Off to his right, music and light spilled suddenly through the open front door of the Gooney Bird. So much for evening prayers. He walked up the lane between the station and the jail, meaning to duck in the back way to his office, check on things, maybe go back to Paki’s for dinner. That fish had been good last night. Don’t like Koreans in here. He smiled to himself, thinking about those beautiful girls this morning, trusting him because he looked like themselves. More or less.
A movement in the shadows behind the jail caught his eye: a human figure where it shouldn’t be. At home, he would have dodged to put the corner of the building between himself and someone who, more than likely, had a gun. Here, he stopped and stared into the darkness.
“You looking for me?”
Gravel crunched underfoot and someone giggled. A young woman crossed the lane, followed by Ioane. The street lamp up the hill in Sa’ili’s yard spattered light down the slope through the trees, making an areola of the girl’s tight curls, picking out cheekbone, shoulder, breast, hip, stride. Han’s mind registered three things. The person with Ioane was the Fijian whore from the Gooney Bird. She was almost as tall as Ioane. And the structure and movement of their bodies, uncluttered by day-light, details of dress and assumptions, was exactly the same. Silently, he began to laugh.
The Fijian girl, he supposed he must think of her, and why not, if that’s what she thought of herself, glanced back at Ioane and then said to Han, “I will talk to you.”
“Fine,” Han said. The Fijian looked at Ioane. “Sure,” Han said, looking for a word that would work. “Good. Okay.” He gestured into the back corridor of the station. “Have a seat.” The space was cool and sheltered from the usual early evening shower. Enough light filtered back from the front office that they could see each other. Han sat on the bottom step and stretched out his legs. The Fijian sat out in the middle of the floor, the ceremonial position of examination; Ioane, behind, his back against the wall.
“Talk away,” Han said. The Fijian looked confused again and said something, first to Han and then, over her shoulder to Ioane.
“She says, you want to know about the girl who comes to the Gooney Bird.”
“You mean, the palagi girl from the boat. The dead one?”
The lights went out. As they did pretty much every night about now as normal evening activity resumed after evening prayers and the island’s entire population of TVs, lights, and stoves came on at the same time. Inside the building, the darkness was absolute. Laughter sounded from the front office, followed, a few moments later, by the asthmatic roar of a Coleman lantern but not enough light to see more than vague shapes.
Han looked at Ioane. “Get us a lantern.” Ioane came back a few minutes later with an old hurricane lantern. Soft and silent yellow light flowed around them like honey. “Okay,” Han said. “Tell me about this girl.”
“She is my friend.”
“Okay,” Han said. “How is she your friend?”
“She gives_she gives_things.”
Ioane said, “She gives clothes, lipstick, palagi things. She “ He nodded toward the Fijian. “…Gives a lavalava.”
Han looked at Ioane. “She identify it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So_how did you meet this girl?”
“She comes. With big red boyfriend.”
Quenching the mental images this statement produced, like stamping out small wildfires, Han said, “You mean the one with the beads in his beard? Did they came to the Gooney Bird together?” He prayed none of the other fifteen palagi males on the island with beards wove beads into them.
“Yes. He drinks. We talk.” The Fijian looked down at her hands, knotted in her lap, then spoke quickly in Samoan.
Ioane said, “She says, this girl listens. She studies. She is…interested.” Han heard the yearning for someone who will listen and the reassurance that one is not alone in one’s trials. And was reminded that even a princess may have skills and heart in unexpected ways.
“When did she come? What night? Or what day, for that matter.”
Ioane re-organized the question into Samoan.
Big smile. “Every night.”
“Every night? When was the last time?”
“Saturday. Big party.”
Big fight, Han thought. “No time since?”
“No. No time.”
Han pulled out the photo of Wendy Sondheim. “This her?”
The Fijian took the photo and bent closer to the lantern. “Yes.”
“Did she always come with her boy friend? The big red one?”
“Thursday, yes. Friday, yes. Big party. New doctor, with Dr. Tuiasosopo.”
“And Saturday?”
“Maybe. Yes. All everybody. Not so “ She looked at Ioane but then found the word herself. “.Usual. So much palagi. Big fight. Busy busy.” She said something to Ioane.
“She says, at first, she did not see her friend come in, because of the big crowd. But all are there from the boat.”
“Including the other girls?”
“Oh, no,” said the Fijiian. “Never. Just men and my friend.”
“Your friend always came with the boat people. Did she always leave with them?”
Ioane translated. The Fijian thought for a while. “Thursday, maybe. Friday, maybe. Saturday “ She shook her head. “Much people. Much work. Maybe no.”
“Maybe she didn’t leave with them? Or maybe you didn’t see her leave?” Han looked at Ioane. The boy gaped for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure of the English, much less the translation, then put the question to the Fijian.
“Not see her leave,” the Fijian said carefully.
“And after Saturday night, you never saw this girl again?” Han pointed to the photo.
“No.”
“Okay,” Han said to Ioane. “Written statement.”
True-to-form, carrying out this basic of police routine took the next two and a half hours and did not involve an evening meal in any readily identifiable form. It did, however, include fielding a visit from Miti, the Gooney Bird’s owner, manager, pimp, and bartender. Han sent Ioane to deal with him. Five minutes later, the kid still wasn’t back. Han left the Fijian puzzling over the two transcripts—one in English and one in Samoan—and walked downstairs into the front office. Miti was L.A. straight tonight, acid-pink aloha shirt, black duck trousers and attitude, standing in the front doorway, yelling and waving his hands around. Ioane stood his ground, quiet but looking uncharacteristically explosive. The three other officers standing around were looking immensely entertained. Everybody shut up when Han walked in.
“Look, tell the fucker we’ll pay him for her time. Then tell him to get the fuck out of here before I arrest him as an accessory.” Ioane clearly enjoyed translating that one. But Miti shot something else over his shoulder as he left. The other officers laughed. Ioane did not.
“You,” Han said to two of the men, “Have work to do. You,” he said to the third one, “Are off shift. So get the hell out of here and go home.” One of the first two said something and grinned, but the man who was off duty looked sheepish and left. Han and Ioane went back up to Han’s office and got the girl through the signing process. The power came on.
“Good timing,” Han said. “Now we tackle Miti.” Seeing Ioane’s face, Han said, “He’s not going to bite you. And if he does, kick him in the balls.” He herded Ioane and the Fijian down the alley behind the jail and around to the tavern’s back door. He could just see Miti behind the bar. Seeing the Fijian, Miti’s face rumpled angrily, then flattened as Ioane followed the Fijian through the doorway, then, seeing Han, relaxed into cautious courtesy until he could figure out what the hell this was about.
“Miti, I need to talk to you.”
The bartender sized up the immediate requirements of the scene with his us
ual alacrity. Turning over the bar to an underling with a sideways jerk of his head, he led them into an office partitioned off from the storeroom in back. He switched on the single bulb hanging from the rafters and propped out the big shutter that was most of the side wall of the tiny room. Cool air didn’t really move through, but at least one had the illusion that it could have, had there been any.
Miti nodded at the Fijian. “She is no good, Assistant Chief?”
“She’s identified the girl whose body was found in the dump two days ago as a palagi girl who was here at the Gooney Bird three nights running, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, a week ago. Recognize her?”
Miti glanced at the photo. “So?” His voice was suddenly defiant. “She has ID. She is old enough. I have no prejudice. I sent this girl to tell you.”
“You mean tonight? Funny thing about that. Not my impression at all. And how come when I asked you about her two nights ago, your response, if I recall correctly, was ‘Never here’?”
The last refuge of the multi-lingual interview: Miti looked confused. Han pointed to the photo. He knew there was no point in getting Ioane to translate: language wasn’t the issue. “When was the last time you saw this girl? Friday? Saturday? Monday?” Even the Gooney Bird wasn’t open on Sunday. At least not officially. “Middle of the week?”
“One week.” Miti looked at the Fijian. “Yes. Like tonight. One week.”
“So we’re all over town looking for anyone who knows anything about a missing blond palagi girl, and you don’t say anything to anybody. D’you kill her?”
The outburst produced another look of wide-eyed confusion. But just as Han was kicking himself mentally for falling into that trap again, Miti spoke. “I kill her? No.” His voice was simple, as if, once understood, both the question and the expectation of a clear answer were legitimate: lesser chief to paramount chief.
“Why so long before you.told us what you knew?” Han didn’t think for a minute the Fijian’s coming to him was Miti’s idea. Miti answered with the exquisite logic that Samoans always brought to these situations, once you figured out which deck they were playing with.
“I did not know she is gone. Only Thursday, you tell me.” The bartender finished triumphantly: “And so I send this one to you.” Suddenly, Han was remembering the shadowy figure behind the bar and then in the street.
Check, Han thought. Well done, you old bastard. He still didn’t think that first encounter had been the bartender’s idea, but that wasn’t important now. “What can you tell me about the palagi girl on the nights she was here? You must have noticed her. Who was she with? She leave with the same person she came with? Anything special stick in your mind?”
He looked back and forth from Miti to the Fijian. Sweat poured down his sides. He parked one hip on the edge of Miti’s desk. That put his head lower than anyone else in the room, so, in Samoan terms, in a subservient position at a time when he was supposed to be in command. But it was that or drop over from the heat. Besides, Ioane’s tense, uniformed figure in the doorway leant a distinctly official feel to the scene, Samoa or no Samoa.
Miti shrugged. “No problems.” Han was looking at the Fijian when the bartender spoke. Something there. Ioane asked Miti something in Samoan. The bartender looked surprised and shrugged. “Yes,” he said, shortly, in Samoan, and then something that Han didn’t get. Then he turned to the girl and said something.
Ioane said, “Miti talks some Fijian. He asks the same question.” The Fijian answered, her voice quick and insistent, as if she had suddenly been given another lever into the conversation. She and Miti spent the next few minutes yakking back and forth in a high-speed mix of Samoan and Fijian. Then the two of them looked at Ioane. Ioane looked at Han. “They wish me to_help.”
“Go for it. Whatever it takes.”
Over the next few minutes, the three Samoan-speakers talked, and Han wondered how they were all going to react when he went to sleep and fell off the desk. The voices rose into another rapid-fire argument, this time with Ioane participating.
Han looked at Ioane who shook his head and shrugged. “Every time, the person is tall and palagi and has a beard.”
“Every person she came with or every person she left with?” Han thought, I’m
Together, Miti and the Fijian said, “Yes.”
Han followed Ioane down the alley toward the station, trying to put together what he actually had learned. Because that was going to define what he had to do next. That and the fact that he had not gotten supper and could not remember the last time he’d had a full night’s sleep.
Miti and the Fijian agreed that the dead girl had arrived at the Gooney Bird both Thursday and Friday nights with Pedersen, but that the two other sailors from the schooner had also been with them. Thursday had been tense because of the palagis being strangers, but something about Wendy’s willingness to talk to people, especially the bar girls, had somehow lightened things up and there had been no problems. At least not inside. Both Miti and the Fijian remembered Wendy and the big red one, as they called Pedersen, getting into an argument outside that had ended in shouting and then some wrestling. Then some of the local boys had spilled out of the bar and joined in. And then the police had come and things had quieted down, at least after one of the local boys took a swing at one of the officers and had been marched off the green in handcuffs.
Friday night had been more social. Welly Tuiasosopo and McGee had been there and maybe a couple of other palagi drinking buddies of Welly’s. Again, Wendy had made the rounds. But again, Miti and the Fijian agreed, she probably spent as much time sitting in the back talking to one or another of the girls than she had out where the main drinking was going on. The Baltic schooner crowd had left well before closing time. Which fit with Han’s recollection that Friday night’s fight had been out on the road in front of the hotel and had spilled down into the docks area. Again, by the time the DPS was mopping up, everyone from the schooner had split.
Saturday was interesting. Miti remembered Wendy arriving alone, standing, he said, like waiting to go into church, at the side door, until she had seen someone she seemed to recognize. Then she had stepped up through the door and been lost in the crowd. Not long after that, the three sailors from the schooner had arrived—or at least three tall palagis with red or blond beards, though Miti and the Fijian had gotten into an argument about whether the third one was McGee rather than from the schooner. This time, the fight started inside the Gooney Bird, though neither Miti nor the Fijian saw quite how or why. Miti and his bouncers had been too occupied getting combatants out the front door into the street to identify who was involved, though at least one was palagi. The bar then emptied to participate in the battle of the Fagatogo green or to cheer it on from the front porch. When the fun was over and Miti’s clientele reassembled inside, there had been no palagis, male or female, among them for the remainder of the evening. Miti denied all knowledge of where any of the schooner crew spent the night.
A soft patter of rubber-slippered feet followed them down the alley. Han stopped.
“Captain?”
“Yes?”
“He lies, this Miti.”
“Surprise me.”
“Yes?”
“Never mind. What does he lie about?”
“He…he…sells…bed to my friend.”
From the darkness ahead of him, Ioane’s voice said, “Upstairs. There are.lit-tle rooms.”
Han said, “You’re saying Miti rented her one of these…little rooms?” Han had never been upstairs at the Gooney Bird. Indeed, was not immediately aware of there being stairs, other than the rickety porch in back.
“Yes. Some inside. Some outside. They are inside.”
“They?”
“She and boyfriend.”
“The big red one.”
“Yes.”
“So, Thursd
ay night?”
“Yes.”
“And after that?”
“Maybe. Much work. I do not see.”
Han sorted through the words, trying to pick out the sense without adding what he wanted to hear. He gave up. “Ioane, does she mean that, other than Thursday night, she only saw the girl in the bar. Not anywhere else.”
“Yes,” Ioane said. Han waited. Finally, Ioane said, “That is what she means.”
Han was too tired to ask. “Okay,” he said. “Thank you.”
Tomorrow, he thought, I may wring Miti’s neck. But not tonight. Tonight, he was interested in tall, Nordic palagis. The two deaths had to be linked, and the answer had to be on that boat. Not to say, if he could have come up with even a shadow of a motive for McGee killing Pedersen, that he wouldn’t have pulled McGee in happily for a chat, even at eleven o’clock at night. But how the hell would McGee know about the dump? How would the Baltic schooner crew know about it, for that matter? And where would they have gotten the transport? But there were three of them, or at least there had been when Wendy Sondheim was still alive. They were strong; and they wouldn’t be worried by Samoan night or Samoan ghosts.
Han walked into the back of the station. He could drive the police jeep home and then let Ioane drive it on out to his own village. He could sleep in his office again, of course, and let Ioane fend for himself. He could check through the station files for the reports about the fights last week to see if they shed any more light on Pedersen and Wendy Sondheim, though that seemed like an unprofitable use of what little energy he had left tonight. He walked on through the front office and out to check the jeep, now parked out front.
The gas gauge still read empty. Had they fixed the gauge this morning? Was there in fact enough gas there to get either him or Ioane home? He looked toward the main docks. Lights were still on at the gas station. Ioane had followed him out. “Fill it up, then swing back here and pick me up. Drop me off home and you can make another attempt to drive to your aunt’s. I’m going to make a phone call.”
A Bird in the Hand Page 21