The cold burn was all through me, in my gut, chilling my face, pulling at my nerves. I took my time. My glance fell over the hammer of my gun, the sight, touched the car. Gently I squeezed the trigger. Already the Chevy was too far from me, but I thumbed back the hammer for the shade of extra accuracy that would give me, eased my finger down on the trigger again.
The crack of my shots was somehow not loud here, perhaps muffled by the massed growth of shrubbery and trees. Echoes came back to me. The car was gone, fishtailing around a curve a hundred yards away.
I felt fairly sure I hadn’t hit anyone in the car. Might have hit the car itself, but I couldn’t even be certain of that. On my knees, I looked at the brown furrow in the grass. And I shook my head hard. I’d been off guard, for sure. It wouldnt happen again. Bean-shooter, huh? Well, in a way it was. That bastard had been shooting at me, and he’d been aiming at my bean.
Only then did it filter in. Shooting at me — here? Why shoot at me? Who in Hawaii wanted to kill me? One thing was sure: somebody here did, really did, want to kill me.
I went back to the very frightened cab driver, mumbled an unbelieved explanation. We drove a little farther up Tantalus Drive and I talked to the judge. He wasn’t the one. He was just a tall thin guy with a large beak.
Ten
Late in the afternoon I took a cab up fashionable Kalakaua Avenue, the main street of Waikiki, to the International Market Place.
The Market Place is not a building, but an open-air area of green grass and curving walks, many shops and booths and clubs. And it is what its name implies: International. Facing it from Kalakaua, I looked at the totem poles on my left, garishly painted, contorted faces carved upon them. Farther left and extending from the Avenue into the grounds was Don the Beachcombers Bora Bora Lounge, in which — according to a sign outside it — was the famous Dagger Bar. On my right was the first of many little stores and shops. This one was Polynesian, crammed with idols, wood-carvings, jewelry in glass cases, a model outrigger canoe in the front window. Beyond it, all around and in the Market Place, were other booths and shops, Korean, Japanese, Hawaiian, Philippine, and more.
Directly ahead as I looked in from the Avenue, and about fifty feet away, was a huge banyan tree. Its massive gnarled trunk was centered in the open space between the shops, and its great canopy of leafy limbs formed a roughly oval shape above. Dozens of aerial roots grew from its branches and extended down to the ground below, forming other smaller trunks. Beneath the tree was a small pool, an attractive Japanese-type bridge over it, a plume of water dancing in its center. And there appeared to be something up in the tree. It looked almost like a little house up there. A tree house? In the heart of Waikiki? I walked closer for a better look. This I had to see. At the trees base was a painted wooden sign. Beyond the sign there was a wood-and-bamboo gate about two feet wide and four or five feet high. A chain was looped around a post of the gate, a padlock through the chains links. And, believe it or not, beyond the gate reed-enclosed wooden steps led clear up into the banyans limb to — a tree house. I could see it up there, maybe four feet by eight feet and six or seven feet in height, a peaked roof above the walls. I wondered if somebody lived up there. I read the sign. It said:
TREE HOUSE
Stairway to
The Worlds Most Exclusive Restaurant
Created for those in love with love
CAPACITY 2
High in the giant banyan tree you taste
Succulent cuisine prepared by master chefs
And sip nectar of the gods while peoples of
The crossroads of the world stroll below.
For Information: Phone 937-377
Ask for: Don the Beachcomber himself
Somehow that sign, the little tree house, gave me the biggest kick I’d had since reaching Hawaii. I didn’t have the faintest idea who Don the Beachcomber was, had never met him, but any guy with the wildness and imagination to build a couple-sized restaurant up in a tree in the heart of Waikiki . . . well, he got my vote.
That little house made me think of the vanda orchid on my plate this morning, the blazing orange-red poinsettias and delicate plumeria blossoms that were by now familiar to my eyes. And it made me think of Loana. All I knew of Loana was what I’d seen in a couple of photos, heard over the phone, but somehow she seemed part of the vanda orchids and plumerias, and Don the Beachcombers Banyan Tree House.
Three minutes later I’d talked to a handsome young guy named Skip inside the entrance of the Bora Bora Lounge and had reserved the Tree House for dinner this evening. It made me feel rather expansive, reserving a whole house — a whole tree for that matter. I paid in advance, just in case Loana went into shock at the sight of me, or couldn’t get away, or wasn’t hungry, or didn’t like tree houses. If I had to, I was going to eat up there in that dandy little house alone — although that thought made me very sad. The young guy asked my name.
And memory sent a bullet swift past my ear.
I said, Just put it down as me and a friend.
He put something down, without a blink. He asked me when wed be ready for dinner — apparently they actually served a marvelous dinner up there — and I told him it would be well after nine p.m., but probably before midnight. He explained that they liked to have everything ready, the squab with a just-right, crisply-golden texture, the pupu marinated, the champagne chilled . . . until my tongue was hanging out moistly.
By golly, I thought, if Loana cant make it Ill eat both meals.
I walked on through the Market Place, soaking up the sights and sounds and smells. Then, in a simple open booth, I saw a man working on a small carving held in his big hand. He scraped the dark wood with a little curved piece of metal. Around him were heads, busts, carved animals, bookends, all kinds of carvings, all of them beautifully done. There was a small head of Pan with features much like those on the big Pan Webb had brought back from Hawaii.
I stopped and talked to the wood-carver. He was wide-shouldered, with strong hands and a strong face. His eyes looked as if they had seen all the secret places of the world, and enjoyed them all. Suddenly I realized that his face was like that face of Pan, as if he’d used his own features as a model. He was the man I’d been looking for here.
Yes, the Pan, he said, motionless but with his hands still poised on the small carving. I sold it to him. Didn’t remember his name.
Webley Alden. Six-three or so, thin, thirty-eight years old.
Yes. The wood-carver nodded. An interesting face. Im glad he bought the Pan. Him, not somebody else. He wasn’t like most of the others. He grinned oddly. That one I didn’t really want to sell. Much of me in that, much of me.
I thought of the Pan, charred and unrecognizable now. The man who bought your work is dead, I said. He was killed.
He moved for the first time, put the little carving down. Im sorry. He peered up at me. Is that why you came here?
Yes. When he bought the Pan, was anybody with him?
A woman.
The little shock leaped in my nerves. I showed him my pictures. He recognized Webb easily. But he looked at the others for a long time, then shook his head.
No. I couldn’t say. I remember . . . an impression. But not enough to help you.
Tell me anything you can. What do you remember?
He thought. Tall, fairly tall. Beautiful body. Beautiful. A beautiful woman. He was silent for a few seconds. Black hair. Im not sure of the rest. Dark eyes, maybe. Maybe blue . . . brown . . . Im not sure. But she was beautiful.
Could she have been Polynesian? A Hawaiian girl?
I’ve no idea now. I don’t recall.
If you saw her again, not just a picture. Do you think you’d recognize her?
Its difficult to say. So many pass by here. I might. I might not. I don’t know.
I thanked him, told him I might talk to him again, and walked on. I was about to st
op for a drink and to rest my feet when I remembered the promise I’d made to Dr. Paul Anson. Two hula skirts for Paul. Coming up. After asking at a couple of places I was sent to a small shop loaded with jewelry and sarongs, muumuus and tea-timers. They had some grass skirts.
A Japanese girl showed them to me. Somehow I’d expected little thin strips of grass, like weak broom straws, but these were big, long, fat green leaves. And there were a lot of them. You couldn’t see much of anything through this sort of thing.
I asked the girl, Are they all made like this? I mean, so . . . un-transparent?
She didn’t understand.
So I said, Arent there any a little — wispier? With more . . . of less? Ah, more revealing?
Oh. Well, these are what most of the dancers wear.
They are?
Yes. When they do a hula. Theyre made out of ti leaves.
That’s the kind I want. Tea leaves.
These are ti leaves. From the ti plant.
Somehow we got it straightened out. There were other, more fragile skirts available elsewhere, but these were all the girl had. I bought two of them and the girl wrapped them neatly. Paul, I figured, could slice them up a little before he gave them to his gal.
The Pele was clear out past Diamond Head, a big place surrounded by a lot of palms and ferns, with several little pools over which were small arched bridges. It was near the sea and I could hear the muffled boom of breakers. At eight-forty-five p.m. I went inside. On my left was a long bar, crowded at this hour. Ahead was a big room, the dining room. The smooth, polished guy inside the dining room entrance was Chuck. I told him Loana was expecting me, and he escorted me to a table at front and center, next to the dance floor.
I beamed. Loana had more than kept her word.
The floor of the club was built in tiers, ascending higher the farther the tables were from the dance floor. No matter where customers sat, they would have a good view of the show. Not as good as mine, however. The ceiling was thatched below the wood so that the feeling was of being in a large and luxurious beach shack. Around the walls were spears and clubs, some paintings of island scenes, fish nets and oddly shaped lamps made from shells. Candles, most of them lighted, were on each table. The room was nearly filled, and the soft hum of conversation rose and fell around me.
A waiter wearing a white jacket and small plaited-straw hat handed me a menu. I looked over the list of drinks and, with the feeling that this was not a night for great caution, ordered a Panthers Blood. I didn’t order any food. Blood would hold me till Banyan time.
My drink arrived in a tall highly polished tube of bamboo. A flower was sticking up out of the top. Even as I looked, the flower wilted. That should have warned me. It didn’t. Gayly I glugged, thirstily, in manly fashion, about half the drink. It went down like a two-hundred-proof transfusion.
I rose two inches off my chair and said, Hoo-hah!
I sank back, with the definite impression that I was getting numb all over. The waiter was still standing next to the table. Grinning. He’d watched this happen before. A sadist.
I said, Whats in this curdled lava?
Rum, he said, many kinds. Vodka, Cointreau, cognac, a little fresh capsicum —
Its fresh, all right.
— gin and vermouth.
Uh-huh. After its all made, you pour a martini on top. Nothing else in it, huh? No embalming fluid or such?
He was still grinning. Only the blood of a freshly-killed panther.
You didn’t kill this one; its alive. It bit me.
He walked away, rubbing his palms together like a mad scientist. Maybe he’d made the drink; maybe he was a mad scientist. If anybody wanted something more potent than this, I thought, the waiters would have to go around with big loaded hypodermics, jabbing the customers. There just couldn’t be anything more potent than this.
But there was. I didn’t know it right then, but there was.
Loana.
The lights dimmed. I shoved my drink clear across the table, thinking I was already going blind, but it was showtime. A Polynesian M.C. came onto the floor; a spot fell on him. He talked a little, sang a little. A small girl about five feet tall did a six-foot hula. A Japanese girl sang a song almost entirely through her nose.
And then the M. C. said, Ladies and gentlemen, malihinis and kamaainas — our lovely Loana.
She came on. She wore a pale blue holomuu — the clinging, fitted gown which many Hawaiians wear, smooth over breasts and waist and hips, descending gracefully to the floor. The musicians, well to the rear of the floor, played a song I’d never heard before. Soft, lovely, a little sad. This was a Hawaiian dance, a hula, not Tahitian.
The floor was bare, the illumination like bright moonlight. And Loana moved like music. Hips slowly swaying, arms flowing, hands seeming to melt through the air. Her long black hair floated behind her head and brushed her shoulders and I could see her lips move as she silently mouthed the words of the song.
She was that rare thing, an entertainer who not only entertained but captured. She was magic, her movements quicksilver and moonlight, soft as winds, smooth as darkness, as she wove a spell around the audience, around me.
All that from just swinging hips and moving arms, from rippling hands, and fingers? All that, and more. The hula, when expertly done, always has a little of that special Polynesian beauty and charm that is in no other dance; but with Loana it was the true, authentic magic.
My eyes were on her, on her shadowed face and body, but around her I imagined sea and surf at night, sand beneath her bare feet, trade winds in sighing palms. All the dances of all the dark-skinned girls with flashing eyes — from the old, old days on unnamed islands until now — all moved in Loana’s blood, in her hips and hands and eyes.
When she finished the dance she bowed forward slightly, arms extended before her, hands touching. The applause burst and swelled. Loana straightened, dropped her arms, and looked straight at me, smiling.
I nodded, grinned, applauded furiously.
The M.C. came back. There was more. Another song, a guy doing a comic routine. Then a bull-muscled man in a lava lava did a sword dance, sharp knives flashing as he stamped about a fire burning in an open black-metal pot on the floor. The fire still burned there when he left.
And then Loana again. Not the Hawaiian hula this time. This time the Tahitian dance. The tempo of the music quickened, became louder, almost frenzied. With the beat of drums and click-click-click of wood on wood, the drum-like plucking of strings, the gasp of horns. Loana came onto the floor suddenly, almost running, head high, full breasts jutting forward, hips moving, rocking, rocking to the rapid beat.
Her costume wasn’t the same. Now she wore only a narrow printed cloth over her breasts, and two other strips of the same cloth at her hips, one in front and one behind, knotted together at each side. It was low on her hips, dipping below the navel in front, looking as if it must fall from her, slide down her gleaming legs.
Not the graceful hula this time. This time the wild Tahitian orgy of rippling breasts and hips and thighs, the frantic sexual attack, the hot loin-burning, lusty, Tahitian dance designed to stir the senses, fire the blood.
She moved around the floor then paused near the fire, its flames licking redly over her quivering flesh, feet planted in one spot but the rest of her body vibrating, throbbing, the cloth at her hips billowing, rippling, her breasts trembling. She spun around.
And suddenly it was over. As suddenly as it had begun, she was gone.
I didn’t move for about a minute. Then I called the waiter over. He stopped by me, grinning.
Another Panthers Blood, please, I said.
Five minutes later Loana walked along the edge of the dance floor, stopped by my table. Mr. Scott?
I stood up and pulled out a chair. Shell. Please sit down.
Shed changed into another holo
muu, dark blue this time, with splashes of white on it. She sat down and said easily, Whats that? she was pointing at my drink.
Panthers Blood.
Oh, dear.
Yeah. There should be a sign: Not one to a customer. She laughed and I added, I wasn’t going to have another, but after your dances I weakened.
She smiled. You liked my dances then.
I nodded.
Her smile widened. I noticed that you seemed . . . sympathetic.
I didn’t know you could see me that well.
Yes, I was watching you almost all the time.
I didn’t realize . . .
Perhaps you werent looking at my eyes.
Yeah, uh, now that I think back . . . Where do you go from there?
But now I looked at her eyes. They were velvet, almost black, like her long thick hair. Hot eyes, but there seemed a smile in them, too, as there was on her warm red lips. We talked for a few minutes, always easily, never any searching for the right word or phrase. There hadn’t been any strain or unease from the moment wed met. And I liked to listen to her speak. Her voice on the phone had been sweet and low and soft, but it was vibrant, golden now, coming from her lips. She laughed easily, and it was quite a while before I remembered to mention Webb.
When I did, I asked her if shed seen him when he was here in the Islands.
Yes, I did, she said. He’d just arrived, he told me. I only talked to him for a few minutes — he wanted to make sure I was going to be at the Anniversary Party, that was all. I told him I would.
This was when he first got here? That would have been on or around the sixth or seventh?
Yes, about then.
Did he talk to you here at the club?
No, at my home. I’ve only been at the Pele for four nights. I started Saturday.
Where were you working before you came here?
Dance with the Dead (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 12
