In the Surf Room at the Trade Winds during June and July.
How about from the first of August until you opened here?
She frowned slightly. I didn’t work. Just lazed around home and on the beach, a little vacation.
You werent on the mainland at any time, then?
No. Why?
I grinned. Well, I guess you couldn’t have married Webb.
Married him? She smiled, puzzled. Of course not. Im not married — and I didn’t know he was.
He got married on the thirteenth here. Flew home and was killed the night after his arrival.
She was silent for a moment. How was he killed?
Murdered.
She drew back a little, as if in revulsion at the word. Murdered? I thought . . . an accident or something.
No, he was shot.
I talked to her for another few minutes, but she seemed unable to give me any help. After their meeting, shed not seen Webb again, or even heard about him until I’d mentioned his name, she told me. I asked her about Ed Grey. Shed met him, and of course knew he owned the Pele, but hadn’t had anything to do with the man during her month at the Algiers or since. She didn’t like him at all, she said. And she didn’t know anything about Pagan Page.
Finally I dropped it, said to her, Youll be at the party in Medina next Saturday, then?
Yes, Ill take a couple of days off, fly over and back. She smiled. Are you going to be there, Shell?
If I possibly can. If Im not, detour to the Spartan Apartment Hotel and say hello.
Spartan?
On North Rossmore in Hollywood. That’s where I live.
Oh. It was said with a rising and falling inflection, like the sweep of her long lashes up and down over her dark eyes.
I asked Loana if she wanted a drink, but she said, Not now. After my next show, if you’re still here.
Ill be here.
I don’t have anything to drink while Im working. After the last show I usually have something before I eat.
Dinner! Ah, that reminds me. You havent eaten?
No. I never eat dinner until after the shows.
Then why not have it with me?
She looked at me for a few seconds, then smiled. I’d love to. Here?
I was thinking of something more — well, like a tree.
A what?
Tree. Theres the wildest little tree house —
Oh, she laughed. The Banyan Tree. In the Market Place.
That’s it, that’s it. Have you been down — up there?
No, but I’ve seen it. Oh, it looks charming! That would be wonderful, Shell. She reached across the table and put her hand over mine.
The last of my reservations about Loana melted away. We sat and talked until shortly before eleven, when she had to get ready for the show. A couple of times we danced together on the small floor, and the vibrations from both of her previous dances must still have been in the air. In my arms she was as soft and graceful as that Hawaiian hula, but it affected me Tahitian.
Then she left me to get ready. I sat at the table and waited for the show. And thought about Loana. Thought of the beauty of her face and body. Of Loana’s golden voice and velvet eyes.
Later we walked through the Market Place, my arm across her shoulders, her arm about my waist. When we got near the wood-carvers booth I thought of stopping there, just to check, make sure Loana wasn’t the woman the wood-carver had seen. But the booth was closed, dark, and the woodcarver was gone.
So we went to Don the Beachcombers and inside. I confirmed our reservations for the tree, said wed be ready in half an hour. Then we stepped across the room to the Dagger Bar and had a couple of drinks. Loana stuck to a Puka Puka and a Nui Nui, but not me. I started with a Penang Afrididi and followed it with a Cobras Fang. No sense at all. Or maybe I had in some weird way a premonition of what was going to happen.
Maybe I had a kind, of feverish feeling that this night was to be different from all the others in my life. Or maybe I just thought if I could handle two Panthers Bloods I could handle anything. Those two panthers down there seemed to have spied each other and killed themselves. Or possibly I’d drowned them with the Afrididi and Cobras Fang. Whatever, I was feeling no pain.
Loana and I sat at the bar and yakked, and grinned at each other, and had a delightful time indeed, then walked into the adjacent Bora Bora Lounge, where our waiter was ready for us at our table. He handed me a beautiful lei made of those delicately colored and delicately scented vanda orchids, and I put it around Loana’s neck. Then she was seated in the Queens Chair — an oversized rattan chair with huge rounded back extending above her head — and the waiter told me I could prepare the pupu.
Pupu?
He nodded, pointed. On the table was a wee charcoal-broiler gadget, about two inches wide and three inches long. Coals, already glowing red, filled the little hibachis bottom. Placed inside a tube of bamboo were several bamboo skewers, bits of tender meat already upon them, still in their marinade sauce.
I flopped a couple of the skewers onto the coals, feeling very jazzy, and the waiter said, What would you like for your complimentary drink?
Drink? Free?
Yes.
I . . . hadn’t counted on that, I said, thinking back. I looked at Loana. She grinned happily and shrugged. Might as well live, I said to her.
Might as well, she said.
Even if it kills us.
Ill have a zombie, she said.
Loana! You do care!
She laughed. Even if it kills me.
OK, I said, looking at the drink list, and recklessly ordered. Bring me a — a Skull and Bones!
The pupu was done on one side and I turned it over. A tall dark waitress wearing an Indian sari brought our drinks. We had a sip and started on the now-just-right bits of broiled meat. They were delicious. I piled the rest of them on. While finishing them, and more of our drinks, we looked at the little menu listing the dinner we were about to be served in the tree house. It made my mouth water.
I looked at Loana.
She looked at me.
We smacked our lips — she delicately, me boorishly.
Lets get up there, she said.
Call the waiter, call the waitress, lets go.
We gobbled the last of our broiled meat and had another guzzle of the drinks, waving at people. Our waiter zipped over. In another minute we were outside, standing next to a big carved idol lighted by the flame of a Hawaiian torch, under the Banyan Tree.
The white-turbaned waiter unlocked the little gate and went up the stairs first, carrying a big silver tray laden with all that wonderful food, wrapped in foil to keep it warm. Loana followed him, and I — not being stupid — followed Loana. The steps were solid underfoot, and on our right and left walls of thin bamboo formed a semi-screen around us. Below, out in the open air of the Market Place, people strolled about, looked in shops. Several were peering up now, following our progress as best they could.
Halfway up, Loana looked back over her shoulder at me.
Isnt this exciting, Shell?
You don’t know the half of it. After all, she was not right behind Loana.
At the top of the steps our waiter stopped on a little deck or landing, held aside strips of bamboo beads, and nodded us inside the little house. I was startled when I followed Loana in. The room was small — but exquisite. Against the far wall, which was not, of course, very far away, sat a low couch. On it were heaped soft pillows, every shade of the rainbow. Before the couch was a low rectangular table, on which our waiter placed the tray of food. The champagne bucket went on the floor. Loana and I sank luxuriously into the pillows, she smiling, me grinning happily.
This, I thought, will be a night to remember.
And the waiter said, Shall I open the champagne?
It had
been a night to remember, too — until I stepped on that damned champagne bottle.
The damned champagne bottle that sent me staggering, plunging out through the bamboo-bead curtains, clutching the hula skirt Loana had thrown me.
Out, over the rail, and down.
Cracking into limbs and things solid, whooping and grabbing at leaves. . . .
I had grabbed at the last leaf, snapped the last twig, and memory explosions bloomed in my mind. Everything I’d done in these last few days whirled in a blur through my brain. You wouldnt believe what all can whirl through your brain when you’re falling out of a tree.
Lights were flashing behind my eyes from the bangs my head had gotten, white lights and black ones and lots of pretty colored ones. And then smack — into black.
I couldn’t have been out very long. Because there were all sorts of commotion around me when the first faint light filtered back. Those scenes which had just flitted through my mind danced there a brief moment longer, blurred and muddled, then melted into mushy grayness.
They melted away, gone completely.
I got a very queer feeling. Very queer.
Something strange was happening. A bunch of citizens were galloping around me. I didn’t know where I was or anything, and for a moment I thought maybe I was tied to a stake and these were natives racing around the fire, about to toss me in a pot and gobble me up. I had been slammed around so vigorously that, oddly enough, so far there’d been merely sight without sound. Slowly, then all of a sudden, my hearing came back. What had before been only extremely rapid motion became howling pandemonium.
Wow, the noise! It clobbered my eardrums as if they were bongos pounded by wild savages. It was the people — all those citizens — shrieking and yowling and hullabalooing. It was horrendous, horrific, astounding, like an Italian opera — all the notes at once. There were screams and wails and hoarse bellows. Dust was rising.
But I was not. No, I was not rising.
It was then I realized I was sort of waggling limply around on the ground beneath a tree, eyeballing those citizens. Drafts swept over me. I didn’t have any clothes on. I added some notes of my own to that opera, grabbed a green leafy thing that was nearby and hugged it to me as I got to my knees.
What the hell? I thought. And that was all. I couldn’t think of anything else to think. It swept over me clammily that I didn’t know where I was. Didn’t even know what I was.
Then the final, ultimate horror smacked me like a gob of wet spaghetti.
I didn’t even know who I was.
I had lost my marble!
Eleven
That’s what it was, all right.
I had lost my mind.
I was out of my skull.
I had gone cuckoo.
I had milk of amnesia or whatever they call it. Everything got very dear to me then. I could see dearly that everything was as unclear as it could be. But I could also see the citizens plainly now — citizens of someplace. Most likely Africa, I figured. Or the wilds of Afghanistan. Some of the Afghanistanians were coming at me. Most of them were going the other way. Some were jumping up in little hops, or peering at me through wide-fingered hands.
Who am I? I thought.
The queer thing was that I seemed to know practically everything except that one item — and where I was, how I’d got here — but that was an important item. It was as if everything which had ever happened to me had been stored in one little spot in my brain, and that area had been attacked by spot remover.
But I knew those people were — people. That around me were trees and buildings and so on. That I was, in fact, sort of waggling feebly around under a huge tree going Gah . . . gah! as if I’d just been born here. And that I had sure as hell better stop going Gah! and simply get going.
What made up my mind conclusively was the realization, which arrived with a great sinking sensation, that maybe I had just been born here. Because I’d been flopping on the ground wearing my birthday suit.
Then I noticed the green leafy thing I was holding against me for protection. Protection for them. It was a hula skirt.
Great Scott! I cried mentally. Im a girl!
But, no, I wasn’t either a girl. Those guys were running at me, getting close. One of them was another of those things I could remember: a cop. He was wearing a uniform and swinging a little club.
I also remembered what to do when a cop comes at you swinging a little club. I did it. I Jumped up, fastening the grass skirt, speedily but securely, around hips it had not been made to encircle, spun about and ran.
I ran to a wide car-clogged avenue and swung right, the sounds of pursuit behind me like the baying of a famished wolf pack. Feet, I said, whoevers you are, go like crazy! They were moving wildly, carrying me along like little cheetahs. In the street, brakes squealed and horns honked. On the sidewalk ahead, open-mouthed people faded out of my way. I charged ahead, bare cheetah-feet banging hard concrete, grass skirt slapping my knees, then darted toward a big building on my right. I had to get out of the street, that was sure. Over the entrance it said, Moana Hotel.
I raced up the steps, slowed to look back. I shouldnt have slowed. It looked like a movie of a parade run at triple speed, following me, the leader. That cop wasn’t in front, but he was close behind. With two more cops. I didn’t even stop in the hotel lobby, ran through, out into a courtyard.
Wild yowling and yelling again. Wherever I was, it was the noisiest place you could imagine. I ran through it, dodged tables, zipped around a big tree. Ahead of me: Ocean. At last. Now I knew what to do. I’d drown myself.
I sprinted forward, felt sand under my feet. Sand, then the cool wetness of surf. Faint in the darkness ahead was the pale white foam of breakers. I kept running, then started swimming. Straight out. It was night, dark and almost quiet here, stars sharp above. I swam a long time. Then I looked back. Nobody was near me. Stretching from left to right along the shoreline were big hotels; lights salt-and-peppered the night, many white ones mixed like confetti with red and blue and green and yellow ones.
Right here, old man, I said to myself, you’d better do some thinking. Was I an old man? I hadn’t run like an old man. I dog-paddled a while, and now that I was away from the madness back there, getting my wind back, I started to think. But there wasn’t much to think about. It truly was as if I’d been born under that big tree. Everything before that blurred moment was blank. Life began for me now, this minute. And it didn’t seem, from the life I’d lived so far, that I had much to look forward to.
There wouldnt be anything to look forward to, however, if I didn’t get out of this ocean. I started swimming again, more slowly this time, angling toward shore so I would hit the beach half a mile or so from the point where I’d left it. When I finally felt the wet sand beneath me, I was exhausted. Whatever banging around I’d had, the flight and long swim, had drained most of my strength from me. My head felt broken. I sprawled on the sand and slept.
When I awoke, it was still dark. I rolled onto my back, looked up at bright stars in the black sky. And I was suddenly awake, without any lingering fog of sleep in my mind. I remembered what had happened — but only from that moment under the tree until now. The grass skirt, tightly knotted at my side, was still around my waist. But there was nothing else, nothing to tell me who I was, where I’d come from, how I’d gotten here. It was an empty, even frightening, awakening. I ached all over, and my head throbbed dully in time to the beat of my heart.
I started walking along the beach. Lights of hotels were burning brightly; voices reached me in the night. For a while I stood in shadow near a group of tables and chairs before a small building. People were talking there, laughing and having fun. Before long I knew I was in Hawaii, in Honolulu, on the beach at Waikiki. I found a path between two buildings, kept walking, keeping to darkened streets as much as possible. I was more than a little conspicuous, and didn�
��t even know where I was going. But I knew I couldn’t just sit on the beach and wait for the sun to come up. Not in a grass skirt. Not without knowing more, somehow discovering a little more about myself.
Soon after leaving the beach I learned a little more. But I didn’t plan it. It just happened. I had turned into a dimly illuminated section of a street that a sign told me was Monsarrat. A couple of cars passed, kept on going. Then another came by. It was an old brown Chevrolet, moving fast. The driver was leaning out a front window, looking toward me, and as the car went by he yelled, Hey that’s him!
Tires skidded on the road as he hit the brakes. The car came to a sudden, swerving stop. Two guys piled out of the rear and the car swung around in a U-turn, raced back the way it had come. Alarm jumped in me. I might even have tried to run, but ahead of me the Chevrolet slid into the curb and stopped. A man jumped out of the front seat; another, the fourth, followed him. The last two stood on the sidewalk facing me. I turned toward them, but twisted my head around for a look. Ten yards away the two men who’d first left the car were trotting toward me. Two in front, two in back. And they sure as hell didn’t act friendly.
The Chevys driver called, Don’t shoot. Keep it quiet. He cant have a gun on him. His voice was not loud, but it carried easily past me to the others. And I heard it.
Don’t shoot? I looked around, glanced over the ground. There was nothing near me I could use as a weapon or club. And nobody had to tell me I was going to need one. Across the street, a five-foot-high brick wall extended parallel to the sidewalk before a two-story building. As the men closed in on me I ran toward two of them, then turned suddenly, sprinted across the street and stopped with my back to the brick wall.
One of the men let out a yell, but the others ran after me in silence. The main advantage I’d got by running here was that my back was protected now; but there was another benefit, too. Instead of reaching me all at once, the men were spread out a little by the time they got to me. That was the idea. A guy in a snap-brim hat was in the lead, something held in his upraised hand. Two men were together behind him, and the fourth was barely starting across the street.
Dance with the Dead (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 13