Wave of Death

by Charlie Vogel

  “I don’t have time to explain. I need to hide her for a week or two.”

  “Lihua. Isn’t she that prostitute you were looking for?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “Goddamn it, Pencils, what is going on? You had me lie to the Armory Sergeant so you could steal a gun! Now you want me to put up a whore in my house?”

  I worked to see it from her perspective, but her holier-than-thou attitude knifed into me, especially compared to the image of what Lihua had suffered. “Jenny, she may be a whore, but she’s also a human being who has a life. Right now I have more respect for her than I do for you. Everyone knows what she does. She’s up front and honest. But I had to find out the hard way about your true colors.” I slammed the receiver down.

  After waiting a moment to adjust my thoughts, I placed another dime into the slot and dialed information. A young female voice gave me the phone number in perfect English. I dialed. A girl answered in pidgin.

  “Let me talk to Mr. Wong.”

  “Sorry, this Lo’s Restaurant. Wrong number.”

  After I re-dialed the number, I tried to be very polite and patient, “Look don’t hang up. I know Wong has an office upstairs. I want his number or my next call will be to the Health Inspectors.”

  For a moment, I thought the line went dead, but then Wong’s voice filled the receiver. “Mister Pencils, you made a dirty mess in my basement.”

  “There’s no ‘mister’ in front of my name.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Just call me Pencils. That mess, I believe, is something you caused. If you want, I can come back and clean up the place. You’ll be the first bag of shit I throw out.”

  “You are talking nonsense. I know you are terribly upset and you may have a right to be, but after you cool down, I would very much like you to return to my office.”

  “Why? You got another beaten woman you want me to see?”

  “No. I believe it will be easier on both of us if you come here on your own accord. You may find I can be very nasty if I have to send someone to find you. Either way I will have you in my office.”

  “Who would you send for me? Huey Lo?”

  “Very good. He would be an excellent choice. He can be very persuasive, though a bit impatient.”

  “I’ll meet him at Ewa Beach in four hours.”

  “You are designating the meeting place? Are you setting me up for a trap? I can assure you it will not work. Why don’t you just give up and come to my office?”

  “I’m not setting up anything. I will meet Lo at eleven o’clock near the bath house.”

  “Oh, but why should he drive two hours to meet you? I’m sure he will find you in less than an hour. Let’s be logical, Pencils. You might as well do as I say, because I want you in my office now, with or without the Operation Market Time documents. This island isn’t that big. You can’t escape me.”

  “That’s a chance I’ll take.”

  “Before you hang up, Pencils, you won’t need go back for Lihua. I’ve just been informed of her location. Don’t worry. I’ve decided to let her be for a short time. Once you are in my office, she will be taken care of.”

  Replacing the phone, I thought over what Wong said. He was not bluffing. Between Lihua and Tanya, I was convinced the man was capable of whatever he threatened. I had to trust Lihua with Tanya until I took care of Huey Lo.

  The Roadster made a screen of black smoke as I shifted gears and accelerated. I traveled west on Kamehameha Highway heading to Pearl City Tavern. If the goons decided to follow me, I wanted to be in totally familiar territory. In the distance I spied the water tower at Hickam Air Force Base. The sun cast streaks of pink and orange as it hovered over the horizon of the low swampy area of Keehi Lagoon.

  Just as I passed the sign directing traffic to Hickam’s main gate, I saw a Ford Falcon in my mirror. Wong must have provided a brown Falcon for everyone in his pack. When it moved in, I stepped on the gas. The Kaiser peaked out at sixty five miles an hour. I glanced down on the seat where I had the two grenades and two loaded magazines with a full one in the butt of the Colt. Remembering Wong’s fire power, I wished I had grabbed at least one bomb. Thought of that stuck down my pant leg with the grenades in my shorts made me laugh.

  The tires screamed as I took a right turn onto Puuloa Road. A short distance later, I ran the stop sign as I took a left onto Moanalua. Should I stop at CenPacFleet and pick up something bigger to blow away the Falcon? Since it now cruised within inches of my rear bumper, I decided I didn’t have time.

  Just as I glanced into the outside mirror, the glass shattered. The target practice had begun. With one hand on the wheel, I clipped the grenades to my shirt pocket and stuffed the gun and the two magazines into the front of my slacks. I had to ditch the car. An uncut sugar cane field loomed ahead.

  The gas pedal pressed against the floor, I headed to the green wall at the start of the curve. The humming tires left the pavement and roared across the red dirt. Feeling the lift of the air-born car, I stood and placed my upper body over the windshield. I didn’t see the car collide with the stalks, but my body became a missile as it flew into the cane. Like a spring board, I bounced in reverse and fell ten feet to the ground, a little shaken but not hurt.

  The towering wall of foliage around me blocked the sun. Blindly, I squeezed between the stalks, unsure of what direction I traveled. After a few steps, I heard voices. A man called for Huey. Wong actually did send his second in command to kill me.

  I strained to understand their pidgin, guessing they had found my car. I headed in the direction of voices. My arms itched where the cane had scratched me. Only a few feet away, the blackness turned to gray. The sun was setting. Time and failing light might be against me. The crackle of moving cane warned me the goons had wandered into the cane field to search. Shadows and their careless movement told me they were only six feet on either side.

  Soundlessly, I stretched out. The soft, moist ground held me motionless among the dead leaves and sweet odor of the plants. One of the men suggested they search where they last heard me moving, but the one who acted in charge, possibly Huey Lo, had a better idea. Bullets sprayed over me, cutting stalks in half and ricocheting against the harder cane. The high ceiling became lower and lower as I covered my head with my arms.

  The grenades pressed against my chest like two hard balls, but the density of the sugar cane prevented me from throwing them. My gun would only give away my location. I crawled on my belly across the dirt, the sound of their automatic rifles drowning the rustle of my movement.

  My head poked out from the edge of the plants sooner than I expected. Twenty yards to my right I could see men’s legs as they leaned into the field, their gunfire mowing the stalks. Directly in front of me sat their abandoned car. My Kaiser rested between the goons and me in a nest of broken cane, steam and smoke drifting from under the hood.

  Darkness came fast in the tropics, but I decided not to wait another fifteen minutes or so for the final shiver of light to pass behind the horizon. I leaned forward and, with a track runner’s start, dashed to the Ford Falcon. Rolling to the ground behind the rear bumper, I used the car as a shield and peeked through the driver’s door window. They hadn’t see me. I looked down and almost laughed aloud. They hadn’t taken the key or even turned off the goddamn engine.

  A voice called out to cease fire. A shadowed figure waved his arms. His men gathered around him. He stood short and skinny, another Napoleon. This had to be Huey Lo. When the group was no more than twenty five yards away, I cocked a round into the Colt’s chamber.

  My finger pumped the trigger. I watched two men grab their chests and fall. The other two slid into the weeds before I could see if they caught a round. Strangely, no one had yet returned my fire. Realizing I had to draw them out, I ran and rolled into the ditch. Rounds whistled above me. A really stupid man stood up pointing his rifle. I fired. The gun went off, flames from the barrel stark against the darkening sky as the gun shot towa
rd the stars. The man fell onto his back, his finger frozen in position and bullets flying wildly.

  After his magazine spent the last round, a voice said, “Pencils, I’m hurt. Can you help me?”

  I crawled a couple of feet into the cane field before calling back, “How bad is it?”

  “I’m losing blood.”

  “Can you lift up your arm so I can see where you are?”

  “No, I’m shot in the shoulder. If you come to your car, you’ll see me directly in back of it.”

  “It’s too damn dark for me to see.” I continued to belly-crawl and came within two feet of the Kaiser’s trunk lid. The voice had come from a cluster of weeds to the right. I crept toward him, hoping the moon remained hidden for awhile longer. I didn’t want him to know my location.

  My reaching fingers touched a metal object, a rifle barrel. His voice came again, only closer than I expected, perhaps a yard away, “Pencils, is that you?”

  Silent as a cat, I tilted forward until I balanced on the balls of my feet and my hands in that handy-dandy runner’s stance. An orange flame flashed. I launched myself onto his back. His right arm stretched out and another shot fired from his hand gun. I jammed the tip of the Colt’s barrel against his temple, with, “You missed! I won’t.”

  I pulled the gun from his hand and threw it into the cane. My palm slid across sticky blood at his shoulder. Shifting my weight, I clicked on the .45’s safety and tucked the gun back into my waist band.

  He said, “May-maybe we can make a deal. You take me to the hospital, I’ll make you rich, okay?”

  “How rich?”

  Couple thousand?”

  I laughed harshly. “That ain’t worth my time, let alone the bother.”

  “Look, I only got two thousand on me. You take me to the hospital, I’ll give you another five thousand.”

  “Wong was going to give me a lot more for some papers. Do you know anything about that?”

  “Yeah, sure. What do you want to know?”

  “Who were the sailors involved?”

  “If I told you their names, would you take me to the hospital?”

  “How would I know if you gave me the correct names?”

  “You can take my word. I’m an honorable man. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

  “Okay, who are they?”

  “You take me to the hospital first.”

  I folded his injured arm back. Sounding like celery popping, a bone broke. He screamed. I let the useless cylinder of flesh drop. Huey whimpered then bawled like a senseless animal. I wanted to punch his face, but I deserved something cleaner. Standing, I placed a foot on his bleeding shoulder. “Would you like me to break the other arm so you have a matching set?”

  “No. No, please don’t.”

  “Who are the sailors?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. I’m begging you, I don’t know. Wong knows, only he talks to them.”

  “Were you responsible for hurting Lihua?”

  “I was taking orders. Wong wanted me to kill her, but I didn’t. She was too valuable. You think so, too. He said you would.”

  Turning, I stepped away from the whining puddle of shit. The moon peeked over the distant mountains. I took a long breath before looking down. The slanting moonlight glittered off something around Huey’s neck. The wide mouth in his oriental face opened as if to beg for something else. I slipped the necklace over his head. Squinting at it’s design, I realized I held one of the Storm of Pearls.

  Clearing my throat, I said, “I need to borrow your car.”

  “Please, Pencils. Take me with you. I need a doctor. You are a man with a conscience. Don’t leave me here.”

  I stared at him in the vague light. “Oh, I guess I do owe you something for not killing Lihua.”

  Pulling the pin, I placed the grenade into his injured hand and folded his fingers around the safety level. “Here, hold onto this. It will take your mind away off the pain you are suffering.”

  Stuffing the necklace in a pocket, I took off at a run, leaping over the hood of the Falcon just as the explosion blasted a deep crater where Huey Lo had been. One pineapple left and I intended to see it stuffed in Wong’s mouth.

  * * *

  Rex leaned back in the cab of the tow truck. He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “Tell me again where you got this truck?”

  I smiled. “Corkie. You know, the fat guy at the motor pool. He said I could borrow it for a couple of hours.”

  “Damn it, Pencils! It’s one o’clock in the morning. Can’t you get your damn car out of the cane field when the sun’s out?”

  “It’s not in the field.”

  “You said you missed a curve and had an accident.”

  “Yeah, but the cops towed my car. We’re on our way to the impound lot.”

  “Shit, shit, and double shit! You’re confusing the hell out of me, Pencils, and I know it’s on purpose! You woke me out of a sound sleep! An impound lot is the last place I want to be in the middle of the goddamn night. Tell me why we can’t get your car in the morning?”

  “Because the cops don’t open the lot until nine.”

  “Is there some reason why you can’t wait until nine?”

  “Rex, listen to me. I have to get my car before the cops start checking the Nebraska license plates on it. I don’t want them to know who’s been blowing away Wong’s men.”

  His mouth fell open. In slow motion he moped his forehead again. “You killed someone?”

  “More than one. I kinda quit counting.”

  “Shit!” he hissed, staring at me as if I were some kind of freak.

  “Look Rex, there’s some really bad assholes involved in the two murders aboard the STEVENS. All I’m trying to do is find the names of the sailors who did it. And nobody wants to tell me.”

  “So you’re killing ‘em if they don’t?” It did sound incredulous when he put it that way. He stammer on, “I-I sure as hell didn’t agree to help you kill. I’m a medic. I save lives.”

  “You are also a friend who agreed to assist me in finding suspects. I didn’t say it would be easy. Get ready. The tow lot is up ahead.”

  “Pencils, you just passed it.”

  “I passed the entrance. I decided to make my own gate.”

  Where the fence took a ninety degree turn away from the street, I drove the truck off the road and followed the chain-link, ten-foot high barrier along a dirt service lane.

  With wide eyes, Rex scanned the interior of the compound. “Do you know where they parked it?”

  “Yeah, I followed their tow. It’s not far. Lucky for us it’s parked next to the back fence.”

  “Yeah, lucky. Pencils, have you thought about this? If someone sees this truck, they’ll know who we are. U.S. Navy’s written all over it and it’s got government plates.”

  “No one is going to see us. The guard sits at the gate and he can’t see back here. Here’s the Kaiser just where I told you.”

  Taking the bolt cutters out from under the seat, I began liberating the fence from the top down. Rex pulled the wires back as I returned to the cab. I backed the truck through the opening, stopping a foot from the rear bumper on the Kaiser. Raising the car up, Rex immediately ran the safety chains to the car’s frame. In less than five minutes we were back on the service lane.

  After I pulled onto the pavement, Rex asked, “Okay, you got your car. Now what?”

  “I’ll have Corkie check it over and repair what he can. As soon as he’s done, I want you to drive it back to Honolulu and pick me up.”

  “You are nuts, you know that? That fat bastard ain’t gonna stay up all night fixing your car!”

  “Sure is. He owes me a favor, big time. He said he’d do it. Think about it, Rex. It was one of his cars that about blew me up. He owes me.”

  Rex blew out an exasperated breath. “So where will I find you in Honolulu?”

  “I’ll call. Just stay at the garage.”

  “You mean I get to sleep at the motor pool?”

/>   “Yup.”

  “You make sure Admiral Collins gets me some over-time pay, goddamn it!”

  Leaving Rex and the Kaiser at the motor pool, I drove the Ford Falcon to the exit gates of Pearl Harbor. The Marine lethargically waved me on. An hour later, I parked in front of Spring Wind Medical Clinic.

  I pounded on the door for couple of minutes before Tanya opened it. Rubbing her eyes, she said, “Hi, Pencils. I expected you a couple of hours ago.”

  “Is Lihua still here?”

  “Yeah and doing much better. I’ve been waiting to hear from one of Wong’s men, but everything’s been quiet. So I kept her here.”

  “Can she be moved?”

  “Yeah, but she’s very sore, bruised and tired. She can’t go far, especially on her own two legs.”

  “I need her to take me to an opium den. Think she’s up to that?”

  “Opium? You? Pencils, I’m surprised . . . and disappointed. No, I won’t allow her to go with you.”

  Chapter 14

  Lihua placed the edge of the glass tumbler against her bruised, swollen lips. The ice slid down the sides as she lifted it. She slowly sipped the water. I stared as she played with the crushed cubes, moving her tongue across her teeth. Possibly five minutes passed before she decided to place the drink down on the dinner tray. Her eyes focused on me, hard and full of accusations.

  “Why in the hell didn’t you kill me? Shit, I’m already dead. I’m just waiting for someone to finish the job. Now you want me to suffer longer. Why?”

  Tanya left the room, closing the door to the infirmary. I turned back to Lihua, motionless under the white, starched sheets. My gaze moved over her facial wounds, a few stitched closed, most now just dark, ugly bruises. “You aren’t going to die. Wong will never get close to you again. I won’t let him.”

  “Goddamn it, Pencils, don’t you understand? You’re not Superman. You’re as human as me and just as dead. Wong’s like a cat. He plays with his food before he kills it. He gets off seeing us squirm. He’s got people watching this place this minute, just waiting for you to make a stupid move.”