His smile was nervous. “Look, uh…sorry I grabbed your shirt. I know you’re just doing your job.”
“Forget it. I was provoking you.”
“You admit that?”
I nodded. “I’ve been getting canned stories from everybody I talked to here, tonight. I had to find a way to cut through the bullshit, so I gave you the needle.” I held out my hand. “No hard feelings?”
He took it; we shook.
“No hard feelings,” he said.
I smiled at him, and he smiled back, but I didn’t mean it, and neither did he. This bastard had been fucking Thalia Massie, and we both knew it.
We wandered back inside together, and split off faster than the marrieds around this joint did. I went over and buttonholed the stocky doorkeeper, Joe Freitas.
“You wouldn’t happen to know Lt. Stockdale, would you, Joe?” I was asking this question over the edge of a shiny half-dollar.
Joe snatched the half-buck and jerked a thumb upward. “Booth upstairs. Tall good-lookin’ fella. Short curly yella hair.”
Stockdale was, as the doorkeeper had promised, a blond-haired bruiser, ruggedly handsome; he had a flask and two glasses, an ashtray with two burning cigarettes, and a skinny but pretty brunette he was nuzzling. Both he and his lady friend were tipsier than a three-legged table.
“Sure, I’ll talk to you!” he exploded, good-naturedly drunk. “Sit yourself down. This is Betty. She’s Bill Ransom’s wife—except for tonight.” And he let out a horse laugh and Betty’s giggle evolved into an unladylike snort.
I slid into the booth. “I hear the night Thalia Massie was assaulted, you and she had a little run-in.”
“Hey, first off,” he said, overcompensating with his enunciation in an effort to be soberly serious, “I’m as against niggers raping white women as the next guy.”
“That’s an admirable view.”
“Just because Thalia Massie is a lousy stuck-up slut is no reason niggers should go around raping her. That character, Joe Ka-ha-what’s-it? I’da shot that black bastard myself, if they’d invited me to the party. Tommie Massie is my pal.”
“What happened that night, Ray? Between you and Thalia, I mean.”
He shrugged. “We was eatin’, and me and the wife and another coupla couples.” He gestured vaguely off to the right. “Over in one of the private dinin’ rooms. Thalia come stumblin’ in, drunk as skunk, uninvited.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “Nobody liked Thalia, snooty little bitch. Little Miss Sassiety Butter-Wouldn’t-Fucking-Melt-in-Her-Pussy.”
Ah yes. As Olds had said, you make special friends on submarine duty.
“She come waltzin’ in here, and we just ignore her. She wasn’t invited! And she just stands there with her goddamn nose in the air, and clears her throat and says, ‘Don’t you know a lady’s entered the room.’ I says, ‘I don’t see any.’ About then, Jimmy Bradford comes in, lookin’ for her I guess…they used to be kind of an item, y’know. Anyway, pouty little bitch says, ‘You’re no gentleman, Lt. Stockdale,’ and Bradford says, ‘Take it easy, baby, this is a public place.’ But Miss Sassiety Bitch struts up and sticks her chin in my face and says, ‘I don’t care! You’re no gentleman, Lt. Stockdale, talkin’ to me like that!’ I says, ‘Well, Thalia, who gives a shit what a lousy slut like you thinks, anyway.’ Which is when she slapped me.”
“Slapped you….”
This hadn’t been in the transcript material I’d been provided! No wonder Doris Olds had referred to Thalia as “slap-happy.”
“Yeah.” He touched his jaw. “She whaled me a good one.”
“Then what happened?”
He shrugged. “She stormed outa there. Good thing, too. I’da kicked her fat ass, if she hadn’t, and the other fellas hadn’t been holding me back. I was well and truly pissed off. Then, I guess somebody went looking for Tommie, to tell him what happened. He come looking for her, but she was long gone, o’ course.”
“When was this?”
“I dunno. Eleven-thirty, maybe.”
I thanked Stockdale and left him to his guzzling and nuzzling, and searched out the doorkeeper again.
“Joe, did you hear anything about a fuss upstairs involving Mrs. Massie, the night of the assault?”
“She slap some sailor, I hear.”
“Did you see her leave? I mean, did she come flying down the stairs and go rushing out?”
Joe shook his head, no. “That was a busy night. I was showin’ people to their seats, not always watchin’ the door.”
“You didn’t see her leave, sometime between eleven-thirty and midnight?”
“No…but I did see somethin’ else.”
“What?”
His smile was friendly but his eyes were mercenary. “I’m tryin’ to remember, boss.”
I dug out a dollar for him. “Does this jog it?”
“Comin’ back to me, boss. I remember her, that girl in the green dress. When her party come in that night, it was the first big party to arrive, and she walk ahead of others, with her head bent over. I thought maybe she was mad at somebody, or maybe drunk already.”
“That’s not worth a buck, Joe. Keep trying.”
“Okay. But I think maybe this is worth two dollars.”
“Try me and see.”
“Oh-kay. I remember seein’ her standin’ by the doorway about midnight, little after, maybe. She was talkin’ to Sammy.”
That perked me up. “Who’s Sammy?”
“Sammy’s worth two dollars, easy.”
“Two bucks it is. Who’s Sammy, Joe?”
“He’s a music boy.”
“What?”
“Hawaiian boy, he play music with Joe Crawford’s band, over on Maui. But when he’s home, on Oahu, he like to come over to the Ala Wai, and listen to the music, here. We always got good music here, boss.”
“What were Sammy and Mrs. Massie talking about?”
“I couldn’t hear ’em.” He shrugged. “Not even for ’nother dollar.”
“Were they friendly?”
“She seem a little worked up.”
“Arguing, then?”
“No. Jus’ talkin’, boss.”
“Has Sammy been back since?”
“Sure. Now an’ then, once in while.”
“Lately?”
“Not sure.”
“Look—this is where you can reach me.” I got out my notebook, jotted down my name and the Royal Hawaiian’s phone number, tore off the paper. “If Sammy shows up, no matter what time of day, Monday through Sunday—you call me. There’s a fin in it for you—and I don’t mean a shark, get me?”
Grinning, he snatched the slip of paper from my hands like it was the five-spot. “Got you, boss.”
The rest of the evening I spent dancing with Isabel to the syrupy but rhythmic music of the Sol Hoopii Trio.
And when we went out to the car, hand in hand, she said, “Did you find anything out?”
“Nothing particularly useful,” I said.
It was a lie, of course, but I didn’t feel like being the only guy who went to the Ala Wai Inn tonight who didn’t get laid.
13
In a land redolent of exotic blossoms, the second floor of the old Kapiolani Building at King and Alakea streets offered a mingling of pungent cockroach-repelling creosote and stale tobacco smoke. It was not an unfamiliar bouquet. I was, after all, a Chicago copper, and this was, after all, the temporary headquarters of the Honolulu Police. The central station house at Bethel and Merchant was getting a facelift, Chang Apana had explained.
They’d moved a few things in to turn this place into headquarters—the big open room you entered had a high counter for the desk sergeant to shuffle reports behind, a handful of desks against one wall with blue-uniformed cops talking to citizens at them, a few file cabinets, a scattering of straight-back chairs. Ceiling fans whirred lazily, throwing shadows, rustling papers.
The desk sergeant told me the assembly room of the detective bureau was on the second floor. At the top of the stairs, I found Chang Apana in another big open room. The mid-morning sun was filtering in through high windows, giving a golden glaze to greenish plaster walls and hardwood floor; like a lethargic cook beating eggs, ceiling fans stirred the air. At one end, an area was set up with chairs and a blackboard for roll call, and some glassed-off offices were along the right wall. Otherwise, it was desks and one central table where cops could gather for a conference or to just shoot the bull.