Han was suddenly aware of movement out in the bay. A varnished dinghy with four people motored smoothly up to the big schooner, followed by a Boston whaler with four more people. Han could make out one of the crew and one of the Hawaiian-Chinese girls in each boat. The schooner’s dinghy had two other men and the whaler two other women. One was a blond.
“Tourism,” McGee called up to him.
Han nodded. “Or opportunism. You up for another trip?”
“Sure. But you owe me.”
As McGee rowed back out to the schooner, Han watched the party being unloaded. First, the girl in the schooner’s dinghy scrambled up the ladder showing lots of honey brown glutes under her little short shorts to the two male passengers, while the sailor—Han recognized him as the skipper—steadied the boat. Then the girl turned, bending to reach out a hand and help the two passengers up the ladder, and, by the way, offering deep frontal views. Then the skipper swarmed up the ladder, tied the dinghy quickly off the back end of the boat and was ready, Eric the Bodice Ripper himself, lots of pecs and strong white teeth, to do the same for the ladies in the second boat while his partner held the whaler against the yacht. The blond in the whaler wasn’t the girl from their crew.
They hadn’t noticed McGee’s approach. The skipper called down to the man in the whaler in their own language. Han heard the name, Ped, and then, Wendy. In a flash, seeing their permits, Han remembered the blond girl’s name: Wendy Sondheim. From the skipper’s tone, the rest was probably something like: go find those useless assholes and get ‘em back here.
Han hailed the schooner. “Police.” He held up his ID. But, like on the green this morning, they knew perfectly well who he was. “I’d like to talk to Ped myself. Complaint of assault.” Technically, of course, no complaint had been filed yet that Han knew about. But there had been plenty of other complaints in the last week. “And I’d like to talk to Wendy Sondheim as well. Little matter of possession of illegal substances.” In a pinch, you also make up the complaints, though he had a feeling this was one charge he was never going to have to hustle proof for.
Han read the skipper’s face easily enough: last thing in the world he wanted was problems with the cops around his guests. “I want them also, Lieutenant. My partner goes for them now.” No reason a good captain can’t be a great liar, but the man’s tone certainly suggested nothing more than annoyance at his tardy crew.
“Good. Why don’t I go with him?” The man in the whaler looked up at his skipper who grunted something. McGee sculled crabwise, sandwiching the whaler against the schooner.
For all of his distaste for boats in general and small tippy boats in particular, Han had learned a few things about them in his two years in Samoa. He knew that it was possible for him to get from a dinghy controlled by a man who knew what he was doing into something as stable as a Boston whaler without falling into the water or breaking an ankle. And he was both cop enough and Korean enough to know that both of these sailors knew that letting him come to harm would be a bad move, whatever the obvious temptations. Settling himself on the middle thwart of the whaler, he nodded to McGee.
“Thanks. I owe you.”
McGee shoved off. “Right then. See you ‘round. Thanks for the bit on the anchorage.”
Han nodded to the crewman in the whaler. The man swung the boat around and headed back to the shore, cranking the engine up. The boat bounded across the open water in noisy whoomps. A cynical man might have thought he was trying to avoid conversation.
Han shouted, “Wendy and Ped; they hang together all the time?” The little whaler bucked harder. The man at the tiller smiled and nodded. “They spend last night on the boat?” The man shrugged and smiled again. Me no speak-a de English, Han thought. Yeah, right.
The old Navy dock was a quarter-mile of rock, concrete, and pilings in the main cove along the south shore of the bay. The hotel had added a lacing of wooden floats and catwalks to the outer end for its own small fleet of pleasure craft. The crewman edged the whaler up to one of the floating docks, expertly lassoed a bollard, cut the motor and motioned Han out of the boat, every inch the accommodating tourism professional. The moment Han was on the dock, the man in the boat fired up the motor again, flipped his line off of the mooring, and sped away with a jaunty wave.
“Fuck!” Han said aloud.
“Nah, too early in the day for that, man.”
The wooly head and wild moustache of Han’s friend, the Samoan surgeon, Welly Tuiasosopo, peered over the edge of the main dock. Han started up the stairs.
“Don’t you ever work?”
“I’m a specialist. I get called in for the difficult cases.”
“If they can find you.”
They fell in step up the gravel drive. The hotel had been half-finished for all the time Han had been in Samoa, the hamburgers tasted like Styrofoam, and the running water and electricity were if anything less predictable than anywhere else on the island. But the bar was a handsome room overlooking the harbor, and alcohol is alcohol.
“You just come from the bar?”
“Not just, but a while ago.”
“I’m looking for a sailor off the Baltic schooner, the big, stupid one called Ped. And the blond girl, Wendy, that hangs out with him.”
“They’re all big and stupid,” Welly said absently. “You mean the blond from the boat?”
“Is there more than one?”
They walked together through the outer lobby, like at the hospital, a broad, screened lanai. “Yeah, well, you can always hope.” Welly pushed into the lounge.
“What does that mean?”
“Whatever. You think he killed her?”
“Killed who?” Han said automatically. Incomprehensibly elliptical conversations with Welly Tuiasosopo were the norm. Han looked carefully around the room, though he could tell from the calm Ped wasn’t there.
“Don’t be cute, man. Girl’s body. In the dump.”
“You been talking to Ann?”
“What’s Ann got to do with it?”
“Never mind.” The stones and the mynah birds talked to Welly, along with every other damned body on the island. Han turned back and went into the TV bar. No Ped, no Wendy, and no one admitting seeing them. Welly lifted a hand to the barflies but followed Han out into the lobby. Han looked at him. “Have you seen them today?”
“Who?”
“Ped. The sailor off of the Baltic schooner. The one I’m looking for. And the blond girl from the boat. Or any other goddamned blond, for that matter.”
“Temper, temper, man. The bloke, the sailor; he was at Paki’s earlier today.”
“Before or after he was raising hell at the Gooney Bird at eight o’clock this morning?”
“Paki doesn’t open ‘til nine. And I did rounds at the hospital this morning,” Welly said virtuously. “So I didn’t get to Paki’s til after ten. And, yeah, I have seen him with the blond.”
“The one from the boat? At Paki’s?”
“Nah. They didn’t discover Paki’s ‘til day before yesterday. They do the hotel mainly, like most palagi. Though I’d swear I saw her at the Gooney Bird a couple a nights ago.”
Han stopped. “The Gooney Bird?” Drinkers in Samoa segregated fairly clearly: whites at the hotel and hard case locals at the Gooney Bird, with Paki’s the only potential middle ground. The Korean fisherman fended for themselves among the Tongan squatters on the hillsides above the cannery. The only place women—and only palagi women at that—drank in public was the hotel or maybe Paki’s. Han could imagine the rare European like McGee, very much chaperoned by a regular like Welly Tuiasosopo, going into the Gooney Bird, but never a woman. “You sure?”
Welly grinned and shrugged. “What’s sure on Saturday night at midnight?”
“Saturday night? Midnight? You making that up, or is that when you think
you saw her? Who was she with?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Your friend Ped, maybe. It was quite the little ecumenical drinking party. Had a bunch apalagis there the last week or so. Gooney Bird’s movin’ up in the world. You been here too long, thinkin’ like a palagi.”
“I am a palagi. Just happen to have slanted eyes.” Han pushed through the heavy glass doors into the heat and started down the graveled drive. “Ped still at Paki’s today when you left?”
The first hint of an afternoon breeze came down off of the mountainsides, rattling the tops of the palm trees and sending their shadows into crazy dances across the stones. “Can’t remember,” Welly said. “Think so.”
“No girls at Paki’s, right?”
“Not that kind. At least, not pros. Where’s your jeep, man?”
“At Nozaki’s.”
“Shit. That’s a hike. I was going to get you to take me up to Sa’ili’s.”
Welly always said he didn’t have a car because he didn’t want to be bothered: forty thousand people and five thousand cars on one small island with one paved road was already too many. But the DPS Motor Vehicles Division, all one of him and a very senior chief in his home village, had long since figured out that Welly Tuiasosopo behind the wheel of a car was not in the long-term community interest. As a result, both as a friend and because the nature of both of their jobs meant that they were often headed in the same direction at the same time, Han spent a lot of time ferrying the surgeon around.
“Sorry,” Han said and headed off toward Fagatogo. He heard the slap of Welly’s sandals as the surgeon trotted after him. They dodged into the shade of the banyans clinging to the cliff on the leeward side of the road. “Who was that they just ferried out to the schooner?”
“Tourists. Staying at the hotel. Checked in anyway. Fastest case of advanced Samoa shock I’ve ever seen: been here less than an hour and already in the hotel lounge drinking and complaining about everything. And the power didn’t even go out this morning. They picked ‘em up in there.”
“But Ped and Wendy weren’t with them.”
“Nope. Not that I saw anyway.”
“So what’s with these guys? Day tripping? Cruises?” Han stopped on the road and looked out across the bay. From where they were, they could just see the big schooner motoring slowly out toward open water. The big back sail was being cranked up. Did that mean the crewman had found the two AWOLs? Damn. As they watched, the sail filled, clean and tight, and the boat shouldered into the wind and picked up speed.
“Dunno. You should ask Sa’ili. If it’s anything official, he’s going to know about it.”
Damn, Han thought again, suddenly conscious of being hot, thirsty and faintly nauseated, first stages of dehydration. Sa’ili and the damned Birdman. Well, he, Han, needed fluids, and Sa’ili was as good a source as any. “How’s he doing? Haven’t seen him in the last few weeks.”
“Sa’ili? He’s okay. Drags around like a bird with a broken wing when he wants sympathy. But he’s gettin’ better.”
Han grunted. “Fucking lucky he’s alive.” Sa’ili had been badly injured in the shoot-out that had climaxed the family brouhaha over who should be named to the high chief title he now held. Han started down the road again. “Since when’s the Birdman been living with him?” Sa’ili would be able to give him the scoop on the dump site families. That was way down on his list of hot background to a dead white girl, but he did need to find out whatever there was to know.
“Not living. Just staying, like. Sa’ili’s sister says having a palagi around is like letting chickens in the house, make too much mess. Too much beer bottles.” Han wondered how the sister felt about Welly’s beer bottles. “Mostly he stays on Ofu. Has some kind of a little place there. He was just over here for a couple of days last week. Ended up in the hospital with an abscess in his hand. Just let him out this morning.”
“When’d you admit him?”
“Shit. I don’t remember. Sunday? Monday? Ask Ann. She helped me in OR.”
Han strode down the hill. The shade from the trees was beginning to move out onto the tarmac but the pavement still pulsed with heat.
“Ever see any of the schooner crowd with any local palagi girls? Teachers. Nurses “
“…Hippies? Nah. Why bother. Got plenty good stuff of their own. How about do-girl? You sure you got the right flavor?”
“She was pregnant.”
Welly was silent for a few paces. “Speaking of do-girl, saw your pal Ped slug at one who tried to move on him at the Gooney Bird, first night they were here.”
The do-girl crowd weren’t overt pros like the bar girls but, like the mynah birds, perpetual opportunists.
Han snorted. “Never could get anyone to admit to me what started that one. But it doesn’t mean anything. That’s just for show. Doesn’t mean he won’t be out back ten minutes later with the guy’s head in his crotch.”
“An’ here I thought you’re kind of naive. For a copper, that is.” Welly had spent half his life in New Zealand and his accent and his idioms were a vaguely Commonwealth patois, but Han was remembering McGee, calling him a copper this morning.
“Lot about me you don’t know,” he said shortly.
“Lot about lots of things I don’t know. But what I don’t know doesn’t worry me, because what I do know, I know better than anybody else for a thousand miles in any direction.”
CHAPTER 10
Ann preferred swimming later in the day, when the sun dropped behind the mountains, gilding the ridges, and the sky went teal and violet beyond the silver clouds. But tonight she had an ER shift, and, besides, early evening is the sacred time of day, when village families gather for prayers and the village young men’s organization prowls, enforcing the hour-long curfew between six and seven. Not the time to waltz through the village in a bathing suit. So she did her laps around the four small yachts anchored in the cove and wondered if she’d still feel comfortable swimming here when it became McGee’s back yard.
She flipped onto her back and did one more circle looking up into the huge fluffy clouds bumbling across the mountain ridges under the blue, blue sky. McGee was attractive in a women’s magazine check-list sort of way. But something about him turned her off and not just the beard. A distrust of obvious beauty or some deeper, more animal recognition of threat? It didn’t seem that profound. Just, having known Han, having been…whatever they had been for a year, a cool disinterest in anyone else. Suddenly, for the first time since Sakiko’s return, Ann’s future opened before her, today, tomorrow, and all the tomorrows after that, forever and forever. For a moment, the sky was gone and the ocean felt like tears. Blinded by the darkness in her own head, she came around the last boat into the shallows and stood up to wade into shore
Don Grayson, the Birdman, stood on the shore, watching her, a silly grin on his face. His right forearm with its bundled hand was cradled across his middle. He waved his good hand. “Hi,” he said. “Hi.”
Grayson was all but standing on her towel. Ann had never been much for displaying her body. If you’ve got it, flaunt it, was her sisters’ motto. They had it. She didn’t. But she couldn’t just stand there waist deep in water waiting for him to go away. She marched up onto the shore with as much noise and splash as she could short of throwing water at him to get him to back off. He didn’t move but stood there, still with the shit-eating grin, as she picked up her towel and wrapped it around her.
“Is there something I can do for you?” Hearing her own voice, she snorted grimly. Her father’s secretary, communicating that the professor was not to be disturbed. Grayson held out his bad hand. It had been re-dressed, but the gauze was dirty again and half unwrapped.
“Worse, I think.” He giggled. Despite the sun, his face was grey under his beard, something more than the shade from his hat. Then he shivered. Something of a trick in a place as h
ot as Samoa.
Mercifully, for herself perhaps even more than Grayson, her mind snapped back from where ever it had been to her job. “Umm. Let’s walk you up to the hospital and get you sorted out. Can you walk alright?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m fine. Just, you know, feels weird.” He giggled again. “You and Dr. What’s-his-name told me to come back if it felt weird. Well, it feels weird.” Ann put her hand behind the man’s elbow, turned and started walking up the beach toward the road. As soon as he was moving, she let her hand drop. Funny, she thought, how automatic both gestures were. The one as automatic as leading one of her sisters’ horses onto a trailer: just clip the lead to the halter, turn and walk on. Don’t look at the animal, and don’t let him think he has any other choice. But, just as clear, the notion that, other than strictly in the role of physician, this was a person she did not wish to touch. A little ashamed of herself, she offered a hand to help him up the bank from the beach to the side of the road. And then let go as soon as he was standing beside her. He grinned at her suddenly, releasing her hand with just the slightest hesitation. She ignored him, checked for non-existent traffic and hustled him across the road toward the hospital drive. Heat from the paving beat up at them in waves.
The crushed shell gravel of the hospital drive, under the overarching trees, was a little cooler. Ann walked silently beside Grayson, thinking that, like McGee, as a catalogue of parts, Grayson wasn’t bad-looking. He was articulate, educated, even courageous, if one took his confrontation of the sailor on the dock this morning as courageous. Though it seemed in retrospect more like adolescent bravado. But what makes one man attractive and another one not? Not a question you want to get too close to when you have a cop in your repertoire. Maybe the problem was just immaturity. The decade or so between her and Grayson seemed more like double that. Wouldn’t bother a man. All a man wants is someone to turn him on, make him feel like a stud again. No rational woman depends on a teenage male for anything except maybe delivering the newspaper.
For something to say, she said, “So how’s the eco-tourism project going?”
A Bird in the Hand Page 6