The Pearl Harbor Murders (7 page)

"Thanks, Otto—though I prefer royalties to apologies."

But much later that evening, after the last luau guests had departed the Niumalu, Burroughs—in his bungalow, preparing for bed—reflected on
Tarzan the Untamed,
which since the German uproar had been withheld from all markets. The businessman in him was thinking that the book was probably marketable again—and, when the war came, could go back into print, in America anyway. Tarzan bellowing the victory cry of the bull ape as he stood with his foot on the chest of a fallen German soldier, whose neck he'd snapped... that could prove to be a crowd-pleaser again, before too very long....

Though it was after midnight, Hully wasn't home yet—off having a good time with his sailor pals, no doubt, prowling Hotel Street. Burroughs was in his pa-jama bottoms—he liked to sleep shirtless, in this tropical clime—about to shut off the light and climb in bed when a knock at the door interrupted him. Grumbling, he threw on a maroon rayon robe and went to the door.

"Could I come in for a moment?" Pearl Harada asked, looking up at him through the screen door. The dark eyes in the lovely face conveyed urgency, and she seemed small, childlike, gazing up from the bottom step of the stoop.

"If you're looking for Hully ..."

"No, Mr. Burroughs—it's you I want to see." She was still wearing the low-cut gown, but a lacy shawl was slung around her shoulders, and over her dÈcolle-tage, whether out of modesty, or because of the cool night breeze, Burroughs couldn't say.

He opened the screen door, glanced around, wondering if allowing this young beauty into his bungalow was an impropriety he'd pay for; then he sighed and nodded, gesturing her inside.

He suggested she sit on the couch, which she did, and offered her a soft drink, which she refused.

"I won't be here long," she assured him. "I know it's late... and I know this is an imposition. But it really is important."

"All right," he said, pulling his typing chair over, sitting opposite her.

"Has your son spoken to you about me?"

"No he hasn't."

Her eyes lowered to her lap, where her hands were clasped. "Hully's a nice boy—he probably will say something. But I saw him leave with Bill... and I couldn't take the chance."

"What chance?"

"That he would forget to ask you."

"Ask me what?"

"If... if you would arrange a meeting for me, with Bill's father."

"Oh, my.... Young lady, please don't put me in the middle of—"

She sat forward, her eyes glittering, the shawl slip-ping, and he did his best not to look down into the considerable cleavage of this girl who was young enough to be his daughter. "Oh, Mr. Burroughs, I know you're a good man, a considerate man, underneath that ... gruff exterior."

"Underneath this gruff exterior, my dear, is a gruff interior."

"I don't believe it—I can see kindness in your eyes. I know Colonel Fielder doesn't approve of us, Bill and I. . . ."

"Can you blame him, at a time like this?"

She shook her head, and the dark arcs of hair swung. "That's why I have to speak with the colonel—I have to speak with him privately, and I know you can arrange that. Discreetly, Mr. Burroughs. It's important."

"You want a private meeting with Colonel Fielder. Just you and him—not Bill."

She was nodding. "I need to state my own case. I want to prove myself to Bill's father."

Burroughs smiled, shook his head. "You're a determined young woman."

"Yes I am."

He couldn't help it: she impressed him. She was as intelligent as she was beautiful, and she had courage and conviction. Who could blame any man for loving a woman like this?

"I've written about women like you," he told her. "But I've met damn few."

"I... I don't understand."

He stood, holding out his hand to her. "I'll help you. I'll talk to Colonel Fielder, and set the meeting up here at my bungalow... discreetly. Tomorrow soon enough?"

"Oh, Mr. Burroughs," she said, beaming, and she almost threw herself off the couch into his arms, holding on to him, tight. Face pressed sideways against his chest, she said, "Hully is a lucky boy, having a father like you."

"Yeah, I'm a peach." He patted her back, gently. "Now get out of here before I fall in love with you, myself, you little vixen. Scoot!"

The dark eyes were teary with joy, her smile a white slash of happiness, as she scurried out of the bungalow, thanking him as she went.

Wishing he were thirty years younger, Burroughs sighed and headed into the bedroom.
There's a Jane any Tarzan might fall for,
he thought. He slipped out of the robe and—bare-chested, in the pajama bottoms—crawled under a single sheet of his bed, a flower-scented breeze whispering in the open window, fluffing sheer curtains, the lap of waves on the nearby beach soothing him, lulling him to sleep.

Deep asleep, dreaming, he believed he'd awakened, hearing a sound. In his dream, he opened eyes that in reality were tightly shut, and saw—shrouded in darkness—a figure standing across the room from him. The figure gradually revealed itself to be female—a tall, beautiful female who moved into a shaft of pure, heavenly light, slanting through the window.

The woman's flesh was an emerald green, her hair scarlet, her voluptuous body bare but for strategic scatterings of gold sequins that appeared to have been applied to her naked skin. She seemed to be approaching him, reaching out to him, and he sat up, and reached out for her....

A roar from the darkness—for the bedroom had become a cave—announced a third player, and a mammoth man-beast lumbered into view ... a pair of tusks, a huge single eye, a fiercely muscular build matted with fur with two arms on either side, each thick pawlike hand clutching a scimitarlike blade, four swords slashing at the air, threatening the green woman, who fell as the blades cleaved her emerald flesh, blood the color of gold splashing, and Burroughs tried to move, but found himself paralyzed in bed, screaming in protest, unable to move, too late to save the beautiful emerald girl, too late....

Then he was sitting up in bed, drenched in sweat, catching himself in mid-scream.

Quickly Burroughs got up out of bed, raced to his typewriter, snapped on his desk lamp, and sat in front of the keyboard, fingers flying. Before it could fade, he recorded the dream, in its every detail. Such nightmares came to him regularly—often involving some terrible creature or unidentified danger. Many of the plots and characters in his novels and stories had been literally dreamed up; he would routinely rise from a bizarre nightmare and, as calmly professional as a secretary, jot down notes.

He'd had these useful nightmares for many years, ever since receiving a blow on the head during his stint as a cop in Salt Lake City. At first there had been torturous headaches, as well, but these had faded, and the dreams remained. He was quite accustomed to them, but neither of his wives nor his children had ever got used to his nocturnal thrashing and bellowing, his moans and screams frequently awakening them.

Both of his wives had insisted that he sleep in a separate bedroom.

He was right up to where the scimitar-wielding man-beast had entered the dream when another scream echoed across the night—not his own.

A woman's scream, a scream of terror, cut off abruptly!

The cry came from outside, had found its way through an open window, and seemed to be coming from the dkection of the beach. He threw on the maroon robe, not even bothering to sash it, and ran barefoot into the night, finding his way through the palm trees in his backyard, toward where the purple ocean blended with the purple sky, with only the stars to show the difference, padding down onto the white sand, which looked gold in the moonlight, like the sequins on the emerald woman in his dream.

This nightmare had a woman in it, too, but Burroughs was not, unfortunately, sleeping: she lay sprawled ten or fifteen yards down the sandy expanse, lying near the surf, which rolled gently but insistently onto the shore. A man was kneeling over her, touching her shoulder with one hand, blood glistening on the other.

Burroughs could already see who the woman was: Pearl Harada, still in her blue gown, askew on her side on the sand, her skull crushed, blood turning the beach black around her rained head. Nearby lay a blood-spattered stone, one of the thick, roundish rocks used in the luau
imu
—an impromptu weapon anyone might have picked up.

The man bending over the obviously dead girl was a handsome if pockmarked Hawaiian from her band—the trombone-playing leader, Harry Kamana.

All of this the writer took in, in a heartbeat, and then he was running toward the kneeling man and the dead girl, yelling, "You! Don't move!"

The musician looked up sharply, his eyes wild, but he did not obey Burroughs, rather he scrambled to his feet and ran, heading down the beach.

Though Burroughs was in his sixties and his quarry in his thirties, the writer was bigger than the slight, slender Hawaiian, still in his dance-band aloha shirt, and—as it turned out—faster.

He threw himself at the fleeing musician, tackling him, bringing him down onto the sand, rolling with him until they were both in the water, where the surf licked the shore. The writer had the younger man around the knees, but Kamana squirmed out of his grasp, pulling Burroughs forward, and the writer lost his robe, was climbing to his feet in the surf in just his pajama bottoms, chest as bare as Tarzan, and Kamana tried to ran again, but he was running in wet sand and didn't get very far before Burroughs slammed a fist into the man's back, nailing a kidney.

Kamana blurted a cry of pain, fell facedown, splashing into the shallow water, then flipped around and, making a shrill whining war cry, came up at Burroughs, small sharp fists flying.

The older man ducked and weaved, and threw a hard right hand into the musician's belly, doubling him over, then finished him with a left to the chin that didn't have much power, but was enough to drop the man.

"You want more, you son of a bitch?" Burroughs, looming over him, asked, breathing hard, but not as hard as the younger man.

"No ... no... " Kamana's voice was high-pitched, hoarse; he was on his hands and knees in the shallow surf.

Burroughs grabbed the man by the arm and hauled him to his feet, dragging him down the beach, heading to the bungalow.

The writer paused at the girl's body. He didn't bother to take her pulse—her skull had been caved in by that rock; her brains were showing. Rage and nausea and sorrow rose in him, a volcano of emotions threatening to erupt. He turned to the musician, wanting to throttle the bastard, but something stopped him.

The man was weeping.

FIVE
Sad Song

After the luau wound down, Hully Burroughs had been in no mood to join his sailor friends Bill Fielder and Dan Pressman in any Hotel Street excursions. Bill had been rather on the morose side—he'd learned about Colonel Fielder's displeased reaction at seeing his son and the Japanese songstress on the dance floor; and Pearl herself had begged off any after-hours date, pleading fatigue from her night on the bandstand.

This meant Bill would get plastered, while Dan would be on the prowl for dames, and in that part of town, the likely candidates served up love for a fee. Hully was interested in accompanying neither a drunk nor a tomcat, and instead headed to the Royal Hawaiian, where Harry Owens's orchestra was playing. Nobody pulled off that
hapa haole
sound better, and Hully's odds of meeting a nice young female—a tourist maybe, as the absent, much-missed Marjorie Petty had been—were far better than down at sleazy Hotel Street.

He'd gotten very lucky—not in the way the sailors on Hotel Street did, either. He danced several slow tunes with a pretty brunette named Marion Thrasher, a local girl in her early twenties out celebrating a friend's birthday. She was down-to-earth and friendly, so different from the girls in California, all of whom seemed to be aspiring actresses (expecting Hully to land them a part in a Tarzan picture!). All he'd "scored" were a few lovely if tentative smiles, some conversation and a phone number... but he was walking on air.

Or rather driving on air, in his father's Pierce Arrow convertible, one hand on the wheel, elbow resting on the rolled-down window, enjoying the way the stirred-up, sweetly scented breeze raffled his hair. He loved this little low-rise city of Honolulu, which hid shyly under banyans and flowering shrubs, palm trees towering over telephone poles.

Waikiki itself was a bohemian village, increasingly given over to hotels and inns, but still with room for clapboard houses, fisherman's shacks, picket fences and vacant lots. On an evening like this—well, early morning, as it was approaching one a.m.—the sounds were unbelievably romantic, the music of strolling troubadours mingling with the benign roar of surf.

As he pulled into the moonlight-washed Niumalu parking lot, the revelry of the luau was long over, the staff's cleanup accomplished, with a few lights on in the lodge itself, but most of the bungalows—peeking from between palms—dark. He parked, headed down a crashed coral path toward the Burroughs bungalow, whistling "Sweet Leilani," jingling change and keys in his khaki pockets.

That was when he heard, coming from the beach, a man's voice—his father's voice, he could have sworn—shouting
"You! Don't move!"

The shout conveyed an urgency, and a sense of menace, that sent Hully running down the path, and cutting through the hedges, toward the sandy shore.

By the time he got there, it was over: his father had apprehended (there could be no other word) the individual, who proved to be bandleader Harry Kamana. A bare-chested O. B. was hauling the aloha-shirt-sporting musician—who was blubbering like a baby—toward their bungalow.

Hully slowed and, approaching his father, was about to ask him what had happened when he noticed the twisted form of the girl, down a ways on the beach.

For a moment, he covered his mouth, in shock and horror; then Hully managed, "Is that... ?"