“You’re suggesting,” said Alder, “blackmail!”
“Superb, my dear sir,” cried Pleschette. “That steel trap mind of yours, that cold, clear logic. It gets right to the heart of the matter. Blackmail! It has an ugly sound. Could we not call it retribution — punishment?”
“And that’s the long and the short of it,” said Alder. “Behind the Niagara of words, the mountain of sham and flimflam, behind it all is the one simple truth. The basic thing, blackmail!”
“Please, Mr. Alder. I don’t like the word. I told you—”
“Shakedown,” said Alder. “You’re going to shake down your brother.”
“He has so much,” said Pleschette doggedly. “He has so much and I have so little. He has youth. He is only forty-seven years of age. I am sixty-two. He has many more productive years ahead of him. He can earn money, much more. I have a barren old age ahead of me.”
“You can always go back to prison,” retorted Alder. “Your reading, your studies. Your old friends.”
“True,” admitted Pleschette, “some of the happiest days of my life have been in prison. The good, plain prison fare, the comfortable cells, the knowledge that one does not have to worry, because others are looking out for him. But is paternalism a good thing? Is it natural for a man to have someone else shoulder his burden? No, Mr. Alder, man was given a brain, a heart, and a soul. He was given lordship over the creatures of the earth. One must assume that burden. It is man’s bounden duty to try... to try to better himself, so that the world is a better place for his having been in it. We owe it to humanity.”
Alder settled down in his seat. “Keep talking,” he said. “I’m going to get an hour’s sleep, but don’t let it bother you. Just talk. I won’t be listening, but it may amuse you.”
He closed his eyes and in a little while he slept.
Chapter 22
In the 1920’s it had been a modest hotel for tourists of limited means. As it became older and shabbier it lost its tourist patronage and degenerated into a third-rate hotel for seamen, Chinese, and indigents of all nationalities and shades of color. It acquired a bad reputation. Raids were frequent and police pounded the corridors and the locked doors on many an occasion. Suicides were found in the room. Brawls, knifings were common and even murder was not unknown.
For two years the hotel was closed. Then it was leased by Carrie Goddard. A restaurant was installed on the street floor and the upstairs thoroughly refurbished. No floodlights announced the opening of the business upstairs. There were no advertisements in the Honolulu Advertiser, but prospective patrons knew of it.
It was a good house. There was a distinctively furnished lounge and bar. There were tables and low lights. Food was excellent, the liquor was uncut and champagne was freely bought and freely drunk.
The twenty girls who were with Carrie at the première were all new girls from the mainland, fresh faces and bodies that had not been exposed before in Honolulu.
Carrie knew her trade and her establishment prospered. Girls who deteriorated too rapidly were turned adrift or sent to other islands in the Pacific and replaced from the mainland.
Among the early contingents of girls was Marty Brown. She was only sixteen, a strikingly attractive brunette.
Her flawless white skin, contrasting with her dark hair, gave her the appearance of a European, an exotic beauty from one of the Slavic countries. It was Carrie who suggested to Marty that she change her name to Helga Kossoff. Her fee was raised to twenty-five dollars. Very expensive for prewar Honolulu. In spite of the high fee, she worked as much as any of the cheaper girls.
Helga was aloof. Men bought her and came back. Sometimes too often. They talked about her and they thought about her and sometimes, when they returned, they became savage. They were not satisfied.
Pearl Harbor was attacked and the world changed overnight. Carrie Goddard became exceedingly prosperous. Her clients now wore uniforms. A civilian was a rare sight. Because of her higher prices, the quality of her food, her liquors, her girls, the patronage was largely officers. There was no class barrier, but it cost money to spend an evening at Carrie’s.
Helga Kossoff’s price increased to fifty dollars. In 1944, she was twenty-two. Her beauty was breathtaking.
She came into the lounge one evening and looked around. She wore a satin green gown that was cut very low, but not too low. Her hair was piled high on her head in a coiffure that made her look like — like men wished all women would look. Her hazel eyes were clear and when she looked at a man it seemed to him that she was as much aware of him as he was of her. Her features were classic, her skin as white and flawless as it had been at sixteen.
A full colonel got up from a table and stared at her. Helga returned his look and walked past him. She heard his hoarse breathing. Carrie Goddard, exchanging pleasantries with a navy lieutenant, watched Helga sizing up the colonel. A faint smile flitted across her features as Helga continued on to the bar.
A lean young officer sat on a padded stool. There was a glass of untasted whisky in his hand. He was staring at the backbar mirror, but saw nothing in it. He was no more than twenty-five, but had twin silver bars on each shoulder. Had he been an aviator the rank for one so young would not have been exceptionable, but the young captain wore the crossed rifles of the infantryman on his lapels.
Helga stopped beside the infantry officer. She leaned her back against the bar, let her eyes roam around the room. The full colonel came forward. He had been drinking heavily and his eyes were beady.
“All right, beautiful,” he said, “you’ve got yourself a pigeon.”
“A chicken,” retorted Helga. “A chicken colonel.”
The colonel reached out and gripped her bare arm. “I’ll buy you a drink first.”
“Thank you,” said Helga, “but I’m not available.”
“Reserved, eh? Well, he ain’t here. Time he comes we can be done.”
“A fast man.”
“Fast and good,” said the colonel.
“I’m not available.”
She looked down pointedly at the colonel’s hand gripping her arm. He removed it, but he turned ugly. “Look,” he said, “the lucky man — he’s a soldier?”
“Yes,”
“What’s his rank?”
“Rank? What’s that?”
“He’s a lieutenant, captain — major? I probably out-rank him. I don’t see any generals around here.”
Helga reached out her left hand, placed it on the arm of the captain beside her. He still did not look at her, did not even seem to be aware that she had put her hand on his arm.
The colonel scowled at the captain, who was completely oblivious of him. “A captain, a lousy, goddam captain!”
Helga said, “Get lost, Colonel!”
Perspiration was on the colonel’s face. The veins on his red neck stood out. His mouth opened to make an issue of it. But he was not yet drunk enough. A drink or two more and he would forget that he was a full colonel and a gentleman. He would remember only that he was a colonel. He said hoarsely, “I’ll catch you next time around.”
He reeled away.
Helga said to the captain, “Thank you.”
He made no reply. He continued to stare sightlessly at the backbar mirror.