Fuzzily, I remember seeing Sybil coming through the entrance. I felt relieved. I got off the stool and started toward her. And that was all.
• • •
It was the screwiest nightmare anyone ever had. In it were all the girls I ever knew, all of them I ever kissed. But all of them were singing that old Navy classic, “Roll me over and do it again.” And they all had Ona’s face. Ona’s battered face. Poor Ona. The only place you’ll ever live now, Ona, is in my nightmares. My thought associations are not respectable enough to work you past the censor into my respectable dreams. You would be all right, Ona. A sweet kid, and I wouldn’t mind the nightmares to see you, but must you wear your battered face? Wear your Kalama face, Ona. The smiles, the wriggling, the way you looked like you were going to scream with agony when you weren’t going to scream at all, and weren’t even in agony. Not the nightmare face, Ona. Then my dream changed. Ona and I were driving back from Kalama on the Nuuanu Pali road, only we were going the wrong way. Ona’s head was against my shoulder. And I thought, Troy will raise hell about your blood on my jacket. Lipstick is one thing, Ona, but blood. Then there was a cliff. And I was driving, but there was nothing I could do. You never have control in nightmares. But this cliff was so real, I felt the terror of it all the way to the end of my spine. We were going over! There was no way to save us. Except, the drowsy thought came, except wake up.
I was jolted badly. Both my eyes flew open. I was in my car. On the seat beside me lolled Ona’s battered body! In the crazy, spinning, battering moments as we toppled wildly down the sheer incline, I yelled her name!
I took a beating as we hurtled down through the thick, sweet darkness. It was still a nightmare, but I was no longer dreaming. I felt the steering wheel driven hard into my belly as we careened against the rubbery-webbed side of a banyan.
There was no explosion, no fire. Just unearthly, ear hurting silence. My ribs felt broken, and it was difficult to breathe. I slid out from under the wheel. I tried to lift Ona’s body, but sledge hammers thundered against the back of my neck.
Little demons carried torches behind my eyeballs, my legs crumpled under me every few steps as I climbed upslope to the highway.
There were already a half dozen cars at the place where we’d gone over. The headlights revealed skidding tire tracks, the brush splintered at the side of the road. I stepped out into the center of the glaring lamplight.
A woman gasped. Men were muttering as they ran toward me. I gestured down the incline, “Down there — ” I said. “She’s down there — help her please.”
I folded to my knees then, and sank against the cool, pleasant road. It felt so comfortable against my face. Vaguely, I was aware of men bending over me. “Whew!” one said. “What a breath! This guy is drunker than a lord.”
“Probably only reason he’s alive,” somebody said.
I tried to protest. I wasn’t drunk. I knew I wasn’t drunk. There were no words. I could hear the sirens wailing up from the valley in the distance.
14
GOD DAMN YOU,” Mosani said. “Now, God damn you.”
It was dark in the room, but light filtered metallically bright through the cracks of the Venetian blinds, so I knew it was day outside the hospital. The door was closed behind Mosani’s broad back, and beyond the door was the guard.
When I’d opened my eyes the first time, the guard was there. I moved my head on the pillow, trying to escape the antiseptic smell that was in this place. “What time is it?” I said to the cop.
“Seven o’clock,” the cop said.
“I got to get out of here.” I only said it. I didn’t feel like leaving, all I wanted to do was lie there, cool and comfortable. I was only in pain when I tried to move.
“You’ll be out of here, all right. You be patient,” the cop said. “You’ll be in court for murder.”
I just looked at him. The guard left the room and then returned with Albert Mosani.
“Mosani,” I said.
He gestured the cop from the room, closed the door behind him and then turned to look at me.
He was no longer the smart copper, the wise homicide detective who’d climbed up from the gutter. He was a simple man, now. A simple, heartbroken man. It was in his face, the drag to his thick mouth, the ache and burn in his eyes.
“Now, God damn you,” Mosani said again. “Now I got you where I want you. You have hit at me for the last time, Patterson. Now I am hitting. I hope to God you can now take it.”
“You’re a mean man with a grudge, aren’t you, Mosani?” I looked at him.
“What you have done to me with the department,” Mosani said thickly, “no man could ever forgive. What you have done by meddling, no man can forget. My superior Mr. Patterson, let me tell you, I know all you have done! Do you think I do not know that you went to the aid of that Contona woman?
“Well, maybe you won’t be so happy about it when I tell you what you don’t know. Your friend owed Hattie Contona a great sum of money. Only the exact amount I cannot tell you. But it is in the thousands, and staggering — for what? For drug weeds and for cash loans that he squandered on whiskey with no intention of ever repaying to her. He knew she could not complain to the police because he knew — as we know without being able to prove — that she is a dope peddler. He used her money and then laughed at her. The woman you aided might well be your friend’s murderer, as well as a despoiler with her weeds — ”
I turned a little in the bed, and pain shot through me. His voice was level. But it was dead, without mercy, without any emotion except grief at the death of Ona. I was sorry for him, but I said coldly, “Hattie was not romantic enough. She could not have gotten so close to him to shoot him. He would have fought her off.”
Something happened to the agony in Mosani’s face. Rage flooded through it. “Still you try to tell me my business!” he whispered. “Haven’t you had enough?”
I shook my head. “You beat me to the bullet in Herb’s room, Mosani. But why did you have one of your official goons beat me over the head and throw me in the alley for the vultures to pick?”
He did not even bother to deny it. “I warned you, Patterson, to get out. I told you I would show you no mercy if you continued meddling. I thought you would have sense enough when you woke in the alley — ”
“You made a mistake, Mosani. You made me mad.”
He leaned forward, his voice tense. “Do not try to avenge your anger on officials, Patterson. There are always other ways to get you. Even if you had not killed Ona Kalani, I would have fixed you. But now that you have killed Ona, you’ll get life in prison at the very least! Do you understand? I’ll work at that all day. All night. You haven’t got a chance in God’s world!”
I sat up in the bed. Pain? The hell with it. My eyes held Mosani’s. “Listen to me, goon,” I said. “You hate me. All right. I don’t like the cut of your face, either. Is that clear? You’re a goon, and you’re nothing but a goon. All the gaudy sport shirts in the world won’t change that. But I didn’t kill Ona Kalani.”
He got up and walked to the window. It was as though he had to hold himself leashed to keep from killing me. Finally, he turned around, facing me, his face strained.
“No. Of course you didn’t. You were out for a ride. You were taking her for a ride. You were drunk, and you went over the side of the Nuuanu Pali road. You’d like the world to believe that, wouldn’t you? Ona Kalani was killed in an accident. At worst, manslaughter.
At worst. At best, you’re the husband of a rich woman, Ona Kalani was nothing. Nobody. An orphan — ”
“An orphan?” I laughed at him. “Don’t be a fool. How do you think I met her?”
“I don’t care how you met her. Don’t talk about her. I don’t want her name on your mouth.”
“Mosani, this is between you and me to the end. But get this. I was hired to find Ona when she ran off to meet you at the hotel court across the island. Her father himself hired me. If you want the truth, she wasn’t trying to
hide. But you had left her. You were a disappointment, if you want all the truth. You’re a big man, Mosani. You can slug poor devils around when they can’t hit back. But Ona laughed at you in bed. Do you understand that, Mosani? She laughed at you. She told me about you, and she laughed at you.”
He stood, staring at me, his eyes for a moment glassy, as though he’d been hit so hard, his senses were reeling under the force of the blow. I could hear his breathing, like a growl in his throat.
At last, he said quietly, “The joke then is on me, Patterson. She seemed pleased. She seemed happy.” The tears were in his eyes, they spilled over slowly, a horrible thing to see. “But at the end it is on you. Somebody was playing a monstrous joke on you, Patterson. And you’ll die for it. Because I am a good cop, and I know how to see that you die for it. But Ona’s father could never have hired you to find her. She was an orphan. I know, damn you. I know. We grew up together in the same Catholic orphanage. I used to promise her when we were kids that someday, when we grew up, I’d take care of her. And I will, Patterson. I will.”
15
THEY WHEELED me in to the inquest.
I was all right. I wanted to walk. But Mosani told them coldly that I was to appear in my pajamas and robe, in a hospital wheel chair.
The room was large with white walls and casement windows. Outside the sun was shining through a brisk rain shower. Inside the room, it was muggy hot, even with the large fans oscillating on the coroner’s desk.
The first man called to testify was a stout, graying retired railroad employee. “I was driving with my wife,” he said when they questioned him. “We saw the car go over. Naturally, I stopped and offered assistance. I might say I was the first person down the incline to the car. I helped bring the mangled body of the young woman up to the highway. We saw in the headlights that she was badly battered about the face and head.”
“Could these marks have been caused by the accident?”
“I certainly should think so. The incline is steep at that place, the car must have turned over at least once before it hit the banyan tree.”
I glanced at Mosani. He didn’t even lift his eyes.
The next to testify was a Naval officer from Navy Housing. He’d been riding with another officer’s wife in the romantic moonlight of the Nuuanu Pali road. He was inclined to be lenient in his judgments.
“At first, I thought this man, Patterson, was very drunk. But it could have been shock. I suppose the shock would have made him cave in. It might have upset him so that the smell of his breath was heightened.”
Slowly, they went back over it all. The whole thing was presented. I watched Mosani, sitting silently in his white pressed suit. Mosani’s eyes seemed veiled, even inattentive. The talk went on.
The doctor was called. A test had shown that I was not drunk, there was practically no alcohol in my system the night of the accident. Mosani looked up then. His eyes met mine. For some reason, he seemed pleased.
Eddie Kole was called next. He was a dapper man, about forty years old, his hair thick but tightly brushed on his skull. He was wearing what must have been a three hundred dollar suit. But it had a garish look with its high waist, padded shoulders and narrow cuffs. Kole was only slightly more than five feet tall, his nose large, his skin very dark.
“I own the Bali Hi Night Club at Waikiki,” he said with a touch of pride when they asked him his occupation.
“Did you see this man James Patterson in your club?” he was asked.
He looked at me. I knew I’d never seen him before, him I couldn’t forget with his gold watch chain across the front of his pale vest and lime green shirt.
Eddie Kole nodded. “This man became loud at my bar. I signaled my bartender to ask him to leave.”
“Was Mr. Patterson alone?”
“Yes. Alone.”
“Was he staggering in any way? Unsteady on his feet? Or was he evidently in possession of all his faculties?”
“Except for being loud, I’d say he was all right. He walked all right. I didn’t pay too much attention. I just wanted him out of there. I run a respectable, high class club.”
“Mr. Patterson has told police that he must have been served some knockout drops in his single drink. He testifies that he awoke in the hospital with his mouth tasting of soured lemons. Could he have been served atropin, luminal or any other drug at your club without his knowledge?”
Kole’s eyes flared angrily. “Not with his knowledge, either, Honor. We don’t use them.”
“And he was perfectly all right when he left your club?”
“Far as I know. Loud, that’s all.”
Hooks Alkao, bartender at the Bali Hi Club was next. He was asked the same questions, and denied them as his boss had. “There was a woman waiting for him at the door,” he said. “I walked out with them to Mr. Patterson’s car. Mr. Patterson insisted on driving. The girl laughed at him and let him drive.”
“Girl?”
I stared at Hooks Alkao. The bartender had been a light-heavyweight boxer. His face was damaged. Sitting there, I tried to catch the boxer’s eye, but Alkao’s gaze shifted. He’s lying, I knew. And Kole lied. But why? How could even Hooks Alkao say that Sybil Tinsley was a girl?”
“Yes,” I heard Hooks say. “A young girl. Maybe nineteen.”
“Do you see this girl in this room?”
Hooks looked around. “No, sir. I don’t.”
“Would you know her if you saw her again?”
“I think so, sir.”
They brought a picture from the papers spread out on the table before Mosani. I saw that it was the tinted photograph of Ona Kalani!
“Was this the young woman with whom Mr. Patterson left the Bali Hi Club?”
Hooks Alkao looked at the picture, glanced at me, at Mosani.
Alkao nodded. “Yes, sir.” he said.
I got up out of the wheel chair. “That’s a lie!”
“Sit down,” the coroner said.
“They’re lying here,” I said. “In the first place Ona never went near the Bali Hi Club. A Mrs. Sybil Tinsley phoned and asked me to wait and meet her there. She was a client of mine. I had one Scotch while I waited. It was was Mrs. Sybil Tinsley who came in the entrance at the Bali Hi when I passed out. She is a fifty year old woman. Not even Alkao could mistake her for a nineteen year old Ona Kalani.”
“Where is this Mrs. Sybil Tinsley?” the coroner said.
Mosani stood up. “I can answer that,” he said. “We subpoenaed Mrs. Tinsley. But we find that she has left the Territory. Mrs. Tinsley took a Trans-Pacific plane at midnight last night for San Francisco. It is quite impossible that she could have been at the club and at the airport. But she is gone. She can only be sent for — returning her is something else.”
I looked at him. The cold, set smile on his face. He had knocked the last prop from under me, and he knew it. The rest of it was lies, and he might even have known that. But he hated me so terribly he was willing even to accept framed-up evidence against me! He didn’t care in what manner he got me for Ona’s death.
I could see what had happened. They’d changed their plans, whoever was behind this thing. They believed me that they could not get enough blackmail money from Sybil Tinsley to make it worth the gamble. But they could frighten her out of the Territory. They could make her run, so that the frame for Ona Kalani’s murder fit me more snugly than ever!
• • •
“We call now the police lieutenant who investigated the death of Ona Kalani.”
Mosani got up and walked across to the chair. He moved slowly, as though he regretted what he was about to do.
He sat down, pulling up his trousers at the knees, showing gaudy sox. He straightened his shoulders.
“Yes. I answered the call. At first it looked as though this man — this Mr. Patterson whose wife is the wealthy society woman of this city — this society man had been out riding with the orphan girl, Ona Kalani — ”
I almost laughed aloud. What corn, Mo
sani. What corn. But nobody else in the room thought it was corn, they were swallowing it as seriously as he was spooning it up to them.
“ — and had gone over the cliff near the Pali, but fortunately — for Mr. Patterson, not at the pass itself. This looked like an accident due to drunken driving. According to all the witnesses, Mr. Patterson appeared drunk. Now, we feel this may have been either pretense, shock or the effect upon him of what he had done.
“I investigated further. I found that he had left the Bali Hi Club in the company of the young orphan girl, Ona Kalani. This however was much earlier than the accident was reported. So I knew that this man held an office where he was a private detective. But because he was rich, he used the office only for parties such as the one we see he planned with an innocent girl, a place where he could take women to drink — well, I went up there. The office door was opened, the lights on, the shades drawn, the office furniture upset. A struggle had taken place. It was our view that Ona Kalani resisted this man’s attack upon her. They fought in the office. There was a bottle there, blood smeared. And this bottle is carefully preserved evidence that this man killed Ona Kalani in his office with an empty whiskey bottle, and then simulated a wreck to make her death appear accidental!
“And who can he call to testify for him? No one. A woman. But she is now in the States. Isn’t that convenient? He must have known she planned this trip. He was visiting her in the afternoon. I met him when I called there on a routine police matter. Mrs. Tinsley mentioned to me that she wanted to return to the States, planned to. I believe she would have made the same statement to this man.”
“We order this man held, without bail, for trial in Criminal Court, for the first degree murder of Ona Kalani.”
16
MOSANI CAME into the cell and looked at my face.
He said angrily to the guard. “You will tell them to stop hitting him in the face. Tell them to stop it at once. Tell them they are to work on his body. If it takes longer, he will soften in time. Tell them not to be impatient.”
The Brass Monkey Page 9