by Eva Shaw
I’d nearly dropped the steno notebook I bought to make me look like a real writer when he said, “So you just want to know about Jimmy here in Honolulu? Not before?”
I wanted to shout, “Well, duh,” and I was a dud for never thinking to ask this question. I finally managed, “You knew Jimmy before Honolulu?” Why had I assumed? Honestly? Because I either suffered from chemo brain, a now acknowledged medical condition, or I was total dud and a dolt. I’ll take the former.
Pinkie looked off in space, shook his head, and chuckled. “Yeah, way back. Hung out in Memphis when we were just out of high school. Tough neighborhood, tough times, but back then everything seemed possible.” He bounced the baby on his knee and gently placed her on the floor where she immediately crawled toward a pile of toys. He closed his eyes, and when they flicked open he added, “I tried to tell him he was wasting his time on music, that man. The guy could tell stories, better when he was sober, but he was always spouting stuff about Freud and Jung all the way to Confucius and Karl Marx, then he’d ramble off books of the Bible, that Jimmy, quoting chapter and verse like he was a preacher’s son. He never went anywhere without a book. No matter what you’ve heard, miss, Jimmy was a good guy. Sure, he was foolish. When you grow up with nothing and nobody to count on, that happens. And don’t let anyone tell you he wasn’t a fine friend.”
Mil huffed.
I tuned her out.
So did her husband.
Pinkie was lost in memories.
I waited, pretending to review imaginary notes on the steno pad. I hoped he’d share whatever he was thinking.
He shuttered slightly, got up, and poured a glass of water. Took time drinking it and then asked, “Anything else?”
“If you wouldn’t mind, I have some of the background information, but could you tell me more of what happened those final days, before, well, before.” I couldn’t say Jimmy’s death because in fact I could only say that if I knew where his body was? Or if he was actually killed that night? But was I the only one troubled by that discrepancy?
“Let’s see, where to start? It happened when we were playing in Chinatown. College kids barged in to the club. I remember looking at the other guys in the band and we knew they’d be trouble. Back them days, college kids stayed close to the university, unless they wanted action. You know what I mean.”
I nodded, not wanting to discuss whatever he thought I knew what he meant or something like that.
“At the bars close to Pearl Harbor, IDs would be checked. But in Chinatown, bartenders and bouncers looked the other way, especially since these rich kids had plenty of dough. And that’s what they were with their good clothes, straight teeth, and gold watches, and that’s when Jimmy got it into his head that he’d be the next big super star.”
Pinkie rinsed the glass and nodded his head. “Jimmy was one cool dude. Don’t know what William; he’s my grandson and we’ve got him studying medicine at Harvard, or Corrie; she’s our oldest granddaughter and at Vassar, would call it today, but if anyone needed a definition of cool, man, it would be Jimmy March.”
Pinkie puffed his chest at the mention of the grands. Since everybody knows that Harvard and Vassar aren’t economical, I looked around the kitchen with the tattered wallpaper and sagging screen door and wondered where the tuition came from. Rich parents? Didn’t seem impossible, just unlikely.
Pinkie’s arthritic fingers touched my hand and said, “You heard his music, miss?”
I scribbled what he said about the club and nodded. “I know his writing, his novels, and some of his poems. And his music.” I made more notes; writers did that. “What about the gig at the Hawaii Theatre? Did you see Jimmy before, well, before it happened? Before the accident? Like a few days before? Was anything bothering him? Anyone troubling him?”
Pinkie scratched his bald plate and screwed his eyes shut. The bottom jaw extended in and out. Then for the first time, he really looked at me. He may have already put me in the same category with the rich kids he played to in the seventies, yes, nice clothes and gold watch. I stopped smiling, so at least he couldn’t see my straight teeth.
Pinkie’s eyes flashed to the ceiling. It was obvious if he wanted to lie, I would have no way of knowing.
The baby sat in the middle of the well-worn linoleum tile, drooled, shoved a fist in her mouth and then fussed. In one smooth move, he plucked her up, grabbed the bottle she’d refused before, and offered it again. “Yeah, saw him a lot that fall and early winter. Knew he had been back and forth to the mainland, heard he was in Washington, D.C. Came to Honolulu a dozen times, before that night, the night when he . . . well, told me his ship had come in, his luck had changed. He was dressing well, new shoes, my goodness, those slick suits with the wide lapels, John Travolta had those kind. I figured that he must have a sweet little deal going on. Maybe a record deal. You remember records, don’t you, Ms. Dawson? When I asked him about it, I had five kids at home and Mil was working as a maid for one of those families that drip with money. We were barely keeping food on the table and me always looking for work. Tough being a veteran and living here in the Islands. But no, this time, he clammed up. Like he was too good for old Pinkie.”
“Did he usually brag? You probably knew him better than anyone. Was this like him?”
I decided in that instant either he was an exceptionally good liar or some part of what the man was saying was the truth because he pursed his lips, looked straight at me, and nodded.
“All the guys bragged. Still do.”
“Why didn’t he want to tell you more? Was it like him to withhold information or even places where you could get a gig? From what I’ve heard, he was generous to a fault.”
Pinkie didn’t answer, but went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “I knew that if the club where Jimmy was playing liked his singing, they’d be crazy for me. But every time I approached the March Man to ask about it, he put me off. Finally, after the band I’d been playing with folded, I cornered him. I had no jobs lined up and Mil was pregnant. Again. I asked him about it in front of the boys. Anyhow, he pulled away from me like I had leprosy and then he shoved me. Got hostile. Not like Jimmy. He was a cool dude, like I said. Nobody could ruffle that man’s feathers, but there he was hot as a skillet on Sunday. He acted like he had the world on a string, but I’d known him a long time, and something wasn’t right.”
“Think he wanted to keep the gig to himself? Or what? Did he have other problems?”
“I’ve thought about this for years and that’s probably more years than you’ve probably been on the earth, and it still don’t figure up right. Jimmy was generous. He had a smile that could charm the soul of the devil, if the devil has a soul. Don’t remember his exact words—it was years ago—but he said something like, ‘You don’t want none of this stuff, Pinkie. You got babies. You got a good woman at home.’ I’m a smart man and could tell he was in over his head. And he really had to keep the business secret.”
“Had to? Did you find out any more? Did he tell you the secret?”
Pinkie played “This little piggy goes to market” with the baby’s bare toes, he nibbled at a cookie she tried to feed him and avoided looking at me.
I fiddled with the second cup of sludge and shook my head when Mil offered more coffee. I had forgotten she was standing in back of me. “Did you see Jimmy the night he died?” I cut to the chase. Pinkie didn’t even blink when I said that Jimmy had died. So did that make it true?
“What about those men you saw talking to Jimmy?” Mil asked turning from the sink where she’d been scrubbing the same pot for the last ten minutes.
“All those ancient memories make my shiny head tired, Mil. Don’t remember. But, goodness me, if I told you back then that there were people talking to Jimmy . . . ” He exhaled and turned to me. “My Mil has a steel-trap memory. Yep, if I said there were people talking to March, then it had to b
e true.” Pinkie balanced the baby as he replaced a tire on the toy fire truck produced by yet another whining child. The kid immediately snuggled under Pinkie’s right arm and looked at me with enormous brown eyes.
Pinkie shook his head and shrugged.
His body language said, “The interview is over,” but I had other plans. “Did you know the men? What did they look like? Musicians? Henry Angieski says that folks in the business can always tell other musicians.” I readied the pencil and stayed tight to that kitchen chair.
“Listen, miss, I’d like to help you with whatever you’re writing, but it has been years ago. They were men,” he replied. He handed the baby to his wife and the child started wailing. He nodded and started to walk to the door without turning back.
He knew a whole lot more and I knew it as sure as I knew I wasn’t a writer. Pinkie was selectively forgetting. On a sheet of paper, I scribbled my cell’s number and the phone number at the hotel and the number of the room where we were staying, ripped it out of the spiral notepad, and put it in the middle of the kitchen table, then said, “If you or Pinkie should remember anything else. Anything might help put the pieces together. And if it’s a matter of money or you need . . . ”
“Don’t need your money,” Mil snapped, but she took the paper and slipped it into her grease-stained apron. She followed me to the front door, held the screen door for me and whispered, “I think you’d better leave now. I got stuff to tend to and babies to feed. Besides, Jimmy March is dead.”
I turned to ask, “How do you know?” but the door slammed in my face.
The dead bolt kicked and I got the message. I’d reached a dead end attempting to get information from Pinkie or Mil.
Realistically, someone had to know something. And someone certainly did—as I was about to find out in a dangerously up close and personal way.
Chapter 14
At the car, I looked toward the house. Everything was still, until the lacy curtains moved and I could see, yes, it was Pinkie’s baseball cap in the window. Then I saw him on a cell, making sure I was leaving. Rather than dash for a quick getaway, I sat at the curb, watched the wind ruffle with the palm trees and the kids playing ball. What was Pinkie’s real recollection of that last night that anyone saw Jimmy March alive?
Based on Diamond’s version of the story, Jimmy and Lanie were lovers and about to go off to find their thrills on Blueberry Hill or whatever was popular in the eighties. According to the rumors and what Diamond said, someone came right into the dressing room and shot Jimmy. Lanie was terrorized, and after making sure that Jimmy was alive, was taken away by someone in the band. Babes Waller was there. Who else? Apparently Pinkie Finger. And his complicated spouse Mil? It wouldn’t have surprised me.
For old time’s sake, I drove the surface streets back to Waikiki and thought through my list of suspects who knew more than they were saying about that night. There was Babes Waller, a good musician, but never a clever man when it came to money as I’d been told. Except for the catch that the guy was living in the lap of institutional opulence. Sleazy bartender George Stratford revealed tidbits when money changed hands, my money, and reminded me of the Cheshire Cat. What of Pinkie? I found it hard to fathom that he was nervous of me asking questions, so who else had ruffled his feathers? Could it be that his finger was on Jimmy’s pistol?
“Then there’s dear little auntie,” I said out loud, slowly running my fingers over the steering wheel and pulling into the hotel’s parking structure. If I were writing a murder mystery, a character like Victoria Dupris would seem hackneyed and an editor would probably send a rejection letter saying, “You’ve been watching too much TV. Write a character that hasn’t been done to death.” Nonetheless, Victoria Dupris was real and with a viciousness that disturbed me for Diamond’s sake. Yet, she’d invited Diamond back into the clan.
“What about those mysterious people? Who were they—the authorities or some serious-looking guys Mil had mentioned? Where did they come into it? Or was this just her way of diverting my attention, a ploy to throw me off? The plot is so thick you could stand a fork up in it,” I muttered, turning off the car. “All I have now, after spending an hour with Pinkie and his grating wife, are more questions and the desire never to drink another cup of coffee in my life.” I slipped out from behind the wheel, slammed the car door way too hard, swung my purse over my shoulder, and pulled out the notebook before heading toward the elevator. It was mid-day, but inky in the garage. I was frustrated and hot. I longed to sit on the lanai and sip something cold for about a month.
Later I would say, “I heard an engine revving. I never even looked in the direction the sound was coming from. But then that huge black car turned on its high beams and aimed at me. It happened and then it was gone.”
I fussed, but Jane wouldn’t take no to yet two more bitterly strong cups of coffee as I kept repeating the meager details of my brush with metal, or worse. When Jane left for a meeting, Henry took over, called the police, looked at the lump on my knee, and created a makeshift ice pack from a plastic zipper bag.
By the time an officer arrived, my breath was back to normal when I told her, “There wasn’t even time for my entire life to flash in front of me. All I could visualize was shrimp bisque—I was going to look like gooey pink soup splattered from one end of the parking garage to the other.” I bit my bottom lip and moved the cold pack from the left to the right side of my knee, which was bumped on a minivan as I dodged for my life. “I kept thinking, ‘This isn’t really happening.’ But it was. It felt like one of those bad dreams you get from eating pizza after midnight.”
“What else?” Henry grilled, as if the police officer wasn’t about to ask that same question. “Didn’t you look at the license plate? If a car were coming straight at me, you could be sure I’d see that. Are you keeping anything from me? Child, this isn’t a joke, and forgiving someone seven times seventy doesn’t apply when they’re attempting to kill you. How about the driver? Anything? There’s a nut out there hurting people, tried to kill my grandniece right out in public. He’s got to be put away.” Henry circled the room, clenching his fists tighter with each lap. At the bay window of the hotel suite, his body shook as if he was shaking off snow or if he were a dog after a bath. He turned toward me.
I saw him wipe away a tear. That hurt more than my bumps and bruises.
The police officer realized the scare didn’t affect my intelligence level and suggested I get some rest, leaving her business card. “In case you remember more details. I’ll call you again in the morning, ma’am. I need to run this through the computer and see if there have been other incidents. HPD takes reckless driving seriously. I’ve all the info here to file it. We’ll need your signature on it. I contact you tomorrow or the next day.”
When the officer left, Henry started on me. Again.
“You just try recalling numbers when a huge black car wants to mow you down,” I said. “No, Henry, I didn’t see anything except the headlights and knew unless I threw my body straight onto that Honda, I was going to be history. You’d put a nice piece in the paper, wouldn’t you? Would you write an obituary that said what a good person I have been and would have been?”
“Don’t you sweet talk me, Nica. You were nearly killed,” he yelled, as if I hadn’t caught the drift of that concept from the welts and blackening bruises now beginning to show on my knees and forearms, not to mention a pounding in my skull.
I rubbed my knee, felt the lump. But as I did, I offered prayers of thanks for protection, good timing, and the fact that I took yoga classes and walked lot of miles in the attempt to keep tabs on the size of my tush. If I had been slower or less fit, I might have spent the next few days in a Honolulu hospital. Or worse.
It was the “or worse” that made me sigh, close my eyes, and realize it was past time to tell Henry the whole story. He had to see the notes and know about my interrogation tact
ics. The other “coincidences” could have been just that. But this attempt wasn’t just to frighten me. Someone wanted me dead. Now that was a sobering thought. But for what?
Time to spill the beans, cleanse my soul, put on my big girl panties, and act like a grown up. Time to ask for Henry’s forgiveness about not being forthcoming with the nasty little details. Afterward, I felt better but Henry didn’t and that was obvious by how quiet he was. By the time I’d finished, the sky was a perfect pink dusk, the dim lighting made it easier for me to confess.
The only sounds in the room were Henry swirling Pepsi and ice cubes and his breathing. For at least twenty minutes, he hadn’t even grunted as I told of my escapades. Then he got up and began to inhale and exhale deeply.
“Now calm down, Henry. Even in this light I can see it. You’re getting pale. All that huffing can’t be good for your blood pressure. Sit down. Please, let’s talk.” I patted the sofa next to me, used a cooing voice, but the pacing and muffled whispered words continued.
“You know my blood pressure is perfect and my heart is strong as an ox’s. That’s the bunch of baloney Jane uses when she wants me to cool down. Doesn’t work for her and it won’t work now. Listen here, you’re an adult. You worked for the FBI. You know how dangerous the world can be.”
“But I was just asking questions . . . ”
“Don’t interrupt. Get serious, woman.” There was dead silence as we both seemed to muster our energy, and our anger for the situation.
I broke first. “Yes, Uncle Henry.”
“Okay, I admit it was scary. I will admit I’m livid. No, that doesn’t say it. I’m fuming, big time. Why didn’t you tell me about the flowers and that note? What about the nutty aunt or the guy with the cell phone? Baby, this isn’t some situation where you have a dozen trained FBI agents watching your back. This is the real world where we mortals live and where happy endings aren’t guaranteed.”