Hows that again? I asked Wang.
Some change, a handkerchief, and this check were the only things we found in his pants. Either he made out the check himself, or it was made out to him, or he stole the thing. He grinned at his quip, if that’s what it was.
Then his grin went away slowly, and he peered some more at me, finally asked, Advertiser, you said?
That’s right.
What did you say your name was?
Uh . . . Smith.
Smith? Pretty common name. He sounded suspicious.
Probably I should have chosen something else, but it was too late now. He sure looked suspicious. So I said, Yes. Well . . . its my first name.
Smiths your first name?
Yes. Smith — Brown. My parents had a sense of humor. A lousy sense of humor. Smith Brown. Ah . . .
He didn’t say anything.
Well, thank you, I said. Thanks a lot. Detective Robert Wang, isnt it? W-a-n-g? Want to be sure and spell your name right. Im very careful about names — after what happened to me. W-a-n-g, right?
Yes. And Robert is R-o-b-e-r-t.
We had lost some of our rapport.
I thanked him again, for me and the Honolulu Advertiser, and got out of there. On the street I resisted the almost overpowering impulse to run, walked a fast block and flagged a cab. I didn’t breathe normally until miles were between me and the Honolulu Police Station. And even then it was a struggle, because I felt pretty sure Detective Wang was about now calling the Advertiser and asking for Smith Brown.
It was going to be kind of painful for him.
The sun was low in the west when I got back to the Hawaiian Village. I’d taken time to buy and change into a new blue gabardine suit, shoes, everything from the skin out, including a woven-reed hat with a band colored like a peacocks tail. I seemed to like colorful things, but that was about all I’d learned — except for what I’d picked up at the Honolulu Police Station.
I felt that Loana Kaleoha was the quick and easy answer to all this, but I’d been unable to get in touch with her. So, I had dinner in the Ale Ale Kai room on the Hawaiian Villages grounds — ambrosial mahi mahi sprinkled with crunchy macadamia nuts — while beady-eyed little birds peered at me from nearby chairs and tables in the open-air room. Then I found a phone and called Loana’s number again. Again, no answer.
I called the Pele and asked if she was there. She wasn’t, I was told, and nobody knew if she would be present for the floor show later this evening, since nobody had been able to get in touch with her. Maybe yes; maybe no.
Half an hour later a taxi deposited me at the club. It was out past Diamond Head, a big tropical-looking spot near the sea. I walked over a narrow bridge and inside. On my left was a long dimly-lighted bar. A bamboo wall separated the bar from the main dining area of the Pele. The dining room contained a lot of tables, most of them occupied, candles providing flickering illumination. Beyond the small dance floor a combo was playing soft, lilting music while three or four couples hugged each other rhythmically.
I went back to the bar, obviously a popular spot. It was crammed, people massed at small tables, bubbles of conversation popping in the air like champagne corks. There were a couple of empty seats at the bar and I slid onto a stool.
The bartender mopped the bars surface with a white towel and said, Yes, sir. What would you like?
The question jarred me. I didn’t know what I liked. That cold, brain-chilling feeling started creeping up from the back of my skull again, like an icicle boring into my brain, but I pushed my thoughts away from that and said, Same as his, jerking my thumb at a highball before the man next to me.
Bourbon-and-soda, he said and swiftly fixed one for me. I asked the bartender, Miss Kaleoha show up yet?
You got me. I been too busy to do anything but mix drinks. He walked toward an impatient customer.
Unthinking, I shoved the woven-reed hat back on my head, then remembered the white hair, straightened the hat. I finished my drink, pushed through happy people and found a pay phone in a booth outside the club, made the call to Loana’s number and again got no answer.
Wondering where I went from here, I headed back toward the bar, walking through the dining area next to tables crowded with the jolly people. And something caught my eye.
I was passing by a table at which a woman sat alone, and she moved so suddenly that I turned my head toward her. She had jerked back in her chair, as if I’d startled her, and when I looked down at her face her eyes were wide.
She let her breath out in a soft sigh, then said, What . . . what are you doing here?
Shed recognized me — from somewhere. My pulse speeded up. I took a good look at her. She was gorgeous. Those eyes, still wide, were dark, almost black under black brows, and her lips were red as wine. She was seated, but I guessed she was fairly tall, and I didn’t have to guess about the astounding figure. She had all the curves men dream about and some new ones for better dreams. Her skin was brown, either naturally or from a lot of sun, and the neckline of her electric-blue dress, cut low, revealed the creamy smoothness of high breasts pushing against the cloth.
I said, Do you know me?
Do I . . . what did you say?
Do you know me?
She didn’t answer for a while, looking up at me, the lovely face perplexed. Then she said, Of course I know you. Whats — whats the matter with you?
I swallowed. My pulse was pounding now. There was a highball glass in front of the girl, another one, half-empty, in front of the seat opposite her. I said, May I sit down?
She nodded and I took the chair across from her and said, This may sound a little crazy, but I’d very much like for you to tell me who I am.
Her mouth sagged slightly. You mean you don’t know?
No. I told you it would sound crazy. I — well, I fell out of a tree, and something . . . happened to my head. Or in it. I cant remember anything about myself.
She shook her head slowly, picked up her drink and swallowed half of it. Then she turned those flashing dark eyes on me again and said, I know you fell out of a tree. The whole island knows it. But — you really cant remember a thing?
Lots of things. Practically everything, I guess, unless it concerns me. And I’ve got a hunch Im either Webley Alden or Shell Scott. But its only a hunch so far.
Her face was still puzzled. Why do you say that?
I told her about the check found in my pocket and added Wangs quip, Or maybe Im a thief. Maybe I stole the check. She was no more amused than I had been when I’d heard it. I said, Will you for Petes sake tell me who I am?
She still seemed almost unbelieving. You’re serious, arent you?
Hell, yes. I mean, lady, you don’t know how serious.
And you really don’t know who I am?
No.
Darling, Im Loana.
For as much as two or three seconds it didn’t penetrate. When it did, though, I felt enormously buoyed up and at the same time let down a little. Loana Kaleoha — the woman I’d been trying to find. But also the lovely I’d been in the Banyan Tree with.
I looked at her beautiful face, the thick black hair, the astounding figure, and I thought: what in hell is the use of doing anything at all if you cant remember the first thing about it? And then, dismally, it dawned on me that maybe I would never remember anything of my past — because if I had forgotten someone as lovely as this dark-skinned, dark-eyed, Incredibly fashioned tomato, then I was practically beyond hope.
I sighed and said, Loana, the suspense is killing me. Who am I?
Why, darling, she said smiling. You’re Webley Alden.
Thirteen
Boy, did I feel relieved!
Now I was getting someplace. I knew who I was. This was a dandy start, and from here maybe I could dig out the rest of it.
Loana, I said, I could hug yo
u and kiss you for telling me that. In fact, even if you hadn’t told me that.
She smiled.
I smiled.
After smiling a while I said, You were up . . . I was up . . . we were up in the tree? Both of us? Together?
She nodded, still smiling.
What — how did I happen to pop out of the thing?
Well, you . . . werent running away.
That figured. I wouldnt have been. Not from her. I said, I knew it. I was pretty sure it wasn’t anything like that. But tell me more. What did I tell you about myself? What kind of person am I — is Webley Alden?
Webley Alden. I rolled it around in what was left of my mind, which I hoped had been rather more to begin with, and it gathered no moss. Nothing stuck to it. Usually, I thought, amnesia cases on learning some new fact about themselves should find other, related facts, seeping into memory. But nothing seeped. I was a special case, I guessed.
Loana said, You didn’t really tell me very much. We — we werent talking much about things like . . . that.
The husky, pointed way she said it stuck me right in the gizzard. What . . . were we talking about . . . doing . . . tell me, tell me.
She chuckled softly. Oh, please!
I groaned inwardly. And even a little outwardly. Well, never mind for now. Tell me more about me, then, Loana. I must have told you something.
Well, you’re a millionaire —
Ah!
And you live in California.
Medina, yes. I shook my head. Its not coming back to me, though. I just saw the name on my check.
Right then another thought clanked in my head. Why had I made out a thousand-dollar check to the other guy, to Shell Scott? I didn’t know yet — but at least I was a millionaire. Not bad. I was glad I’d made something of my life.
Then, frowning, I said to Loana, I’ve learned a little about me in the last few hours. And some of it I don’t know whether I like or not. So do you know if I made my fortune — honestly?
Oh, yes. You invented something to do with photography and made a lot of money. Right now you publish a magazine.
A magazine?
Called Wow!
I don’t.
Yes, you do. That’s how we met. I posed for one of the photographs. You even took the picture. She seemed to be enjoying herself.
I blinked. Im sorry. I don’t remember. What kind of picture was it?
If I published a magazine called — of all things! — Wow!, then I could imagine the kind of picture.
She seemed to think about it for a bit then said, It was on the big island — Hawaii — the black sand beach there, Kalapana Beach. I lay face down on the sand as surf rippled up around my legs. Of course I didn’t have any clothes on —
No clothes on —
. . . and it was in color. Three pages of the magazine. The gatefold in the center.
She said something else but I didn’t hear her.
I stood up, saying half to myself, What a life! Oh, what a life I must have led! I beat myself about the head, thinking: come back, come back. But nothing came back. Finally I stopped beating myself about the head and sat down. Tell me some more. Lots more.
That’s about all there is, darling. Darling. Two or three times shed called me that. There was something between us, all right. A table for one thing, and I wished it wasn’t between us. Even if I didn’t know what had gone on up there, I wished we were back in that damned tree. It would almost be worth falling out again.
I said, Surely theres more you can tell me. Anything at all. It might jiggle my memory. Any little thing . . .
She wasn’t listening. The black eyes were wide once more and she was looking up at somebody standing alongside the table. I followed her glance. A man was standing next to the table, looking at Loana. Then his face turned toward me and his mouth sprang open.
This one I’d seen before. So recently that I could remember him easily. Tall and skinny, with a big spread-out nose and bushy black eyebrows and hair. And one black eye. I’d given him the black eye, and undoubtedly his gut was still very tender. The tall thin bastard who’d reached me, second of the four, last night on Monsarrat.
His mouth was open, thin lips stretching so that I could see the crooked, stained bottom row of his teeth. I aimed at those teeth as I came out of the chair. The reaction was automatic. The last time I’d seen him he’d been swinging at me, then running, and I just picked it up where wed left off.
My legs snapped me up like springs and my left arm came around in a tight loop with my balled fist at the end of it. My knuckles landed squarely on his mouth and I felt the skin over some knuckles split. But that was just a little thing, and what happened to his mouth was a big thing. It made a big noise, too, like a plank breaking. He sailed back in the air, smacked into a table.
Voices rose, crescendoing. My hat had fallen off, exposing my white hair, when I’d swung at him, and on my right in the midst of moving people a man pointed at me and yelled something. I didn’t catch the words, but I got the message. I grabbed the hat, pulled it onto my head again, straightened up. And another familiar face nearby in the crowd tugged at my eye. It was the fourth man, the one who’d driven the car away last night.
I started for him, then stopped.
There was a hell of a lot of noise. The bartender was out from behind the bar, coming toward me. Two waiters were converging on me from another direction, and there was that fourth man, plus plain drunks who might decide to join in the fray.
Behind my eyes floated Detective Robert Wangs face. And the cream-colored Honolulu Police Station. And electric chairs, gas chambers, firing squads.
I hesitated. I was tired of running.
But even if I knew my name now I still didn’t know much else — including what I might have done to get the tough boys after me. And I did know for certain that Wang wanted to talk to me about two dead men. Especially now that he would have spoken to somebody at the Advertiser.
The guy I’d hit was flat on his back a few feet away. One foot wiggled feebly. I hesitated, but then both my feet wiggled feebly, and then I gave them their head, if you can give feet their head. Anyway, I ran.
I went past the bar and out through the entrance of the Pole, sprinted to my right along a darkened walk lined with trees and shrubs. The walk curved and I curved with it, came out onto some grass. There was no parade behind me as there’d been before, just the usual yelling. Beyond the grass I ran onto the sands of a beach, skirted some beach seats and umbrellas and kept running. Several blocks away I puffed into a street and slowed to a walk. Apparently I’d made it. But I had a hunch it wouldnt be for long. Oahu was getting a little small for me.
Later I lay fully dressed on an empty stretch of beach and tried to think. I was enormously confused. But one hard fact stood out above confusion like Diamond Head over the sea: I had to find out more about me, my past, what had gotten me into this mess — even what the mess was. It was vital, in the strict dictionary sense: essential to the continuance of life. Not just any old life — my life. I simply wasn’t going to last unless I learned more, a lot more, and fast.
Especially here, on Oahu, I wouldnt last. What with Detective Wang undoubtedly snorting after me now, accompanied by numerous other snorting policemen, and no telling how many guys with guns eager to use those guns to produce great ugly holes in me, Oahu was not merely hot but erupting.
For an almost superstitious moment I was appalled by the picture I’d drawn. Surely, whatever I was, I couldn’t have gotten myself into such a stupendous predicament as this alone; surely evil Fates of some low type must have experimented with me, weaving the threads of my days into a lumpy Gordian knot.
Well, nuts to them. I wasn’t exactly going to run away from trouble; I was merely going to get clear the hell away from here. If I could. But I needed a goal; not just a place to get away f
rom, but a place to go. After all, my biggest purpose here had been to find Loana Kaleoha and talk to her. That I had done, and apparently there was no more of real value she could tell me. So, away, away! But where away?
Well, what did I have to work with, what did I know?
Into my mind came the picture of that thousand-dollar check. I remembered the address on it: 947 Poinsettia Drive, Medina, California. And I remembered, too, Wangs reference to Shell Scott as a Los Angeles private detective. Why had I given — or planned to give — that much money to Shell Scott? To a detective. Maybe I was in trouble.
I laughed sourly at that. Maybe I was in trouble?
I tried to line it all up in my mushy mind, find the best and quickest way of getting to the bottom of whatever situation I was fouled up in. It seemed to come out clearly enough.
I lived in Medina, near Los Angeles. Scott was a Los Angeles private detective. If I had hired or even meant to hire him because of trouble I was in, then certainly I would have told him all about the trouble.
I felt better after I’d figured the thing out. Rather pleased with myself, in fact. I knew how to get the answers, knew what I had to do. It was simple. It was as plain as the nose on my face.
I had to find Shell Scott.
Fourteen
The Pan-Am Clipper Rambler came in over Catalina Island and soon I could see the California coastline ahead, strings of lights webbing the darkness beyond. It was nearly eight p.m. Thursday night, the twentieth of August.
After coming to my decision last night on the beach I had decided simply to take the first plane for L.A. I’d been able to get a seat on a prop job leaving Honolulu Airport at eight a.m., and I had waited till the last minute, then — as John Smith again — walked casually but briskly aboard. There was one slightly disturbing event.
As I’d gone through the gate, two men leaning against the chain-wire fence bordering the field had stared at me in what I thought strenuous fashion. I didn’t recognize either of them, but I wouldnt forget them. The contrast between the two men was almost ludicrous: a very good-looking big guy, tall and strong and with abundant brown hair; and a very bad-looking little guy, short and weak and with prematurely gone hair. From the top of the flight stairs I’d looked back to see the little bald man trotting toward the terminal. Maybe it hadn’t meant anything.
Dance with the Dead (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 15