The Pearl Harbor Murders d-3

by Max Allan Collins

  Fielder sighed heavily. He finished off his rum punch and said, "All right, you stubborn s.o.b. Can you meet me at my quarters at six o'clock?" "Yes. Absolutely."

  Nodding, Fielder rose; the two men shook hands. "See you there."

  And Colonel Fielder headed toward the tavern and its parking lot. "I think you're doing the right thing," Burroughs said.

  "Hell," Sterling said with a laugh. The FBI man gulped down the rest of his rum punch. "I was just hoping I was full of crap."

  NINE

  Chinatown

  For a Coast haole (as mainlanders were referred to), Hully Burroughs had a better-than-average understanding of Hawaii's Japanese community.

  He knew that Japanese owned many of the restaurants in Honolulu, that they repaired most cars and built most houses, that they worked behind most retail counters. And, anyway, you didn't have to be terribly aware to notice the dozens of Japanese teahouses, or the kimono shops, or the sake breweries, the Japanese-language newspapers, fish-cake factories, movie houses….

  Still, much of mis eluded the average haole, particularly the typical tourist, because on the one hand, Hawaii worked hard at its Polynesian image-Waikiki wallowed in it-and on the other, Hawaii was insistent upon its American status, indignantly reminding forgetful mainlanders that they were in the United States, not some foreign land.

  Hully had gained his awareness, limited though it might be, through his friendship with Sam Fujimoto, the son of their maid at the Niumalu. Sam-a senior in prelaw at the University of Hawaii-had shown Hully the local ropes, when the mainlander had first arrived.

  This afternoon, Hully needed his friend's help, for two reasons. First, he needed wheels-his father had taken the Pierce Arrow to the Shriner game. Second, he needed a tour guide-because, despite whatever scant familiarity he had with local Asian customs, Hully felt that would not be enough for where he needed to go.

  Chinatown. The Oriental neighborhood had been staked out many decades before by Chinese workers fleeing the sugar and pineapple plantations, marking off this triangle of downtown Honolulu-Nuuanu Street on the southeast, North Beretania Street on the northeast, South King Street as the hypotenuse-for small retail businesses and restaurants.

  But despite the name, in Chinatown, the Japanese (and the Filipinos, too, for that matter) vastly outnumbered the Chinese, though the white tourists, coming and going from the main port at the foot of Nuuanu Street, rarely knew the difference, much less noticed how the Japanese and Chinese merchants kept their distance from each other, even when jammed side by side.

  Coast haoles saw only the Orient, a nonspecific Asia crammed into a few blocks-sleazy storefronts and Shinto shrines, silk shops and tattoo parlors, bathhouses and Buddhist temples, live chickens and dead ducks, coffee shops and chop suey joints, incense and strangely aromatic spices mingling with the sickly-sweet perfume of the nearby pineapple canneries and the salty stench of the marshlands below the city.

  "What do you think her uncle's likely to know?" Sam Fujimoto asked.

  The slender, smoothly handsome nisei-black hair trimmed military short (he was in ROTC at the Manoa campus)-was casual at the wheel of his dark blue '38 Ford convertible sedan; his sportshirt was a lighter blue, his trousers white, his shoes the slippers so common on the island (Hully was wearing a pair himself).

  "You and I, we only knew Pearl through the Niumalu," Hully said. "The only people in her life that we know, too, are musicians, hotel staff and guests."

  "And boyfriends like Bill and that Stanton character, who met her there."

  "Right, Sam. But she used to live with her uncle, in Chinatown, when she first moved to Oahu-that could open up a whole new world of friends and acquaintances."

  "Maybe it is worth talking to him." Sam had never dated Pearl, but he knew her a littie, had spoken to her a few times. "But it'll probably be a dead end. My feeling is, she distanced herself from anything… overtly Japanese." He shrugged. "A lot of my generation do."

  "Pearl sure seemed like an all-American girl."

  One hand on the wheel, Sam gave Hully half a smile. "She was one-she was born in Frisco, right?"

  "Right."

  The convertible was bouncing along Fort Street. They crossed Nuuanu Street, where the Liberty Theater-home to a Chinese stock company that went in for horrific flights of fancy-was at the left.

  "I think I've seen this guy around the Niumalu," Sam said, referring to Yoshio Harada, Pearl's grocer uncle. Though he didn't live at the hotel, Sam had spent his share of time there, what with his mother's work and his friendship with Hully.

  "I saw him just yesterday," Hully said. "Helped him unload, a little. Bivens buys fresh seafood and fruit and vegetables from Harada. Seems like a nice enough little guy … You would think he'd be heartsick, today."

  "His niece murdered, I should say."

  Actually, Hully had his doubts, though he said, "Maybe he won't even be working."

  "Oh, he'll be working," Sam said with a knowing smile. "Guy like that doesn't miss a Saturday at the market."

  Hully knew Sam was right-knew that Harada was indeed working today. Since Hully hadn't had an address for the grocer, he'd stopped at the front desk and checked with manager Fred Bivens, who'd said, "Funny thing is, you just missed him. He made a delivery not ten minutes ago."

  "Really? Gosh, he delivered a boatload of stuff just yesterday-I helped him unload some of it."

  "I remember-but sometimes Mr. Harada makes unscheduled stops when he has something nice for me-like the swordfish he dropped by with, just now."

  "How's he doing?"

  "Doing?"

  "His niece was murdered last night, Fred. How is he doing?"

  "Oh. Well, he's doing fine. I paid my sympathies, he thanked me, we both said what a sad awful thing it was, and… frankly, then we did business."

  "So Pearl's uncle isn't holed up in some funeral home or church, mourning, then."

  "No. He said he was on his way back to his store."

  "You have an address?"

  "Actually… funny thing, no. I never been down there to his shop in Chinatown… he always makes deliveries. All I know is it's down near the Aala Market."

  They were deep into Chinatown now. Just past Mau-nakea Street, on the right-hand side of Beretania, was notorious Tin Can Alley, that quaint, exotic, harmless-looking entry into a deadly tenement area replete with crooked pathways, whores, rickety wooden stairs, pimps, sagging balconies, and thugs-a literal tourist trap. Within easy walking distance were neighborhoods with such sobriquets as Blood Town, Hell's Half Acre and Mosquito Flats, home to a staggering array of opium dens, gambling halls and cathouses.

  "What's your take on this?" Hully asked his friend. "You know Bill well enough-could he be a suspect?"

  Sam shrugged a shoulder. "Only if Pearl was running around on him, and he caught her in the act."

  "Do you believe that's possible?"

  "She was a flirt, and she got around-but this last month or so? I can't see it. Hell, she was crazy about Bill-she was serious. They were serious."

  Nodding thoughtfully, Hully said, "I'd like to track down this Stanton-he's on a weekend pass. Maybe we could check out Hotel Street later."

  "I'm game."

  Just beyond Lau Yee Chai-the best, most lavish chop suey house in Honolulu (a different sort of tourist trap)-was River Street, bordering the Nuuanu Stream. Soon they were on Queen Street, and Sam found a parking place, and they headed over on foot to the Aala Market and the Japanese sampan fishing dock.

  Along the way they encountered Japanese women wearing silk kimonos clip-clopping along the wooden walkway in clogs called gettas, lugging children on their backs. Past the garish Oriental lettering of signs, small simple wooden storefronts were gorged with tourist-friendly merchandise; often a diapered baby would be crawling across a wooden floor, and one moonfaced older child sat unattended, nibbling pink gelatin candies, while tourists and clerks bartered. They passed pawnshops, saimin (noodle) cafes, coffee
shops, and herb dens, the babblelike sounds of Asian tongues mingling with the occasional popping of firecrackers and the hollow echo of gongs gliding down the Nuuanu Valley from a Buddhist temple.

  The Aala Market was democracy-and capitalism-in action: all classes of people, half a dozen or more races, moving along the vegetable, fish and flower stalls, rubbing (sometimes knocking) elbows in the common pursuit of food. The fish caught in Hawaiian waters were second to none, and spread out in rows for the approval of customers: red snappers looking like giant goldfish; enormous swordfish; tuna small and large (aku); bass; needlefish; even an octopus. Some of it had been chopped into slabs and steaks, and there was seaweed for sale, too, and dried salmon, and fresh poi.

  Hully let Sam do the talking-since much of it was in Japanese-seeking directions to the grocer's shop. Sam had little luck for some time, until Hully thought to ask him to explain to these merchants that they were not seeking Harada to make a purchase.

  "I should've thought of that," Sam said, grinning, shaking his head. "They don't want to send us to a competitor!"

  Next time out, they got the address-and it was close by.

  As they strolled along the sampan dock, where both small blue sampans and larger diesel-powered boats were moored, Sam said, "These fishermen are all Japanese-no Chinese or Filipino or anybody else."

  "Why?"

  "We're just better at it." This was a rare instance of Sam referring to himself as in any way Japanese. "Faster boats, powerful shortwave radios. We're good at gizmos."

  "Size of some of these boats is amazing."

  "Fishing is big business, around here-one of those diesel-powered forty-footers can run you twelve grand. That kind of dough even Tarzan wouldn't sneeze at."

  Hully whistled. "You know, all this talk of a Japanese attack on Oahu-would they really do it? I mean, there are so many Japanese here … so much Japanese business."

  "Well, it's really American business, Hully. But you have a point-Honolulu is probably the most Japanese city on earth, outside Japan."

  "So you're saying they wouldn't bomb us?" "No." And Sam's eyes tightened into slits, and his smile was utterly mirthless. "They'd bomb us in a flash."

  "That's hard for me to believe." Sam put a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Hully, there are quite likely people in Japan right now banking on that very attitude."

  Yoshio Harada's shop was not a grocery in any American sense. It was a small, unpretentious wooden storefront whose front door was black hanging beads; the walls were consumed with shelves overflowing with reed baskets and glass jars of ginger root, shark-fins, seahorse skeletons, dried seaweed and other exotic wares. None of the fresh fish or produce that Harada delivered to the Niumalu (and, presumably, other clients) was on display-apparently, he strictly made his purchases at the nearby Aala Market for deliveries by pick-up truck.

  The small, mustached man-wearing a white shirt and tan trousers and a grocer's apron, despite the lack of groceries-was manning a counter to the left, the shelves of weird roots and herbs rising surrealistically behind him.

  Harada recognized Hully at once, half-bowing. "Ah, Burroughs-san. You honor me. What brings you to Chinatown?"

  "I came to pay my respects." Hully gestured to Sam. "This is my friend Sam Fujimoto-his mother is our maid at the Niumalu-perhaps you know her."

  "I am sorry, I do not. But it is a pleasure." Harada held out his hand and he and Sam shook, like they were both Americans … which, of course, they were.

  "I was a friend of your niece's, as well, sir," Sam said, with another respectful nod. "We're sorry for your loss."

  The grocer offered a curt nod in return. "Thank you, gentlemen."

  "When will the service be held?" Hully asked.

  Harada seemed confused. "Service?"

  "Pearl's funeral."

  "Oh… no arrangements have been made."

  "Ah. Can I help?"

  "I have written her parents. Posted the letter."

  "You didn't call them?"

  "No. It is long distance."

  Hully exchanged glances with Sam. "But Mr. Harada, surely Pearl deserves better than this….As I said, I'll be glad to help…."

  "Offer is … kind." Harada smiled faintly, patiently. "Burroughs-san, I like my niece, but we were not… close. I am Buddhist, she was Christian. She would not want a service in my faith; I no have interest in arranging one in hers. Her parents share her Christian belief. They may feel other way."

  Frowning, Hully asked, "Where is her body now?"

  "I understand is in morgue. She was murdered."

  "Well, I know she was murdered, but-"

  Harada held up a hand. His face was strangely hard. "I am sorry for her death. But she turned her back on her people. She did not like it here, with me-and she did not return, once she got her… job."

  "I thought she helped line you up your grocery account with Fred Bivens, at the Niumalu."

  "She did. I was grateful."

  Sam said, "But you weren't close."

  "No."

  Hully tried another angle. "Did she have any friends down here? Or for that matter, enemies?"

  Harada's eyes narrowed; his face seemed to harden even more. "Why do you ask this?"

  "Well, someone killed her…."

  Harada's chin lifted. "A man is under arrest. She had loose morals and a man killed her. He is in custody, is he not?"

  "Yeah, sure, but-"

  "The circle has closed. Why do you ask questions as if you are a policeman?"

  Hully gestured with an open hand. "Mr. Harada, I meant no offense. I merely … we merely … thought we'd offer our sympathies in what we had assumed would be a dark hour, for you."

  Harada said nothing.

  Sam said, "I guess that was our mistake."

  For several long seconds, Hully just stared at the little grocer, who didn't even blink. Then Hully rushed out onto the wooden sidewalk, anger bubbling; Sam followed. Hully was several storefronts down, moving quickly through the interracial crowd, when Sam caught up with him. 'Take it easy, Hul….You just ran head-on into a cultural war I've fought every day of my life."

  Hully stopped, looked at his friend. "Something smells."

  "Yeah, fish and dirty diapers and incense. What, you think Harada killed his own niece? Why? Because she was Christian?"

  Hully didn't know what to say, and was still looking for words when a small dark man in a snap-brim fedora, orange tie, and brown rumpled suit was suddenly in their midst.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Detective John Jardine demanded. His dark eyes were daggers.

  "I, uh… well…"

  Jardine took Hully by the back of the arm and bus-tied him into a booth in a nearby cafe. Sam came along, a wide-eyed bystander, who slipped in next to Hully.

  A waitress in a kimono came over, and Jardine said, "Three coffees," and she went away.

  "You were grilling that guy," Jardine said.

  "You… you heard?"

  "There's no damn door. Sure I heard-I was on my way in to interrogate him myself. What in the hell are you doing, walking my damn beat?"

  Calmly, Hully said, "Have you talked to my dad today?"

  "No-we've missed each other, traded phone calls. Why, is he in this too?"

  With another glance at Sam, who shrugged, Hully sighed and made a clean breast it-sharing not only the notion of the informal investigation he and his father had been conducting, but the various pieces of information they had discovered.

  Though he looked irritated, the Portuguese detective jotted much of this down in his small notebook.

  "Thank you for the information," Jardine said, sliding the notebook into an inside suit-jacket pocket. "Now-give your father a message for me: leave this to the professionals. I won't write about his jungle, and you and your father need to stay the hell out of mine."

  Hully leaned forward. "Are you looking at any suspects, other than Harry Kamana?"

  An eyebrow arched. "I was about to intervi
ew that grocer, wasn't I? Damnit, boy-leave this to the police." He looked sharply at Sam. "What's your part in this?"

  Sam's eyes widened. "I'm just a friend of Hully's … I was a friend of Pearl's, too."

  "Where were you last night?"

  "At a college dance-pregame bash."

  "But you weren't at the game today?"

  "I don't like football."

  "But you went to the 'pregame bash'?"

  "Well, sure-I do like girls."

  "Did you like Pearl Harada?"

  "Not that way… hey, what is this?"

  Jardine looked pointedly at Hully. "How's this guy for another suspect? We're looking at everybody and everything… including you, Mr. Burroughs."

  A uniformed officer, a young Polynesian, peered in the cafE's storefront window and seemed relieved to see Jardine. The cop hurried in and stood next to the booth, hands behind him.

  "Detective, may I have a word?" Jardine rose and, pointing to Hully and then at Sam, said, "Stay," as if to a pair of dogs.

  Hully and Sam watched out the window as the uniformed cop delivered some slice of detailed information that made Jardine cover his mouth; then the detective pushed his fedora back on his head, and turned and gazed through the cafe window at Hully. He crooked a finger.

  Hully raised his eyebrows and gestured to himself. Jardine frowned and nodded. Soon Sam had been left behind and Jardine-with the uniformed cop at the wheel-was sitting in the front seat of a squad car with Hully in back, feeling like a suspect.

  "What's this about?" Hully asked. "Just ride," Jardine said.

  Past the end of the Waikiki streetcar line, Jardine's driver headed out Diamond Head Road. The road was just about to begin making its winding way up the cliffs, when the squad car drew up along the roadside where another squad car was already parked.

  Wordlessly, Jardine approached an opening between the rocks where another Polynesian uniformed cop was posted at the mouth of the path; the cop nodded to

  Jardine and pointed down. Following the swarthy little detective-whose driver had stayed behind-Hully did his best to keep his balance as he navigated van-sized rocks down the grassy, sandy slope. On the beach below, the rock-infested white beach, lay a body-a naked man, sprawled on his stomach. Two more cops stood watch, but this fellow wasn't going anywhere.