Soon we were turning left onto King Street, a magnificent old plantation on the right, glimpsed through shrubs, foliage, a stone-and-wire fence, and the spreading branches of palms protecting it and its grounds from the tourists frequenting the Coconut Hut, a tacky grass-shack souvenir shop directly opposite—its sign boasting “A BIT OF OLD-TIME OLD HAWAII IN THE HEART OF HONOLULU.”
Before long, courtesy of the least likely tour guides Oahu might have provided, I was getting my first glimpse at the heart of Hawaiian government. Ida slowed down so I could have a nice look. At right was the Iolani Palace, set back far enough from the street to look like a dollhouse in the moonlight. A boxy Victorian affair with towers on the corners and in the middle (both front and rear) and plenty of gingerbread trim, almost ridiculously grandiose on its manicured grounds with its palm tree sentinels, the palace was a building that tried very hard not to look Hawaiian.
And across from the palace, on my left, was the Judiciary Building, another quaint monstrosity with balustraded balconies, Grecian pillars, and a central clock tower. Several schools of architecture seemed to be doing battle, none a winner, yet there was a comic-opera grandness about it.
In front of the building, on a stone pedestal, stood a golden statue of a native warrior, a spear in hand, a feathered cloak about him, his build powerful, his features proud.
“King Kamehameha,” Ida said. “Kinda looks like Joe.”
Joe Kahahawai, he meant; his murdered friend.
“Joe was proud he look like Kamehameha. Almost as proud of that big toe he kick football with…. That’s where they kidnap him.”
Yes it was: when Kahahawai had approached the courthouse that morning last January to report to his probation officer, he had walked in the shadow of the statue of the Island monarch he resembled into the false summons and waiting arms of Tommie Massie and company. There, next door to the Judiciary Building, across a side street, was the modern structure of the post office, where Mrs. Fortescue had parked, and watched, and waited.
We drove through downtown Honolulu—within spitting distance of the Alexander Young Hotel—and had I wanted to call out for help or jump out, I could easily have done it. I wasn’t quite sure why these boys wanted me to hear “their side” of it; but I didn’t think I was in danger, and besides, I wanted to hear their side of it….
Beyond the downtown, in a working-class residential neighborhood, Ida pulled over to the curb, leaving the engine thrumming. We were at the arterial intersection of King and Liliha streets, with Dillingham Boulevard curving off to the left, toward Pearl Harbor.
Ida was pointing over toward Liliha, at the stop sign. “I just dropped Eau off, and pull out on King when this big damn Hudson come roarin’ down King, headin’ toward town, goin’ like hell. I yank the wheel around and we both slow down and just touch fenders.”
“A little haole guy was driving,” Henry Chang said, “but it was his big fat wahine mama that cussed us.”
Ida said, “She yell out the window, ‘Look the hell where you’re goin’!’ And I yell back, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ “Ahakuelo said, softly, some regret in his voice, “It make Joe mad, seein’ that white man with that big-mouth kanaka gal. Big Joe jump out and yell, ‘Get that damn haole out here, and I’ll give him what’s coming to him.’”
“But the little guy stay behind the wheel,” Ida said. “He look real scared. The big fat mama didn’t—she got outa the car, damn big woman, almost tall as Joe. She come over cussin’, smellin’ of oke, drunk as hell. We all jump outa the car but she and Joe already at each other. She grab Joe by the throat and scratch him and Joe shove her offa him, and she fall on the runnin’ board of her car. Big fat wildcat, we had enough of that, even Joe, and we scramble back in car and drive off like hell, laughin’ about it.”
“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!”