Slay Ride for a Lady

by Harry Whittington

  When Alkao and Nakayama came in together, I had forced myself up and was sitting with one leg swung over the edge of Guerrero’s desk. There were bees in my belly, and my head was swimming, but I gritted my teeth and sat there staring at them.

  One of the cops closed the door and locked it from the outside. We could all three hear the click of that key in the lock. Nakayama turned to look at the door over his shoulder.

  “Did he tell you why I wanted to talk to you?” I said to Alkao.

  The boxer smiled smugly. “You think I will change my mind. I never saw you.”

  “You’re going to change your mind,” I told him. “You are going to change your mind, because I’m going to beat you until you do.”

  Now Alkao snarled with contempt. “You forget I am a professional fighter. You took an advantage of me.”

  “Maybe you won’t let me take an advantage now,” I said. “Still, I’ll beat you. I’m a cop, Alkao. I been one a long time. I can take care of you.”

  “I warn you! Don’t touch me again. This time in your condition it will be pilau for you! I am a master of Judo as well as boxing.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’m waiting for you.”

  I was bluffing. I had never been more helpless in my life. Alkao swelled up his chest, but he only stood there waiting. I suppose he remembered that I had kicked him in the face when he was in agony. He was not to be bluffed. But he wasn’t going to take any chances, either.

  I stared at him a moment and then I looked at Oliver Nakayama.

  “Would you like your arm broken again?” I said to him. “Not the other arm, Oliver. The same one. Have you ever had the same arm broken again? Or even twice again. It is more terrible, Oliver. The pain is so much worse.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Eddie Alkao snapped at Nakayama. “Guerrero has promised to protect us. Besides,” he snarled at me. “This man is in jail now. He will never get out. When will he do these things he threatens.”

  I looked back at Alkao. “The man who hired you to kill me in the Bombay Grill,” I said. “He promised to protect you, too, didn’t he? But did he? Listen to me, Eddie. You have seen strong men. And powerful men. Men who manage fights. Some of them control a lot of other men, don’t they? It’s like that with the man who paid money to you and Nakayama so you’d attack me. He is a powerful man. But I have a friend who hates this man, Eddie. Listen to me! I’m not lying to you! My friend’s name is Rafferty. When he hears that I am in trouble, he’ll send smart men to get me out. Guerrero lies if he says I’ll never be free. The friend I speak of is so much stronger than the man who hired you.” I laughed at him. “But go ahead, smart guy, take a chance. But when I am free, I swear to you, Alkao, I’ll get you.”

  “Eddie,” Oliver said.

  “He’s bluffing,” Alkao said hollowly.

  “Sure. I’m bluffing,” I said. I laughed again. “But so you won’t forget, Eddie, I’m here. Come on in, because you’d better kill me unless you’re going to tell Guerrero the truth. Unless you’re going to tell him I was at the Bombay Grill, Eddie, you’d better come on in and kill me now!”

  “Eddie,” Oliver said.

  Alkao swallowed. At that instant, the door was unlocked and Guerrero sprang through it, raging. “You lied, Henderson! The woman has no baby. She has seen no one like you! You tricked me, Henderson. But don’t worry, you’ll fry.”

  “I told you,” I said very quietly. “There is no baby. My name is Victore Kapiolani. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Tell the Lieutenant, Oliver, who broke your arm at the Bombay Grill at around ten o’clock yesterday morning.”

  Oliver’s eyes were wild now. He was visibly trembling. He looked beseechingly at Alkao. But Eddie didn’t turn to him.

  He pointed at me. I heard the two plain clothes men exhale.

  “You lie!” Guerrero screeched. “You lie! Who will accept the word of an opium user? I’ll throw you under the jail, Nakayama, and you’ll never get another pill!”

  “How about you, Eddie?” I said to the boxer. “Did you see me at the Bombay Grill?”

  Guerrero stared at Alkao, the light glinting on his glasses. He was breathing heavily. Eddie Alkao kept his head low.

  “I saw you there,” he said.

  “Will you take the word of a famous professional boxer?” I said to Guerrero.

  Guerrero said nothing. I knew he wasn’t through with me, but for the moment he was stopped. He hadn’t found the baby yet, and his two witnesses had reversed themselves. He went behind his desk and sat down just looking at me.

  For a moment, I thought he was going to cry.

  Temporarily, Guerrero was stopped, and I was free. But only temporarily. I knew I had to find some way to get out of Honolulu. And get out fast.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “YOU’RE A FOOL,” Guerrero said. He stood at the door of the Honolulu Police Station with me. We could hear the sounds of the harbor. Gray Navy jeeps whipped past us. The sun was bright, and burned into my shoulders. “You’re a fool. If anything happens to you, what becomes of the baby?”

  I only smiled at him. I was feeling better. The very knowledge that I was free, even if only for the moment, was a psychological boost. And besides, I wanted to laugh in Guerrero’s face. His witnesses, Eddie Alkao and Nakayama, were afraid of him, but they were more afraid of my fists!

  I could see through Goichi Guerrero’s thick lensed glasses that this knowledge was not lost upon him, either. I think he hated me because the two bums had changed their minds even more than he hated me because I stood there in the sunlight, grinning, free of anything he could do.

  “The baby?” I said. “There is no baby, Guerrero. If there were a baby, it would be in good hands. If it grew up there, it would be happier than if it were returned to Henry Nelson, don’t you think?”

  His face showed a little shock.

  “Nelson?” he said. “Henry Nelson?”

  “Didn’t you mention that name?” I said.

  “No,” Guerrero replied.

  I smiled. “That’s funny. I thought I’d heard it somewhere. I’ll see you around, Guerrero. Keep your nose clean.”

  “The same to you, Mister Kapiolani. You’ll see me around. I promise you.”

  As I said, I wanted to laugh at him. I wanted to laugh out loud. All these years a cop, and for the first time in my life I was enjoying myself, fighting the Law!

  I started walking up Hotel Street. There was a native woman waiting at a corner for a bus. I stopped beside her as though I’d decided to take the bus, too.

  When I turned and looked over my shoulder, I saw him. He was a little fellow, skinny, and what you’d call nondescript, the kind you could lose in a crowd. The kind, I told myself, that police anywhere would be smart to employ.

  It would have been easy to convince myself he wasn’t my tail. He was looking in a window across the street and halfway down the block from me. But I knew. He was going to be looking in windows, studying stars, or just standing wherever I happened to go. The bus came then. I stepped into it. It was a Punchbowl bus and turned sharply on Punchbowl Street. The first time it stopped, I stepped off of it. There was a taxi and I rode in it over to Alakea and Beretania. I went into a bar on Alakea and had a cocktail.

  When I came out, he was waiting for me. I pretended not to see him and walked slowly along Beretania to the Oya Tailoring Shop. As I went up the outside steps, I could see him across the street in the photographer’s studio.

  The door to the apartment was locked. I went back down the steps to the Oya’s shop. Oya peered at me. “The key,” I said.

  He didn’t want to give me the key. I still don’t know how I got that impression. He didn’t say he didn’t want to give me the key, he just stood there and stared at me with a vacant smile on his brass green face.

  I picked up a chair and looked meaningly at Oya’s glass showcase with its neat rows of Navy rating badges, threads and cloth samples. I grinned at him as vacantly as I could. He got the idea, and place
d the key with its white paper tag on top of the glass showcase.

  As I went back up the stairs, I could hear him calling the police. There was nothing wrong with his English as he told them that the escaped murderer, Kapiolani, was in his upstairs apartment.

  I knew that Guerrero, if he heard of this, would use the fact that I had “forced my way” into the apartment as excuse to return me to jail. I wanted only one thing from the apartment. I went through it quickly. It was changed. The baby bed was gone, as were Connice’s clothes and suitcase. The rooms had been freshly dusted, but they still looked dingy and foreign with insubstantial furnishings crowded in them.

  The wallet was gone from behind the water closet!

  Somebody knew plenty about me, and that same somebody was several hundred dollars richer!

  I had no time to stand there and worry about that. Anyway, I’m an old worrier and can worry on the run. I locked the door, came down the steps, tossed in the key to Suiki Oya, who was standing in the exact center of his little shop with his hands clasped in front of him, and that same vacant grin on his face.

  I hailed a cruising taxi and jumped into it just as a police car screamed into the curb in front of Oya’s tailoring shop.

  I watched my smart little tail write down the license number of the cab I was riding in. When I saw that I sat back and forgot him. I wasn’t going to get rid of him by running, and I felt pretty sure, he’d begin shadowing again as soon as he shooed the police cruiser away.

  I gave the driver the address of the Breakwaters Hotel out at Waikiki and sat back to watch Honolulu. We drove swiftly and silently out Kapiolani Boulevard to the Cross Roads of the World, where there’s a drink stand that looks like something intended for Los Angeles. Then beyond the bandstand under the banyans, the beach and the big hotels and the little shops lined the avenue. The places the armed forces had taken over during the war were beginning to look respectable again.

  At the hotel I asked for my key. The clerk hesitated and then turned it over to me. I realized as I went up in the elevator that the police were being called. What a waste of the taxpayer’s money it was to have me shadowed!

  The police had been through my room, and they didn’t bother to hide their quick and sloppy work. From between the mirror glass and backboard, I pulled out a receipt with a fingernail file. Then I packed the bag I’d brought with me from Tampa and returned to the lobby.

  My shadow was there, sitting near the cigar counter with a copy of the Star-Bulletin before his face. I returned the key, paid my bill, and they charged me for the night I’d spent in jail. When I was ready to leave, I took the receipt from my pocket.

  “Could I have this from the manager’s safe, please?”

  The clerk looked at it. I saw him go pale. It was something he had overlooked. I knew he was praying the police never found out that he’d withheld evidence from them.

  “Would you step this way, please?” he said.

  I followed him into the manager’s office. They opened the safe and handed me the thick manila envelope. I could tell it had not been opened. From it I took the five one hundred dollar bills and the return tickets I’d bought for Connice Nelson, her baby and me.

  When I came out of the manager’s office, the little shadow had moved to a chair just across from the clerk’s desk. He still had the paper in front of his face.

  Each time you walked into the sun, it was like walking into a steam bath. You began to sweat the minute the sun hit you. It was very still, there wasn’t even a breeze, and the Pacific looked as smooth as a mill pond.

  I took a taxi down town to the offices of the Matson Line. There I inquired about rates to China. The offices were crowded, the Hilotania was due to sail at four that afternoon. I wanted to check my suitcase to the liner, but I couldn’t do it. There was nothing to do but lug it along.

  It was heavy, but I walked swiftly. From swift steps I changed to a jogging trot and then I broke into a run. At the first dark and narrow alley, I swerved sharply, the suitcase banging my leg as I ran between the buildings.

  I put on brakes and thrust my self hard against the building. I could hear the snapping steps of the little police man as he ran after me. He whipped into the alley and too late saw me waiting for him with the paving brick high in my right hand.

  He howled high in his throat and threw up his hands to ward off the blow. I threw a punch at him with my left and when he brought his guard down, I let him have the brick, hard. He crumpled loosely, tottering for a second on his knees. I stood there to see if I’d have to hit him again. I didn’t. He was out, cold.

  I kept on running down the alley then until I came to the oleander hedge I remembered. As I ran, with the heavy bag bumping me, I began to laugh, remembering the lie I’d told Goichi Guerrero about the midwife on Kam Highway. I’d never even been out that way. I’d read about it in some directions on how to reach the Dole pineapple company where you were welcome to free pineapple juice piped through coolers.

  There was no sign of the highway as I reached Momi Cantania’s yard. The huge pineapple above the Dole Company was blocks away. There was some kind of Chinese ceremonial dance going on in the streets. I pushed my way through it, and rattled the picket fence when I opened the gate.

  I went up the steps to the antiseptically scrubbed front porch. Putting my suitcase down, I knocked on the door and waited. There was no answer.

  The house was quiet with the silences of abandoned places. I began to sweat with a kind of sweat that had nothing to do with the heat.

  I can’t tell you how sick I got. I knocked again, without hope. I turned all the way around and stood staring at the celebration in the street.

  All right, I told myself, the baby is gone. Guerrero outsmarted you. What happens to the baby doesn’t matter to you anyway, Henderson. Life’s too short. The only thing that matters to you is getting back alive to Tampa to square things with brother Henry Nelson. That’s the last thing you’ll ever do, you’ve got the same chance as a snowball in hell. The main thing is to get out of here and start back across that four thousand miles to Tampa.

  But the ache across the bridge of my nose didn’t lie. I knew it was important to find that baby. So what could I do for a baby? I didn’t even know how to change its pants for sure. But I didn’t like the thought of leaving her over here where nobody knew her, where maybe nobody would love her, anyway not the way Connice Nelson had loved her. Somewhere Connice had people, and somewhere that baby would grow up loved and looked after. And that’s where she belonged, and that’s where I meant to take her. And then, kind of under my breath, I added, with God’s help.

  The fear that Guerrero had the baby, or that I’d been sold out, changed to a cold anger. I picked up my suitcase and tramped through the muddy yard around the side of the house. The windows were so high I had to stand on my tip toes to look in them. They were closed, but there were no shades.

  Inside the rooms were in order, but they looked the way a house does when the people have gone away from it. Things were put not where they’d be if they were needed, but where they would look best. Everything was in place.

  Momi Cantania’s house was deserted.

  “Your hands. Drop the bag. Put up your hands, please.”

  It was a woman’s voice from directly behind me. She had stepped up close to me, and I hadn’t even heard her! I tried to tell myself it was because I was worried about Patsy, but I knew I was getting careless, and from now on all I had to do was get forgetful like that just once and I was finished.

  I dropped the bag and turned around slowly. It was fat Momi Cantania.

  “You!” I snarled at her. “Where is my baby?”

  She let the gun sink down to her huge hips. “The baby,” she said softly. “There have been men here all night, all day, looking, searching, seeking. The first one came less than an hour after you left me yesterday.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “She is quite safe. You have needed a friend. I have been o
ne, you’ll see.”

  “Where is she?”

  She smiled. “Come.”

  She led me across the mucky back yard, through a wooded grassy place where a stubby black cow grazed contentedly. Beyond this there was a shack even browner and meaner than the house of Momi Cantania. This one was not even lifted off the ground. In one place the roof sagged.

  As we came to the door, I heard children laughing. Momi Cantania looked at me and grinned.

  “Estella,” she called.

  A girl of twenty came to the door. She was in a cheap frock. She was soon going to be as fat as Momi Cantania, and in twenty years she would look just like her. But for now, you could still see that it was almost yesterday that she had been lovely.

  “Estella is my daughter,” Momi said.

  Estella stared at me.

  “She saw your picture in the paper, Mister Kapiolani. She read about you. She reads well.”

  “It isn’t true. I didn’t murder her,” I said.

  “Still Estella likes to look at you. You had your picture in the paper.” She pushed her daughter aside. “In here are the babies.” She laughed. “Come, Kapiolani, pick out your own.”

  I stood there. There were four kids from toddlers to six year old. They were all the color of tan rugs, with smeared faces. I chose the youngest because she had blue eyes.

  Momi laughed. “She is yours. But the men who came to search, they could not tell. The child played on the floor while they fretted about the house to see where we had hidden her.” She shook her head and laughed. “Never try to hide a child, for they pick that moment to cry.”

  Estella was washing Patsy in a tub at the side of the room. I looked at my watch. It was almost three o’clock.

  When the baby was washed and its clothes changed, I looked at her. Estella had done a beautiful job, but she hadn’t brushed up the curl the way Connice had. I took the brush and pushed it up on both sides.

  Momi laughed. “Mothers do that who have a lot of time for their children,” she said.