A Bird in the Hand

by Lynn Stansbury

  Ioane Ioane walked the rest of the way into Fagatogo, thinking about the uses of night.

  CHAPTER 24

  For what little was left of the night, Han slept like the dead. Maybe it was the antibiotic starting to work or maybe it was just desperation on his brain’s part, but nothing got through to him until after daybreak. Then, the door of his office swung open, ramming his feet as he lay on his futon on the floor, and a stream of hot tea projected through the half-open door, fortunately on a slightly different vector than Han’s body.

  “Ayieee. Lieutenant!” Ioane knelt beside Han’s futon, all but weeping and probably seeing his police career evaporating like the tea steaming up from Han’s office floor. Han rolled up on one elbow, hitched his lavalava around his waist and tried to decide if what had just happened was real. The stinging in his toes suggested that it was.

  “What’s up?”

  Ioane looked at Han and, with the agility of mind that Han had always felt would be the making of this young man, said, “Ah. Mrs. Nozaki says the palagis of the big boat do big shopping this morning, because they leave for Ofu tomorrow. I think you will drink tea before you speak to the girls of the boat.”

  “You just didn’t think I’d still be asleep stretched out on the floor. Okay. Well. You’re right. I would like some tea before I talk to the girls from the boat.” He sat up. “Particularly before I have to show them the body of that girl in the morgue. I would also like a shower.” He yawned. No headache. He looked at

  Ioane. “If you’ll do the tea, I’ll do the shower “ Ioane was still crouched beside the futon, looking blank. “.Since it won’t work the other way around.”

  “No, sir.” Ioane all but saluted as he left.

  Han pulled a clean towel out of a filing cabinet and went out to shower under the spigot behind the station. Ioane had certainly been out talking to old Mrs. Nozaki damned early. But maybe he had just stopped there for breakfast on his way in to work. Back upstairs, Han found a whole pot of tea, a clean dry mug and a second mug with milk. He dressed and stood for a moment, drinking tea and looking out at his view of the bay. An elegant skiff of varnished wood with four people in it—presumably the entire remaining crew of the Baltic schooner—moved across Han’s vision. He trotted down the stairs, shouted for Ioane, and went out into the street.

  No jeep.

  “Where’s the jeep?”

  Looking at Ioane’s face, Han suddenly had another explanation for the early morning gift of hot tea. “You didn’t wreck it, did you?”

  “No, sir. It…it stopped at Paki’s. Last night. As I drived….”

  “Drove,” Han said automatically.

  “.. .Drove…home. I do not know why.”

  “Okay, well, rout out Mose and get him to look at it. Ifhe can’t figure it out, call Sarge at the hospital. You didn’t try to sleep in it, did you?” Ioane shook his head. Misery seemed to be giving way to confusion bordering on terror. “Well, that at least shows some sense. After you get the jeep sorted out, go home. Take the day off. Get some sleep somewhere decent.” Han marched off across the street toward Nozaki’s. “Only don’t forget to leave me my keys.”

  Behind him, Ioane’s voice said faintly, “No, sir.”

  The girls’ names were Evalani Lee-Kane and Emma Jean Lee, they were no known relation to each other, and they accepted with somewhat puzzled grace Han’s apology at not having a woman police officer to go with them as chaperone to the hospital. With luck, he could find Ann at the hospital and have her with him when he took the girls (in self-defense, he was already thinking of them as Lee-girl-1 and Lee-girl-2) into the morgue. They were every bit as beautiful up close as they were at a distance, even more disturbingly so crammed into the tiny taxi he hailed to transport the three of them out to the hospital. No one spoke until they were going up the steps onto the front porch of the hospital.

  “Is it going to be really yucky?” said Lee-girl-1. She was the one who always spoke first.

  “I’ve never seen a dead person before. I mean, except on TV,” said Lee-girl-2.

  They each looked confidingly into his face as they spoke. He held the screen door open for them, enjoying the little flirtation. But, following them inside, he guessed there was another reason they had been so unconcerned about having the Samoan woman officer chaperone. For these good Hawaiian girls, Samoans meant crime, violence, danger. Han’s Asian face would be the one they remembered across the Honolulu precinct desk to whom they had reported the missing dog or the missing bicycle, tried to talk out of the first speeding ticket. Oh, well. He gestured to the benches in the lobby.

  “Wait here. I’ll find someone to let us in.” What he actually did was make a lightning tour of the wards, looking for Ann, but was told at each stop that she hadn’t been in this morning. That was unusual. He knew she was usually done her rounds, even on a Saturday morning, well before eight. He was annoyed because he needed her but also wondering if this was something to do with her odd behavior recently. Was she getting it off with McGee? Or was it the Bird-man? She’d really been peculiar last night. He’d half expected a lecture on undue force. Finally, he wandered over to the guard shack and asked Sarge for the keys to the morgue.

  “Ioane called,” the guard said. “Mose says you have run out of gas.”

  “Huh?”

  The guard grinned. “The gauge is stuck.”

  Han snorted. “Story of my life.” He lifted the keys over his head in thanks and went back over to the hospital.

  Lee-girl-1 put her hands over her face, then turned away and barfed into the trash can. Lee-girl-2 stood looking down at the blackened face surrounded by its cowl of black plastic on the slab in the freezer. She looked up briefly at Han, as if to reassure herself that she was not alone, and then back at the body. Finally, she nodded, looking up at Han again.

  “I think so,” she said. “Did she…was there any jewelry?” She seemed suddenly aware of her shipmate’s noisy congress with the trashcan and went over to put an arm around the other girl, support her forehead with her other hand. Han closed the freezer thinking, she’s not only gorgeous, she’s trainable. Wonder if she’s got any interest in law-enforcement.

  “No,” he said. “Only the clothes I showed you. Were you thinking of something specific by way of jewelry? Something she always wore?”

  “Gold ankle chain. Little gold cross.”

  Lee-girl-1 pulled her head out of the trash can and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “And my coral earrings!”

  Neither girl elaborated. Han spread his hands in question and raised an eyebrow. “What’d they look like?”

  “Gold studs.” Lee-girl-2 held up thumb and forefinger a couple ofmillimeters apart.

  “With, like, pale pink coral pieces. With holders that, like, screwed on.”

  “What about the clothes?”

  Lee-girl-2 said, “Ped and Ivor both had shirts like that.” She was wiping the other girl’s face now with a damp paper towel. They went out into the hall, Lee-girl-2 still supporting Lee-girl-1 with an arm around her shoulders. “Could we get her some water or something to wash her mouth out with?”

  “What about the other things? The lavalava or the panties?”

  “Thong’s hers,” said Lee-girl-1, pausing to spit into her crumpled paper towel and then tossing it into a trash can. “Actually, it’s mine. D’you see the ‘L’ on the label has a circle hand-marked around it? That’s how I mark my stuff. She was always ‘sharing’ like that. One-way sharing. Like my earrings.”

  He bought both girls sodas in the hospital dining room. “Just sip it,” said Lee-girl-2.

  “Yeah, okay,” said the other.

  “But you don’t recognize the lavalava?” They both shook their heads. “You say she was Pedersen’s bunk-mate, pretty much, when you two joined the boat in Honolulu.”

&
nbsp; They both nodded. “Yeah.”

  “But not for long.”

  “I mean, she picked them up there, but not too long before us.”

  “He liked the blond bit.”

  They both giggled. “Tired of South Seas maidens already.”

  “Thank God.”

  “So what happened here?”

  They both shrugged, moving first one shoulder and then the other. The effect was like watching choreography.

  “She was all, like, wanting dry land. Anyway, that’s what she said.”

  “She was, like, off the boat and gone, the minute we got in.”

  Han said, “Thursday?”

  “More or less.”

  “I mean, like, we got in after midnight Wednesday, so, yeah, I guess, Thursday.”

  “What time would she have gone ashore? That night when you got in? After daylight?”

  “Daylight.”

  “But, like, real early.”

  “How did Captain Poulsen feel about that?”

  “Him? He bitches about the work, but he doesn’t, like, do anything about it.”

  “Ped was pissed. After she was gone all day Thursday. Then he kept kinda watching her.”

  “But then he was kinda okay with it. She got some kinda room somewhere.”

  “Like.a hotel room? Camp out?”

  They laughed. “Oooh, not camp out. Not our Wendy.”

  Lee-girl-2 frowned again though, then said slowly, “But she wasn’t happy about something. I mean, like, she was always bitching about something, but this was something else. I can’t explain it. But…something.”

  “But she and Ped spent at least one night together on shore?”

  “Yeah. That first night.”

  “So…Thursday a week?”

  Both girls nodded. “Yeah.”

  “But she was back on the boat Friday night? With Ped?”

  The girls looked at each other and then at Han. “More or less. I mean, there was like a big fight.”

  Han snorted. “I remember it well. The first of many, as I recall.”

  The girls looked surprised. “No. I mean, they were only together back on the boat Friday night for a while. Then she left.”

  “I’m sorry. You mean Wendy and Ped had a fight.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did he hit her? Hurt her physically in any way.”

  “Probably not. He’s really strong but, like, really clumsy. Particularly when he’s really drunk.. “

  “.Like most of the time “

  “.You could just like step aside and he falls over.”

  “Surprised the skipper put up with him,” Han said, wondering if the girls would rise to the bait for a little gossip.

  They smiled like a multiplication of Cheshire cats. “No choice. Their mom’s is the same, but Ped’s dad owns the boat.”

  By the time Han delivered the girls into the hands of Mele, his one woman officer (who had at last put in her appearance) to make their written statements, he had a rough outline of Wendy Sondheim’s movements from her arrival in Pago on the Baltic schooner some time in the early hours of last Thursday morning to her last sighting by Lee-girls 1 and 2, which, they more or less agreed, was possibly-Sunday-only-maybe-it-was-Saturday night. Unlike themselves, she had partied every night, always leaving the boat with Pedersen and, they thought, going to local taverns, though they couldn’t say which ones because they had stayed on the boat. She had spent every night since their arrival on shore, exactly where, they couldn’t say, though they had the feeling that it was somewhere different each night. She had put in a few hours work on the boat Friday and Saturday. Saturday, they had also seen her in passing at Nozaki’s and in the outdoor market at the edge of Fagatogo village. Away from the boat, she seemed to be bubbling over with something she wanted to tell them, but they were tired enough of her that they hadn’t encouraged conversation. Both of them thought initially it was a new boyfriend. Over the next few days, they had guessed she might be pregnant and somehow trying to turn that into a ticket home. When asked who they thought the father of the baby might be, they said maybe Pedersen, but who knew what she’d been up to before she’d joined the schooner’s crew in Honolulu. Han asked them if they thought someone might have flown in to meet her—thus the ticket home. They looked interested but couldn’t say really say for sure. Though the idea of meeting someone with local transport did ring a bell. But no more than that.

  However, they both identified the purse as Wendy’s.

  “At least,” said Lee-girl-2, “it looks like hers.”

  So there was no way in hell, if that purse was Wendy’s, that her death and the death ofThorvald Pedersen weren’t connected. Even if it was just that the asshole managed to fall off a rock and drown himself while trying to get rid of incriminating evidence. Chuffed by this progress, he announced to Mele: “I’m going up to Nofonofo Sa’ili’s for breakfast. Call me when the statements are ready. I’ll take the girls back to Nozaki’s myself.”

  Han settled cross-legged on the mat beside Sa’ili’s chair, back against a pillar, just like a senior chief, and speared himself half a papaya from the breakfast platter. “I spent a good hour in Nu’ufou yesterday afternoon, with one of my officers translating, and didn’t get a shred of useful information out of anyone.”

  “Who was the officer?”

  Han told him.

  “Well, he’s got a minor title of his own, so there’s no obvious traditional cultural reason why you struck out.” The big man’s face relaxed into the hint of a grin. “Oh, dear. They’re not growing marijuana out there again, are they?” Han’s face stiffened, and Sa’ili went on. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything. But it isn’t the first time. The airport is just so convenient.”

  “The Lieutenant Governor? And why wouldn’t Nu’ufou people want to rat on him?”

  “Well, things are always complicated. And just because the Lieutenant Governor is connected out there, doesn’t mean he knows about what a couple of mid-level chiefs are up to. He should, but that doesn’t mean he does.”

  Han thought about the Old Man’s conviction that big-time marijuana-growing was impossible here. Why would Sa’ili know about the dope and not Sasa? He said slowly, “Ann said something about Welly having some connection in Nu’ufou. Maybe through his wife.”

  Sa’ili’s eyebrows shot up. “No. Not Welly.” The Samoan sat for a long minute without saying anything. Finally, he said, “The one who has the connection there is Sasa.”

  “The Chief?” Han heard his own voice as a cool, dim, echo, like speaking down a well. All the fury of a lifetime bubbled up in the single word. Not again; not here; not him. For a little time, Han’s thoughts were a double-time slide show, faces, soldiers in rags, nuns in habits, nurses in white, officials in grey, sergeants in khaki, colleagues in blue, a life-time of traitors. Finally, he said, “You mean, he knows about it?

  “The marijuana? Almost certainly. Why do you suppose he’s stayed away so long?”

  “What do you mean?” Han was still having trouble getting the words out. They hung in his chest, painful, like a swallow caught halfway down.

  “Well, one of my aunties came back from Honolulu a couple of days ago, said she’d seen him there, and he told her he was fine. Certainly wasn’t in the hospital.”

  Han though about the telegram, about the need for DEA statistics. And then the Attorney General and the Lieutenant Governor. So how deep was this set-up? “I.don’t seem to have the same…sources as you do.”

  Sa’ili stared at him for a moment. “You didn’t think.oh, no.” He was laughing and looking scandalized at the same time. “Please “ He refilled Han’s tea cup, a libation: atonement and reconciliation. He gazed at Han, as if struggling for words in a situation that required depth perception,
not linearity.

  “Sasa is the most visible symbol of law enforcement in the Territory. For all the seriousness with which Leon Fischer takes himself, no one else takes him seriously. Sasa is Chief of Police and holder of perhaps the most important traditional title in both Samoas. To traditional Samoans, he outranks the constitutional monarch of Western Samoa. But that means that he is.totally visible. He can’t move without bringing the house down to some extent. He had just been made Chief of Police when the old paramount chief died. He certainly merited election to the title. Any of the other candidates would have been a stretch compared to him, given both his lineage and his education and accomplishments. But like any powerful family, his family has more than its share of Slick Willies. Elect the director of the FBI President of the United States, or, more like, the Commissioner ofScotland Yard turns out to be heir to the throne. For heaven’s sake, you’re a Shakespeare fan. Think of Falstaff when Hal becomes king. Suddenly life in the fast lane has possibilities it didn’t have before. And, at least in Samoa, there are things, because of his ceremonial position, that the title-holder can’t do. At least not and still function as the head of the family.”

  Han wasn’t totally unaware of this, though he would have said it was more volitional, things that the Old Man had just decided he didn’t want to do. But culture, like religion, does seem to lock people down a hell of a lot tighter than reality.