A Bird in the Hand

by Lynn Stansbury

  “Which one?” He giggled. “There’re two, you know. Won’t be enough birds to go around soon.”

  She really didn’t care. Other than to shut her mind up and keep Grayson walking toward the hospital. And maybe find out a little bit about Sakiko. “Sa’ili Tua’ua and his village are the only ones I know. They going to make a go of it?”

  They were almost through the trees and out into the baking sun of the hospital grounds before he answered. “Yeah,” he said. His voice was soft and slightly hoarse, like someone with laryngitis, like he had to force the sound out. “Yeah.” He was watching a small flock of birds dip and swoop off one end of the first hospital pavilion. They were roughly the size and shape of swallows, with that same Blue Angels quality of formation flying. As if reading her mind, Grayson said, “Yeah. Like swallows to Capistrano. Or turtles to the sea. Yeah.”

  CHAPTER 11

  After Welly cut off towards his cousin’s house, Han hopped a jitney to Nozaki’s where he had, mercifully, no actual sighting of the old lady, though she had pulled her Lincoln Continental land yacht up bumper-to-bumper with the back of his jeep. He bought two tepid bottles of water from the girl behind the counter inside and then drove through one of the old lady’s oleanders and out onto the road.

  The likelihood that Ped would still be at Paki’s was small but it was worth a try. Han drove the five hundred yards of blind curves among the brush and boulders to the wide spot in the road where Paki’s clung to the shore. The bar was closed. A hand-written sign pinned to the door said that there had been a death in Paki’s family in their home village at the other end of the island. Han had been in Samoa long enough to recognize that as an automatic twenty-four hour delay before he could talk to Paki or any of his staff. Funerals happen quickly in places where bodies rot fast, and they elicit total village attention. Han headed the jeep back to the station. He still wanted to talk to Sa’ili Tua’ua about the family politics of Nu’ufou, but he had learned the importance of spending at least a part of every day at least looking like a chief.

  He checked in at the front desk then went up to his own office. In driving rain, things got wet, but least the space had air movement and light that weren’t dependent on electricity. And it had a telephone that could be used in that rarest of Samoan commodities, privacy. He called the new hotel near the airport, and the two families who advertised themselves as B&B’s. Nobody missing. Particularly not a well-cared-for blondpalagi with a taste for local clothes. Then he tried the college, the airport information office, the teachers’ union and the Catholic aid organization. Likewise.

  He was staring at a small beetle progressing across his floor when the desk officer appeared in his doorway. She was the latest thing in DPS officers, a pretty young woman whose family had apparently decided that, like nursing in the 1950’s, with a high chief of Manu’a as chief of police, becoming a policewoman now conveyed sufficient status to be acceptable. Of course, that high chief was in Honolulu at the moment, collecting cultural glory in the form of a medical evaluation that couldn’t be done here or at least couldn’t be done at the level required for a paramount chief—nothing to do with being Chief of Police and everything to do with being one of the most important traditional chiefs in all of Samoa. The girl held out an envelope.

  “Telegram for you, Captain.”

  “Telegram,” he said, taking the folded paper. It certainly said Telegram on it. “I didn’t know you could still send telegrams.”

  “From Honolulu.”

  “From Honolulu.” He was beginning to sound stupid even to himself. He slit open the seal and nodded to the girl. “Thanks.” She stood in the doorway, smiling. “Thank-you,” he said again. He lifted the paper over his head, the universal Samoan gesture of thanks. “I’ll let you know if I need to make a reply.” The girl looked worried, and Han guessed that her English was of the school-girl variety, serviceable but not yet able to fill in the unspoken. “You can go back to the desk now,” he said gently.

  She grinned and the floor squeaked in farewell. Han opened the telegram.

  DEA regional quarterly report not yet arrived. Manu’a. The date was yesterday. Han stared at the paper. How could something that fucking simple be so fucking complicated? Like: how could something that’s basically a telephone call take twenty-four hours to arrive? And what does it mean to get a communication from a higher-up signed with the full power of his social position, like a Brit getting a telegram signed Wales. Not to mention quarterly reports of whose existence he, Han, had been hitherto entirely unaware. Or why a man who is supposed to be in hospital is aggravating about statistics for the Feds. Or why the old bastard hadn’t just picked up the telephone and called if he wanted to rattle Han’s cage. Han tucked the telegram in his shirt pocket and went downstairs.

  Over the next three hours, he learned that the reason he had been unaware of statistical reporting obligations to the regional Drug Enforcement Agency office was that, over the two years the DEA had been expecting such communications, they had never been compiled, much less sent. This possibly explained why the

  Old Man hadn’t want to talk, just to give orders. On the other hand, Han also discovered that something like twenty percent of his current salary was owing to a diversity grant from the DEA who, quid pro quo, wanted statistics in return. Tickled by the notion of being Samoa’s answer to diversity, he interrupted Ioane’s lunch to get him to ferret out at least the basic numbers. Then, feeling much more cheerful than he probably had any right to, he started up the cobbled street behind the station toward Sa’ili Tua’ua’s house, looking for background information and possibly an excuse for not going home for supper.

  Sa’ili Tua’ua was the only traditional Samoan Han felt comfortable enough with to think of as a friend, possibly because Sa’ili was the only traditional Samoan he knew who could pull off his culture’s core parlor trick, the tend the spaces business, with palagis as well as Samoans. With Samoans, Sa’ili was the astute, reserved and dignified but youthful high chief, shifting those qualities with absolute accuracy depending on the seniority of the chiefs around him and the nature of the interactions and the problems at hand. With palagis, he was himself, the perfectly integrated adult personality, intelligent, insightful, self-aware, self-deprecating, slyly humorous. But unlike Sa’ili’s cousin, Welly Tuiasosopo, whose technical skill and total self interest were a gold standard, Sa’ili Tua’ua had a saintly streak that had almost gotten him killed once and still made Han nervous. Global forgiveness is all very well but a sense of self preservation would have been more useful. You could never trust Sa’ili not to get in over his head.

  Coming up to the level of Sa’ili’s house, Han saw the two cousins seated, palagi style, in chairs, on the far side of the forward, open, part of the house, with its view out over the bay. Welly Tuiasosopo had an empty beer bottle in one hand; Sa’ili had an orange soda. Welly hailed him.

  “I’ve solved your problem about the Baltic schooner. You wanted to know what they’re up to: they’re stealing our money.”

  Han swung himself up onto the verandah and sat, like any other important chief, on a thick pandanus mat on the floor with his back against a pillar. “That’s the second time I’ve heard that today. Girls at the Gooney Bird feel the same way.”

  Welly handed him a bottle of water from the cooler behind the chairs. “Worse than that, they’re trying to steal our Birdman.”

  Han looked at Sa’ili. “Actually, the way I hear it, they’re trying to drown him. He here? I’d like to talk to him.”

  Sa’ili shook his head. “He had an appointment at the office of the Samoa Times in Pago earlier this afternoon. He has been writing an article about the birds in our park. Your wife offered to drop him there on her way home. She was here today working with my sister and the Women’s Group. But he must get here soon, for it will be evening prayers time.”

  Han wouldn’t have said
that the Birdman looked like he gave much of a shit about evening prayers, but the traditional curfew period would delay his, Han’s, getting supper. “Okay. Well, I’ll catch up with him eventually.” Han didn’t need the Birdman to host Ped for a night or so in the cooler. Whenever he finally caught up with the son-of-a-bitch. He had lots of other things he wanted to talk to Ped about. He drank half a liter of water in one go. “You guys doing T-shirts?”

  “T-shirts?”

  “To advertise your eco-tourism gig.”

  “Not yet,” Sa’ili said, his eyebrows going up. “Good idea, though.” He grinned slyly. “I’ll put the idea to your wife. Her drawings are very beautiful.”

  “For T-shirts?”

  “Your wife is a very fine artist. I would have thought you knew that.” Han ignored him and he went on. “Why do you ask about T-shirts?”

  “Just.put something together I saw earlier today. A logo on a T-shirt.” Like any good cop, Han avoided giving out information he didn’t absolutely have to.

  Welly said: “That what the dead girl was wearing?” Han grunted. So much for controlling the flow of information during an investigation.

  Sa’ili looked at them both. “What dead girl?”

  Welly opened his mouth, but Han spoke first. “Tan shirt, printed with a drawing of trees and a written phrase, something, something, vao.”

  “Just vao? Not vaomatua?”

  “Yeah. What’s vaomatua?”

  “Virgin forest. Vao is just forest. There is a rain-forest preservation group, calls itself O le vaomatua, The Virgin Forest. But I’ve seen their logo. Doesn’t sound like what you’re describing. You don’t remember the other words?”

  “Fa’a something.” He pulled out his notes. “Fa’aola o le vao.”

  “’Save the forest’, like, save the life of..”

  A soft rush sounded from the forested cliffs behind the house. Suddenly, rain poured from the sky, curtaining the space in flowing silver. A telephone warbled behind them, and Sa’ili’s sister carried a cordless out to Welly. The surgeon rose and walked away from them, listening. The sound of the rain made spaces as private as walking into another room.

  “So,” Han said. “The eco-tourism thing’s actually working?”

  “Yes. Your wife knows how to make Samoan things run. I don’t know quite how she does it. Her chief allies seem to be Mrs. Nozaki and Neil Hutchinson’s wife. Neither of whom are famous in Samoa for diplomacy.”

  “Well, Adele Hutchinson may be Hawai’i Japanese, but mainly, she’s a pediatrician. Hard for an American pediatrician to have much patience with attitudes like: Children are not yet members of the family.’” Han held up his hand. “Hey, I’m not criticizing. Traditional Korea didn’t consider kids born until they’d survived a hundred days.”

  Sa’ili smiled absently and went on. “We need some way to provide refreshment in the village. The trip even to the village itself is too difficult not to have some way of giving guests a break before and after the forest walk. But pure village hospitality puts a strain on the families and “ The smile developed a wry corner. “.Creates rivalries. Our grants through the Native Lands Preservation Act allow for a little local enterprise. Sakiko keeps the business end from getting too…family. She has a gift for avoiding offense.” Funny, Han thought. Can’t say I knew that. “And,” Sa’ili went on, “Through you, she has roughly the status of a talking chief s wife, which helps.”

  Han snorted. The prior Assistant Chief of Police had been Welly Tuiasosopo’s predecessor in the Sapatu title. Han’s assumption of the duties as acting AC had carried tacit traditional chiefly status as well. Han had never been quite sure how much of that was how Samoan culture really operated or the amazing flexibility of that culture to do what it needed to do while claiming all the while to be following the rules exactly.

  He eased his shoulders. “Well, she’s run her own studio for years. Tell me, what do you know about problems between Nu’ufou and the other villages around there?”

  The rain was slower now. Sunlight broke through, sparking gold from the green and silver. “Does this have to do with the death you don’t want to tell me about?”

  “It may. But I don’t want to hear about it through the general rumor mill.”

  The corners of Sa’ili’s mouth twitched. “Believe me, if a death has become a police concern, each family potentially involved is way ahead in the spread of mis-information, entirely calculated to shift blame to the other families.”

  Suddenly suspicious, Han said, “Had you heard about this already?”

  “Alas, no. My talking chief, who should have related such a juicy bit to me right away, was too interested in beer to inform me properly.”

  “So what can you tell me about the politics of that area?”

  “Along the main road or toward the sea?”

  “Toward the sea.”

  Sa’ili sat quietly for a time, as if working very carefully through what he was going to say. Conscious evasion? Or just the complexity of explaining the more obscure reasons that human beings fight with each other to someone of a different culture?

  “Without going into the complexities of who married whom in what generation and then went on to have a startling number of children survive to adulthood, marry, and themselves breed successfully…then get knocked around like billiard balls by the building of the airport.. I suppose the most accurate—as well as the most Samoan—explanation is something like this. Through all of the turmoil in that district over the last seventy-five years, the one blessing was that each of the three major family groups managed to elevate to their senior talking chief titles not just the usual run of clever, articulate sons-of-bitches traditionally selected as talking chiefs, but exceptionally clever, articulate, sons-of-bitches.”

  “So it kept things balanced.”

  “Basically, yes. There have certainly been the occasional wars between young mens’ groups: lots of alcohol and broken heads, stone bruises and bottle cuts. Two, three, um, maybe four, actual deaths over that period.”

  “Not exactly Margaret Meade.”

  Sa’ili rolled his eyes and grinned. “No. But we are talking three-quarters of a century. And very much in the usual manner: overt, witnessed and with clear motivations, whether or not one agrees with them.” Han nodded. “And your body?”

  “Palagi, about twenty. Found in the Nu’ufou village dump.” Sa’ili’s smile faded. “You said that the only good thing was the balance between the talking chiefs.”

  “Talking chiefs are like family lawyers and British barristers rolled into one. Through much of the last thirty years, these three were in fact the same three people. And as Samoan things often do, over time they had worked out a kind mutually respectful equilibrium. And then, about five years ago, one of them, the chap from Nu’ufou, died. His replacement is very much of the quality of his predecessor, if not more so “

  “But he’s thirty years younger and has twice the energy “

  “Quadruple. And he has a degree in accounting from the University of Hawai’i. And one of the other chiefs has late-stage diabetes and the third had a stroke last year. Over the long haul, one can hope that things will balance out.”

  “But for now, things are rough as the two other families become increasingly sure that they’re being short-changed.”

  “Exactly. And that’s a set up not just for inter-but intra-family strife as lower-level chiefs feel that their own talents are being squandered.”

  Han snorted. “You know me: militaristic iron-age aristocracy. It’s a hell of a lot easier just to chop off a bunch of heads. All this negotiation could make a person crazy.”

  “Yes, but the craziness does not usually including murdering young women and hiding bodies in a refuse dump.”

  “Well, we don’t know that. I mean that the intention was to
hide it. Maybe she’s got something to do with one of the families that’s feeling cheated by the move to get the dumpsite made official. Be a great way to queer that deal.”

  “Goodness, you have a twisted mind.”

  Han snorted again. “I’ve been a homicide cop for fifteen years. There is nothing I haven’t seen people kill people for. At least here, people know the people they kill. And do it face-to-face.” And could you ever go back to the other? The thought filled his mind, blinding him for a moment. He distracted himself by shifting his butt on the mat.

  “Well,” Sa’ili said. Han had an uncomfortable feeling that Sa’ili knew what he had been thinking. “As your consultant on Samoan traditional values, it does seem unlikely.” The Samoan grinned suddenly. “But you might do well to inquire if any young men from either of the other two families are known to have been dating a palagi girl, and if so, where she is now. Our young men do pick up odd habits in L.A. and San Francisco.”

  Han grunted. “So, what’s with the Birdman? He living here?” Welly said he wasn’t, but Welly’s perceptions were like Swiss cheese, good enough if you didn’t mind the holes.

  “Professor Osgood suggested him.” Palagis, Han thought, called the head of the community college Hank, emphasizing their own importance by familiarity. Sa’ili, as a good Samoan, played a subtler game by courtesy. He also wasn’t really answering Han’s question. “We needed someone who could tell us what was there, whether it was worth the effort. He’s been doing the same sort of thing for the new National Park being set up on Ofu-Olosega. And we needed someone who could guide but also train village boys to guide. Girls too, if they want to, though I can’t imagine the old ladies letting girls go into the forest.”

  “Too many ghosts?”

  “Indeed.” Sa’ili’s face was suddenly tight, as if stretched farther than tending the spaces allowed. Ghosts are not to be carelessly spoken of. In Han’s experience, a disproportionate number of the ghosts on Samoan mountainsides were young men who had committed suicide, possibly as the only way they could see out of the bonds of the traditional culture. But he didn’t say that. Sa’ili’s sense of who Han was and who they were together seemed to reassert itself. “Too many young men, more like.”