From the Heart

by Eva Shaw

  George was alone. His feet were propped on a chair. The Honolulu Advertiser’s sports section was in his fingers and his glasses were perched on his nose. An apron covered a white silk shirt and dark slacks. Taken out of the present circumstances, a kitchen in back of a club and put into some Hollywood-style duds, he could be taken for a has-been actor, one that unlike fine wine didn’t get better with age. I’d seen his type all over the world. There was a slippery essence about him like a film on black ice on the highway. Unseen, and menacing. I would have to choose words with care.

  Seeing me at the door, George placed the paper on the table and stood as if meeting royalty. His perfect white teeth sparkled. “You probably don’t remember me, Miss Ticky. But I knew your dad. We worked on base together. Years ago. Your dad and I carpooled and sometimes dropped you off at the high school when you went early for some club. Payton said you were here.”

  “Science club? You still remember me?” I focused for about three seconds, and bam. There was something familiar about him and the thought made me a tad icky, so I stopped thinking and listened.

  “Why, you’re bigger, and fine-looking, but you look the same.” He bowed slightly and took just the tips of my right hand in his. I half expected a fingertip kiss like in the movies. A part of me felt relieved when he released it and it was a part I didn’t want to ever be kissed by this man. I know that’s not loving my neighbor, but from the look in his eyes, it didn’t seem like a neighborly love that was the subject of his attention.

  I pulled up a battered chair to the table and motioned him to sit. “You’re so kind.” I took a sip of the water I had carried in with me, cleared my throat and got down to it. “I’m trying to find out more about Jimmy March.”

  “Jimmy?”

  “Yes, I understand you might have known him . . . ”

  He scratched his head. Probably to buy himself time, or at least that’s what I thought. “Who? March? Oh, yeah.”

  Of course that was a stall. But why? “I’m collecting material. I think a book should be written about him.” At that second, I wondered if it was true. I concentrated on George.

  George scratched his grizzled head, producing an indolent smile. “The gal pal of Payton Yu and dazzling beauty,” he winked, “and you are a writer?”

  At least with his description of me, he didn’t add that I was an advisor for the FBI or I would have wondered if the entire world knew of my personal history. “I haven’t told anyone about this yet. If I don’t have the knack, I don’t want to be embarrassed.” If I were to write a book on Jimmy’s life, it definitely gave me reasons to ask questions.

  “You’re a sassy little gal. But this Jimmy you say you’re writing about wasn’t always good news. He got kicks by grabbing trouble by the tail. Some stuff is best left alone.” The husky whisper jetted near my ear. George slowly folded the newspaper, re-creasing the natural lines and making some new ones, then smoothing the corners.

  “Listen here, George. The public has a right to know about Jimmy, the legend, and how at one time he was more famous than McCartney.” Okay that was a stretch even to my ears since few today had interest in the wannabes of eighties rock and roll, like Jimmy March.

  I pulled a hundred out of the pocket of my jeans. And waited. We both stared at the crisp bill. George smiled, but didn’t move. I slipped another on the battered table, but held the corner tightly, my eyes not wavering from the hooded ones that now met mine straight on.

  “Money can’t buy happiness, but somehow it’s more comfortable to cry in a Porsche than a Kia,” he snickered and then said, “I’ll tell you this right off, but you don’t go around repeating that George Stratford, the best bartender this side of Atlantic City said so. Jimmy was mixed up with an evil bunch of thugs.”

  “Old news.” I attempted to yank on the money and felt like I was in a bad Humphrey Bogart movie, but George didn’t give an inch, refusing to let go of the bill.

  “It was the underworld. Gangsters and gambling. Maybe big-time bookmakers from mainland China. Rumor had it at one time they had some politicians on their payroll, too. Rumor had it Jimmy was into it all. Didn’t do nothing like those squirts who run high stakes poker. It was deeper. I don’t know why a writer with the skill in music like Jim had did it. Maybe the adrenaline rush. Hear you can get addicted that that. Still doesn’t make sense. You’d do well not to find out anything further.” He extracted the bill from my fingers and slipped it into the chest pocket of his silky shirt, smooth as a pro.

  “And Pinkie?” I didn’t know Pinkie, but from the look that flickered in George’s eyes for the briefest instant, I had scored. I’d struck a nerve. “Where does he fit into this?”

  “Pinkie?” George’s voice blasted over the rattle of pans as a cook cleaned a counter. I saw the woman cock her head toward us, blatantly eavesdropping as she slipped a pot into the sink. “He and Jimmy were pals. Let me amend that. Pinkie followed Jimmy around like a puppy dog. Pinkie was there the night we saw Jimmy, you know.”

  “Reba said Pinkie lives with his kids. North of Honolulu. Pearl City, I think. I won’t be in town long. Love to interview him, too. Do you have the address or know how I can find him?” I tried not to be obvious as I fished in my jeans for the last bill. If it took more, I was going to have to hit up Payton for it. Bribery is like bluffing at poker and I was never good at either.

  George palmed the money with another smooth move and spouted off Pinkie’s phone number like it was one he called it regularly. “Son’s name is Ringley, call him Ring. Imagine a kid growing up with that claim to fame.”

  I shook my head. Whatever this joke was, I didn’t get it.

  George let out a snort of laughter. “Get it? Last name’s Finger. Pinkie Finger. Ring Finger. Wonder if he named the other kids Index and Middle? Can you believe that Pinkie was that cruel or it could be he was just as stupid as I always thought.”

  My brain, formerly clouded with chemo, made a connection and it had zip to do with inappropriate ways to name one’s children.

  Connections and numbers. George Stratford had something to do with numbers. The numbers racket. Jail. He was sent to prison. How could I have been so dense? How could I have pushed it out of my memory? In a second, it all came back. I’d never seen so much violence and anger from a man as I had from George Stratford.

  I thought to that night. It was the summer between my junior and senior year in high school and the memories flooded back. It was warm and Dad and George were in our garage bent over the hood of a battered pickup that George brought to our house. It was a clunker, but Dad was amazing with cars and George needed it fixed. I was there in the garage sitting on a stool doing advanced calculus, practicing for my SATs, and asking Dad for help now and then. Once in a while I’d take a peek at George. Back then, he did look like a movie star, or so I had thought.

  Suddenly, a half dozen cop cars pulled up to the house, lights flashing and sirens screaming. One cruiser drove over Dad’s manicured front lawn. Dad grabbed me and pulled me to the floor. “We’ll be okay. You’re okay. Just don’t move, baby.”

  George nearly stepped on us as he ran through the house and out the back door.

  I knew George couldn’t get away. I’d watched enough Hawaii Five-0 with Jack Lord to know that the cops would surround the house. What I didn’t know, until I read the newspaper the next day, was that George had been arrested for the attempted murder of someone in a bar fight. Dad never offered any details, but he was just as shocked as me and Mom. Yet, now? I could definitely find out and had the resources to do so.

  “Remember me to Pinkie, would you?” George shoved the chair near the stack in the corner and chuckled, seemingly to himself as he swaggered through the swinging kitchen door.

  Would this three-hundred dollar investment be worth the introduction to one Pinkie Finger? “I’ve spent more money on less,” I whisper
ed and made plans to intrude on another life hurt by Jimmy March. I pulled my cell from my pocket. It was late, Diamond was ill, her aunt was passive-aggressive, and the whole investigation, as I was now calling it, was a big fat muddle. I knew a lot of history about March, and from everything I’d read in college and from talking with Babes and George, it seemed like the writer and rocker was cursed. A black cloud of things that could go wrong went in that direction.

  The Jimmy March curse? Had everything that man touched gone sour? A prominent debutant from a rich Hawaiian family was forced to become a recluse, their child was ostracized from her heritage or even Jimmy’s biological family, and now the woman chronically ill. The few people I talked with seemed to freak when Jimmy’s name was mentioned, or if not, stopped and considered their words they changed. And then there was the stalker. Was I any closer to knowing what happened to Jimmy’s body if it were true and he lost at Russian roulette? Or after he’d been murdered like Diamond asserted?

  Nope. But that didn’t stop me.

  Chapter 13

  The day dawned, as days do, even in paradise. Instead of knowing I could dash outside and run in the waves, the image of creepy George Stratford was the first thing that came to mind. I couldn’t shrug it off. I started the coffee and then noticed a flashing light on the house phone. That meant a message. It was straight to the point, in a guttural monotone: “I’ve left something for you downstairs.”

  “Of course, Ms. Dobson,” said the operator when I called the front desk to have whatever it was delivered to the penthouse. I rather doubted it would be a brown-paper box with ticking inside, yet I felt nervous just waiting for the knock at the door and whatever it was to be delivered.

  Moments later, after tipping the delivery woman, I fingered a sealed envelope. The stationery was familiar. The note was written on the same paper as the one that had come with the roses.

  “You are not paying attention. Jimmy March is dead.” And just to get my attention, this time that last sentence was underlined. Twice.

  So it didn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that dear, little Diamond Dupris was not to be thanked for the flowers and also that somebody out there didn’t like an on-leave confidential consultant for the FBI meddling in private business. Yet, now I knew the truth was close. Perhaps, I thought, steering through mid-morning traffic, Pinkie could shed some light on the happenings of Jimmy’s final day. “It can’t hurt to ask,” I said and then wondered if whoever sent the card and the flowers was trailing me as I drove west, toward the suburbs and Ewa Beach and an interview with Pinkie.

  I exited Interstate Highway 1 and checked the GPS to head toward Pohakupuna Road. The neighborhood was a jumble of styles, from a trash-laden house with screen doors knocked off their hinges and a rusty truck nearly sitting on the front porch to a darling, pristine cottage straight out of the pages of Coastal Living magazine. In between these two homes, Pinkie and his wife lived in a duplex, probably built in the nineteen-fifties. Newspapers still in plastic bags, bikes, and toys littered the scruffy front lawn with stout oleander bushes framing the front door, sprinkling their spent blooms like a carpet of red, orange, and white.

  Half dozen kids were playing baseball in the street, even though I could see Ewa Beach Park down the road. I edged to the side of the road after a girl pulled home plate halfway down the block, unperturbed that I’d just infringed on the game. I watched them for a moment, remembering how I’d grown up in a neighborhood much like this with kids running from home to home. There had been a feeling to trust, of love in the families and freedom to be children.

  I thought of how these days, armed guards patrolled school buildings and parents worried if their kids were on a perverted website, at least the kids in the families I knew on the mainland.

  “Maybe here in Hawaii those feelings of freedom to be a child weren’t totally destroyed,” I said. Had I ever been as carefree as those kids? Would I ever be again?

  Even before I knocked, I smelled rich bean soup with Portuguese sausage, a staple of the islands and from recipes brought over by Portuguese immigrants who came to work in the fields. If I hadn’t been there to ask questions about a long-ago murder, I would have asked to stay for lunch.

  My knock produced a ramrod straight, gaunt apron-clad woman in her late sixties, possibly older, with a tot yanking at the hem of her skirt. “Ms. Dawson?” A baby wailed in the background and the woman frowned more deeply. “I’m Pinkie’s wife.” She opened the door and stepped back into the living room. “I don’t think we’ve met, but then when Pinkie used to be on the road, I didn’t go, even to the shows. Somebody had to stay with the babies and now I’ve got the grandkids to handle. So here I am staying home again.” The statement was gruff and practiced, as if she enjoyed appearing trod upon.

  I nodded and would have shaken her hand, but she turned and lifted another baby from the playpen, motioning me farther into the house. I stepped over red, yellow, and blue plastic locking blocks, a stuffed bear with one ear hanging loose, muddy socks, and a baby’s bottle half filled with something pink and thick, like papaya juice.

  Some homes can be shabby and ooze with love. This one did not. It looked like too many people were squeezed into it. Yet, here and there were expensive pieces of electronic equipment, like a huge plasma television and an enormous stereo system.

  “To be truthful, Mrs. Finger . . . ” I knew when all else failed, the truth was about the best solution around.

  “You just call me Mildred, or Mil. Most folks do.”

  “Thanks. I’ve only heard about Pinkie and the old days, from my uncle, Henry Angieski, and the others. I’ve come to ask some questions about those times. That’s why I’m here.”

  Mildred nodded, crinkled the lines in her forehead and buttoned the top of her lavender-colored sweater. “Cool even for us in Hawaii. I’ve heard the locals call it a two-layer day but then again the locals are always calling things stuff that doesn’t make sense.”

  I had no explanation why she didn’t want to be considered a local and frankly when she gestured me toward the back of the house and the kitchen, ducked her torso outside, and hollered, “Pinkie, dearest,” I didn’t care. The soup might smell like heaven in a bowl, but the woman’s sour face made me wonder who the cook of the family was. Surely she could not have made it.

  I sat at the kitchen table as Mil stood at the back door and yelled for her husband. Then yelled again, “Pinkie, you put that shovel down. Didn’t you hear me call? What’s wrong with you, man? It’s that woman who is writing the book. She’s here, Pinkie. The author is here. And you wipe those feet this time. Whoever you’re talking to on your cell can wait. We got company.” Mil’s complaints sounded like to fingernails on an old fashioned blackboard, but when she turned a smile was plastered on her lips. “Enough mud gets tracked into this house in just one day to plant his precious vegetable garden right here in the kitchen. Land sakes that man never even notices the filth and he’s as happy as a clown,” she snorted. “Too happy most of the time.” She stepped away from the door.

  From my place at the kitchen table, I could see him. Pinkie shrugged out of a soiled work shirt to unveil a sweat drenched t-shirt. He removed the Boston White Sox baseball cap and ran his hand over a shiny hairless head and shoved his cell into the back pocket of his muddy jeans.

  He was of middle height, no distinguishing tattoos or scars, and there seemed to be nothing but average about him. Pinkie Finger was an older guy, who at one time probably had been a muscular man, except now those muscles sagged. He and the misses certainly weren’t living in the style that Babes Waller did, minus the electronic stuff in the cramped living room. Yet, when he saw a grandchild run toward him, the smile made his crinkled face glow. He snatched up the child, twirled her around, and plunked her down, never missing a step as he walked to the back door. I clarified my thoughts. Pinkie Finger was a rich man.

 
At the doorstep, Pinkie put the child down and slipped off the muddy boots. He wiped loamy dirt off his fingers. Mil stood near the sink and cluck-clucked, grumbling. I could see he was ignoring her in a practiced way.

  Mil muttered another complaint and disregarded a little one bawling and begging to be picked up. Instead, she leaned against the refrigerator and watched as Pinkie scrubbed off the dirt. Then he said, “I’m afraid I don’t have much memory for details about the old days, Ms. Dawson.”

  By the length of time it took Pinkie to clean his hands, he wasn’t in a rush to divulge just what he knew either. I sat still, I found the courage to put the coffee cup Mil had placed in front of me to my lips, but I wasn’t going to open them.

  After washing up, he snatched the fussing tot from his wife’s arms and sat directly across from me. He kissed the plump tike, nuzzled her soft cherry-red cheeks and she immediately cuddled into her grandfather’s embrace. He also avoided my eyes when he spoke. “Now, what specifically can I help you with, miss?”

  “George Stratford at the Glass Slipper said you knew Jimmy March, knew him well back in the old days. Those are the times I want to know about.” Then I did it. I sipped the bitter brew, and vowed to keep my face from the cringe I knew would appear. But shock of shock, it wasn’t bad. “Anything you can tell me would be helpful. Just bits and pieces. They don’t have to make sense and from your time together here on Oahu.”

  “Bits and pieces, okay, well, I remember Jimmy. He was working at one of the posh spots in Honolulu, as a waiter, maybe. I was a doorman waiting to get a music gig. Jimmy said he was a writer, always spouting ideas for a book he was going to write. We’d take breaks together and sit on the loading dock to smoke. He had grand ideas, that Jimmy March. Then one day, he quit because he was going to join a band. Remember, this was in the seventies and eighties. These were disco joints. So, you just want to know about here in Honolulu? Not before?”