugh. “You’d think they’d want something nicer.”
“Out of the way, for taking native girl. Close to the beach where they can meet female tourist. And Navy wife. Only not all officer are bachelor, hear tell.”
As we headed down the beach road, the landscape again shifted; we were on a narrow blacktop, and right now we were the only car on it. The road was in some disrepair, rather bumpy, its coral underlayer glowing white in the moonlight. Though the ocean was nearby—you could hear and smell and sense it but not see it—we might have been driving through a desert, what with the algarroba thickets and scrubby underbrush and wild cactus. No palms, here—the closest things were the telephone poles lining this sorry roadway.
“They use to fight,” she said suddenly.
“Who did?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Massie.”
“Like how?”
“He swear at her and tell her to shut up. Sometimes she walk out.”
I frowned. “Do you know what these fights were about?”
“She didn’t like it here. She was bored. She drink too much. He tell her to stop, he said she drive his friends away. She has sharp tongue, Mrs. Massie.”
“How long did you work for them?”
“Over two year.”
“Then you didn’t come aboard after Mrs. Fortescue moved out, to help with the housekeeping?”