He took a step toward me. “You’re supposed to be helping Tommie Massie.”
“You’re the one supposed to be his friend. I’m not the one who was fucking Thalia.”
He took a swing at me—in fairness, I should point out he might have been a little drunk—but I ducked it easily and threw a hard right hand into the pit of his stomach. He doubled over, reflexively tossing his water glass—it shattered against the left wall, splashing the dragon—and went down on all fours and crawled around like a dog, retching. What he puked up was mostly beer, but some kind of supper was in there, too, and it made an immediate awful stink.
I went over and opened the window; a breeze wafted in some fresh air. “What was it about, Jimmy? Did you want Thalia to dump her native musician boyfriend, and come back to you? Or did you just want her to be more discreet?”
He was still on all fours. “You fucker. I’ll kill you, you fucker…”
I walked over to him. “You know, Jimmy, I don’t really care about your love life, or your sense of naval decorum. So whether you were dogging after Thalia’s heels to get back in her pants, or just to settle her back down, I don’t really give a rat’s ass.”
He glared up at me, clutching his stomach, breathing hard. “Fuh…fuck you.”
I kicked him in the side and he howled; nobody out there heard it: too much booze and laughter and George Ku Trio.
“You trailed after her, Jimmy. It’s time you told the truth. What did you see?”
Then he was up off the floor, tackling me, knocking me backward into the hard wood table, scattering chairs, and I had my back on the table, like I was something being served up and Bradford leapt on top of me, and his hands found my neck and he started to squeeze, fingernails digging into my flesh, and his reddening face looking down at me would make you think he was the one getting choked to death.
I tried to knee him in the nuts, but he’d anticipated that with the twist of his body, so I dug the nine-millimeter out from under my arm and shoved the nose into his neck and his eyes opened wide and the red drained out of his face and I didn’t have to tell him to let go. He just did, getting off me, backing off, but I was getting up, too, and the snout of the automatic never left the place in his throat where it was making a painful dimple.
Now we were standing facing each other, only his head was raised, his eyes looking down at me and at the gun in his neck.
I eased up the pressure, took half a step back, and he gasped a sigh of relief right before I smacked him alongside the head with the barrel of the automatic. He went down on one knee, moaning, damn near sobbing. I’d torn a nasty gash on his cheek that would heal into a scar that would remind him of me every time he fucking shaved.
“Now, I’m not a trained killing machine like you, Lieutenant,” I said. “I’m just a slum kid from Chicago who’s paid to bring in pickpockets and other lowlife thieves, and I’ve had to learn my killing the hard way, in the street. Are you ready to tell me what happened that night, or would you prefer to retire on a disability pension after I shoot off your goddamn kneecap?”
He sat on the floor. Breathing hard. He looked like he was about an inch away from weeping. I pulled one of the chairs over that had got scattered, and sat and didn’t train the gun on him, just held it casually in my hand.
“I…I wasn’t interested in Thalia anymore. She’s kind of a…” He swallowed and pointed to his temple. “…She’s not all there, you know? After I broke off with her…you’re right, it was me that broke off with her…she started to flaunt her loose behavior, runnin’ around with this beach boy—they call him Sammy, he was here at the Ala Wai that night, did you know that?”
“Yes. Does Sammy have a last name?”
“Not that I know of. Anyway, people were talking about her sleeping around with colored trash, and when Ray Stockdale called her a slut and she slapped him, I knew things were really getting out of hand.”
“So you followed her.”
“Not right away. A couple people stopped me, to talk. So she was out the door by the time I got down there, but I saw her, tagged after her. She was moving quickly, not wanting to see me or talk to me, keeping out in front.”
“You followed her down John Ena Road.”
“Past Waikiki Park, yes. She was pissed off, wouldn’t talk to me…. Frankly, I think this whole business with Sammy was her wanting to get back at me, to make me jealous.”
He didn’t look like much of a prize to me, not with blood on his face and puke on his white linen suit coat.
“She was almost running, and got herself so that she was up a good ways ahead of me, and some guys in a touring car pulled up…”
“A Ford Phaeton?”
He shook his head, no, shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t notice. Couldn’t swear to it. To be honest with ya, I was a little drunk myself. I did notice the ragtop being torn, flapping. Anyway, these guys, these niggers, how many I couldn’t say, two or more, cruise along by Thalia and one of ’em yells something to her out the window. I don’t know what exactly, you know how those colored guys are—‘Hey, baby, wanna go to a party.’ I think one of them said, ‘Hey, Clara Bow, want some oke?’ That sort of thing.”
“How did Thalia react?”
“Well…you gotta understand, I’d been lecturing her, as we walked along, about how she was gonna get herself in trouble, hangin’ out with this rough crowd, I mean, she was screwing this nigger Sammy, can you believe it? So I think, maybe just to show me, she said, ‘Sounds like fun’ or some such. I don’t know what she said.”
“But she sounded willing.”
“Yeah. They probably thought she was a hooker. That’s sort of a red light district along there, y’know.”
“I know. Go on, Jimmy.”
“Anyway, she looked back at me and you know what she did? Stuck her tongue out at me. Like a little girl. What an immature bratty cunt she is. So the car pulls along the curb, and two or three niggers get out, and Thalia’s kinda woozy from drinkin’ too much, and they’re kinda guidin’ her toward the car, and I just threw up my arms, said to hell with her, and turned back around.”
I sat forward. “Was it the Ala Moana boys, Jimmy? Was it Horace Ida, Joe Kahahawai…?”
“Probably.”
“Probably?”
He winced. “Maybe. Hell, I don’t know, I didn’t notice, they’re a bunch of fuckin’ niggers! How the hell was I supposed to tell ’em apart?”
“So you just walked off.”
“Yeah. I…and, uh…yeah, just walked off.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You were going to say something else, Jimmy. Finish your story.”
“It’s finished.”
I stood up, looked down at him, the nine-millimeter in hand, not so casually now. “What else did you see? You saw a struggle, didn’t you?”
“No! No, not…not exactly.”
I kicked his shoe. “What, Jimmy?”
“I heard her kinda…I dunno, squeal or maybe scream.”
“And you looked back, and what did you see?”
“They were kinda…draggin’ her into the car. It was like, you know, she maybe changed her mind. Maybe she was just doin’ it for show, saying yes to those boys, to get back at me, and once I turned around and walked off, she tried to brush the niggers off maybe…and they weren’t takin’ no for an answer.”
“They dragged her in the car and drove off. And what did you do about it, Jimmy?”
We both knew the answer. We both knew he hadn’t gone back and reported seeing an abduction, not to Tommie or the cops or anybody.
But I asked him again, anyway: “What did you do, Jimmy?”
He swallowed. “Nothing. Not a damn thing. I figured…she was an immature little bitch and a nasty little slut and the hell with her! Let her…let her get what she deserved.”